Jacqui

Moving Through Grief

2008-06-10T04:36:56Z

I’ve been wanting to write, missing it, but every time I think about sitting down to begin I get bogged down in narrative and the exhaustion that accompanies me through this grief. All of these thoughts and the heavy sadness that sits on my chest like a sharp rock waiting for me to take a deep enough breath, or accidentally stumble across the tiniest memory of my lost family, to tap this unfathomably deep well of emotion, have so far prevented me from being able to share anything here about the weeks following my Mother’s funeral or even the ceremony itself. I just haven’t been able to bring myself to face it, the pain has been too great, the pain of revealing my feelings or thoughts to you, just, too, great to crack open and share. And there have been so many beautiful moments, profound healing moments, mini-miracles, mini-epiphanies, beauty amidst the ugliness, light within the dark that I have wanted to write about but just haven’t had the strength to. It is so hard to focus when you are hurting and feel so lost. It is so hard for me to focus when I am feeling so hurt and lost.

For the first time in my life, this fear that has haunted for me for so long, not just the fear of cancer, or abandonment, (Which as an only, adopted-late-in-life child, without a single relative in my nuclear family other than my Mother, Father, Grandmother, and Grandfather, [All gone now] has been my life’s constant companion), but the specter of truly being an orphan, when I have always felt like one, and that was held at bay by the illusion of belonging and companionship that my small family kept just out of reach, the fear that grew larger with each subsequent death, (And that is perhaps true for all of us when we lose both of our parents, BTW I've got the book, Death Benefits, it's been helpful, thanks), has finally come to pass and in a very important, real, and primary way I am now truly an orphan and feel more alone than I can possibly attempt to describe to you.

I have a son. I have a lover. I have friends who remember me. But my first family is gone. Wiped off the face of the earth. And there isn’t anyone left who can answer my questions or tell me what I might have been doing on a certain date, or explain why we went somewhere at some particular time, or where this piece of furniture came from, or why something might have held some particular meaning for my Mom or my Dad. If I feel sad I want to reach for the phone to call my Mother. If something sweet or funny happens I want to pick up the phone to tell her. And I can’t. And it hurts. It hurts so much. And I am alone in this. I have been given the gift of a healed relationship with one of my Mother’s best friends with whom I can share some of this grief. And I have been given the gift of some much older women who have stepped forward to offer me some comfort and advice and I do not take these gifts lightly or for granted but Christ Almighty have I been hurting.

My Mother was more like a husband to me than any man was and I feel ripped to pieces, so lost at sea without her. The freedom from this endless childhood that I thought would come with her passing is bringing gifts along with it, but this transition is mind blowingly painful and I don’t want to impose this suffering I am going through on anyone. So I act the way my Mother would. I get up and put one foot in front of the other and do things. I walk through my days getting painfully difficult things done. I take it, “one day at a time,” and somehow it becomes manageable and I make my way through this, but I don’t know how, I don’t remember how I got from A to B. I don’t remember how I spent a week. I struggle with time as always, and am often unaware of what day or date it is. I lose things over and over again and have to retrace my steps in order to find simple basic things like my wallet and my keys that I am constantly losing.
I have traveled through stages of feeling, none of it linear in a way that Kubler Ross would have me believe, although I look for the signs, road maps, anything to help lead the way down this painful twisting path. I want to breathe again, but breathing is dangerous, breathing connects with feeling, and I am afraid the feeling will spill over like the Stone Canyon reservoir that sits at the top of my Mother’s street, sweeping away everything in its path. I am afraid to allow myself to really feel because I feel so much and wonder if once I open the floodgates, if it will ever subside, if I will survive the flood, so I let it out in small polite bursts like a child playing with helium inside a party balloon.

I tell everyone about it, repeating the story again and again to strangers, as if doing this will help some part of accept that this is real, telling anyone who will listen, “My Mother has died.” Everyone understands what this feels like. Everyone has lost someone they loved. Someone will understand. And they do. And it helps. It helps to talk to strangers and daily acquaintances. It helps to accept their sympathy. But then sometimes it makes me angry too. I get angry when well meaning people say, “How old was she?” and then dismiss my grief due to her advanced age.

I know they/you/everyone means well and I am grateful for every exchange I am lucky enough to have with anyone who cares enough to try to say something comforting. I am seriously appreciative and grateful. I know that my grief is so small by comparison with the suffering of others and I am blessed to be able to reach out and find ways to get any kind of comfort through an exchange of words and feelings, any kind of contact with another human being. But as irrational as it is, and as often as I have said these very same words myself in an attempt to comfort someone else, I get angry when people tell me how lucky I was to have had her for so long. Angry when people tell me to be grateful that she is no longer suffering. Angry when they tell me she is in a “better place”. Angry when they tell me that she would want me to move on and be happy. Angry when I am told to remember the good and discard the bad. Angry when I am reminded to celebrate a life so well lived. Angry. And sad. And then angry and sad again, and again, and again. Which finally brings me to this; Yes, time does heal all. In some cases it may take a lot of time to dull the sharp ragged edges of the deepest of wounds, but time does indeed heal. However it is nature that I have found to be the most healing; the tiniest most often overlooked and most commonplace events in nature have brought me the greatest comfort and joy.

I realized this tonight as I was following the sound of a dog barking, followed it out into the dusky shadowed green garden of this hotel where I am staying. (I have been doing a lot of this lately, running away to very local hotels to escape the tremendously daunting tasks I am faced with at home.) I followed the sound of a dog I wanted to meet and interact with, because animals make me happy. For me it’s a simple act of instinct to drop everything I am doing in an instant and follow the sound of a dog, cat, bird, or anything that crawls or buzzes by. So I followed the barking dog and never found it, but I did find a small garden filled with fruit trees. Trees so ripe with fruit that their branches are almost touching the ground. Trees so ripe with fruit that the weakest fruits are being pushed off the braches by the stronger ones, creating a line of small unripe fruit along the edge of this pathway that is filled with ants who are busily working to disassemble these plums, apricots, and whatever other sweet round and juicy things are growing out there, to take back to feed their community.

The sound of a dog, the fruit on a tree, a long line of ants; Nature reminded me that life moves on, life continues despite loss, grief and tragedy, and it is still beautiful and rich, still full of hope and possibility, and so the thought that finally brought me here tonight was that sometimes the smallest and simplest of things are the most beautiful, the most rewarding, the most healing. They won’t bring my Mother back, but they remind me that I am grateful and lucky to be alive, to be here living in this very moment. They remind me to continue to be alive and present to the right now. So that when we are hurting all we ever really have to do is go outside and watch the path of a snail as it makes it’s way along the ground or look up and watch the clouds pass by.

On my street there are roses blooming. By my porch there is a thick wall of jasmine, and around the corner there is a bank of sweet peas. At my Mother’s house, the house where I grew up that holds so many memories, but that I am being forced to sell in order to pay 45% estate taxes to the government, there is a small birds nest tucked up beneath the roof of her front porch, and there is a mama bird who sits so patiently and sweetly, watching me so closely each time I pass by. Then just the other day I saw tiny yellow beaks and fuzzy bald heads popping up, waiting for their parents to come back with food. I saw the hummingbirds that always remind me of my Father, the lizards that have lived in our garden for as long as I can remember, a big orange butterfly, and the deep fuchsia colored bougainvillea that my parents loved so much is in bloom again. So for me nature is the answer, nature and remaining open to the many meaningful possibilities in each present moment. And if you are lucky enough to live anywhere near the ocean, there is always the tremendously healing power of the sea.

Love You,
Jacqui

PS: Just now there was a knock at my door. The manager, Makena, (Named after one of my favorite dive spots in Maui), with whom I had just been speaking about the fruit trees, sent a complimentary slice of their amazing chocolate cake, a pot of hot tea, and a condolence card. There is so much kindness, loveliness, and light in the midst of the darkness, the sadness and the pain, and I am constantly being reminded of this. I wanted you to know this.

PPS: Today is Scott’s birthday. He could use some love too. XOX

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T12:12:31Z

Thank you all so very much for your kind comments. You're the best. I'm too overwhelmed and weary to respond, I just want you all to know how much I love you, and how much your comments mean to me.

I'm so sorry for all of you who understand what this is like. I mean I know that life is a giant exercise in learning compassion through experience, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. It's so raw and painful, and it doesn't matter how old your loved one is, or how sick they were, you just aren't prepared, or at least I wasn't, I think we all think we're going to have just a little more time.

I've been holding the feelings, oh, just a wee bit at bay by keeping myself wound up and overly busy planning her service and the "party" at the club afterwards. But I had this huge grief hiccup today when Scott dropped me off at the bank to make a deposit. I had been driving but there weren't any spaces so we switched seats so he'd be able to drive around the block if anyone pulled in behind him. I was only alone for a minute or so, but standing there waiting, without any real distraction, or the drugs I take at night, (Vicodin, Celebrex, and Skelaxin for the pain, and super low doses of illegal Mexican Valium for the feelings), meant I had time to think and just be there in the moment.

An older man crossed in front of me and I immediately felt this sense of warmth and love for him. I really love older people, I think I always have, except for maybe a brief time in high school when I was utterly lacking in compassion for my wonderful Grandmother. Anyway this man looked a little bit like my Dad, he was wearing a short sleeved shirt and I saw his arms as he passed by, those beautiful tanned thin skinned and freckled arms that older people have. To me, of course, they are beautiful, because they are the arms of my parents, the arms of the people I love the most. So naturally I thought of my Father with his tanned and sun damaged arms from years of playing golf, and then suddenly I flashed on my Mom's arms, those arms I know so well, and her hands, and her pretty long nails that she was so proud of, and having such a visceral memory of her just hit me so hard. Like a punch in the gut there was this pain, this incredible pain and I started crying. The thought that I would never ever see her arms again, or her fingernails, never hold her hand, even though we were both so shy about this because she couldn't handle the intimacy for too long. And I remembered that I was planning to have this lady from her hair salon come give her a manicure in the hospital but she just kept getting sicker, and I remembered that one of her nails was cracked and needed patching and I put a Band-Aid on it for her, like you would put one on a little girl. Her arms, her beautiful arms. And I remembered filing her nail for her because she couldn't do it herself, and it felt so good to be able to do this one simple thing for her, to do it perfectly, better than anyone, to make it smooth so that it wouldn't bother her any more.

