A LAST GOODBYE

We held my mom's funeral on Friday.

Technically, I suppose it wasn't a funeral, since we weren't at the actual gravesite with a coffin being lowered into the ground.  But "memorial service" though it may have been, it sure felt like a funeral.

We moved the service from Forest Lawn to a small shady prayer garden in the front of our church because Forest Lawn had been so utterly unpleasant to deal with.  It turned out that a move made from purely emotional reasons worked out best logistically as well, since Friday was about 106 degrees, and Forest Lawn (where we would have been out in direct sunlight) was getting lots of smoke and ash from the L.A. fires...

Our dear friend Kim performed the service.  Kim is the only hyphenate of her sort in the universe:  an ordained pastor/talent agent, and as such, she is the pastor to the entertainment industry at our church.  She was magnificent, both in helping me walk through this horrible time and sort things out, and in her presiding over the service.  She spoke from Lamentations, and it was absolutely beautiful.

I expected about a dozen people there, to be honest.  All my mom's friends are dead or unable to travel, and many of them I still haven't reached with the news.  And a work day afternoon with a major wildfire mangling traffic?  Our church's lovely memorial director Trudy said they were going to put out 20 chairs, and I told her fine, but that was too many.

We had 40 people there.  I was stunned.  People came out of my past... my old roommate JoEllen, from way back before Lee and I got married... JoEllen and Jeff came to my dad's funeral so long ago, and I can still see the grieving look on his face when he greeted me by the grave... pretty much the same look on Friday, just with a little grey hair...  Our former assistant and friend Darlene, our friends Cindy and Mike, all of whom came from very far away, all of whom we hadn't seen in years....

So many church people, too, people who had never met my mom but were so gracious in showing up and bringing food through the week... I was blown away.

I was especially touched to see my stepbrother and sister-in-law Eric and Eri -- they drove up at the same time I did, and I didn't even recognize them.  They live in northern California, and hadn't told me they were coming, so it was such a special surprise.  My mom married Eric's dad Don when they were both retired, and had a wonderful 5 or 6 years together before Don died, really one of the best seasons of her life.  It meant so much to have them there.

And just as moving was my dear friend David.  David and I go back to sixth grade together.  When Kim asked me if anyone would want to speak, I said no -- then I said, "Well, if my friend David comes, he probably will... he's an actor, you know."  David did speak, and I am so glad he did.  Kim had told the story I told her about how my mom used to drive a pack of us around to toilet paper friends' houses in our early high school years....  And David took it a step further to reminisce about how, when local stores refused to sell toilet paper to kids late at night, my mom would not only drive us, she would go into the store and buy the toilet paper... something I had totally forgotten!  And he remembered and mentioned, as I hoped he would, my mom's cool leather driving gloves, which he always used to tease her about....

I wanted to call my mom and tell her, "Guess what?!  David remembered your driving gloves!  And how you bought the toilet paper!"  ...But of course, I couldn't.

Of course, I couldn't have told her that for many years, because she wouldn't have remembered.  But for just a moment, I felt as if we could have had that kind of conversation.  And I was overwhelmed with loss....

The reception was lovely.  If people hadn't brought sushi and cake and other goodies, we wouldn't have had enough food...  But we did.  It was almost like a mini-version of our (almost-)yearly Christmas parties, where we have 150 people over and I never get to talk to the people I only see once a year.  This time I did get to talk to them...

And then it was over, and David whisked us off to the Hollywood Bowl to see Liza Minnelli (whose name she reminded me how to spell during the evening) as a take-your-mind-off-things post-funeral, late-anniversary treat.  Which was great, because otherwise I'm sure I would have cried all night.

And I am left feeling that all the hours and weeks and months and years of my life I have spent doing volunteer work for different organizations has just been a waste of time, and that I should have spent that time just hanging out with the people I have missed, some of whom I got to see on Friday.  Maybe that will be the beginning of my 2010 New Year's resolutions...  After all, when our dear nanny Melody died of ovarian cancer, I took up scrapbooking in her memory.  I feel I need to do something similar in my mom's memory...

