Last week, I was lazily checking my e-mail when a new message popped up in my inbox from our family friend, Father Donald, who over the past year or so has been a casual reader of my blog. It was a link to a YouTube video which I promptly ignored, maybe because I rightly assumed it was something religious but probably more so because I usually just ignore people who send me YouTube videos.

Why do I do that? It just seems like so much damn effort to click the link, open a browser, take three minutes to view it, etc. I’m a hateful person. I know.

My older brother Paul DID watch the video and then e-mailed Father Donald to tell him why religion is ruining the world. This is a usual occurrence between the two of them and Paul often forwards me e-mail exchanges between himself and Father Don, a relentless and exhausting debate between an atheist and a dedicated member of the Catholic clergy. For whatever reason, Father Don had recently taken on Paul’s cynical and scientific approach to living with unapologetic zeal.

“These conversations are so ridiculous!” Paul mentioned to me once. “But I can’t help writing back!”

“Well,” I replied. “He’s pretty fun to debate with.”

And it was true.

I know many people have negative ideas about priests, Catholic priests in particular. I have luckily never experienced anything but joy when encountering those holy dudes in robes, probably because of my mother’s relationship with them. As you probably know by now, my mother is an avid Catholic, a woman whose faith is her top priority and who, as a social butterfly, has befriended an innumerable amount of religious people over the course of my lifetime. 

Priests and deacons regularly came and went from dinners and birthday parties and barbecues at our house as they moved from parish to parish over the course of their career, often dressed down in street clothes, fooling everyone around them. I still sometimes forget and will be telling a story like, “And then I’m all SHIT, WHAT THE HELL?” and my mom screeches LAURA! and I clasp my hand over my mouth and profusely apologize to the man eating dinner with me who then laughs and tells me it’s not a big deal and please, continue the story it’s HILARIOUS.

Father Donald was a frequent fixture in our lives until he got transferred to a parish in the Middle of Nowhere, Texas. And if my mother was a crazed teenage fanclub member of Catholic Priests, Father Don was like her Bon Jovi. Or her Paul McCartney. Or something. And when he was told that his time with us was up and he was due to head down South, my mother slowly spiraled into a deep depression.

Father Don was king of our church community. His homilies were always that perfect combination of funny and touching. He was a brilliant writer and had a singing voice unlike any other. He loved music and he loved people and he had a very distinct gentle voice that I always hear when I read Paul’s e-mails aloud. His love for the Catholic faith was pretty remarkable. And I believe my mother latched onto a friendship with him because he was THAT charismatic, he was that warm, that gentle, that giving. When he appeared, he was exactly what my mother needed. And when he left, there was a crack in her foundation that I don’t think was ever rightfully repaired.

…

It was Father Donald that introduced us to our friend Bill. And when he was transferred to Texas, the responsibility for Bill fell primarily on my parents’ shoulders, a responsibility they gladly welcomed as hard as it could sometimes be. When Bill passed away last week, Father Don sent out a beautiful e-mail, quoting a snippet of my blog and also telling the story of how he met Bill, of how he accompanied him to the doctor to hear whether or not he was a carrier of Huntington’s Disease. Father Don wrote eloquently about how Bill accepted his diagnosis with grace and how, when he noticed the priest dissolving into tears, exclaimed, “I thought I was the one who was supposed to be crying!”

There was a connection between Bill and Father Don much like there was a connection between my mother and Father Don. And about one million other people that knew this incredibly good natured priest, eyes crinkling behind his spectacles, easy way of joking and laughing and sharing the love, as they say. He rarely had the time to come visit and I honestly don’t remember the last time I saw him but I keep in close contact with his niece Teresa and my mother chats with him on the phone now and then. He commented on my blog a few times and sends me YouTube videos occasionally but I believe he spent the majority of his time making other people happy, making other people feel loved and when he had a spare second, I believe he was trying to save my brother’s soul via fierce and intelligent e-mail debate.

Bill’s death brought up a resurgence of Father Donald contact—the e-mail about Bill’s death, the phonecalls to my mother about funeral arrangements, the many tears and emotions that one goes through when a friend dies. My mother caught him a few days ago as he was on his way to church and he promised to call her back a few hours later. It was the last time they spoke.