My Mother's arms, and her hands; I just lost it. So by the time Scott made it around the block and back I was in tears, and he hasn't seen me like this too much because I've been holding it all in. And even then I buttoned it back up as best I could because it's too much, too much for anyone else, and way too much for me, but it just kept coming, bubbling up and spilling over, so I put my big dark glasses on like some glammy widow at a funeral. Sunglasses at night to go to the market. But I just couldn't handle anyone seeing me feeling this way, I wanted to hide like the kid at the bakery who wears his bangs so long and when I tried to brush them back off his face I got that he wears them that way on purpose. He feels safer behind them.

And just now Ziggy, (Iggy Ziggy Stardust Kitty), came and sprayed me and my pillow. Ya know, when life gets too painful, it's these absurd things that make you think, "Ya just gotta laugh." I'm laughing alright, laughing through the tears.

I managed to get a lot done today, rushing here and there, trying to attack the mountain of phone calls I have to make on my cell while driving. I went to the club and planned the food. Appetizers, hot and cold to be passed out by waiters, mini hamburgers, (Mom wasn't a vegetarian and it wouldn't be right to impose this on her friends), crab cakes, chicken tacos, shrimp, quiche, quesadillas, potato skins with sour cream and caviar because my Mother so loved caviar, (I was buying it for her in the end just to try to get her to eat anything other than chocolate ice cream, she never lost her appetite for that), a desert station and a full bar. I ordered the valet parkers, called the musicians, (A Hawaiian ukulele player and his band, Hawaiian songs from the thirties and forties with a dash of Gershwin and Cole Porter thrown in), the florist, the videographer, and the photographer who turned out to be an old friend of the family.

I still need to finish writing her eulogy, keep making those phone calls, take Mom's urn to the mortuary and pick up her ashes, fun, find musicians for the church, meet with Father Doney to select the readings, clean all of the antique Victorian and Edwardian mourning jewelry that I bought to give to Mom's closest friends, except for Jani who thinks a lock of her hair is too "ghoulish" (Weird, I never expected that from her, especially because she asked me for her own little ash container to bury in her garden, I was thinking of getting some cremation jewelry for myself, little mini container things you can put a token amount of ashes in to wear -- maybe I am getting too morbid here, I don't know, I find it comforting though, death doesn't freak me out that much, Mom is mom, her hair is still her hair, I held her hand for hours after she died, kissed her face, brushed her hair, it was so hard to let go, to leave her behind, to accept that her body was empty in some way and wouldn't be breathing again), scan and print all of the pictures of Mom and my family and her friends that I want to arrange on the black poster board we are going to put on easels around the club, and I still have to take Esther and Andrea and Concha shopping because they can't go to my Mom's funeral in sweat pants or shorts.

Scott came in the afternoon and was a big help. We picked up his suit, and finally got Beau fitted for his. He would have put it off forever if I let him but we couldn't wait a single day longer and so he simply had to go. We picked out conservative shirts, somber ties, a pair of dress shoes and cufflinks. I gave all of my Father's and Grandfather's better cufflinks to my ex. It never occurred to me that I should have kept some for Beau. It seems to me that my Mom has a jewelry box of my Father's in her room at home but whatever was there that was of any value has long ago been picked over by greedy housekeepers. Wouldn't it be wonderful if one day some strange alchemy happened that returned everything that had ever been stolen to its rightful owner, and it happened all at once, with little tags attached to everything bearing descriptions of all of the places where your missing items have been all this time?

And now one of the cats is throwing up, probably just a hairball, or one too many Whiskas. I'll keep an eye on him. Just one more thing to worry about. The cats remind me of babies sometimes. Babies just keep on needing. They don't stop needing to be fed, burped, changed, rocked, comforted, fed, burped, and changed again just because you're in crisis. They go on living, oblivious to the needs of anyone else around them. My cats are a little more self sufficient and sensitive, they'll come and cuddle up with me or even pat my face when I'm crying, but you get the point. Life goes on. In the midst of all of this the cats still piss and shit and puke. It's actually kind of nice.

My Mom's obituary will be in The Los Angeles Times today. If you don't live in LA you can read it on their Legacy page but it was so long in print that they've truncated it on line so I'm going to post it in it's entirety here behind the cut for anyone who might be interested.

I seriously need to get some rest, but for once I got to stay up late without having to feel guilty, which has been kind of nice.

Happy Mother's Day Everyone. It's also Beau's EIGHTEENTH birthday, if you can believe that, wow!

Love You,
Jacqui

Mom's Obituary Is Here

Jeannette Hunt Hyland passed away from complications of cancer and pneumonia at Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, CA, on April 25. Jeannette Hyland was predeceased by her beloved parents Wendell and Peggy Hunt, the renowned fashion designer, and her devoted husband George Black (Jack) Hyland. She is survived and will be missed terribly by her only daughter Jacqui Hyland and her Grandson Robert “Beau” Carrillo.

Jeannette, a native Angeleno, was born on July 31, 1916, and was ninety-one years old at the time of her passing. Still as beautiful as she ever was, doctors and nurses were amazed at how youthful she appeared, and would frequently check their charts in disbelief. She remained totally alert and lucid up until the day she died. She attributed this to her lifelong passion for bridge, crossword puzzles, and her voracious love of reading. She read The Los Angeles Times and the Harold Examiner (Until 1989) every day of her life, but her secret passion was for romance novels, particularly anything by Danielle Steel. One of the last things she read was an article about a friend and fellow alumnus in the Marymount News. She was also passionate about politics and as a staunch Republican and a loyal friend to both Roweena and Roberta McCain, she was eagerly following the election proceedings and rooting for Senator McCain. She was feeling hopeful about the future because of these upcoming elections.

Jeannette was a good Catholic who believed strongly in and derived comfort from her faith. She instilled this same sense of faith in her family, particulary her daughter who she would take with her to mass every Sunday no matter how tired or busy she might have been. She did this until her health made it too difficult to continue to do so. Jeannette graduated from Marymount High School in 1934 and was proud to have been one of Marymount’s oldest living alumnae. She was happy to have been able to send her daughter to Marymount, who adored her school, and has remained friends with the R.S.H.M. Sisters all through her life. She was thrilled with the fine education that they both received there.

Lucky to have lived such a long, rich, and rewarding life, a life filled with so many friends and memories, she could be relied upon to remember almost any event in history. Jeannette had a wealth of first hand information about life in Los Angeles before the advent of cars, refrigerators, radio, television, or any of the modern conveniences that we all take for granted now. She loved history and was always available to answer any of her Grandson’s many homework questions. She was at a filling station with her Mother on March 10, 1933 when the Long Beach earthquake hit. She remembered thinking that some boys who had been hanging around the station were teasing her by rocking the car up and down. When she got out of the car she remembered seeing all of the buildings crumbling, and as she looked down the street she could see the sidewalk rising up from the ground and rolling towards her. Later in life she was able to share these memories with her Mother-In-Law, Louise Black Hyland, who had just returned from Japan was staying in San Francisco when the Great San Francisco Earthquake hit.

With her natural platinum blonde hair, blue eyes, and terrific figure, she looked so much like the film star Jean Harlow that she was given the nickname Jean Harlow Hunt. In 1937 after the sudden death of Ms. Harlow during the production of Saratoga, she was approached by MGM and offered a movie career if she would help complete the film. Naturally shy, despite her wonderful personality and fabulous good looks, she turned them down. Taking one year off from college to study at her parent’s fashion design school in Downtown Los Angeles, Jeannette returned to complete her Bachelors Degree in Japanese History from Stanford University where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1939. She was a member of The Kappa Kappa Gamma Women’s Fraternity.

She was romanced by some of the most famous men of her time but was completely unfazed by their success or fame. She dated Conrad Hilton, called him Connie, and enjoyed a lifelong friendship with him due to their mutual love of business. He was fascinated by this beautiful, successful, young business woman and asked to see her books offering to show her his statements in return. She remembers being utterly perplexed by them, and was flattered by his attention, but ultimately turned him down, as she felt the difference in their ages was unseemly. She taught him how to dance the mambo and together they won a fifty dollar gold piece as the top prize of the evening at Mocambo, a famous nightclub in New York. She also danced with Howard Hughes but wasn’t interested in him because she thought he was strange for wearing tennis shoes to the Coconut Grove. She dated billionaires and captains of industry but cared much more about love and compatibility than wealth. She cared for and remained friends with her first husband Dennis Alexander and enjoyed a long and successful marriage to her second husband George Black (Jack) Hyland.

Jeannette was a natural athlete, excelling at most sports, with the one rare exception being golf. She swam, rode horseback, played tennis and paddle tennis, owned a speed boat with her first husband Dennis Alexander, and enjoyed water skiing and snow skiing. She even tried surfing. Although she tried hard to improve her game, so that she could play alongside her second husband Jack Hyland, she simply couldn’t compete with someone so good that he had been the captain of the golf team at UCLA, a winner of more trophies than they had room in their home to keep, and Club Champion of Eldorado with a scratch handicap at age seventy. With a handicap so high that she would not want this information divulged she finally threw in the towel, but was always happy to cheer him on and support his love of the sport.

Following in the footsteps of her Mother Peggy Hunt, (The noted fashion designer who founded the California apparel business as the first manufacturer of children’s and women’s clothing), and her Father Wendell Hunt, (Who wisely guided the business end of Peggy Hunt Inc.), she borrowed a small amount of money from her parents and set up her own company under the name of Jeannette Alexander, (Her first husband), in a corner of her parent’s factory. She quickly became an apparel industry pioneer in her own right as the first manufacturer of shoulder pads. She sold these pads to major department and retail stores throughout the country. Her new business was a hit from the start, far exceeding anyone’s expectations, as shoulder pads became a mainstay of women’s clothing in the 1940’s. With stores clamoring for more Jeannette began traveling regularly with her Mother to New York to purchase hard-to-find fabric throughout World War Two. She never had trouble finding a room as Mr. Hilton, and later Mr. Frank Wangeman, Executive Manager of the Waldorf Astoria, and a director of the Hilton Corporation, always insisted on finding her the best of rooms. As recently as three years ago the hotel was kind enough to upgrade her from a standard room to one of their finest suites and she was so pleased remembering the good times she had had with her family and friends during all their years of doing business in New York.