Because now, with my entire extended family by blood gone, I am the only left to remember.

RECONCILERS

Admittedly, this is a week where I am probably more sensitive than usual.

But I am finding myself getting literally sick to my stomach at the level of nastiness and hatred spewing around the web right now.

My greatest sadness is that so much of this nastiness is being spread by people who say they are Christians.  I would imagine that if you told non-believers there was an old saying, "They will know we are Christians by our hate," plenty of them would agree.

At Family Camp, I was very taken with a point our speaker, George Hinman (formerly of Bel Air Pres, and now the new senior pastor at University Pres in Seattle) made.  He was talking about "being like Jesus."  And you know, we've all heard that before.  Be loving, be righteous, be kind, yada yada.

But George came at it from a different direction.  He talked about Jesus's role and ministry as Prophet, Priest, and King.  Well, we've all heard that before, too.  But I've certainly never heard it applied to me before.  Me, a "prophet, priest and king"?  Huh?

George broke it down thusly:  Prophet = The ministry of Truth.  Priest = The ministry of Reconciliation.  King = The ministry of Governance.  And everything we do within our lives pretty much breaks down into one or more of these areas.  Some people's callings/jobs are clearly in one area or another.  Journalist?  Truth.  Counselor?  Reconciliation.  Cop?  Governance.  Accountant?  Truth and Governance.  Parent?  All three.

Reconciliation jumped out at me.  We don't hear much about reconciliation as a ministry of the church these days; at least, I don't.  And if that's one of the three major ministries in which we are supposed to be like Jesus, we're certainly letting him down. 

All this to say, Chris Rice, co-director of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconcilation and author of some books you may have read (and husband of my college suitemate Donna) has started a blog called "Reconcilers" which you may want to follow.

I'm not going to link this post to Facebook, as I often do, because I have already linked to Chris's Reconcilers blog on FB.  But feel free to make the FB link yourself if you want.

Because I think we all could use a little more Reconciliation these days.

FEELING THE WEIGHT OF IT ALL

I came back from Family Camp a week ago, so revved up and excited to get back to work.  That feeling seems a hundred years away now.

I had so much I wanted to blog about.  Family Camp itself, and the lyrics of the boys' smash hit from this year.  "Julie and Julia."  More Harry Potter stuff, of course.  I wanted to post pictures and even video.

Theoretically, I'd still like to do all that.  But it all seems so hard.

Even knowing that my mom's days were numbered, even knowing that these days were coming, I didn't know what to expect.  My dad died over 20 years ago, in an extraordinarily unexpected fashion, in Italy.  The logistics that had to be dealt with were daunting.  My mom, distraught and probably feeling just like I'm feeling right now, didn't know what to do.  (Would you know how to get a dead body home from a foreign country?)  In what could have been the lead-in to an ad, I gave her the only advice I could think of.  "Call American Express," I said.  And American Express did, indeed, take care of everything, even moving my mom to a different hotel so she wouldn't have to remain in the room she and my dad had together.

But when she got home, my mom handled all the funeral stuff.  So even though technically I've done this before, I really haven't.

It shouldn't be so hard.  But it is.  I find myself crying at stupid things.  Or at nothing at all.  (I shifted to waterproof mascara days ago.)...  I find myself hiding in my office at one minute, refusing phone calls...  then cringing from the overwhelming isolation and wishing I could to go to a party the next.  Playing computer games because at least if I beat my all-time high score I will have accomplished something.  

I know what I need to do.  I need to sit down with our friend Kim, the pastor who will officiate at the funeral, and talk about music and readings and so forth.  But just thinking about that makes me so weary.  

