Always, always, Cory Bird

Right after Cory was first diagnosed with Bi-Polar Disorder was tough.  Going on meds helped, but also caused some confusion, I'm sure, for someone who was busy with the work of forming her identity.  For a teenager with a mental illness, there is the daunting task of sorting out symptoms from personality traits:  who am I really?  

Tonight, I was going through old messages and found this facebook inbox message to Cory from 2009.  I am so, so happy that I told her these things, that she saw them in print, and could go back and reread them if she wanted to or needed to, just like I did tonight.  I am so grateful that she knew she was my world.


you will always be cory-girl to me

i know you must be feeling like a by-product of bi-polar at this point, like maybe your personality has been ground up, spit out, put through the milk and all that's left is the manually-separated parts like the chicken penis tacos they serve at work. I just wanted you to know that I will never think of you as my bi-polar daughter. You are Cory bird to me, with your freakishly small thumbs, your hauntingly beautiful green eyes, your smile that lights up your face and most times the room you're standing in. You are still the witty, smart, shy around large groups of people you don't know, good taste in music, learned how to accessorize and find your way around an outfit from your mother Cory girl. You are still my favorite person in the whole world to watch a movie with, go shopping with, grab a Frutista freeze with, hang around and do nothing with. I love that we get each other's humor and many times have made each other fall down laughing. And that is pure Cory-girl, no mania required. I love you and I'm always here for you

Tell Me Something

Jacob told me the other day that I am the best storyteller, so that's just what I did while we walked around the cemetery yesterday.  We were out to see Cory, water her flowers, and take a little tour of the old section.  While we walked, I told him the stories I'd written in the coffee shop that morning, one about wearing high heels to ninth grade and another about Bob saving (ahem) the day when us girls had thought someone was in the house.  I had my quiet boy laughing out loud at each of them and it made me smile so much.  Jacob shares himself with practically no one, which makes his laughter, expressions, and responses pure gold.

When we made our way back to Cory, we stood in front of her to say our goodbyes.  Jacob told her he misses her and loves her so much.  I asked him if there was something new happening that he wanted to tell his sister...that was part of this, too, to include her in his life now, however he could.  He stood there, contemplating, and then offered up to her headstone, with the smallest of smiles, "I'm in eighth grade now."

My heart broke again right there on the spot.  My babies.

Our Amityville Moment

I laughed out loud driving down the highway today thinking about one particular night with Cory and her father.

Cory had been sick for a little while by then- hearing voices and seeing some pretty creepy things.  One night while Jake was at Tim's, the two of us went to a scary movie and then let ourselves into a dark, empty creepy ass house.  It wasn't long before we both started to hear a mysterious groaning sound coming from the basement.  We both heard it.  I couldn't decide if I'd finally snapped under the stress of Cory's mental illness or what.

It really sounded like someone or something not quite human was in the basement.  My first thought was that teenage boys had broke into the house and were trying to scare us- you know, because that happens so often.  I was on the phone to Bob in less than two minutes, all, "Babe, I think someone's in the house!"

Calmly, from his non-creepy place across town, he says, "Then call the police."

"But I'm not sure.  Oh my God, what IS that sound?"  I was at that scalp-shrinking stage of fear and Cory was practically climbing on top of me in her fear.

"Oh my Gawd!!"  he said, exasperated.  "You girls are so silly!  I'm on my way over."

It may have been the longest twenty minutes ever.  Our hero burst in the door and cocked his head to listen.  Sure enough, that creepy howling drive-you-out-of-the-house, don't-take-a-thing-just-leave-this-very-moment piped up right on cue.  It was an Amityville Horror moment.

Bob froze to the spot.  "Oh my God!"

"SEE?!!"  we responded.  "What the hell IS that?"

"Nick, I don't know." he answered, moving farther into the house and well away from the stairwell.

The three of us stood in the living room, listening to the sounds coming up through the vents, no one making a move, and each of us fearing that something was on its way up the stairs to find us.

I jabbed him in the stomach.  "Babe, go down there!"

He looked at me nakedly.  "Uh...I'm not going down there."

Cory and I burst into nervous laughter.  Was this man for real?  Why did he come over, just to loan us the emotional support of being scared shitless with us?

I can still see his eyes, every bit as wide as Cory's and it just cracks me up.  This was the man I once slept in the hallway outside of an apartment with because he wouldn't kill a bat.

After much discussion, he went outside to take a manly look around the premises.  He returned a few minutes later, his chest all puffed out to have solved the mystery.

