Annie Wood's Blog

Dear eema, 

It's here. June 15th. The one year mark. I feel like I've been anxiously waiting for this day to arrive. I'm not sure why. Maybe just so I could face it. Or maybe just so it could pass. The missing does feel more intense this week. The nice people over at the hospice place must have known that. They sent another letter. 


We used to talk about your death often. We're a family that always talked about the inevitable. I'm glad for that. I don't know that it prepared me but it does make me feel that everything that ever needed to be said, had been said. You knew that you were adored and I knew that I was. Who can ask for more than that?

I wrote this Huffington Post article for you. 

I don't know if I'll be back to this blog. It might just live here forever on the internet as a memory of my first year without you. Maybe other people going through loss will find it comforting. Maybe I will read it again in the future and I will find it comforting. I do know that it helped me to write it. 


You used to say that you sometimes felt that I was your mother. Maybe we'll try that next time. 
Until we meet again. 
I love you to the moon and back, eemilah sheelie. 
Thank you. 
Thank you. 
Thank you.
love, 
annie

Dear eema,

This Mother's Day will mark my last first without you. I survived the holidays, our joint birthday, Passover and next up, Mother's Day. 

Adjusting to a world without you in it has been strange, new, challenging. I keep thinking, this is how it'll be from here on out. I remember how often I would hear you sigh, Oh eemilah. Quietly speaking to your own mother who died when I was just a baby. I never got to know her but I knew pieces of her through you. Through your love and through your stories I was able to get a peek into the woman who raised you. And from now on, whenever I meet someone new, they won't know you. They won't know us. But maybe they will get a glimpse of you through me. 

I wrote this piece for the Huffington Post, in honor of you. 

Happy Mother's Day, eemilah. 
Ani ohevet otach.
xo,
annie

Dear eema,
As soon as February would roll around I’d get the call, your cute, smiling, mischievous voice, “Boobilah, Annilah… it’s almost our birthday.” 
We loved sharing a birthday. I think it made us feel like it was a testimony to our closeness. Like it was some sort of cosmic validation from The Great Beyond. Not that we needed a validation, still, it certainly was fun. 
You came to me in a dream last week and said, “Boobilah, Annilah…it’s almost our birthday.” I started to weep in the dream but you couldn't understand why. You happily assured me that you’ll still celebrate with me. I choose to trust that. 

Your last phone messages have been patiently waiting on my laptop. I’ve been waiting for our birthday to listen. But now I’m wondering… is that a little like listening to a love song after a break up? Am I going to cause myself more pain by hearing your voice on our day? There’s only one way to find out…

Okay, I just listened to all of them. In the very last message you had such a happy, sing-songy tone, "I love you, I miss you, I love you." Your voice echoes in my mind with or without these recordings but it was nice to hear you again. Did it make me sad? Happy-sad, I guess. Mostly happy that I can still feel you. 
The hospice care people send letters to check in. I think this might be the last one they send. I found the letters comforting. 



Your life and your death have inspired me in countless ways. In one of my recent articles, The Zen of Dying. A lot of people, friends and strangers, have contacted me to tell me how it has helped them cope as they go through their own loss of someone they love. You loved helping others. You’d be so pleased that you still are. 
This beautiful poem was read on a meditation retreat I was just on. It touched me deeply at the time, thoughts of losing you flooding my mind. 




I vow to simply bear the truth and to continue to allow your memory to gracefully feed my soul in glorious ways. 
Happy Birthday, eemilah shelee. I love you always,annie

Dear eema, 

Now that the condo has been sold and all of my boxes of memories have been given away, thrown away or put away, I feel a kind of silence has filled up the space around me. Like the air itself has let out one, big sigh. I wonder if the the new owners will feel you in that space from time to time. 
They'd be lucky if they did. 



Today is the last day of 2015. I know that there's a tendency to look back at a year that was full of challenges and say, "this was a bad year." But I don't feel that way. Why blame the year? It wasn't the year's fault that your time came. Or that my beloved dog, Lucy's time was also up. Or if I did or didn't get the jobs I wanted, or if I got sick, or didn't get sick. The year was just being like any other year. A year in a person's life full of... life. 

Around the time that I felt you weren't going to be with us much longer, I upped up my meditation practice to include mindfulness. Mindfulness is mostly about being fully present in the moment with an open awareness and curiosity to what comes up. With no judgement. A focused attention to what's going on in you and around you. An intention to pay attention. Easier said than done but I committed to it and it's brought me a calm and a peace that i'm a grateful for. I think partly because of this practice, when the time that I'd feared since I was a little girl finally did arrive, I didn't feel like running, hiding or avoiding. I just wanted to be there. 
Fully there. 
For you. 
For me. 
I actually surprised myself. I didn't think I'd ever be able to, not only watch you die, but be a sort of tour guide on your journey. I feel like it's the best thing I've ever had the honor to take part in. 
I'm writing a book about it, for you. I know you'd like that. 