I need to finish calling the few of my mom's friends who are still alive.  But I don't have all their numbers, and the ones I have called have been so depressing.  The last one, my mom's friend Madeleine, who lives a few miles away and was so kind to her after she lost her eyesight, was devastating.  Madeleine is also very old, also slipping away slowly, and she has known her own grief -- Her husband collapsed a few years back at the UCLA Festival of Books, and died a few days later.  When I called, her caretaker had to shout at her who I was, who I was calling about.  When Madeleine began to put it together, all she could say, over and over, was "Sophie was my friend.  Sophie was my friend."

So I know I still need to call Dorrie.  And Vera.  And Rosalind.  And Mimi.  But oh, it's hard to muster up the energy.

I need to call the banks and close the accounts.  I need to find my mom's safe deposit key (people with dementia hide things in weird places, and it has disappeared).  I need to figure out how to transfer her half-ownership of her condo to me.  I need to figure out what to do with the will (though maybe I don't, as there's nothing to inherit, all her resources having been long ago expended on her medical needs).   I need to pick up the last of my mom's belongings.  

But even making that list is wearying.  I do realize, believe me, that I have far, far less to handle than do most people when handling a funeral, settling an estate.  And I am not, never have been, the kind of person who becomes weary by making a list.  Lists are energizing to me.  Except for now.

A large part of it is, I know, the fact that another big "need to do" is to figure out how to pay for the funeral expenses.  Cash up front.  Cash that we had set aside almost to the penny to pay our way into September, until we get our next paycheck.  We can pay for the funeral, or we can pay the must-be-paid-or-else bills.  But not both.  In the middle of the night, oh so awake, I find myself wondering just how much I could get for my mom's engagement ring, which I had planned eventually to give to Cory.  But in the morning light, I remember just how very, um, frugal my dad was (a good Scotsman, he), and roll my eyes at my own mid-night schemes.

So far my basic response to this dilemma is to sit and wait that Forest Lawn will not call and make the demand (even though I've been told by those who know that they will), that they will send us a nice bill that we can handle in September or October.  I don't expect this approach to be very fruitful, however.  And maybe it's simply that stress that's making it so very hard to do the things that have to be done.

The toughest part, though, the part that I try to avoid thinking about, is the realization that there is now no one alive who shares any memory of my life before I was 10 years old.  While my mom's memories have been locked inside a daunting labyrinth for many years now, still at some point I might have been able to get her to remember the words she made up to the "Dreidl" song when, as a little girl, I would spin in circles for fun (her way of sneaking some of her Jewish heritage to me).  Now I will never know more than the last two lines. 

Even my mom, in her 80s,  had someone still alive who knew her from the day she was born -- her friend Rosalind, whom I spoke to last month, who was hoping to see Sophie when she comes to L.A. in October, and whom I still have to call.  I don't have anyone like that.  My life before sixth grade is, in essence, a fiction, only existing in my own mind.

The funeral is Friday.  I'm hoping that, difficult as it will be to get to that day and through that day, I will snap out of this and get moving.  I will get the laundry done.  I will get the dishes done.  I will finish editing the video I should have finished last week, and I will read the last of my students' scripts, and I will pay the bills (well, maybe not right away), and I will write thank you notes to the myriads of kind people who have expressed their comfort and concern this week, and I will sleep through the night without stressing, and I will get my kids prepped for back-to-school, and I will get back to the writing that needs to be finished and delivered so that September paycheck actually comes in September.  And I will blog about something that isn't just me venting my own pain (I promise.  Really.  And I apologize).

But at least until Friday, I have a feeling I will still need to keep the waterproof mascara handy.

ON THE LOSS OF A MOM

I had sort of expected that, after years and years of shouldering medical crises, emotional crises, caregiving bills, my mom's eventual death would be, in some ways, the lifting of heavy burden.  As it turns out, I was wrong.

My mom didn't have an easy life.  Her dad walked out before she was born, and she never knew him.  She grew up poor in New York, and never really had a place to fit in -- she was so smart, she just kept skipping grades and graduated college at the age of 18.  She lost her best friend, her beloved cousin Norman, in their 20s.  