There was a beagle puppy loose in the neighborhood, and it had holed up next to our basement window, howling for its owners.  Somehow the sound had funneled through our drainage pipes or something and turned into the most inhuman utterances heard outside of a horror film.

He tried his best to just gloss over the fact that he wouldn't go downstairs and face the music, but Cory and I ribbed him to the dogs and back for like two weeks straight.

How this memory makes me smile.  There were good times.  Such good times.

The Clunkers

All the kids' homecoming pictures were up on facebook this weekend, and I'm looking at them, like, really?  How do these children look so grown up, so cool, so attractive?  Where is the gawky phase for this generation?  I mean the really scary, as Cory would say "not quite human", gawky phase...do they skip it?

I saw a picture of a friend's daughter on my news feed, and I really just couldn't get over it.  The girl was in heels and something adorably modest, but shoulder baring, and she looked so put together, confident, and just gorgeous...and she's 14!  At 14, I could not have carried myself that way at gunpoint.  Kudos to you, beautiful teenager's mother, for raising a girl so confident and at ease with herself.

Now let me share the story that came to mind of my troubled, awkward past.  Ninth grade...are you ready?

In ninth grade, my best friend, Nicole and I, were not cool.  I know this hard for you to imagine.  We were funny only to ourselves and pretty much invisible to the opposite sex.  We were devoid of breast tissue, fashion sense, and that altogether most important boy-getting factor:  confidence.

We were so behind the times, that while everyone else was going to Bon Jovi concerts, we were busy worshipping our private heros:  George Michael and an unknown male dancer on Dance Party USA that wore shades anytime he was in public.  Yes, we were those girls.

Well, one day, Nicole and I decided to really show Northwestern Jr. High just how grown up and desirable we were by wearing high heels to school.  This may be the first example of the truly atrocious judgment calls I have been known to make in my lifetime.

First, let's discuss the shoes.  They were basic pumps with a mid-sized heel, summer white.  That should tell it all right there.  How far off the mark were we if we thought we were going to seduce middle school boys with shoes suitable for an aging pastor's wife?  I smile at our innocence.

If I remember correctly, we tricked those puppies out with some mid-calf denim prairie skirts (one of which had a racy inch of eyelet all around the hem), and prepared to stop traffic.  I really want this to be one of those feel-good stories like when Sissy Spacek in the original Carrie turned out to be really beautiful at the prom right before the bucket fell, but...sadly...no.

We showed up feeling super sexy and it lasted all of two minutes.  As good as we might have imagined that we looked in those shoes, we had not thought about the fact that we still had to walk in them...in front of everyone:  in front of the boys we thought were cute, in front of the girls we wished we could be like, in front of teachers who could not hide their pity.

And they clunked.  Those mid-sized heels were chunky, heavy, and louder than thunder.  Picture Nicole and I, a couple of skinny girls clomping down the hallways of Northwestern like Clydesdales. The faces of the crowd were first confused and then either disgusted or condescending.   Grins were hid behind hands and open laughter was heard.  Oh, God, the horror!  To this day, I shudder.   The more we tried to shrink from the crowd, the more attention we drew with each clumsy, uncoordinated footfall.  My face didn't stop burning for six hours.

To this day, I do not know why we didn't think to just go home sick.  The humiliation was all encompassing.  It may have been years before I wore heels again in public.  I still dream about that day sometimes.  This single experience was the reason I spent good, quality time coaching Cory on how to walk in heels, and talked to her extensively about confidence.  No one should have to go through what I went through.

I finally did get some confidence by the way.  One item of clothing was responsible, and it wasn't shoes.  In tenth grade, I had no better body than I'd had the year before, but I did procure a certain above-the-knee denim jean skirt with a zippered flounced ruffle that shook prettily when I walked.  It was magic.  My ass might still have been two inches wide, but in that skirt you wouldn't know it.  It was the first time I remember feeling attractive in the body that I had.  And wouldn't you know, feeling good enough was the only thing I ever really needed in the first place?  People noticed.

If I could go back to junior high and high school with the confidence I have now, I think I could get Nicole and I in a lot of trouble.  And perhaps that is why we were late bloomers in the first place.

The Tide Is In

It swallows me whole. It fills the world. Everything goes black, and I can't see an inch in front of me.

