Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

Cents and Sensibility

I am wearing my dead mother's underpants. Is that weird?

I packed them up after she passed away, and I took them with me. I did it because I felt protective of her privacy and I didn't want a bunch of estate sale people looking at them. But when I got back to Oregon with them, I just couldn't throw them away. It felt too...sad.

Plus, I saw that they are really fancy high end, expensive underpants. Vanity Fair. And, as far as I am concerned, if you are looking for some Very Fancy Underpants, look no further than the ones named after 19th Century British novels.

I am presently wearing an underpant named by William Makepeace Thackery. Take that, you cotton brief  Lollipop bitches. Lollipop. Please. Maybe The Lollipop Briefs could work. A John Grisham line of ladies' underpants.

Vanity Fair, as 19th Century British novel-titles-for-underpants go, is a very nice name. I'm glad the lingerie company had the sense not to name their underpants after the characters in the novel: Sharp and Crawley. Yikes. 

Vanity Fair is a much nicer underpants name than other novels of the time - say, Bleak House. That's just giving up down there. Or Frankenstein. Which would only further the teeth-hiding-in-the-vagina fear that men have. The Fitz-Boodle Papers is a zippy sort of name for underpants, don't you think, albeit a confusing one, especially for boys who are just learning about women by secretly checking out labels on ladies' underwear. Still, a generation of males who grow up calling our ladyparts  Fitz-Boodle Papers would be an improved generation of males, as far as I am concerned. I bet there'd be less misogynistic insults on Twitter. I bet a Donald Trump wouldn't even be born into a world where men called women's private parts their Fitz-Boodle Papers.

Now, naming an underpants line Great Expectations is really just asking for disappointment, am I right? Especially if you're a constipated Jewish woman. I don't need that kind of heartbreak every time I go to the toilet.

And, of course, there is the saddest of the underpants: Paradise Lost. 

I hope Mom is okay with my wearing her underpants. I hope she isn't looking down from the heavens, rolling her eyes and saying, "for God's sake, go buy yourself some nice underpants." I hope she isn't sighing, "Oy, Murray, we raised a schnorrer." 

If my mom were alive, she'd send me a hundred dollars to buy myself some nice underpants. I know this for certain. And I would call her and say it isn't necessary, I can afford to buy nice underpants, it's just that I choose not to. And she'd say, "OH FOR GOD'S SAKE, don't wear my old underpants!"

So, Mom, if you are listening, I want you to know that you also taught me not to be a conspicuous consumer and to make do with what's in front of me, and I hope you understand that you did not raise a schnorrer.

You raised two of them.

Karen is wearing your old bras. 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am The New Old

So, my mom died a couple of months ago.

When I tell people that my mom died, they are sad for me. And then, when I tell them that she was 91 years old, they are less sad for me because, let's face it, the death of a 91 year old isn't exactly shocking or particularly tragic. But people who have lost their moms understand. She was my mom.

Honestly, I thought she was going to outlive me. Other than the dying part, she was a brochure for living. She said YES to everything in life, and refused to let fear or fatigue keep her down. My mom was vibrant and positive and energetic and intellectually curious for as long as I knew her.

You can imagine what it was like for me being her daughter. God. The pressure.

I used to lie to her all the time about what I was doing in my life. Because, you know, I pretty much do nothing. I'd call her on a Sunday night to ask how her weekend was, and she'd still be out. So I'd call on Monday, when she was on her way to Zumba or the art class she was taking, or running out the door to take the train to downtown LA. For the fun of it. For the fun of it. 

It is confounding how I can be the issue of her tissue.

She would tell me about everything she did on the weekend while I debated my response. 

"I went to the Portland Art Museum," I would lie. "It was...um...really cool."

And my mother, a thousand miles away, would probably roll her eyes and think her therapist thoughts about her daughter, the budding agoraphobic.

It was exhausting to lie to her every week. Even my fake life exhausted me. I'd have to whip myself into shape just to pretend to do all the shit I told her I did.

Fuck, even my actual life exhausts me. Writing this blog post is going to just about to do me in. A snack and then a nap factor strongly in my near future.

Mom was gorgeous. And not the kind of gorgeous you say about 91 year old women; you know, "she's gorgeous for her age." Even the coroner mentioned how young she looked.

I was used to hearing compliments about her. Especially as she aged - which is to say, she didn't - it was impossible for her to meet anyone and have them not say something about her vibrancy.

"Your mom is amazing!" Everyone in the universe would tell me. "She looks and acts so young!"

I'd smile. And then there would be this awkward silence where a compliment about ME would have been inserted. You know, "and you are just like her!"

It's hard to know what to say in those silences. Sometimes I said something like, "well, you know, we can't all love life." Which is just a weird enough thing to say to shut people up.

Sometimes I'd say, "she IS gorgeous, you're right."  Which was a very evolved thing for me to say. Although the  inference being that I got the personality in the family.

But there would still be this silence. Tic toc. Tic toc. 

"I have a blog," I would say weakly. "It's very demanding."

Right after Mom passed away, while my sister and I waited for the mortuary to come get her, I took a long, last look at Sylvia Brown. She didn't look radiant, truth be told, because her final week was horrific for her, but she still didn't look like a shriveled old person.

My sister said, "Mom still looks the best of the three of us."

My sister and I were wiped out, having been in LA, caring for her pretty much since last winter. The last weeks were nonstop and frantic. Karen was right. We looked bad.

She said, "the coroner is going to get here and see the three of us lying in the bed and not know which one of us is the dead one. They'll look at me and think, 'oh, that desiccated, wrinkled one: that's the corpse."

I said, "No, they'll look at me and think, 'the dark one that's already bloated so hideously: that's the corpse."

And then we had a good laugh. 

And then we had a good cry.

And then we had a good long nap.

Goodnight, Sylvia.