She married late in life, to a man almost old enough to be her father.  Given that the only childhood book she saved into adulthood was about horses in Scotland, I think my dad's Scottish accent may have been what sealed the deal.  That, and that she was probably still looking for a father figure.

She worked hard all her life.  A tip-top secretary, she loved some of her jobs:  At the French Embassy in New York.  As the UCLA French department secretary.  Some, not so much.  But all she ever did was work.  

She had me very late in life.  She wanted more kids, but it was just too late.  She didn't really know how to be a mom, and the fact that she worked (unheard of in our blue-collar suburb) meant that she was pretty much shunned by the neighbor housewives.  And she didn't have the housewifely skills -- I grew up on TV dinners.  But she did the best she could, and hit her stride in my early high school years, when she was willing to drive cars packed full of kids just about anywhere.  She even drove us to toilet-paper friends' houses, which has to have earned her some "cool mom" points.  (Now, when I drive a car full of gabbling kids who mostly seem to forget that I'm there listening, I think of how much fun she must have had.)

Life with my dad wasn't a picnic.  But she wanted to visit three places, and he made sure she got there:  Simi Valley (Huh?  Yeah, I know...), Seattle, and Paris.  After my dad died in Rome, on their last European trip, she really picked herself up and remade her life.  I was proud of her.  She had a little apartment in Beverly Hills, she went out and joined every club she could, and she got herself a new boyfriend (who knew Parents Without Partners was such a hot pick-up spot?).  

She married Don, moved to Leisure World, and had a blast.  Don was the gregarious instant friend my dad could never have been, and he brought my mom out of her shell in a big way.  They traveled, partied, wined and dined.  And then, a few years later, Don died.

That was 15 years ago.  She tried to pick herself up again.  But in 2000, she lost her eyesight.  Overnight.  (A submacular hemmorhage in her good eye; one eye had already become mostly blind years before from macular degeneration.)  And that was the beginning of the end.

She spent easily three years in denial about her blindness.   She tried to drive.  Made it about 100' and dinged the car.  We took the car away.

We got her a round-the-clock caretaker ($$$).  I took her to every specialist I could find.  She had experimental procedures to fix her retina, but didn't have the discipline to see the post-op care through, making them essentially worthless.  We got her every aid for the visually-impaired we could, drove her to myriad appointments.

When her memory started to go, at first it was easy to chalk it up to her blindness.  I mean, how much of what we remember (calendar, birthdays, directions, phone numbers) is really dependent on having things written down?  At first the memory loss was sort of funny -- she'd recite my childhood zip code as her current one, and we'd laugh.

But then it wasn't so funny.  In about 2004, she went into a screaming fit at me, claiming I had burned a sweater she had knitted me post-blindness, when in fact I had loaned it to her so she could show it off at the Braille Institute, and she had it in her possession.  In 2006, she fell and broke her wrist, went to the hospital, had it put in a cast -- then forgot she had broken it and took the cast off... six times in a row.

By this time, we were draining every resource she had and then some to pay for her in-home care.  It was burdensome, indeed, especially as she became more and more difficult to deal with.  But about a year, it all hit the fan when her caretaker of 9 years quit without giving notice -- just showed up and said, "This is my last day" one day.  About two weeks later, my mom had a bona fide psychotic break.

Things went rapidly downhill from there.  We put her in a board-and-care home.  She never really knew where she was from that point on.  Sometimes she was almost happy, almost present, conversing with the caretakers in French and Yiddish.   Sometimes she was violent.  She had a small stroke.  She was in and out of the hospital.  She had a breakdown in front of the kids, on my birthday, screaming for help because she thought we were kidnapping her.  She had one lovely moment of clarity when I told her the good news about Cory getting accepted into his top high school choice.