More Stand Stills

The moments of connecting come just as randomly as the triggers.  Here's two in as many days:

I drew a sketch of Cory in my Hobonichi the other day and water colored it, hoping like mad it captured something of her likeness.  Although art has kept me alive these last couple of years, I rarely attempt to draw her, afraid of failing and somehow not keeping her image alive.  I surveyed it...certainly not a realistic, photo-perfect rendering, but something around the eyes and mouth said Cory-Girl to me.  I finally decided, her cheeks needed a little color, and in an effort not to go overboard, dipped my fingertip into the wet paint and dabbed it onto her cheeks on the paper.  In that instant, I experienced the oddest sensation of doing her makeup one more time.  It was bittersweet, poignant, and full.

And today, a memory came up on my Facebook feed:  a picture of Cory and I cozied up in a booth, ,just talking and waiting to order some dinner.  I ate that picture up with my eyes:  her hands, the set of her shoulder, her head tilted right into mine.  It was a posture that spoke of love, safety, and having a confidante.  I lived to be her rock, and that picture tells me I succeeded.  I want to memorize the way she held herself, burn every image of her into my brain so that we will always, always be together.

Memory Lane

This insomnia can be a time machine and in these last few early morning hours, I've been transported back to sitting on my kitchen floor after being sent away from the scene.

It was involuntary to camp out on my ceramic tile.  When you've just been told your child is dead, your legs quite literally give way.  But at the same time, I could not be coaxed to come into the living room and sit on the couch or in a chair near the family members that had been arriving in a steady stream since the news had spread.  For one, I couldn't stand to meet anyone's eyes.  I was still holding out hope that this whole thing was a nightmare, and seeing the pain, sympathy, and horror in someone's gaze would surely rip that possibility away.  So I avoided.
 Secondly, I had begun, in between the constant reel of the last hour's events and the ricochet images (her fallen body splayed, legs dirty, twisted arm, and blue lips) to piece together the fact that I was responsible for her death.  I wanted to face no one with this knowledge, and especially not my mother.  What must she think of me now?  I was not able to raise children.  I let Cory get hurt.  I let her get killed!
And lastly, although I could not for the life of me feel the cabinets below the sink behind my back, I was searching for that grounding feeling of something solid against my flesh...something that did not yield, something to stop this incredibly uncomfortable feeling of mental vertigo.  The kitchen floor would have to do.
So I sat there and heard "I'm sorry, ma'am, she is gone.  I'm sorry, ma'am, she is gone.  I'm sorry, ma'am, she is gone..." over and over again until I thought I'd lose my mind.
I can't remember if I cried while I sat there.  I know my insides were turned up to a million miles an hour, panic being my number one recognizable feeling.  DANGER!  DANGER!  DANGER!
It seems to me that I didn't cry enough...that inside I was sobbing my heart out over my sweet girl, her posture, her walk, her voice, her smile, but on the outside, my face resembled a stone statue, hard and dry and devoid of emotion.  This made me feel like a monster, and I remember relaxing for a split second, suddenly certain I would wake up from this atrocious nightmare.  If it were real, I'd be bawling my head off.  But then something happened that was indisputable.  The officer in charge and the medical examiner paid a visit to my kitchen and in the words that were passed, much of which I can't remember, one of them handed me her wallet and her phone.  Her personal effects.
Was it then that I stumbled to the bathroom to throw up?  I'm not sure, but I remember being on my knees in front of the toilet retching and seeing colors, finally gaining my feet and hitting myself in the head a couple good ones.  Stupid!  Stupid!  What were you thinking?!!  You should never have let her walk to the store!
All those times of locking up the sharps and the meds, taking her to the e.r., making sure she'd taken her meds- they all went up in smoke in front of one lady in a hurry to get home.  I had tried so hard and somehow ended up there on the kitchen floor, staring at my tiles realizing perhaps I should mop my floor but not really able to figure out how one goes about doing that.  So I just sat and waited for someone to tell me this wasn't really happening.  Of course, they never did.  Eventually, I had to get to my feet and go somewhere else.  And I did. I did.  I planned her funeral and when it was over, I wished for death, but somehow remained and put one foot in front of the other.
 I've hated most every moment of it, and although sometimes, I think I've made a little progress, there are nights and mornings like this one to put me right back on that kitchen floor, freaking the fuck out.  This can't be happening.  It just can't be.
Oh, how I wish this could just be a three year long nightmare and I could just wake up.