With the profits from her first business venture she then began her own successful apparel line, eventually owning her own factory, employing dozens of people, many of whom remained friends throughout her life. She began by making quilted skirts and quickly added what she called every day dresses to a collection that rapidly expanded to included dresses for all seasons as well as resort. She sold these dresses all across the country and had showrooms in most major cities. These dresses were unique in that they had to be made more affordably so as not to compete with her parent’s end of the business. This forced her to become more creative and innovative in her designs. She did this by cutting out and appliquéing parts of the various prints she used on the bodice of the dresses. She was the host of the first live televised fashion show ever to be broadcast in Los Angeles. So few people owned televisions at that time that her parents had to rush over to The Brown Derby in order to see her. She remembered being made to wear black lipstick and being pulled off camera and pushed back on after commercial breaks. She remained in business until the early 1970’s when women began to wear jeans and pretty dresses were no longer as much of a staple of a woman’s wardrobe as they once were. As with anyone she employed she was always kind and considerate. They thought of her as a friend, a mentor, a sister or a Mother. She remained friends with her secretary Esther Kroner and her assistant designer Joyce Gale for over sixty years. The three women would meet regularly for lunch to catch up and talk about the old days, and they were particularly happy to have been able to enjoy a tea and fashion show recently honoring the work of Peggy Hunt and Jeannette Alexander.

As a successful manufacturer and designer of women’s clothing Jeannette had a wealth of knowledge about fashion. She loved clothing and was always dressed impeccably. She was always available to answer the many inquiries she would receive from students, researchers, and authors. She knew and was friendly with most of the major designers and some of the top couturiers of her time. On a trip to Paris in the late sixties she was pleased to introduce her young daughter to the legendary designer Coco Chanel.

After retiring she continued to assist her husband with building and remodeling homes as this was a great passion of hers. She particularly enjoyed improving older homes and loved decorating her own. She was the ultimate Lookey Loo and would readily admit this. She was endlessly fascinated by architecture and design, and would rarely pass up an opportunity to tour an open house. She had been mentored in design by Mrs. Gladys Belzer, the well known interior decorator, the Mother of Loretta Young, and together they traveled to Europe on buying trips where she learned about furniture and design. She devoted the rest of her life to raising her daughter, enjoying the company of her husband and many friends, and contributing to the many charities of which she was a member. She was a member of The Colleagues, The Los Angeles Orphanage Guild, The Costume Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Assistance League of Southern California as well as many others.

She was passionate about travel and considered herself lucky to have visited so many countries around the world, returning several times to the places she was particularly fond of. As a teenager in the 1930s she accompanied her Mother on a fine lace and fabric buying trip that took her to Minnesota, Iowa, New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and Cuba. It was on this trip that she was a passenger aboard the SS Morro Castle on its last successful run before the tragic fire at sea that cost the lives of 137 people. She traveled through the Panama Canal shortly after it became possible for Americans to safely do so. Her first trip to Honolulu, Hawaii was aboard the SS Lurline in 1937, thereby beginning a love affair with the Hawaiian Islands and her people that lasted throughout her life. Along with Gershwin and Cole Porter her favorite music was Hawaiian, she learned to play the ukulele and she would often sing old favorite songs along with her family. Her last trip was to Maui shortly before her ninetieth birthday. On a trip to Buenos Aires she was introduced to and began a short-lived friendship with Eva (Evita) Peron as she was already ill at the time and died shortly afterwards. She visited London, Rome, and Paris many times. She traveled all through most of Europe. She cruised the Nile River in Egypt and visited Japan and China. She went to Russia. She often travelled to Mexico and visited many parts of South America. She sailed to Alaska. She sailed aboard The RMS Queen Mary, the RMS Queen Elizabeth One and Two, flew on the Concord, and rode aboard The Orient Express. She generously took her Daughter and Grandson to Tahiti and Hawaii several times. She enjoyed spending a great deal of time with her family at their various homes in Palm Springs. She had just returned from a cruise to Mexico last Spring, and was planning a return trip to Japan, especially for her Grandson, before she became ill.

She owned homes in Los Angeles, and Palm Desert. She was a member of The Beach Club, The Los Angeles Country Club and Marrakesh. She loved flowers and gardens and was a member of The Bel Air Garden Club.

As a Mother and a Grandmother she was unparalleled, tremendously loving, forever devoted, endlessly helpful, understanding, generous, forgiving, and kind. She leaves behind a very tiny family who while they are happy that she is no longer in pain, are grieving deeply and are devastated by her loss.

Her list of friends and acquaintances would read like a Who’s Who of some of the most successful and influential people of our time. Despite this she was modest and remained unfazed by her own success or the tremendous successes of her friends. She was a true friend to all, the finest of friends to her intimates. Anyone who knew her, would remark on her warmth, generosity, sharp mind, terrific sense of humor, braveness, optimism in the face of adversity, her wonderful laugh, and that sweet smile that lit up her lovely face. As a friend she was loyal, considerate, constantly available to lend an ear or offer a shoulder to cry on, and always ready with the best advice. Despite this she was unwilling to burden anyone with her own troubles and didn’t want her daughter to upset anyone by telling them about her failing health which is why this announcement may come as a great surprise to many. If life is a seafaring journey then Jeannette would have been the captain of the ship, and there are many people who are feeling lost at sea without her.

Services will be held on Thursday May 15, at noon, at Saint Martin of Tours Parish Church, (Corner of Sunset and Saltair in Brentwood, one mile west of the 405 Freeway), with a celebration of her life to follow. Her family will warmly welcome anyone who knew her. Memories and photographs would be appreciated and donations may be made to The Los Angeles Orphanage Guild or the Kris Kelly Animal Rescue Foundation (310) 699-5566.

Mom Passed Away

2008-05-09T08:29:45Z

Jeannette Hunt Hyland
July 31, 1916 -- April 25, 2008

Hi Everybody,

I just haven't been able to bring myself to write. Somehow it's harder to share this information with compassionate friends like you than with strangers. I haven't had the time or energy to reach out to any of my friends, or at least not until the day before yesterday when I finally called my friend Susan and told her.

My Mom passed away Friday the 25 at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica. I am grateful to have been there with her, to have been cradling her head in my arms, kissing her forehead and holding her hands, but it wasn't a good death. She was in pain and things were terribly mishandled.

I know that the doctors and nurses were doing the best that they knew how, but I will save the big bad conversation about how I think there is a corporate insurance led genocide of the elderly going on in this country that we can and must not ignore. Call after call made to my Mother's friends, who are mostly in their late eighties and early nineties, produced similar horror stories from suffering family members, good people who are tearing their hair out trying to get the care that their parents need and deserve. I feel as if all of these many hospital visits succeeded in killing my Mother rather than prolonging her life, but again, I want to reserve this conversation for another time when I am certain that this is not just one of the many stages of my grief talking.

My Mother's services will be held next Thursday the 15 at Saint Martin of Tours Church in Brentwood. Mary, Jenny, Maria, Michael and Monique, if any of you are out there and reading this we would so love to have you come. There will be a celebration of her life afterwards at the club. Let me know so I can add you to the count, you're welcome to bring a companion. Dress for the club is somewhat formal, dresses or suits for women, suits or coats and ties for the men.

I'm trying to find a rocking good Southern Baptist type of choir to use in our Catholic church. As really good as they are I just can't bear to have this pretty and super gifted but somewhat over mannered soprano and her organist friend who regularly perform at mass, play for Mom's service, not when we are a family of musicians, not when Beau and Scott play guitar and all three of us can sing. I sang at my Grandmother's funeral but just couldn't do it for my Dad and everyone complained, so I will try to sing for my Mom, but I will need serious backing, a rocking good choir would help with this. Mom wouldn't want sad music anyway, something cheerful and uplifting would please her.

For the club I'm looking for a good ukulele player to play some Hawaiian tunes. Mom actually played the ukulele. She took lessons in Hawaii in the 1930's and would always play little songs for me. After she died, we stayed by her side for about three hours, and one of the things we did for her, and for us, was to sing whatever Hawaiian songs we could remember by heart. We also had a priest come and together we formed a circle over her body, said prayers and were asked to share memories about the kind of person my Mother was/is.

I believe that a person's spirit remains present and near their body and loved ones until they are laid to rest, and then can move on or return at will. This is a kind of Rosicrucian take on the whole thing. I also believe that they can come and visit us in our dreams. I asked my Mother to come and visit me in mine and she has and it was beautiful and healing. In my dream she was so much younger and just so beautiful. We were standing in the hallway of her home going through the many racks of clothes I have so lovingly collected for her and for my Grandmother. She had a hard time appreciating my doing this for her in life as she considered it wasteful in terms of money, but I know she was secretly pleased that I cared so much about her past. In the dream she was appreciative and sisterly. We were looking through the dresses together, admiring them happily and trying to choose the prettiest one for her to wear to a party she was about to go to. The most remarkable thing about the dream to me, something I didn't understand until later, was that her face seemed so different, angelic even. Later I understood that what was so different about her face was that it was totally free of the anxiety that had plagued so much of her later life. Sadly I think this was due to a benign tumor located in an area of the brain known for causing anxiety and impatience.

I have also seen several hummingbirds and a big beautiful moth. But I am looking for signs, attributing superhuman qualities to ordinary natural events, in order to comfort myself in my grief and loneliness.

When it became apparent to me that my Mother was really dying I held her and told her that she didn't need to hang on, that she could go and that I would take care of Beau and Rosa and her house. I told her that I would be okay without her. I told her how much I loved her, how grateful I was to her for everything she had done for me for all of my life. I told her what a good person she was, how beautiful she was, how loved she was, what a good Mother she had been. I asked for her forgiveness. I did everything a daughter could do. It was very similar to the way that my Father died. I kissed his feet. I kissed her feet. And in each case, as they began dying, their feet and hands turned purple. The moment I noticed that my Mother's fingers were turning purple was the moment that I truly understood that she was dying. I still cannot understand what the many doctors and nurses who she had could not tell me this, could not help prepare me, guide me, or help me understand what was happening so that I could have planned our time better, made better decisions. Again, these are things better left for another time as they hurt too much to discuss and ultimately since I do believe that everything happens as it is meant to, there wouldn't have been too much that I could have done differently anyway, as these were the experiences we were meant to have, the lessons we are meant to learn and grow from.

At the same time that I was doing this, trying to make my Mother's transition as peaceful and loving as possible, Rosa was shrieking and ranting, coming in and out of the room, finally throwing herself down on the floor by Mom's hospital bed screaming, "Don't go Missy Hyland! Don't Go! Don't Go! " It was horrible. We were such a study in contrasts, the difference between our cultures, our ways of grieving, our degrees of selfishness and selflessness so apparent to anyone who witnessed this. There is so much more I want to say but I just can't, I don't want to mar the memory of my beloved Mother by muddying this up with tales of Rosa. I want to be compassionate and kind to her, despite everything. I want to move on. I can always write more about the events of that night later.