On Saturday morning, while out mowing his lawn, Father Donald suffered a heart attack and died instantly at the tender age of fifty-five.

It strikes me as very odd and somewhat eerie, that Bill died and a few days later, Father Donald did too. That we cried and mourned and said goodbye, put one foot back on the ground and got walloped flat on our backs again. I am most overwhelmed when I think about his family and close friends, those who knew him intimately and held him in highest regard. I worry for my mother especially because she is not taking this well. I don’t think anyone is.

He was simply too good a man, too beautiful a soul, even if I was all, “Okay, enough with the YouTube videos about Jesus.”

And even when Paul was ready to throw his computer out the window after epic e-mails about the sanctity of life and the certainty of Jesus’ death on the cross, you couldn’t doubt that Father Don, at the very least, cared. That he valued you enough to piss you off. That at the end of the day, he could turn around and laugh at it. That he held his Catholic faith above everything else and unlike most people, this made him a better person, less rigid, more forgiving, gentler, kinder, truer, real.

I hope he’s up on a cloud with Bill right now, hanging out, keeping him company, keeping close watch on everyone down here. All weekend long, I’ve found myself pausing, looking up to the sky and offering them a small wave. Just to say hey. Thanks for those e-mails. Thanks for caring. The world is not the same without you in it.

Today is Friday.

So it should be time for a Flashback Friday post.

I have not written a Flashback Friday post in SO long, I know, I know, I suck.

So, let’s go back. Way back. ALL THE WAY BACK. To this past Wednesday night. HA. YEAH. Sort of counts.

PCG and I drove to Long Island to attend Bill’s wake. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it, work being crazy and various commitments littering my calendar and an hour and a half drive each way. After all, I had had a chance to see him, say goodbye, make peace. But miraculously, work ended on the early side, commitments were canceled and I took PCG up on an offer to be my car companion. So off we went. (You’d love to date me, right? COME ON BABY! IT’S WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND I’M TAKIN’ YOU TO SEE A DEAD GUY!)

He is a saint, that one.

Bill was laid out in an open casket.

I know people are normally freaked out by this but if you knew how many Catholic wakes and funerals I have been dragged to by my mom in my lifetime, it barely even registers with me at this point.

I am not kidding you.

“LAURA! WE HAVE TO GO TO THE WAKE OF SO AND SO!”

“What? I’m 11 years old! I don’t even know who that is!”

“SHE’S THE 87 YEAR OLD USHER FROM CHURCH! GET IN THE CAR. *NOW*.”

Rinse repeat. This is how you accustom your children to the idea of death. Please take note.

Because Bill’s illness caused him to limp, shake and jerk out of control constantly when he was alive, it was almost a relief to see him in that coffin. I can’t believe I just typed that. But it’s true. An American flag was draped over the lower half, a send up to his time in the US Navy. And there was Bill. Completely still. No shakes. No jerks. In a handsome gray suit, black rosary beads in his hands and an empty piece of plastic up by his head.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked my mom.

“YEAH! A FRIBBLE CUP. IS THAT AWESOME OR WHAT?”

It was.

My mother, the eternal joker, ray of sunshine, beautiful woman. Bestower of chocolate Fribbles.

There were only a handful of people in the funeral home, 90% of them members of my family or friends of my family who met Bill or simply knew of him. There were a few ladies from the nursing home. And then there was Anna.

Anna is Bill’s girlfriend. They met in physical therapy, both of their bodies ravaged by the effects of Huntington’s Disease. Although Bill shook and slurred and slowly lost control of his body, Anna was always far worse. Her arms flailed and jerked constantly and it took her so very long to get a sentence out because she stuttered and her head would flop around while she was trying to speak.

She made me uncomfortable because I did not know how to react to her.

I would stand there politely and make conversation. Wait for her to finish speaking. Say hello but keep my distance. She smoked constantly which my mother said exacerbated her condition and she often smelled of nicotine and other times like she could use a shower.

Bill loved her.

Together they would come over and watch television. And eat Christmas dinner. I was kind but distant, unsure of what to say. My sister-in-law could barely stand to be in the same room as her, often leaving just to avoid her and once, at the dinner table, my grandfather, shaking himself with the effects of Parkinson’s Disease, informed my mother that he could not sit next to Anna because she was possessed by a demon.