Going Back

I get that I sound like a broken record.  That's what grief is, after all.  It just goes on...as long as you do.
I just ordered my new Hobonichi journals for the coming year, and spent some time looking back through the last year so far in my old ones.  I notice a definitive lightening in my artwork.  There are still grim days, but there are also some smiles and pictures of cats nesting in colorful handbags.  Lady, my therapist, used to say that trauma gave you the narrowest of all possible world views- the only thing you could see or think about was the incident.  And then, over time, your view widens a bit, and a bit more.  Eventually, you realize Anne Frank was right, "there is still beauty to be seen".
However, there are still horrors, too.  Do not be fooled by the Susie Sunshines of the world.  They lie.

I pulled in McDonald's the other day to get a Large Coke, extra ice, and passed directly by a parked ambulance.  I could've reached my arm out the window and touched it.  It was the closest I've physically been to a rescue vehicle since the accident.  My reaction was instantaneous, and alarming.  I bent at the waist like someone with whiplash and gagged, suddenly certain I was going to dump my lunch into my lap, just like that.
A vehicle.  Just a vehicle.  Not even the same one, I'm sure.  But there it was...parked in the McDonald's on the side of West Fricking Michigan Avenue, sure and right in its presence to be there helping to save lives.  I couldn't look at it anymore, just sort of mentally mean-mugged it, and fought with my gorge.
Within seconds of seeing that stupid ambulance, I'd also been forced to stand again on the hot pavement, screaming and craning to see her face, desperate to know she was okay, out of my mind with worry, waiting to get in the ambulance with her and go to the hospital where she would be made well because that is what is done.  They show it on tv and in the movies all the time.  The heroine survives.
The unfairness that it did not go that way just overwhelms me.  It fills my soul with a bitter, black gall that coats everything I see.  Nothing can be good in a world without my CoryGirl.  You must know what?  Surely, I've told you what she meant to me, and you've heard enough stories by now to wish you'd met her and known her, too.
Occasionally, during these flashbacks and for some time after, I go back to tunnel vision.  Just me and some strangers by the side of the road with my girl who was already dead when I got there.  Already dead.  I shake my head, bow it in defeat, and nothing changes.  Is it really so strange to feel I am being punished?

Better luck to you, your child, and your ambulance, should you ever need one.

Back To School

I spent five hundred dollars on Cory's kindergarten wardrobe, and this was back in 1998!  Tim tried to weigh in, and discovered there would be no cutting corners for my girl- yes, she needed five different pair of shoes!  What were we, barbarians? We stuffed her backpack full of so many school supplies, she nearly tipped over when she walked away.  Most of them came home with a note from her teacher saying she really didn't need quite everything.  I have to smile now, she might as well have added a line suggesting I get evaluated for an anxiety disorder and watch myself as I edged ever closer to the hoarder I might someday become.  All I knew is that after years of making do with dollar store treasures, my girl would have whatever she needed...as if any of that could be bought and paid for, and stuffed inside a backpack.  Silly twenty-four year old me.

I see I fared no better when stuffing her casket to the brim with her special things and outfitting her with all the brand new pretties.  She needed none of it, of course, but it brought me so much joy to provide for her.  It always has.

Love you, Baby Girl.

Brain Matter(s)

School has almost started, and in Head Start land, the beginning of school means many in-service trainings for staff.  I presented about Conscious Discipline, which is a social-emotional curriculum that focuses on the connection between brain state and behavior.

When I train, I always try to tell stories and give personal examples to illustrate points.  I sort of stumped myself as I tried to give examples of survival state- fight, flight, or freeze.  The flight part was a piece of cake; I simply shared how I chucked my cellphone at Angie's head and took off running barefoot down the highway when that horrible woman from the driver's insurance company told me over the phone that I needed to accept that Cory's death was no accident.

But fight?  I'm no fighter.  Freeze?  When have I ever done that?  I am a well-accomplished flee-er.

So I thought about these other brain stem behaviors for a couple days, and realized I actually have done them, I just didn't realize it.

Let's start with fight.  I remember being in the car with my sister and mom a couple days after the accident, my hardcover journal (i.e.  funeral planner) in my lap, trying to tune out their voices that pursued every detail of the plan to plant my daughter in the ground.  Everyone was upset.  Things were beyond tense.  At one point, an argument ensued between my mom and sister, and in response to the raised voices and hammering home of the fact that Cory was indeed laying on a slab somewhere, lifeless, I simply picked up that heavy hardcover book and began to beat myself in the face and head with it.  Fight.
The possible fight reaction is the reason I won't drive by the driver's house, just to see what it looks like...to see if the exterior of her house gives away any sense of personal responsibility, guilt, or poor mental health.  Is her life falling apart the way mine is?  Do her surroundings give away her inability to organize or care for herself?  Is she suffering?  Is she?!