Some beautiful things have come out of this. I was able to reunite with my Mother's ex-husband and his wife. I called to tell him about my Mom's passing, learned that he was in the hospital himself and sent him some flowers from Mom and me. She would have liked this. When he got out he invited me to come over to his home to meet him and look through old photographs. He gave me some. This kind of thing is priceless to me. Plus I was able to help heal an old wound, the wound my Mother caused when she left him.

I told him that she had always loved him, that she had passed this love on to me. How else could I possibly know so much about him, his likes and dislikes, his sun sign, etc.? I told him that I thought that they were too much alike, too fiery and passionate, and that despite this she had always wanted the best for him and was happy for him when he married his wife Freida, she liked Freida a lot, Freida who incidentally is descended from Hawaiian royalty.

It felt good to tell him this, and it felt especially good to visit his home. My Mother was a serious Lookey Loo, she loved peeking inside people's houses, it was true passion of hers, and I just know how much she would have loved to have been able to peek into the life of her ex-husband, to see how he had turned out more closely, to see how he lived. I felt as if she was there with me, peeking over my shoulder.

I've also been speaking with so many of her friends, trying to be a comfort to them, while they try to comfort me. One of my favorites is Rowena Willis, Senator John McCain's Mother's identical twin sister. She loves to talk and we have been friendly through the years. I like to sit and listen to her tell her stories about the old days. She is an amazing woman, has led a wonderful, rich and fascinating life and she doesn't have a lot of friends who she can comfortably and safely talk to. Roberta, her sister, is of course busy with the campaign and won't be able to come to Mom's funeral, but I think of her often because my Mom spoke about her so much. She has my Grandmother's best English tea service in her home in D.C. Mom didn't think she'd ever entertain on that scale again and sold it to her. I'm rambling as usual, but it helps... Here's a link to a sweet story about my friend Rowena that appeared in the New York Times.

My Mother's obituary, apparently the longest paid obituary that any of the editors can ever remember receiving, will appear in this Sunday's copy of the times. I'll post it here later and link to her legacy page when it's up. It would have cost $17,000.00 dollars to include her photograph, there's just no way on earth that we could afford that, so I went with a text only obituary.

I have so much to do, so much to take care of before her service, and this is a blessing in that this act of ritual keeps me busy and preoccupied. It's those unexpected moments that come out of nowhere that stab me in my heart and leave me wanting to cry out for my Mother. I was driving home the other day and saw a billboard that said something like, "You want to keep your family together," I don't know what that was about but it felt as if it was a message meant just for me. I wonder how many other people thought the same thing. While buying some clothes for Beau to wear to the funeral I glanced down at the counter and saw this little hand drawn sign that said, "Remember Your Mom." Obviously this was referring to Mother's Day, but in a men's store? Again, it felt like a message to me.

Then there are the other things, things people say that pinch my aching heart, things like, Susan, (The unbelievably helpful and well balanced CNA who we hired just before Rosa ran off on her supposed medically necessary trip to Guatemala that turned out to be an emergency three week house buying vacation as she obviously felt the need to have the purchase date of her home precede the death of my Mother, so she could later sue us in court saying that it had been promised to her, you watch, it'll happen), absentmindedly saying to me in that very direct and plain way she has of speaking, "Anyway your Mother is not here anymore. She is not here. She is gone." Hearing her say this at my Mom's house, while it was said in some practical way, referring innocuously to something, just tore at my heart, "My Mother is not here any more."

One of the young men at my local Mailboxes Etc. store said, "Hi Hyland," to me on the phone yesterday by mistake and it started off an unexpected flood of tears. I think I scared him. He knows my name is Jacqui but he was busy and since I had said, "Hi, it's me, Jacqui, Jacqui Hyland," he got kind of flustered and tongue tied and ended up simply using my last name to address me. It was the significance of my being called this, Hyland, a Hyland, I am the last of the Hyland's, and this kills me. As an adopted person with the usual adopted person's sort of issues, I've spent my entire life trying to fit in, to feel as if I belong, being called Hyland, particularly now felt so validating, and then so poignant in light of the fact that there isn't anyone left to carry on our name. I am essentially an adult orphan. And yes I did see the article in The Times and ordered the book from Amazon, Death Benefits.

I've been buying Victorian Mourning Jewelry on eBay to give as gifts to Mom's closest friends and employees. I saved locks of her hair especially for this. The Victorians were sentimental and following Queen Victoria's lead, who mourned the death of her beloved husband Albert for the rest of her life by wearing black, they had prescribed periods of mourning and dress. Simple black and gold jewelry, lockets with a place for a photograph, and a place for a woven bit of hair, were common. I am hoping to get them in time so I can clean them up and put photos of Mom and locks of her hair in them. I hope people won't find this offensive and become squeamish. I find it comforting.

Beau's eighteenth birthday is Sunday, which also happens to be Mother's Day. This sucks for Beau. I don't know what to do for him to make it better. My Grandfather died a day or two before an important birthday of mine and while I understood that my Mother just couldn't face doing anything for me other than to hand me a bunch of money and tell me to go shop for myself in Westwood, and I adored my Grandfather, it made the sadness I was feeling somehow worse. This reminds me of Jackie Kennedy who went ahead and had a birthday party for her son John Jr. the day of his Father's funeral. If she could do that I can muster up some birthday spirit for Beau. I just haven't been able to think of much because his interests have changed so much as he's gotten older. There really isn't anything that he wants or needs. He's too old for balloons and cake and anything else he needs he pretty much gets anyway, so I'm at a loss...

Meanwhile there is still so much to do; So many calls to make, so many people to inform, priests to contact, readings to select, a choir to choose, flowers, food, photographs to scan and copy, something to pass out at the service, musicians for the celebration at the club, little gifts to select from among her personal things to give to her closest friends, I haven't colored or cut my own hair or Beau's in so many months we are beginning to look like we dwell in caves. Which seems apropos since this is how I have been feeling lately. All I want to do is crawl into bed and bury myself under the covers but as an only child, and the only person in my Mother's life who is willing and capable of making any of these decisions or doing any of this work, it's a lot to handle. People offer to help but I describe what I'd really like, for them to look for any photographs of my Mother to copy and share with me, or for them to write down any memory, it's clear just how hard this is for them to do.

I can't believe that I am writing any of this. It feels so unreal, as if I am walking through some kind of bad and confusing dream, going through the motions, dazed and shocky, unable to function properly, slow and thick as if I am moving through honey or molasses.

Okay, well that's enough for tonight. I just wanted to break the ice and write something down here. I couldn't go on any longer without sharing this.

Love You,
Jacqui

jacqui @ 2008-04-12T15:53:00

2008-04-12T22:50:27Z

I'm so tired I don't know where to begin, and I feel guilty for taking the time to write anything here. My Mom is back in the hospital again, her third time in less than two months. It's been a long, hard road. I do my best to remain positive and strong for her and for her staff and friends, but when I'm alone I feel so sad and lost, like a little girl without a Mother, which is essentially what is happening, in a way.

This is a picture of my Mother when she was a little girl. Isn't she cute? I don't know who the young woman is who is with her. It doesn't look like my Grandmother and if you click on the picture you can get a much bigger version of this where you'll see another woman sitting just to the left of the frame, that might be my great-grandmother who I have never seen a picture of. I took all of these very old negatives from 1916 through 1930 to the photo store to have them printed and scanned. It was like opening a window into the past. I was so overjoyed when I saw them that I started to cry. Someone in the store said it was a real Kodak Moment.

Rosa, her housekeeper, who she has come to depend so heavily upon, is back from her emergency vacation, the one that made it impossible for me to take three days off to go to Artfest, and left us completely helpless with regard to Mom's wants and needs. Poor Mom. But it was her decision to allow Rosa to take over everything a little bit at a time over the course of many years and my Mom is a feisty independent little bee and there was nothing I could do except look the other way as Rosa helped herself to so many things that don't belong to her, and at the same time be grateful to her for being willing to put up with my Mother's very demanding ways.

This is a picture of my Mommy as a child sitting on the front porch of her house. My Granny made all of her clothes and she appears to be reading a copy of the Night Before Christmas. When she saw the picture she said that my Grandmother used to cut her bangs like that and curl her hair with an old fashioned curling iron that she used to put on the stove. She hated having her hair done but was never allowed to leave the house without looking perfect and is still this way even now. When the paramedics came to take her to the hospital several weeks ago she asked if she could please brush her hair first.

If you click on any of these pictures and make your way to my main Flickr.com page there is also a picture of my Mom aboard the S. S. Morro Castle at age fourteen standing in a bathing suit surrounded by what I can only guess are some male admirers. Grandma took her on her first big trip that year. They went to New Orleans by train, then to Chicago and New York to buy fabric and lace for Granny's dress manufacturing business. From New York they took the Morro Castle to Havana where they had a lot of fun drinking and gambling as this was during prohibition when of course drinking was prohibited. If you don't know much about the Morro Castle, it was one of our greatest maritime disasters next in line to The Titanic, somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty people burned to death and/or were drowned off the coast of New Jersey in 1934. This tragedy was responsible for many of the fire and safety regulations that are now in place whenever you sail on a modern cruise ship. I haven't tagged the picture or put it up here because it isn't edited yet and I'm not sure what to do with it as photos of people aboard The Morro Castle are quite rare. It only sailed for about four years before the fire at sea.

I adore my Mom; she is intelligent, funny, generous -- when she wants to be -- spry, witty and very beautiful. Her life history is fascinating. Her friends are amazing. I am endlessly bottomlessly grateful to her for everything she has done for my son and for me. But she can be a bit, well, demanding. I think it's because of the OCD and the anxiety, well, that and the fact that she is a born leader, a real leonine Leo who ran a large business, and maintained a lavish lifestyle and a fabulous home for many years. She is used to hiring people and telling them what to do, not so good at firing. But then neither am I. We're both too soft hearted in this regard.

In any case, all sins aside, I am grateful to Rosa for having worked her butt off doing what I never would have had the stamina or the patience to do, and that is to have been taking care of my Mom's needs on a twenty-four hour a day basis. This isn't entirely true as I have now learned how often she was leaving my Mother alone, and then there's the fact that she doesn't have the common sense to know not to cough on an elderly patient with a super weakened immune system, and thereby gave her the virus that led to the pneumonia that weakened her heart, etc., etc., but Mom could have easily picked this up anywhere and to be fair she herself made the decision to have Rosa remain with her despite all of our pleas and warnings.

I know you must think I am remiss in not having replaced Rosa, but I am not in the position to do so, and Mom does not want this. All I can do is to hire another person to stay beside her so that I am certain she is getting the care she needs, and it was only recently that I had the ability to do this, as it costs a fortune to pay for caregivers. Now that my Mom is finally surrendering some control over her finances to me I can go ahead and get her the care she has been needing for so long.