And a few days later, she couldn't get out of bed.  She had to go into a nursing home -- the one place she dreaded going -- but she wasn't aware where she was.  Again, she was in and out of the hospital... pneumonia, infections, psychiatric episodes.  Sometimes she recognized me... the last time she really did, I asked if she knew who I was and she smiled and said, "How could I ever forget you?" and kissed my hand.

We put her on hospice care about a month ago, when she couldn't fight off a really bad infection.  But once on hospice care, she started to get better.  She was more comfortable, more willing to let people tend to her.  I talked to the hospice nurse last Friday while I was at Family Camp, and it was all good news:  She'd just been moved to a better room, and she had actually kicked off the infection that had been plaguing her for months.

But Monday, she just stopped breathing.  

I knew this moment would come.  And I thought that knowledge would make it easier.  She had wanted to die for a while, had begged God to let her die... usually in French.  (Unfortunately, four years of high school French and three years of college French meant that I knew exactly what she was saying...)

I thought the burden I've carried since she lost her eyesight, when, as she put it, I became her mother, would go away now.  But it hasn't.

Some of it is simply logistical and financial.  We've made the cheapest possible funeral decisions at every step (constrained by the fact that she already bought a plot, next to Don).  But the burden of trying to figure out how to pay for it all, given that we don't get paid again till late September, every penny from now till then is already allotted, and the mortuary is demanding cash up front, thank you very much... well, it's all overwhelming.  People ask if I'm taking time to mourn.  Mourn?  No, I'm taking time to figure out how to pay for all the expenses that go with mourning...

But that's not all of it.  I find I'm just weary.  I've had to psych myself up for a couple of meetings, and I leave them so drained I can't even drive.  Watching TV with the kids feels too hard.  Cooking dinner is almost impossible -- and it didn't help that, Monday night, I decided to cook the easiest dish I know and realized I was cooking the one thing my mom actually cooked.  I started crying as I stood over the stove...

The funeral is next Friday (apparently the mortuary is backed up, couldn't be ready till Wednesday, but I'm at USC on Wed., can't miss the first day of class, and Thursday is our wedding anniversary, so that makes it Friday).  The thought of putting on a service, putting on a reception... even just cleaning the house for a reception... is just wearying.  It won't be big, as all my mom's friends are dead or unable to travel...  But even making the to-do list -- the reception, the people to call, the accounts to close...  It all is just so exhausting.

The burden will lift.  We will go forward.  People do.  Everyone deals with this.  It will all get better.

I just didn't expect it to be so hard right now.

RIP, SOPHIE LAPIDUS SCOTT BREVIG

I was in the middle of writing my blog post about Family Camp about an hour ago when my phone rang.  It was my mother's hospice nurse.

My mom had unexpectedly passed away minutes before.

Obviously not completely unexpected, since she was on hospice care.  But she had responded so well to the hospice care over the past few weeks, had pushed back the nasty infection that sent her to hospice care initially, and had been doing much better over the last few days.  

This morning, she was having some trouble breathing.  She was put on oxygen.  And then she simply stopped breathing.

I know I have many things I need to do now.  I just don't really know what they are.

Please pray for Cory and Sabrina as they cope with the loss of the only grandparent they have ever known.  Please pray for us all.  Thank you.

HOMEWARD BOUND

Yes, I realize that title should read "Campward Bound."  But a few years ago, when we drove up to Family Camp, one of our kids commented that coming to camp felt like coming home.  And indeed it does.

Camp's a little different than it used to be.  For one thing, there's wi-fi now.  I felt a bit guilty taking my computer last year, to a place I go to be unconnected.   I don't feel guilty this year.  I don't know what that says about me.  But it does mean that I will be able to post here (though it doesn't mean I will), and on Facebook.

The entrance to camp will be different, too.  There were safety issues with the bridge one crosses to get into the camp -- lots of construction last year.  This year, there should be a new bridge crossing in a new direction from a different road.  Okay, that's a difference that'll only matter to us.  I guarantee by next year, us old hands'll be declaring to the newbies, "Ah, if only you were here when the bridge was over there..."