About a month ago I dreamt that you didn't know that you were dead and I had to break the news to you. You sobbed and I comforted you telling you that it's okay. That it's all okay. My crying woke me up. But after that night, you seem pretty happy in my dreams and I love that I get to see you so often now. Oh, and last week when I got my new iPhone, I asked Siri to play me a song. Out of the thousands and thousands of songs she could choose from, she played the one I haven't heard since you've been gone. 
Your ringtone. 
Que Sera, Sera
Thank you for that. 

I don't know if I will ever fully get used to a world without you in it, but I can still hear your voice in my head tell me what you've always told me, enjoy your life. be happy.

So I will. 

I love you always,

annie

Dear eema,
As I approach the five month mark since you’ve been gone, things inside of me have been up and down and okay and not okay and a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Every evening I still have that nano second where I think about calling you. Our evening calls were a lifetime habit for me and apparently it’s a hard one to break. 
I’ve been spending a lot of time with your stuff lately. Your stuff that you loved so very much. It makes me so happy just to look at it! you’d often say of each and every knick and each and every knack. You really enjoyed your things. I liked watching you as you watched your electric porcelain butterfly as it lit up and flapped it’s wings. A wide smile on your face, Isn't it beautiful? You were very good at appreciating your things. Maybe because you grew up so poor that the idea of having anything that wasn’t necessary to you and your family’s survival wasn’t part of the program. I’m guessing that having things that were pretty to look at didn’t rate as a high priority when you’re standing in a bread line. 
Cleaning out your home, the one you lived in for the past thirty four years, the one you were determined to continue to live in and eventually die in. You told me that time and time again. You got your wish and I’m comforted by the thought of you “winning.” You said it to me, in the last month of your life, when you were struggling with physical therapy and didn’t want to do anything anymore. You were so frustrated by everyone telling you what to do. Telling you what was best for you. Let me win something. Sometimes I need to win something.
 The other day I had a moment alone in the condo.  I laid myself down on the carpet where your hospice bed was. In the spot where you took your last breath. I looked up at the same ceiling you looked at when you said your last sentence, Wow. This is such a beautiful bus! I read somewhere that people who are dying often make a reference to travel. They talk about plane tickets. They ask when the train is coming. For you, you were well on your way to somewhere, driving on such a beautiful bus. You were smiling, in awe, in childlike wonder of it all. You were good at that too - your face wore a lifelong appreciation of wonder. 

Since I used your garage as a storage unit for my stuff, I’ve recently had the pleasure of getting reacquainted with my stuff as well. Cards, love letters, photos I forgot I took, photos of me I forgot existed. Images of many people who are no longer here. Smiling faces of all the people who have touched my life, in what seems like lifetimes ago. I brought home my forgotten memories. At this very moment my past is now mingling with my present. I imagine each item popping out of their boxes while I sleep and going full on Toy Story in my living room. 
The other day this thought occurred to me:  the one person who thought I could do anything in this world is no longer here to tell me that I could do anything in this world. The good news is, I implanted that thought into my own mind early on, so I can tell myself that whenever I need to. Still, the realization that my biggest fan has left the building… stings.
But, this is how it goes, isn’t it? We miss what we’ve loved when it’s no longer here to love. But, surprisingly, somehow the missing doesn’t feel like it’s taking anything away from me. It’s just another aspect of me. It’s now another thing I have. I have this missing of you and it’s okay. I have this now because I got to have you my whole life. I’m lucky. I know it. And now I have this. I love you. 
annie

Dear eema, 

L 'Shanah Tovah. I can hear you telling me this now. In fact, that's how I usually found out what Jewish holiday it was - by you wishing me a good one. Now I suppose I'll have to rely on Facebook. Tomorrow will be three months since you've been gone. You're beloved condo is almost empty. I'm slowly doing the emptying. I wrote this on Facebook:


Cleaning out the condo, 
Wrapping up moments in tissue paper,closing up boxes of the past.feeling you everywhere. The walls are bare now, the space is smaller than I ever realized. Without you to fill it up, what remains? If not for this great, ever expanding love I have for you, holding me tenderly since you've been gone, this empty home would be unbearable to be in. My mom, my eemailah,I love and miss you so. 

I had this photo framed for dad. It's hanging up in his room now.
The Hospice people sent me a list of things that could help me during the grieving process. I like it so I'm sharing it here in case it can help others. 