Even now my Mother's secretary is so fooled by Rosa, as is everyone else, (Man, this woman should have been an actress, yesterday in trying to get the message across to me that she will need me to make sure she is well provided for when my Mom passes away, she said, "All I will have in the world is my little house in Guatemala and my memories of Missy Hyland." If she'd ever seen the little Gorey animation that used to play at the beginning of the Mystery series on PBS she would probably have added the gesture of a weak hand fluttering to the forehead before fainting.), that she thought I should release Susan and that Rosa's care would suffice.

Are you kidding? She can't even read the labels on her many prescription bottles, and I have now taken over completely, (Which she resents no end, as could be evidenced by her trying to tell me yesterday that she knows things about my Mother's life, about boyfriends she had, that she will never reveal to me, secrets she will keep to her grave, grand hand gesture to the heart and bow. Oh please. I have been the ultimate gatherer of my Mother's life stories for my entire adult life. I could sit here right now and tell you in detail the names of every beau she ever had, ay Rosa, but I don't have the time), am now insisting that she only give her the meds that I carefully separate into compartments in a weekly Morning, Noon, Evening, and Bedtime, reminder box.

The day before yesterday, the only day Susan has had off in over three weeks, Rosa couldn't find the Vicodin that we have clearly labeled in big printed letters, and set beside Mom's bed, and had to reluctantly call me to ask me to describe the bottle to her. Ay, yay, yay. It's madness.

Just returning my Mom's many phone calls and contacting all of her doctors, nurses, and therapists takes up the better part of every morning, and I still have my own home to run, a child to provide for and drive around. Then it's off to wherever my Mom is, whether it's home or at a hospital, having done whatever many errands she has asked me to do on the way.

The one consolation I have in all of this is that I know I am being given an opportunity to demonstrate to my Mother how very much I love her. I am being given an opportunity to love and be loving to my Mother with every ounce of energy I have left to me. Whether she sees this, or even values this or not, doesn't really matter. I will know that I did right by her and that I did the best I could for her. If all she sees in me is a crazy girl who spends too much money on animals, acts of charity, and collecting her vintage dresses on eBay, well, then it's too late now. She'll have to come to know me better in the afterlife.

I do know how much she loves me and trusts me. Yesterday she signed over power of attorney to me, but out of respect for her I will not go against the wishes of her lawyer and her secretary. I will always do as I think she would have wanted me to, even if I disagree. So ultimately Rosa will have more than my Mother has left her, (My Mom's concept of what money will buy you, was frozen somewhere in the late fifties), I will do what I can to help her pay for her house in Guatemala.

Mom's doctors, the charge nurse on Mom's floor at UCLA, her caregiver Susan, her tenant Evelyn, the UCLA nurses and physical therapists who come to visit her at home, the paramedics, all of these people were so outraged when they learned that Mom had been left alone, while Rosa supposedly went to the doctor, have told me that they think I should fire her. You tell me I should fire her. But Mom doesn't want me to fire her. It still rankles that she could have left my Mom alone like that, weak and helpless. She couldn't tell us this, that she suddenly needed to go to the doctor? Couldn't call and ask me to come and watch Mom while she went out? Apparently not.

Well, no worries, this will never happen again, that's for certain, she won't be leaving Mom alone anymore, and I've got Susan and I am there constantly to monitor everything. And this might be the real reason for the mopey sad face, this and the fact that I am no longer filling Mom's wallet with five one hundred dollar bills on a weekly basis. That boat sailed when Rosa left for Guatemala. Now we have a petty cash envelope and we are checking everything against receipts. A truly good plan invented by Mom's secretary Tina. I imagine this means Rosa will now be getting about two hundred dollars a week less than she was getting before.

And despite all of this, I am still such a schmo that late last night, as Rosa, (Who ruined my chances of being able to go on my own trip to Artfest that I had been planning for since September), walked me to my car saying that all she has left to live on after the many expenses of her trip was forty dollars, I reached into my wallet and gave her one of the two remaining hundred dollar bills I have budgeted for myself to live on until next Thursday. And that is why I am saying, ay, yay, yay, yay, yay Rosa. Which if you are unfamiliar with Spanish would sound something like eye, eye, eye, eye Rosa. Watch an old episode of I Love Lucy, you'll get it.

One bright moment of loveliness in all of this came when her new-ish caregiver Susan said to me, "Jacqui, for three weeks now I have been watching you. I keep thinking this is not the Jacqui I have heard about. They are different people. You are not this crazy Jacqui they are talking about when they play bridge. You are sweet. I have been taking care of sick people how many years now? I am old. I have seen many people with their Mothers. Everyone loves their Mom. But you are number one. You are unique. You are special. Your Mom is so lucky. Never I have seen a daughter take such good care of her Mom. That is why I am always telling her this."

You might be able to understand how very much this meant to me, to hear this from someone whose knowledge of me previously was solely based on gossip and hearsay, to receive validation from someone just a little bit outside of her circle. It's certainly kinder and more rewarding than the words of my Mom's friend Jani, who I have always loved but who has never seemed to think much of me. When I told her I was taking care of everything she said, "It really seems like the blind leading the blind." Nice. And this is what she is willing to say to my face. Ahhh life. Acceptance. Working on that. Always working on that.

Now I'm going to take a shower, finally, (Or a bath since the shower is usually the hospital for whatever ailing rescued animal we have most recently brought home from the vet), and then I have a gazillion errands before going to stay for a good long while with Mom. Right now she's just had an IV shot of Dilaudid and won't be too lucid for a while. My yakking away beside her just makes her nervous so I'll wait until she's feeling better. Meanwhile I have to take a copy of this auction and fax it to my Mother's and my dear eighty-something-year-old, (Could be ninety, they all keep their ages a bit of a mystery the sweethearts), friend, who had no idea that an antique bed of hers that she sold to an unscrupulous dealer for a song, was being resold for a whopping one-hundred-and-thirty-three thousand dollars on eBay. Guess they never counted on her having a friend who might have stumbled across it on eBay. I tell you, people who take advantage of older people make my blood boil hot enough for a confectioner to make a good hard candy with it.

I Love You, and Remain Ever-Grateful, Even Though I Haven't Been Able To Respond Personally,
Jacqui

PS: You know, I am so angry, weary, and cynical with regard to Rosa and the tremendous damage she has done to my relationship with my Mom, due to her jealousy, over all of these years that it's hard for me to admit that I do think she loves my Mom in some way. I do appreciate this, despite everything.

PPS: I had my headshots scanned, finally, but they did a pretty funky job, they look really grainy and they're small. I just don't have the energy to go back, have to complain to make it all right -- I hate complaining or returning anything -- and then leave the negatives and have one more errand to run, argh. But I need a recent headshot for my IMDB page. I also need to update my credits, only some of them are there, and they're kind of mixed up. Plus they've asked me to upload my resume, argh, ackitty, ack.

jacqui @ 2008-03-29T18:05:00

2008-03-30T01:01:10Z

It's my birthday today but I am so weary that what I'd really like to do, if I could do anything, is just to stay in bed all day and do nothing, but I really can't. My Mom is still in the hospital. She wants me to buy her some shrimp from Bristol Farms, and I really should go out and do something for my birthday.

I'm thinking about going to the bead show in Santa Monica because my friend Karyn goes every year and she always brings home the most amazing beads that she then strings into necklaces. She bought a strand of rough black diamonds last year for so much less than you would imagine something like that would cost, and they look so pretty whenever she wears them, sparkling on her neck.

This is a picture taken at our house on my birthday when I was three. That's my Mom on the left with the blonde hair and the little girl sitting in her lap. That's me, the little girl sitting in her lap.

My friend/assistant/help-mate Esther is calling to wish me a Happy Birthday. The sweet woman, June, who I gave my Arfest spot to sent me a lovely flower arrangement. Wow, how kind and generous of her. My friend Radimeh/Maryam came by and brought me a card, some soap, tea, and two delicious pastries, yum. Beau made me a big heart shaped collage card.

It's just been so much stress and worry lately with Mom being so ill. I'm on hold all the time and can never check out for a minute because Rosa is gone and her replacement, Susan, although super well meaning and competent, doesn't communicate very well and is pretty helpless without me to bring things to her, or help her in some way.

Yesterday was insane, well, actually the last two days have been tougher than many of the other hopital days before this. The doctors will call and tell me to come and get Mom with absolutely no notice, so you rush over there only to discover that they've gone off to attend to other patients in need, and you're lucky if they return your page within the next three hours. Meanwhile you wait. You wait for six or seven hours while they try to make up their minds if they really are going to release her, and all the while my poor Mom is suffering and I'm helpless to do much to ease her discomfort but rearrange and hand things to her, put cream on her face, hands and feet, and run back and forth to the nursing station to ask for things. If you want a Band-Aid or anything else they have to write an order of some kind for it and then you have to wait for that to be approved and then it takes another hour or two to get it. It's much easier to go downstairs to the gift shop and just buy whatever you need.

I do not in any way mean to criticize any of the nurses or doctors who work at UCLA hospital. I know how stressed out and overworked they are. In fact I think people who go into health fields are saintly. While I make an enormous effort to be helpful, kind, and giving to everyone I meet, I know that I would never have the patience or stamina to do the kind of work they do. It blows my mind and I feel so sorry for them as I ride back down to my car in the elevator with them at the end of another long day at the hospital.

As some of you may know my Mom has cancer from a life time of struggling to quit smoking, the poor thing. God, how I hate cigarettes and the people who make them, sorry, but I do. Mom had to have part of her lung removed about five or six years ago but her cancer has metastasized throughout her body. She has a tumor the size of an orange on her ovaries, another smaller but deadlier one in a part of her bowel, and many smaller cancers in her lymphatic system, especially in her chest. On top of this she has a brain tumor that makes her impatient and irritable. Who wouldn't be at her age, (91 going on 92 in a month or so), with everything she is going through?

This recent hospitalization came about because of a really bad virus that she caught from her housekeeper Rosa. She now has pneumonia, bronchitis, emphysema, COPD, diabetes, and congestive heart failure. She can't walk, she can barely see with the macular degeneration, and she can hardly hear. Now her kidneys are failing. It's so so sad, but I keep doing everything I can to remain positive and hang in there for her. I really think we are going to be able to pull her through this latest hospitalization one more time, be able to bring her home, and buy a little more time for her.