She was. But it was medical in nature. And definitely not her damn fault, thank you very much.

I was steady on my feet and calm when I entered the funeral home. Took in the sight of Bill in his neatly pressed suit, kissed my siblings and hugged them fiercely. And then I turned and saw Anna in a wheelchair.

She can no longer stand. She can barely speak. Her sister and brother-in-law brought her to the wake so she could say goodbye. Even sitting down, her legs and hands flew around helplessly, her head nodding off to the side over and over again.

“Is she like that all the time?” PCG whispered to me.

“All day long,” I replied.

“Oh my God.”

Much like when I visited Bill, I wasn’t sure at first if Anna would recognize me; she was so much sicker than I had ever seen her. But all it took was one look and she yelled out an incoherent greeting and when I touched her she grabbed my arm like a child and hugged it tight, pressing her head to me, nuzzling her hair into my shoulder. Instinctively, I threw my arms around her and whispered, “Anna, Anna, I am so sorry.” And I held her as she shook, as she tried to speak, as she stared at her boyfriend in a coffin, at what will happen to her all too soon.

Anna’s sister wept as she talked to my mother but I wasn’t close enough to hear the conversation. I can easily imagine the reason for the tears. Huntington’s Disease, unlike Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, is definitively genetic in nature. As a son or daughter of someone with it, you have a 50% chance of carrying the gene yourself. Anna has it. Her sister does not. Bill had it, his brother has it and will soon die of it and his sister does not. A cruel case of genetic luck.

I was introduced to Bill’s father, an elderly man, at least 80 years old. Bright blue eyes that matched Bill’s, dressed up in a suit. It was the first time I had ever met him and I watched him as he talked my father and as his gaze would wander off toward the coffin in the front of the room as if unable to believe what he was seeing.

My family filed into a row of chairs as a deacon from church said a few words about Bill. I made the sign of the cross, I dutifully responded to the readings. But mostly I cried, which surprised me. I cried and cried and could not stop. Clutching PCG on one side and my sister on the other, suppressing an animal urge to howl. Bill, so lovely, perfect, still and Anna, in agony, shaking, jerking, slurring in a wheelchair. It seemed hard to believe Bill would no longer be walking around my house. It seemed crueller still to believe it would happen all over to someone else.

The room was quiet as the deacon finished his speech, ended the final prayer. Tears ran down my cheeks in torrents and I was so very tired, my eyes burning red. The deacon moved over to Bill’s father in the front row, officially ending the service and as a sign of respect, Bill’s father stood up to shake his hand.

In doing so, the poor old man let out one of the biggest farts I have ever heard in my life.

I paused.

And then my sister and PCG and I bent forward in our chairs, squeezing each other, trying insanely hard not to laugh outloud. More tears rolled down my cheeks, now for a different reason entirely.

“OH!” reprimanded my mother later. “YOU TRY BEING OLD AND LOSING CONTROL OF YOUR SPHINCTER!”

“I know,” I said.

“DO NOT BLOG ABOUT THIS,” she said.

“Okay.”

But, much like I was when I was a child, I am a liar.

And I had to mention it.

Because Bill would’ve laughed too, I am quite sure of it.

He’s probably laughing now.

Because that’s what life is all about, right?

It’s finding the funny in an awfully tragic situation.

And as most people know, there is often nothing funnier than a well-timed fart.

That’s just comedy gold right there.

As quickly as the laughter came, it went and the night was over, ending in hugs from my dear family. Hugs for gorgeous Anna in her wheelchair. Hugs for Bill’s father, poor sweet old man who lost a son, who will lose another to the same wretched illness in a few months. I couldn’t fathom what he was feeling. I still can’t.

And Bill. Tall, sturdy, blue-eyed Bill. The man who always asked how my singing was going. Who wanted to know what living in the city was like. Who passed me the cranberry sauce at dinner and the orange juice at brunch. Who sat and watched football on my couch. Who dozed off in the afternoon. Who shook and slurred and jerked and limped.

Finally resting at last.

Beautiful Bill, we will miss you so.

Our family friend Bill passed away yesterday morning due to complications from Huntington’s Disease.

I am so incredibly grateful to have been able to say goodbye.

Writing about most of my family is pretty easy.