No, I won't even drive by because I would surely be tempted to stop and knock, and if she were right in front of my face- the woman who side-swiped my girl, caving in her head and breaking her little body:  neck, arm, hips,  I don't think my hands would be able to stop themselves.  My pre-frontal lobe would be on vacation, and I'd have a nice long time in prison later to wish I'd never sought her out.  I don't want- as a Hispanic friend of mine who speaks English as her second language says- to ever "regret myself" that way.

So then- freeze?  When have I ever frozen?  This one was a toughie.  All I could remember doing in brain stem situations like being choked up against a wall or chased through the house at knife point was running.
Finally, days later, in the shower, it hit me.

At the road side, the bystanders held me back and I didn't fight them.  I have hated myself for this for three years.  Night and day.  Obsessively.  HOW could I not go to my baby?  Touch her?  Feel the warmth beginning to flee from her body?  Provide her the thin or even imaginary comfort of my hand on her face, her precious, precious face?

Let me tell you how.  My brain wouldn't give the order to my feet.  I was frozen to the spot.  I never had the chance to think how I would feel about it later on; it just was.  
I'm not a bad person.  I'm not a bad mother.  How about that?  I was just in the lowest part of my brain, surviving the scariest thing that has ever happened to me- and that wasn't the possibility I would be hurt or killed, it was that my child might be.

Isn't it funny how long it takes until some things click?  No one can tell them to you; you have to come to them on your own, in your own time.  So now, in my "reason and logic" pre-frontal part of my brain, I forgive myself for freezing beside the road, for not fighting tooth and nail to get to her side.  I forgive myself for that part.

Baby steps.

When All Else Fails

When all else fails, there is ice cream.

I just remembered ice cream tonight...you know, that it is available to buy in stores and can be served at home.  Sure, we've had our share of milkshakes and flurries through the drive-thru, but I haven't bought ice cream in a grocery store since Cory died.

Moosetracks!  All of a sudden, it struck me, and I jumped in the car to get a half-gallon at Family Fare.  I came home and scooped it with our blue ice cream scooper that's been on hiatus for the last three years.  I put it in a coffee mug and added a splash of milk, the way we always did.

How could I have forgotten about ice cream?  And did I forget, or was this another way to punish myself for failing her?  And shame on me if it was the latter, because Jacob has suffered the same dismal absence of ice cream in his household for the last three years, right along with me.  He didn't do anything but wait on the lawn.

Maybe it reminded me too much of our movie nights and "shows" watched back to back after dinner.
Whatever the reason, I scooped it with a heavy hand tonight.  To hell with the extra calories, it could be worse, right?  It could be cocaine or meth or heroin.

A Day in Her Shoes

Lately, I've been wearing her shoes.

It started as a good luck thing for a public speaking thing, but I've kept wearing them right along the last couple of weeks or so.

And as I do, I think about what it was like to walk in her shoes.  I think about her forgiving nature, about her bravery with her mental illness, and I try to be more like her.  She was admirable.

She rounds my corners.  I'll admit it; I like nothing more than a good nattering of gossip.  Cory would go along for quite at awhile, but the older she got, the less she was okay with talking behind someone's back or just being blatantly mean.

So, that said, she tempers my anger.  And I have quite a lot.  Most days, I feel robbed of what other parents take for granted:  the culmination of a childhood, the transition to adulthood, the passing of the torch to the next family- your child's features on a baby's face and your prize winning holiday recipe intact.

I know every parent that loses a child goes through some testing of their faith or question of faith, at the least.  And, buddy, I have questions.  He (if there is a He) couldn't salvage this meek girl who struggled but still turned away from gossip because it wasn't kind?  He could spare so many others who blatantly bent his rules? Restart their hearts?  Make them walk again?

 I know this tragedy has my mother asking questions.  My dad asks none.  He has that sort of firm, blind faith that says God knows better than man, and he must have had good reason, Amen.

Mom wants to know, "Why my grandbaby?  Why couldn't she be spared?"  And I respect them both in different ways.  I respect my father for having the sort of blind faith that can survive such a heart wrenching disaster.  At the same time, I equally respect my mother for continuing to follow her faith, but expecting answers when this whole sad mess is over.  There will be a conversation.

And me?  I may never believe.  Part of me wants to believe Cory is in heaven, while another part sees her such as she was, spread out on the road for any passerby-er to see...and what sort of God would allow that to happen to a girl that hurt no one, and struggled everyday for a normal life and any sort of peace?

Beats the hell out of me.