My friend Jenny's husband/life-partner died of cancer a little over a month ago, I think, and I'm so so soooo sad and sorry for her and for them as a couple. I know how much she loved him. I only just found out because I have been so busy taking care of my Mom plus everything else I have to do to keep up with in my life. I'm running two households now, plus Jenny tends to isolate like I do when things are really tough, and it's hard to get in touch with her. I just hate for her to be suffering though, hate for anyone to suffer or be sad, and I want to do something to help.

I wish life were easier or that happiness and joy were a more prolonged and steady kind of thing, but I guess that isn't really the plan, although the Dalai Lama thinks that we are meant to be happy, meant to embrace happiness despite suffering. Detachment seems to be the secret. That's pretty hard to do, to love without wanting or needing anything from the people you love, to not attach yourself to anything knowing that everything is so fleeting and temporary and that this isn't reality. Hard to do, very hard.

I don't even know how my friend Mary is doing with her cancer. I'm afraid to call or check my e-mail because I don't want to know if she's worse in any way, at least not today. I'll see if I can get through to her tomorrow or Monday, if I can get my mind to sit still long enough to remember something this important to me.

All of my on-line art buddies, or well, a lot of them, are getting ready to leave for Artfest in Washington in a few days. So many new and wonderful people have written to me to offer sympathy for my Mom and to tell me that they are sorry we won't be able to meet in person. I am so sad not to be going but again, it isn't meant to be, and this wonderful woman June is going to be able to go because I can't. That makes me happy and takes most of the sting out of it : ) Another dear woman has contacted me and offered to take all of the many things I have been collecting to gift people with and I am so grateful. I think I'm going to meet her at Mom's on Monday to give everything to her and that way she can see all of the dresses and meet Mom if she likes.

I got up really early today, well, for me, and scanned a ton of stuff. This is a picture of me on Easter, which might explain why I go so crazy gifting everyone on holidays, but seriously, this doesn't even begin to demonstrate how many gifts I would get. I think this is just what I got at my Grandparent's house on Roxbury in Beverly Hills.

I bought myself three or four of my Grandmother's (Fashion designer Peggy Hunt), dresses off of Ebay for my birthday and that was a real thrill. I really can't afford to do this any more as there are funds run super low at the end of each month, and there are so many people around me in need. Some new people have come into my life through my animal rescue efforts and there is one really sweet and super well meaning young woman on welfare with three children all under the age of six, who is really struggling. I have to do what I can to help her. I want to.

It's next to impossible to justify my continuing to spend this kind of money on myself when she can't afford medication, or beds or even clothes for her kids. Between the owner of the pet store where I place my cats for adoption, who is a serious angel, (I mean seriously, she makes me look selfish), the government, and myself, she doesn't have anyone. She still lives with the father of her kids but he won't help in any way and there are reasons I can't write about, even as anonymously as I am writing about this here, for why she is in the position she is in, and why she doesn't just kick this guy's ass. I know I want to.

She was so sick one night after having had a really botched operation, that she needed to go to the emergency room. She couldn't afford to take the day off work so she worked all day doubled over in pain while occasionally barfing into bags, (Can you imagine?), then picked her children up from the caregiver, took them home, and asked her man to watch them so she could go to the emergency room... and he wouldn't do it. I was so angry with him I could have strangled him, or well, at least I imagined doing it, but then I met him and like always, there I was, torn up over what I found to be the good in him. Ahh life.

Anyway, beyond the people I am closest to; friends, neighbors, and people who work for Mom and me, I also feel compelled to help people beyond my immediate circle, and this is why I feel so selfish when I spend money on myself collecting things. But with the dresses, and with art that people make on Etsy, for example, I can justify it by telling myself that I am doing good. Going to the bead show today to look for that string of black rough diamonds that Karyn bought last year, not so much.

I just spent about an hour and a half downstairs talking with my neighbors and now the day is running out and I haven't really gone out to do anything. You know, if Scott comes and visits my Mom with me, then helps me do the marketing, which I am getting so sick of, I think I'll be pretty satisfied. I really did want to go out and spend a small amount of money on myself though.

If I don't bring home some bags of that crappy Pounce or Whiskas tonight, the cats are going to riot. I started using it to bribe them into moving from one room to another because they love it so much, and the shaking of the dry bits of food in the bags drives them wild with anticipation. Now I'm stuck because they look at me so sadly when I run out. Every time I get up to go to the bathroom, or if I pass anywhere near the dresser where I keep their food, medications, and toys, they all come stampeding over for their nightly kitty fast food treat. Everything I buy for them, in terms of food, is the finest and healthiest, but like most cats they are as crazy for this market junk food as they are about catnip, which always makes me wonder what they put in it; cat crack. Which reminds me, I want a Pinkberry, yes, a Pinkberry would make a lovely birthday treat : )

Love You,
Jacqui

PS: I just learned that a friend of mine had an affair with Red Buttons and that I had spoken to him several times without ever recognizing him. I just knew him as the nice older man with the gorgeous vintage Mercedes who I would talk to from time to time in front of my house in the evenings. How weird, but sad for my friend -- the way it ended. Again, can't say anything identifying or more detailed than this, darn it.

Oh PPS: La Lisa, if you are reading this, or Maria if you do will you pass this along; Thank you so much for taking so much time out of your life to give me such good advice. I just happened to find your note. I didn't even know Live Journal had that feature. Believe me, we are totally on the same page here. I found Rosa sneaking out these French Ormolu and Opaline antique boxes, I can't remember if I mentioned this here, because I've been away for so long, but I have put a stop to this as best as I can. The jewelry is all safe. Furniture is not so easy to protect but everything is in trust and people's things only really get sealed off and frozen like that when there is more than one beneficiary or the chance of anyone contesting the estate. In my case there's just me. I hate thinking about this kind of stuff, but I know it's important as my Mother wants me to look after everything, and for Beau's sake as well. I'm just really praying that I won't have to deal with anything like this for a verry verrrry long time. I think I"m in denial, but I'm telling you, my Mom is amazing, she'll probably outlive me.

Oh and BTW, Rosa, who I'm sure anyone who reads my journal must dislike as much as I do, actually told my Mom about how much money employers have left to various housekeepers, butlers, gardeners, etc., that she knows. I wish my Mom were going to leave her more than she is planning to because as much as I dislike her, and am angry with her for what she is done, she is still a Mother and has been working pretty hard for my own Mom for many years now, so I want her to be well compensated, but to actually hint around about something like that, to your employer who may be dying, is so distasteful and gross I can't even bear to think about it.

This is the patio at one of our houses when I was a little girl. I so remember those colored party favor bags and the weird thing is that I clearly remember this particular party. We had party poppers, the ones that make a loud explosion and have a little toy inside. People in the UK call them crackers and open them on Christmas. My friend John Clark (Gable) was terrified of the exploding sound and I remember feeling very protective towards him and making everyone stop because it made him cry. Funny how you remember certain things. I also remember his birthday parties and his amazing play house but that's another story.

Mom At Easter, Careless Caregivers, Passing Up On Artfest : (

2008-03-25T09:20:54Z

Hi Everyone,

Mom is still in the hospital. She has pneumonia and COPD as well as diabetes and congestive heart failure, and this on top of the cancer and the brain tumour. And she's so sweet still has that twinkle in her eye the most beautiful smile and that wicked sense of humor. It's heartbreaking.

I don't know when she'll get out. I pray she'll get out. Every day I talk to about three different doctors and nurses. Each day we hope she'll get well enough to come home but then her heart rate will set off alarms and bring people running into her room or her blood sugar will be sky high. And the cough, the cough that won't stop and turns her face purple. When she can't breathe it's terrifying, and she's so helpless, and I can't do anything but hold her hand and try to help her calm down and breathe. She's always been such a "good little soldier." I felt so bad for talking her into letting them suction her airway yesterday, because I knew it was going to hurt and frighten her, but they really needed to do it.

Her new caregiver Susan sits by her side all day while I run around doing her errands and organizing things for her before coming in to visit. Today I finally got a geriatric psychiatrist to come in to evaluate her. Her primary doctor has been trying to get her to go to a psychiatrist for her anxiety and OCD for years and years but she just gets offended and says, "I'm not crazy." She doesn't understand psychiatry or therapy. She thinks that having to seek this kind of help is a kind of giving in, admitting to madness. So there's no way I will ever get her to go in to see a psychiatrist, but the one benefit of having her stuck in the hospital is that I can finally get one to come see her. Woo hoo, antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds here we come.

Now, finally, after years of this stress she is going to get the medication that she needs to help calm her down and relieve her anxiety. And as an added side benefit this will make life easier for all of us. Believe me, it can be exhausting dealing with a Mama who worries herself sick all the time. She literally worries herself sick, and honestly, she worries us sick as well. She tends to perseverate on negative things and constantly focuses on worst case scenarios. All my life we have been on the verge of one crisis or another. First it was the communists, then when The Russians weren't going to somehow infiltrate our government (through Jews using the media) seize our homes, and force us all to live in our closets, (I am not kidding you about this), then anyone that lived in the poorer parts of Los Angeles were going to riot and take our homes by storm. My Father would regularly take all of his guns out of his gun cabinet and clean them in front of me because he had to keep them in good working order for the day when he would need to defend our home with them.

Now she worries that I will give all of her hard earned money away and neglect to take care of my own son, ending up homeless, wandering the streets of Los Angeles with a shopping card filled with cats. She has to plan for every eventuality, figure it all out from every angle, saving every nickel for this sad paranoid fantasy, without every seeing how her having hung on so tight to all of this control of money is the very thing that caused me to be so generous in the first place. Seeing her refuse to tip a valet parker, or a waiter more than ten percent because the bill was too expensive, while buying seven hundred dollar shoes, is enough to make anyone want to stuff hundred dollar bills into strangers pockets. I don't need to have seen Pay It Forward or watch Oprah's Big Give to be the kind of person who wants to do this. I just need to be the daughter of well meaning, hard working, but very paranoid parents who lived through The Great Depression and WWII. And I don't fault them. I admire them. But I get more out of giving than I do from receiving, it fills my life with joy, and it is possible to be generous without being foolhardy at the same time.

Getting back to my Mother's psychiatric needs for a moment, there is also this incessant need that she has for us to constantly rearrange everything around her because she can't get up to do it herself, and everything has to precise, it all has to be just so. She seriously cannot handle any kind of disorder, none at all, everything has to be neat and tidy, perfect all the time, or she'll work herself up into a frenzy. And she cannot let go of whatever it is she is focused on until someone, usually me, rearranges whatever that thing is that is bothering her. Picture frames have to be hung and rehung, lamps, vases, knick knacks moved. Beds remade, blankets folded, clothes arranged by color and season. If there is any kind of clutter she gets frustrated, irritated, then angry, and her heart rate goes up.