The fodder is automatically there.

My sister is the quintessential Long Island girl, down to her manicured tips and beauty pageant activities and OH MY GOD that ACCENT. My little brother is a tattoo-ed bad ass, my sister-in-law is mildly insane, etc. on and on…

My dad? Well. Come on now. I have a whole category on this blog devoted to him and I find that whenever I sit down to write about him, the words just start to flow because most of the stuff he says? Well, dude. You just CANNOT make that shit up.

“IF YOU’RE DRIVIN’ A HEARSE WITH A COFFIN IN THE BACK, DOES THAT MEAN YOU CAN DRIVE IN THE HOV LANE??????”

Just. Yeah.

Another side of this that I rarely speak of is the fact that my father and I have very little conflict. I can remember my father getting angry with me MAYBE a handful of times throughout my entire childhood.

This is because

1. You have to work hard to piss that man off.

and

2. He was working a lot of the time so the role of primary disciplinarian fell to my mother.

My dad got angry when I

1. Was disrespectful.

I remember calling my little brother a queer when I was in junior high. I learned that word from my friend Kate who used it regularly, listened to Beck and had black fingernail polish. My dad TOTALLY freaked out and I never used that word again. Oooooo boy.

2. Did poorly on an exam/got a note home about missing homework/etc.

Sucking in school was NEVER TOLERATED in the Dlug household. I mean, NEVER EVER EVER. Luckily, I was a pretty kickass student who didn’t have to try very hard but OH BOY if I let something slide, my father would go ballistic and displayed little to no empathy AT ALL.

COME ON LAWRA. THIS IS EMBARRASSING.

But dad! I suck at precalculus!

HOW CAN YOU SUCK AT THAT? IT’S SO EASY.

Scene!

This is all a very long-winded way of saying that my father is easy to write about. Period. But I notice that as I delight in everything my father says, as I ramble easily and laugh harder than I ever have in my life when I talk about him, I am actively neglecting a very crucial part of myself. The other half of the reason that I’m alive, breathing and walking around.

And I always hesitate to write about her because unlike my dad, we don’t always get along. We don’t see eye-to-eye and because most of the responsibility as a parent fell to her, I have a lot more anxiety and conflict surrounding her. My relationship with my mom is a lot more complicated.

…

Growing up, I thought my family was normal. And my immediate family was. (Well, maybe. If they weren’t, it was because they were so fantastic that it was abnormal. Yes? No?) My parents are freaking awesome and hilarious and level-headed and COME ON, I am a kickass human being and they are the reason why. However, as a child, I was also under the impression that my mother’s extended family (the relatives we interacted with regularly) were also normal, also stemmed from two kickass parents, were a functioning family unit. Sadly, this could not have been further from the truth.

I don’t mean to sit here and bash my grandparents because truly, I believe that the dysfunction and DIS-ease go back generations. When I think about my mother’s family, I have the most compelling novel one could ever write. But I can’t write it because I don’t even know where to begin. And my point is not to say OMFG Y’ALL WERE CRA-HAZYYYYY but to say that my mother did not grow up in the kind of household I grew up in. And while she has done an ENORMOUS amount of work on herself (her siblings as well), some of those wounds naturally trickled down into her relationship with me. And I believe that is why it is harder for me to write about her.

My relationship with my mother when I was younger was incredibly solid. We went through the normal junior high/high school I HATE YOU/WHY WON’T YOU LET ME SEE MY BOYFRIEND ALL THE TIME stuff but it was nothing more than teen angst (riddled with showtunes because that’s how badass I am.) The real conflict showed up in college and after as I attempted to reconcile some hurts from the past in therapy and attempted to form my own opinions about my religious upbringing.

Religion aside, I believe an issue that I wrestle with sometimes when it comes to my mother is the way she can be interpreted on the outside as opposed to how she really is on the inside. My mom is an incredibly strong woman. And because deep down inside her, she is on some level protecting herself from being hurt (with very good reason), she is reluctant to become vulnerable. And my very Sensitive Touchy-Feely self sometimes has trouble with this because a lot of the time, everything my mom says comes out the Wrong Way because she is very much Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps! and Tough Love! and THIS IS THE WAY YOU SHOULD’VE DONE IT with a heavy dose of Jesus and Mary on top and I interpret a lot of this as being really harsh and mildly insane and then she yells and I cry and WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MOTHER DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIPS, LOOOOOOOOOOVE MEEEEEEEEEE!

