"Tragic" only looks good on Anna Magnani

I heard back from the social worker at my mother's nursing home today. I had left messages, wanting to know why they never called to tell me she'd gone into hospice and died. "I guess it was all a miscommunication" was pretty much the answer I got. "Someone (she refused to specify who) tried to call you, but they couldn't get an answer." It seems that a nameless someone had called the cell phone number I've had since 2002 and claimed that they didn't even get a voicemail message. Since this is the first time I have ever heard of this happening with my phone service, I asked the social worker how many times one tries a dying person's Power of Attorney/child before giving up. Her response was "Uh...well when's the last time YOU called the doctors to see how she was?" This is the same woman who told me two years ago that I was doing the right thing by leaving New York, that my mom was vegetative and it was time for me to start my non-caregiving life. "Look," she said towards the end of the call, "I wish it had happened differently but this is what happened and now it's over."

What is over: My mom's life is over, the course of her awful disease is over and my trips to Yonkers are almost over. When I get a better and more truthful explanation from St. Joseph's (and I file a complaint with the Department of Health) my dealings with the nursing home will finally be over too. What I'd like to be over the soonest though is this one feeling that comes and goes when I get sad about her being dead. It's kind of like being alone in a dark bar in the middle of the day, with no music on so the only noises are glasses being washed or a stool scooting across the floor. Like this weird and very specific kind of loneliness which probably everyone gets when their parent dies, or some variation of it anyway.

Also: A few of my mom's cousins have offered up memories of what she was like before she had me, which I can't get enough of. But they've also said things like "Your Mom was a survivor and so are you" — the word "survivor" was used by more than one person when talking about her, or saying the two of us had been through a lot. It reminded me of a quote I read from Donatella Versace right after her brother Gianni was murdered. She said something like 'so many people are telling me how all of this made me so strong, well I'm strong enough now and I don't want to be any stronger.' That was the first time I wondered if calling someone a "survivor" isn't just kind of polishing a turd. Isn't it really just saying you're the kind of person that crappy things happen to a lot, and you handle it with the natural human response that is survival? Where is the honor in that? I don't want to be lumped into this Survivors Club they speak of. I'm totally good with running the Getting Good and Bad in Equal Measure and Dealing with it Okay crowd.

I promise this is like my next to last post about my mother dying and the next one will be a playlist! I found this Warpaint cover of one of Mom's favorite Bowie songs while I was compiling it.

Warpaint - Ashes to Ashes

It Gets Better

I love all things Dan Savage and this video made my day. It's the first post from the It Gets Better project, started by Dan to encourage LGBT teens to stick it out until they get out of high school and realize that the provincial half-wits that bullied them can't affect their lives anymore. Dan and his partner tell their "how we met" story, talk about their son and generally talk about the awesome lives they carved out for themselves.

This message is great not just for LGBT kids but for anyone who's bullied in high school and might be losing sight of the big picture. As a teenager I was harassed constantly for dying my hair purple and dressing funny ─ things were thrown at me, I was spat on and called a freak and a dyke, barely a day went by where I wasn't called ugly or repulsively weird. My mom would tell me the exact same thing that Terry says toward the end of this video: "Living well is the best revenge." The brilliance of clinging to this advice was that it helped me ignore the bullies (most of the time) and by the time I started living the life I wanted to, I didn't care about the revenge part because I was happier. Thanks Dan and Terry. Thanks Mom.

My mom died a week ago and no one told me.

The nursing home told my uncle that they didn't have my contact information (I've had the same phone number for almost 10 years and they've called it many times). I had no idea she was in hospice, that she got better for a minute, that she had a respiratory infection, that she died and was cremated and there was a death certificate and an empty hospital bed. I don't even know what day she left.

I walked around for days and my mother was dead. I rode trains, and two planes, I hugged old friends, I abused my body in several different ways, I drank a margarita with fresh watermelon juice, I woke up on Sunday in an apartment I'd never been to with people I'd mostly just met, I watched Seth play the ukelele, I had terrible meetings at my terrible job, and my mother was ashes the whole time.