I mean there she was at home slumped over in a chair with a raging fever, and she's making us move plants and statues on her mantle piece -- a quarter of an inch to the left, then back to the right, then over to the left and rotate. It's been like this my whole life, but when she was healthier she could at least do it herself. Before the macular degeneration she was always imagining that tiny little specs on the carpet or floor were bugs, little stray pieces of lint had to be picked up instantly, no matter how much you might be carrying or how hurried you might be.

She barely gets through asking you to do one thing before she's angry that you aren't doing the next. I'll have to stop, show her how full my hands are, explain that I am doing whatever it is she has just asked me to do, (screw in a light bulb, change a battery, look up a television show, call someone, whatever), and then ask her which thing she would like me to do first because I can't do five things at once. Then she'll give me a naughty teasing little look and say, "Why can't you do five things at once?" Oh Mom, what will I ever do without you?

Beau went to the hospital on Easter to visit her and he brought one of his guitars so he could play for her. I thought that was so sweet of him. He went through his repertoire and I joined in with him on the songs I know. That was a sweet moment.

We gave about a dozen Pinkberry frozen yogurts with fruit to the nurses to thank them for looking after my Mom, and I took a big Easter cake down to the pediatric floor because I feel so sorry for everyone there, the kids, their families, and all of the staff. That can't be easy. There are a couple of kids who have been there for a year waiting for organ transplants. So sad.

All I really want is for my Mother to be as happy and comfortable as possible for the remainder of her life. You know, quality of life while you have life. I don't want her to have to keep worrying about Beau and me and money. All she ever thinks about is money and she really doesn't have to. We are all going to be fine. I just want however much time she has left to be spent as peacefully and happily as possible.

Her latest obsession is that I will buy a forty acre ranch and put elephants on it. I don't know where she got this idea from but she keeps mentioning it. Of course once she said it I thought, "Hmm... elephants..."

Mom's last room mate was a woman born in Oahu who has had a donor heart for the last sixteen years. She has a large family and they're all Hawaiian. Just being around them made me happy. They way they speak, with the sound going up at the end of every sentence, saying, "Yeah?," and "Bruddah," and, "Auntie." I love Hawaii and Hawaiian people and their culture so much. I really miss it in a way that makes my heart ache whenever we've been away too long. My soul is never more at peace, I never feel more at ease, or feel as if I am really truly home, as much as I do when we're there.

Of course this is the time of year when everyone around our neighborhood goes to Hawaii. It makes it so much nicer here. There is a seriously noticeable difference in the amount of traffic. Just the other day I found myself thinking, "What's going on? This can't be right," because I was able to drive home without having to wait in long lines of cars filled with pissed off honking people. Now I know it's because all of the kids are out of school and everyone packs up and leaves. I really like it this way. It reminds me of LA in the old days, so much calmer.

My Mom's current room mate is a pretty young Mormon with a devoted husband. He's so sweet to her. She's had heart troubles all of her life. She's had four surgeries and is on so many medications. Poor little lamb. I love Mormons, they're such good solid family-minded people, but I worry that if I befriend any of them that the next thing I know there will be several young people in suits knocking on my door. While I have tremendous respect for anyone who lives a life connected to a higher spiritual being I'm happy with my own religion. It works for me.

Beau and his friends are in the next room playing Rock Band. I can hear the steady tapping of the drums. Cordelia is sitting on my lap and Asta is snoring beside me. I've been doing really well finding homes for rescued kitties at my friend's pet store. Although the drama there is insane, seriously, insane.

Sadly I have to give up my ticket to Artfest. Oh Artfest, what a loss. I'm going to try to find someone to donate it to, rather than sell it. It was so hard to get. I have great classes with amazingly talented super well respected teachers, all published authors, and I paid to stay in the dorms. I have a private room, and all my meals are paid for. I can't tell you how much I have been looking forward to this. It was going to be a kind of birthday present to myself, (March 29.)

It's so tough to get in, even harder to get a place to stay, and the classes, well, forget it, everyone wants the same teachers, and I just really lucked out. I've been so looking forward to meeting and working with all of these wonderful artists. I've been dreaming about meeting these amazing women, (and men), whose work I have admired and been inspired by for so long. When I told Beau how sad I was that I wasn't going to be getting to sit on the beach working on my journal by the light of a bonfire with other like minded artists he laughed at me. He said, "Mom, that sounds so... well... girlie." Great. Why couldn't I have a daughter too?

One of the best things about Artfest, (Well, can you really pick just one?) are the art trades. Almost everyone makes about a hundred individual pieces of artwork centered around the annual them and they exchange them with each other, so when you leave, you're coming home with not only all of the art you've made in your classes, and anything you may have bought, but seventy-five unique mementos to remind you of all of the many wonderful people you've met.

The theme this year is centered around a walk in the woods. I've been collecting forest and particularly owl-related antique and vintage buttons, (I cornered the eBay market for a good time there on deer, acorns, owls, pine trees, gnomes, mushrooms, hedgehogs, etc.,) ribbons, etchings, prints, postcards, Victorian paper scraps, and assorted ephemera for months now. My plan was to make these collaged paper tags out of a scanned and photocopied image of this wonderful antique etching of children walking in the woods, overlaying them with these gorgeous colorful Victorian litho scrap leaves, punch a hole in the top of each, string as many of these lovely silk ribbons through the hole as would fit, then attach at least two or three really terrific antique treasures to each card. I was going to put my contact info and an identifying piece of artwork on the back of each one, and then paint very tiny highlights on these cards in German glass glitter. Oh well : (

This is such a loss for me, but there is no way that I can leave my Mom. I've been looking forward to it for years and finally made the commitment and paid for my ticket in September, but good ol' Rosa, my Mom's caregiver, dropped this sudden vacation of her own on us with less than two weeks notice -- and she just took a vacation and isn't due for another until August.

Poor Susan, the new caregiver, is really getting thrown in at the deep end. She'd only been there two days before we were packing Mom up and taking her to the hospital. She doesn't know Mom's habits -- how to get to the market or the bank, how to do any of Mom's errands. She'd never even driven Mom's car. I mean Rosa was so busy running around getting her hair done, getting pedicures and manicures, etc., that she didn't bother to show Susan anything, and without telling any of us, left it all up to me. This of course is part of her strategy, I'm familiar with it by now -- make the new person, or the weekend person, look as bad as possible, so that they will in no way threaten her position.

I am hating Rosa so much right now, not just for being a selfish, thoughtless, thieving liar, but for giving Mom this life threatening virus, coughing all over her when she knows how weak my Mother's immune system is, and then for trying to hide it from me. Oh and leaving her alone constantly. I really didn't know how often she was leaving my Mom. It's so wrong.

I just hate her, and then guilt ridden recovering from being lapsed Catholic that I am, I hate myself for hating anyone, and for failing to do what I always do, which is to try to find the good in her, and trying to understand things from her perspective. Although it's pretty hard to understand her up and leaving my poor Mom like this, stealing God knows what on her way out, stealing so much that she accidentally left a wadded up dress of mine behind.

I don't know what I'm going to do with her when she comes back. Beau is so upset that he told me if he sees her he's going to punch her in the face. I think it might be wise to keep them apart for a while. Ya think? She's going to be pretty upset when she finds out that her former cushy life of thieving ever little fine thing of my Mom's or mine that she can get her hands on (or thinks won't be missed) to resell, and using my Mother's car to drive all over town, while leaving my helpless blind Mother all alone is over. She's always threatening to sue us for one thing or another, so I guess this will be my fate at some point. What a mess. And yet, this is my Mother's life, and she still wants her, well, she can have her, but not if she ever endangers or neglects my Mother again.

Well, that's enough of my woes for one night. I'm sure ours are small by comparison to whatever some of you may be going through and I'm so sorry I can't be there for you. I've just been too overwhelmed and I just wanted to check in.

Is there anyone out there with a desire to hang out with some wonderful artists in the Fort Worden Washington area for the first Wednesday through Sunday in April? I'm hoping to exchange my seven hundred plus dollar ticket for a wee bit of hand made artsy goodness.

Love You,
Jac

This is the Easter basket I gave my Mom. No candy. Poor Mom. She loves to eat more than anything but her blood sugar is too high. She asked me to take this picture of her with her arm up like that because she wanted you to see her IV for some reason. She's wearing her headphones because she was just listening to a romance novel on tape. I can't get her to figure out how to work the CD player I bought for her but she can push the play button on a Walkman so for now I'm buying and renting all of the romance books on tape that I can put my hands on. She goes through about one every two days and this keeps her happy and occupied.

Playing Rock Band At Ninety-One

2008-03-21T08:05:34Z

Hi Everybody, Thanks as always for your wonderful comments. I read all of them and am so grateful. No, that wasn't me in the music video, but I wish it was.

I can't write back to everyone individually because I HAVE to get some sleep. Mom was admitted to UCLA through the emergency room early this morning after a long, grueling, day-into-night-into-early-morning wait for a bed.

I spent yesterday running errands for Mom and fielding phone calls from doctors and nurses, but when I got to her house with my arms loaded up with romance novels on tape, medications, vitamins, cold and flu remedies, things that her temporary caregiver asked me to pick up for her, a commode, extension cords for the new TV, and other assorted things, all I had to do was take one look at her and I knew she needed to go to the hospital.

She felt hot. She was weak and she was coughing. I told Susan, her new care giver that she had a fever and Susan disagreed with me, but I know my Mom, I know how she feels and how she normally looks and I just knew. So we began the arduous process of getting her dressed and moved to the hospital, poor thing, she was so weak and everything was difficult and painful for her.

If UCLA were a hotel they would hang a sign around it's neck saying, "Booked Solid For the Foreseeable Future, Go Away." But I did have a really moving series of exchanges with a beautiful deaf woman and her two daughters. I only know a very few words and phrases in ASL, and Beau and I can finger spell the alphabet, but I've never really followed my heart and focused on really learning how to communicate, even though I really want to.

I think sign language is one of the most beautiful forms of communication. Watching someone sign is like watching a totally unique form of expression in terms of personality. It's so cool because we are all so accustomed to perceiving people through our ordinary methods of communicating, primarily through speech and sound, but ASL relies so heavily on these incredibly lovely and super intuitive gestures and the way someone does this really reveals so much about them, about how they are feeling and what they are thinking and it's fascinating to watch.