But pretty much everything else will be the same.  The same cabins.  The same big lawn.  The same food.  (I mean, really the same.  Breakfast burritos on Monday.  Stuffed french toast on Thursday.  Something calling itself BBQ on Thurs. night.)

Isn't that something we want from "home," these days, though?  That it's always the same?  No surprises, no big changes.  The place where we can relax because we know what to expect, and where what we expect will be good.

We've had an insane week dealing with "how will we get there" issues.  I haven't posted here on our car traumas of the past month... but let's just say that thanks to a guy who was looking out the passenger window when driving at full speed on a slowing freeway, we have real car problems.  We got our SUV driveable again, and want to take advantage of the cash-for-clunkers program... but can't find the car's pink slip after our move, and the duplicate won't arrive till we're home from camp.  But we learned that the car was in danger of catching on fire (metal touching plastic)...  Did we need to buy a new car in a hurry without the cash-for-clunkers help?  Did we need to rent a car for the week?

As it turned out, neither.  We asked our mechanic, Steve, who we've gone to for 20 years, what to do.  He called his local body shop and told him to take care of us... even though it was the day before his mother's funeral.  So Rick at Piper's Body Shop (for any of you in L.A.) did the work for free, out of respect for Steve.  Thank you, Rick.  Thank you, Steve.

And that act of kindness is as good as any to start Family Camp week.  

I'll be back in week.  But right now, I'm homeward bound.

CONGRATULATIONS TO MELISSA, THE NEXT FOOD NETWORK STAR!

I have been remiss in not posting about the journey of our friend Melissa D'Arabian on The Next Food Network Star.  (Okay, I have been remiss about posting in general, I know.)

Melissa was a writing student of ours maybe 8 years ago.  With her intense background in international business and her radiant personality, we knew she was going to make her mark somewhere.  But who knew she was such a great cook besides?

Melissa got on the show as the only non-professional chef in the bunch.  Definitely the dark horse.  But she just sparkled onscreen, she was relatable (after all, if a mom of four kids under the age of 5 can cook like this, why can't I?), and most important, she took notes on her performance like the pro that she is.

We have so loved watching TNFNS these past weeks.  It's rivaled So You Think You Can Dance as our fave show of the summer (and that's saying a lot!).  Neither of my kids would miss TNFNS, and Sabrina watches the Tivoed episodes over and over.  Even Cory has started talking about how we should be watching other Food Network shows.  And when they did their tribute show to Julia Child the other week, Sabrina pulled out my old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and started musing about what she should learn to cook.

(Maybe this isn't all that surprising.  After all, when Sabrina's graduating class was asked last spring what their favorite TV shows were, about 1/3 were on the Food Network.  Who knew?!  But I was surprised...)

Well, last night was the finale... and Melissa won!  I absolutely *loved* the recipe she did as her demo show:  "4-step chicken," adaptable to whatever you've got in your pantry.  (1)  Dredge and sauté the meat.  (2)  Cook the "aromatics" -- onions, garlic, other veggies, etc.  (3)  Add liquid and reduce the sauce down.  (4) Finish the sauce with a pat of butter.  And you can use whatever meat, whatever veggies, whatever liquid...  

What a great idea, and beautifully presented!  (I saw it onscreen for all of 3 minutes, and remembered it!)  As it turned out, in a prescient homage to Melissa's win, I actually made a version of "4-step chicken" last night for dinner:  I dredged the chicken in smashed cereal, Parmesan and spices, my aromatics were onions and mushrooms, and I used melted butter and leftover-bottom-of-the-bottle wine as my sauce.  

Melissa's new show premieres next Sunday:  Ten Dollar Dinners with Melissa D'Arabian, 12:30 (11:30 central) p.m. on the Food Network.  I'm setting my TiVo now!  You all should do the same!

Congratulations, Melissa!