Therapy changed the way I thought about my relationships and interactions. For a long time, it also prevented me from doing anything but blame my mom for E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. This makes me cringe because it is so horribly unfair, but there you go. She was a very easy target because as I stated before, she was the primary disciplinarian while my dad was working so anything she ever said to me is burned onto my brain somewhere. (NOT THAT I’M KEEPING A TALLY.) The thing is, my mom was a compassionate and nuturing mom but a lot of the time? She was kind of always yelling about something.

(Probably for good reason. And yet…)

Because she is always SO DAMN TOUGH, she regularly gives off the illusion that nothing ever bothers her, that she is totally fine. And that’s what I mean about showing something on the outside that is different from what’s going on inside. Unfortunately, because of this, it became far too easy to put EVERYTHING on her without simultaneously registering any compassion for her. Because she doesn’t often show a soft side (see also: yelling), my siblings and I will push her and prod her and annoy her and yell back at her until she’s close to tears, not realizing that her feelings are getting hurt, that there is a PERSON under all those layers of combativeness and strength.

With, you know, feelings and shit.

And this is where I have sometimes fallen flat on my face in a puddle of shame.

I remember a specific time when this realization clicked into place. It suddenly dawned on me, after a huge exhausting fight, how difficult it must be to be my mom sometimes. How it might feel when everyone finds your husband hilarious and lovable and finds you…less than that. How it might feel to have your adult children blame you for things when you spent years and years staying home with them full time, feeding them, playing with them, cleaning up after them, making decisions that you believed were right for them. How it must feel to be misunderstood. How it must feel to love a religion and a faith with all your heart, to feel like you belong there, only to have it mocked by relatives and friends and your own children.

How might that feel.

I’m guessing…in a word…

Awful.

But my mother puts on such an amazing front, you would never know. And it’s only recently that I realized that my mom yells and snaps for lots of reasons. Sometimes because she’s angry, yes, but also when she’s afraid, anxious, sad, unhappy, neglected, etc. And now, when I hear a certain tone rise in her voice, I am no longer defensive and ready to fight. Instead, I become overwhelmed with compassion for her. I try to listen. I try to understand. Because, oh my goodness, it cannot be easy.

…

Our family friend, Bill, is dying in the hospital of Huntington’s Disease. I’ve read you don’t die from that but from complications from it as your body and mind slowly deteriorate and you end up in a hospital bed with a feeding tube. I knew Bill when he was fully functioning, walking around and talking, hanging out on the couch watching movies on Christmas. And now, years later, he is living in a hospital room, barely able to speak or recognize people.

My mother is his guardian, his friend, his sole visitor. She is in charge of planning his funeral. She is the one who they will call when he dies. She visits him whenever she can, bringing him over a chocolate Fribble from Friendly’s as he can no longer chew solid food. She had been suggesting I visit him but I kept throwing out reasons not to go until I found myself on Long Island a few weeks ago, completely out of excuses.

PCG was with me that night and together we drove to meet my mother in the hospital lobby. She was holding the Fribble when we arrived and together, we took the elevator up to Bill’s floor. Though we technically had five minutes left until visiting hours were over, I soon learned that my mother was given special privileges. The nurses let her come in whenever she wanted, stay as late as she needed.

She greeted them at the nurse’s station and knew every single one of their names, cracking jokes, saying hello to another patient named Vinny who was throwing a tantrum in his wheelchair.

“Vinny!” she remarked. “You sound very upset! You’re gonna wake up the whole floor!”

PCG and I followed her, slackjawed. I was used to seeing this side of my mother but it never ceased to astound me. As she walked along, people lit up at the sight of her. She was friends with everyone, warm, kind, open and in the stale air conditioning of a hospital corridor, it was as if a fire was lit in a fireplace, as if warmth were following her everywhere she went.

We walked into Bill’s room and I grasped PCG’s hand and plastered on a smile as I looked down upon the man I barely recognized. Sunken cheeks, bright gorgeous blue eyes, hands gnarled and shaking on the bed. My mother flipped the light on and maneuvered his bed until he was sitting upright.