The super pretty young woman who was helping me communicate with her Mom who was laying on a gurney in one of the hallways, (the whole no room at the inn thing), signed so beautifully, so expressively, and so fluidly that it looked like ballet. The movements of her hands were like birds in flight. Just... lovely. And the sweet and meaningful, soul enriching exchange I had with her Mom, the bond we formed over our mutual love of cats, was just so wonderful. I got to tell her that one of my favorite sounds, along with purring, applause, the ocean, and babies laughing, is the sound of deaf people laughing. God, I love that sound. It makes my nose tingle. A bright spot in an otherwise super cloudy day.

Oh, there's so much I have to tell you, want to tell you, but my energy is completely drained from my body, and I am having some minor cosmetic surgery (Fraxel laser) tomorrow that is so beyond ridiculously expensive that there is no way I can afford to reschedule it. I've had pretty bad acne and chicken pox scars for all of my adult life, and had been wanting to do one of those painful oozing chemical peels for a long time but was procrastinating out of fear of the pain and the months of recovering with a swollen pink face, but then this amazing laser came along. By tomorrow night, providing Mom is comfortable and stable, and I don't need to go to the hospital to talk to her doctors in person, I'll be lying here in bed with my face on fire. This time I know to have pain meds on hand.

In order to really make a difference to the quality of your skin, on a level comparable to a full chemical peel, you have to do this once a month for five months. A dear friend of mine did it and after I saw what it did for her I was sold. Acne, aging spots, wrinkles, gone, and in their place is skin that looks renewed and fresh and about ten years younger. I've been wanting to do this for sooo long. I had one treatment about two months ago and couldn't schedule the second until I had the money and was certain Mom could spare me for a couple of days. I sure guessed wrong on the second count.

In any case she's doing better and she's in excellent hands. I've spoken with her doctors and nurses and I have a care giver sitting beside her. She'll be able to spare me for a few hours tomorrow, but believe me, I'll be worrying about her.

Her lungs and her heart really just can't handle this damned virus she caught from a super incautious and inconsiderate Rosa, grrr, again. It's awful, but her oncologist and I are both praying they'll be able to "patch her up" (his expression) and send her back home again so we can buy a little more quality time for her.

She thinks she's going to die and refused to leave her house yesterday until I could get her lawyer on the phone and have him dictate a draft of an amendment to her will that she could sign, sigh.

God, I wish I had the energy to tell you more, so many good stories to share. If I'm not in as much pain as I was the last time I did this I'll try to check back in and respond to your wonderful comments tomorrow night.

I Love You Guys,
Jacqui

PS: These are pictures of Mom, my seventeen-year-old son Beau, and my boyfriend Scott playing Rock Band at our house in the desert last Thanksgiving. How cute is my Mom to be playing the drums with them? All three of them are so much more attractive than they appear in these photographs but I so wanted you to see them that I decided to put them up without trying to edit out the red eye and everything else.

jacqui @ 2008-03-19T07:54:00

2008-03-19T15:47:10Z

I just haven't been able to write because I have been so busy taking care of my Mother who seems to be getting worse by the day. She had to be admitted to the hospital through the emergency room a few weeks ago and then spent about ten days there. She has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an infection in her lungs, and a new brain tumor, on top of the cancer. All of the people she has hired to look after her are under qualified and totally selfish and disconnected. It is breaking my heart.

At the same time I have become very involved with friends who own a local pet store where I have been much more involved with my cat rescue. I've found homes for five cats, two dogs, a sugar glider and some goldfish. I love these people and I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to find homes for my animal friends but the drama that goes on with the employees and customers in this store is off the charts. Honestly. If I tried to tell you the stories you wouldn't believe me. Think, drama on a level beyond what an ordinary human being can handle. And then there are the customers, some wonderful, and some well... not so much.

I've been wanting to write more regularly for months but I just don't have the time. The only reason why I'm able to check in now is because my Mother's care giver (Who is covering for Rosa who suddenly had to take a three week vacation, six months before her scheduled vacation) called at four to tell me that my Mom had fallen while trying to get to the bathroom and they called the paramedics. Of course she called me afterwards. After they'd left and Mom was back in bed. Hey, at least she called me, that's a step up from the kind of cooperation I've been getting out of Rosa.

I love my Mom so much. I'm an only child and Mom doesn't have any other relatives or friends who live anywhere near her or who are young enough to be able to help in any way.

I had a wonderful conversation with our old friend Roweena Willis (John McCain's Auntie, his Mother's identical twin sister), but she's ninety-six and even though she is bright and alert, and such a love -- I adore this dear lady -- she certainly isn't up to coming over for a visit.

I was going to go to Artfest (Teeshamoore.com) the first week of April. I've been trying to do this for years. It's so much fun. But I just don't think that would be wise or fair to do to my Mom. She can't spare me for four days at this time, which is why I am so totally blown away by Rosa's packing up and leaving, borrowing plenty of money on her way out, while Mom is in such a fragile place and is so totally dependent on her. How can you profess to love someone so much, give them a dangerous virus, hide this for two days from their daughter thereby effectively preventing her from getting the very necessary medical care she needed, then when she gets the care she needs and is told by doctors and her daughter to stay at home and rest, but instead take her out shopping and to a party, which leads to a ten day hospitalization, and then merrily skip off to Guatemala in such a crazed rush that you forget to tell the woman replacing you that she needs to take her inhalers three times a day? Thank God I noticed Mom sounded wheezy yesterday and was able to ask her new caregiver if she'd been taking her inhalers. When I got the blank look I immediately got on the phone and contacted her home health care providers who sent over her nurse. Now I'm arranging more follow up visits with doctors and we've stepped up her at home nursing care and physical therapy. Meanwhile the sharks are circling. It's... just... horrible.

At night, or really any time during the day, when something funny or interesting happens, I find myself reaching for the phone to call my Mom, and then I realize that she just isn't up for our daily chatting and gossip. As different as we are my Mom has been my best and closest girlfriend for so long that I just can't let go.

Anyway, aside from being really sick myself with this damned virus, between Mom, Beau, Scott and the animal rescue, I just haven't had the kind of time I used to, and I really miss it. I miss journalling. I miss checking in on you, keeping up with your lives in my own uniquely limited but well meaning way.

No worries friends. I know that everything is unfolding and happens as it is meant to. At least that's always been my take on it, the faith in something far greater operating behind what I can experience with the senses I have access to that I have been blessed with. Faith that keeps me going through everything, through stress and troubles that pile up one on top of the other. If only I had permission to tell you the details of what these last few weeks have been like, but then I would be revealing very intimate details of other people's lives, people I have been looking after and helping out, but whose serious problems are almost beyond the limits of what I can handle.

Yesterday my friend was so overwhelmed at work that I just had to dive in and help out in her store, screwed up knees and Fibromyalgia or not, working hard core retail at a pet store like a teenager, on the day before Norouz, (Persian New Year), when every good Persian in Los Angeles is looking for gold fish the way other people buy Christmas trees at Christmas.

The goldfish are an important part of their tradition. They put them in a bowl in the middle of a table called a Hafsin, and they have to be as red as possible, for luck. My friend wasn't prepared for this -- she tried to be, but with every one of her employees unable to work for reasons I can't get into -- she needed someone to work the floor while she worked the register, so I learned how to scoop and bag tiny red goldfish for dozens and dozens of people in a big rush to get the rest of their shopping done, (Think last minute gift shopping on the night before Christmas or Hanukah), this despite my super sensitive heart, worrying for each of this little fish, trying to talk people into buying water conditioner, hoping I am entrusting these little fishy lives to people who will care for them just that much more because I gave each and every one of them a good talking to. Meanwhile, down the block, there are Persian markets with buckets of goldfish on the sidewalk, people scooping them into bags as fast as they can, free for shoppers to take home along with the rest of their marketing.

I have got to get a couple of hours of sleep before I get back out there again. I need to get my Mom a commode, some more books on tape, call all of her doctors, set up her new TV and DVR on the table I bought and put at the foot of her bed, check back in at the pet store to see how my two rescue kitties are doing, run some errands for Beau, pick up some basic supplies for the house, and hope I have enough energy left to be a loving partner to Scott. I haven't washed my car in so many months that the kids are having fun writing jokes in the dust, "I Wish My Girl Was As Dirty As This Car."

I haven't lost must weight since my latest weight loss surgery, twenty-five pounds since September, I think. But the good news is that I may have a chance at being on a new weight loss reality show by the producers of The Biggest Loser. I'm a food addict. There's no question about it. It's how I cope with stress, numbing out with sugar instead of alcohol, drugs, or nicotine, and this has to stop.

Which leads me to this video of Toccara losing it on Celebrity Fit Club. I feel sorry for her because I really get it. I totally understand what it feels like to try so hard to do something like this, to literally work your ass off and not make the kind of progress commensurate with the hard work and sacrifice this takes, and then not to get any kind of positive validation from the people around you.

I think you have to be over here on my side of the fence, wearing and walking in my old Birkenstocks, you have to be someone who has been battling weight your entire life, trying to be like other people, living in a world of thin people with speedier metabolisms and better genes, fighting physical pain and psychological trauma, to understand how emotional and raw you can get when your eating is super clean. When you're in this state you are so vulnerable and raw, everything comes up, and what might look insane to someone else, is really just panic and desperation, that and the need for a pat on the back and maybe a hug. Something that doesn't play as well on reality TV as an angry drill sergeant with a whistle.

Anyway, for a good glimpse of what I get like when I'm "dieting" take a look at this;

BTW all that, "Have some class," and "Be a woman," s#!t that they're saying to her strikes me as so facetious and sexist, especially considering the wild fight between Harvey and Dustin (Screech) Diamond that happened last season. Look it up. Why is it okay for men to lose control and swear but when a woman does it she's lacking class and not being a woman? Oh, grrr... I just need some sleep.

Love You,
Jac

PS: The links at the top of my journal, the ones on my entries page that should take you to pictures of my cats, our house, and something else, are all old and broken. I want to be able to edit my account the way I used to be able to, so I can direct people to my picture folders on Flickr.com where I'm known as Jacquiscloset, but I can't figure out how to reconfigure my style system here since I'm using an older style. Anyone have any idea how I can do this?

jacqui @ 2008-02-26T01:35:00

2008-02-26T09:34:01Z

I don't know if Gary Busey was in on this or not but it's pretty funny. I'm a Catholic with a kind of mixed bag of Budhist beliefs, a Jewish boyfriend, and a Muslim best friend, so I mean no disrespect to anyone's religious beliefs, and I'm certainly not a fan of televangelism but I still love Gary. I like crazy, and I have a soft spot for people who have suffered head injuries as a result of motorcyle accidents, {Monique}.