“HI!” he bleated, the only thing he said the entire visit, not quite intelligible, hard to understand.

“HI!” said my mother brightly, propping him up on his pillows. And she was off on a string of upbeat conversation.

“How ARE you, Bill!? I brought you a Fribble! Yes, yes! But you have to drink slowly, remember? Sometimes you choke because you get too excited! What are you listening to? Bill LOVES Led Zeppelin, don’t you, Bill? So cute. Not really my thing but Bill loves it. I brought Laura with me! Do you remember her? Do you remember Laura, Bill?”

I held Bill’s gaze as he locked eyes with me, blinked very hard but was unable to speak. I held his hand and said hello. I showed him collages my mother had made, pictures of Bill and her on a trip to Texas to visit a friend. Bill on horseback. Bill at the Alamo.

“Look! It’s you! So tall!” I exclaimed, holding the pictures so he could see.

I interacted, I was present. But mostly, I stood and just watched my mom.

She held the milkshake up to his lips, wiped the excess that dribbled down his chin. Smoothed his hair with her hand, adjusted his legs to a more comfortable position, rearranged the blankets around his body, talked excitedly about her day and how she was doing and asking him questions that he could not answer. His eyes followed her around the room, often squeezing shut when she lay her hand on him.

I flashbacked to a movie clip of my life. I had just gotten braces and was laying in bed, miserable from the pain. My mother had sat next to me, stroked my hair, handed me Tylenol and a cup of water.

“Ugh, I know, Laura. I remember it well myself. It’s like each tooth is a little headache, isn’t it?”

I nodded, began to cry. And she stayed. And sat there with me.

The hospital was silent except for my mother’s happy chatter and Vinny, still throwing his tantrum down the hall. Every now and then a muted phone would ring, a nurse would call out to someone. All I could hear was my mother talking and laughing, my own voice responding, forced and fake happy.

“We’re going to go and let you sleep,” said my mother, leaning over Bill. “But first I’m going to pray with you, okay?”

Instinctively, I grasped Bill’s hand and the words of the Our Father came tumbling out of my mouth, in unison with my mom’s. She prayed for Bill to have a good night’s sleep, for the angels to watch over him, she kissed him on the forehead and moved the bed back down until he was laying flat on his back. She walked over to his stereo and turned the music back on so he would have some comfort as he dozed off. And then, one by one, we tip-toed out of Bill’s room, waited by the nurse’s station as my mother asked about how he was doing, his bed sores, his cough.

And then, the three of us walked out into the humid summer night. 

I hugged her fiercely in the parking lot.

“It’s quite an amazing thing you do,” I said. “Visiting him, taking care of him like that.”

“Not a big deal!” she shrugged and laughed. “Someone needs to! Poor thing doesn’t have any family that’s interested in being with him.”

How could she not realize the magnitude of her deeds? The instinctive way she waltzed into that hospital and took control, how nurturing she was, the ultimate mother to a man who didn’t even belong to her. The remarkable thing about my mother is that she doesn’t realize she’s remarkable at all.

I felt so thankful I had chosen to visit Bill and to witness my mother at her very best. I’ve gotten so angry with her in the past for her decision to take on too much, for her obsession with the church, for not always being around. And what I have routinely forgotten is that I don’t need her right now the way other people do. The way Bill does. How selfish I can be. How forgetful. How unaware.

And so I choose to write about my mother today. About how through all the therapy and fighting and clashing of ideas, she is the essence of so many things I wish to be. Never easy but always challenging, our relationship is complicated and perhaps that’s the best thing about it. And so I will write about her, the good and the bad because someone needs to acknowledge it. That you can go through pain and hurt and childhood wounds and become a most magnificent woman, compassionate and loving, sitting at a dying man’s bedside, holding a milkshake to his quivering lips.

I got in the car and I drove and drove as raindrops spattered my windshield. I drove away from Vinny and the wheelchair, Led Zeppelin on the stereo, the nurses in the hallway, Bill sleeping soundly in his bed. I left them all behind except the images of my mother which danced across my brain for hours after, as I pressed down the gas pedal toward home, as I crawled into bed, as I fell asleep, as I dreamed.

Mom, 26.
Laura, 9 months.