Oh, i also ate the rest of your hidden chocolate.  I haven't been able to write much since you've been gone. But, i'm supposed to be gentle with myself right now, so, I guess it's okay. You did inspire me to take a yoga teacher's training especially to help seniors. Everyone should be able to walk and be pain free while they're here. Not like your last couple of years. Those were tough ones. Maybe I can be of service to others. Every life I touch I will dedicate to you.
Year 5776 won't be the same without you. Here's hoping for a sweet one for all of us who miss you so.
And give Wayne a big hug if you see him. 


xo,annie

Dear Eema, 

i was doing okay. i really was. i went on auditions, i wrote a little bit (but not my usual mass amount) i went out with friends and i even went sailing. and in the midst of all of that i've been cleaning out your beloved condo and going through your things and in doing so, i didn't fall apart. i was impressed with myself and surprised. "wow! i am so together!" 

but then something happened. 

i remember the exact moment. i was sailing back from catalina with peter and it was nighttime. it was a very dark night. 
something about the darkness... 
something about the coming home... 
i got so deeply... suddenly... mad. 
maybe it was the thought that now, in this coming home,  my normal life will have to be begin again. but, i have no idea what normal is without you. i don't know anything about the new normal and i'm pissed off that i have to discover it. 

i guess this is the mad stage of grief. because that's how i feel. friends want to see me and i'm so grateful to have so many wonderful friends but i don't want to talk. about anything sometimes. you and i, we've been through so much. we used to talk about your inevitable death when you were healthy. you were worried about how i would react because of our closeness. when i look back at my journals i have passages that read, "no one will ever understand me the way that eema does." sure, i was being a melodramatic teenager and that statement has since proven to not be the case, but still... that's some intense closeness there. 

it's been a little more than two months now and the silence is deafening. one day it may be peaceful, this particular silence, but that day is not now. i keep having the thought, "i now have to do the rest of this without you. alone." of course i'm not alone but it's all just so... different. 

i'm feeling conflicted about things. i want to be around those who love me and yet, i want to be alone. 
i want to run away and yet, i want to do nothing at all. 
i don't know. 
i've experienced grief before but this losing a mother thing has really thrown me for a loop. 

i'd throw myself into my job but i don't have one. i mean, i do... i go on auditions, but then the audition is over, so then what? i haven't been able to set my writing goals the way i usually do. that's the thing about being your own boss, it's not always an easy path to motivation. especially when you have such a kind, sweet, understanding boss like i do. oh, good. humor. thank god i've still got that.

i'm rambling now and it feels strange to post something publicly that i would usually just write in my journal but some people have reached out to me and have told me that these letters have helped them with their own grief. so, for them, i will post this sad, mad, in mourning ramble in hopes that they will feel less alone in their own sad, madness. 

i often think of the time after my dog, lucy, died you saw me a few days later and in amazement, through your own tears over lucy's death you said, "you are so strong. you are much stronger than i am."  i don't know why you said it but maybe that knowledge gave you the strength to know that i would be okay, no matter what. 
you died six weeks later.

i miss you and missing you isn't easy. 
but i will be okay. 
love,
annie

Dear eema,

The other day I was talking to a stranger in a casting office waiting room. 


We were talking about various things when the subject of family came up. She asked me a question about my parents and the first three words that began my response surprised me. 


"My mother was..."

It's the third word there that got to me. Was.   I am now wasing you! It felt so strange, so new... I managed to continue the conversation with the stranger none the wiser, but my inner life was telling another story altogether.  
Did you hear what you just said? You are now speaking in the past tense about your mom! She's no longer an is, she's a was and she will be so for the rest of your life! 
I remember after Miram died, when someone new would ask me about my siblings, i'd say, "I grew up with two but one didn't make it." But then i'd be at the mercy of their reaction, and further questions, so, after some time, I stopped doing that. It took me several years before I started saying, I have one brother.  But now, this wasing of you. You, who have always been so very present, so now, for my entire life... it's just... it felt wrong to was you. 
But, the good news is, i'm kind of into the whole time-space continuum and Einstein's concept that time is an illusion. So, if past, present and future exist all at one time - then you, and all who have gone before, are still an IS! YAY!
Here's what I know I know now (if this really is now) you are alive in me for all time (whatever time is or isn't)  for at least as long as I exist (whatever my existence is or isn't) and you will always remain an is, even when I say was. 
If you have access to the link above, you'd enjoy that documentary. It's trippy and you always enjoyed trippy things. 
I love and miss you.
xo,annie

Dear eema,

Today is July 15th. The one month mark. I know I said that I would stop counting but apparently I changed my mind. 

Marking time as it passes feels significant. An entire month of living continued on for me and for everyone else who knew and loved you. We kept on keeping on because that's what the living do. Although sometimes that simple, obvious fact feels strange. 
Or at the very least, different. 

Marking time helps me feel solid. Like, here I am, in the world, getting by, and as proof I have this thing called time that continues moving forward. So, if I just follow it, go with it, then I'll be okay. 

I read in one of the books Kristine gave me, Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief by Martha Whitmore Hickman (which I highly recommend if anyone should find themselves on the grief boat.)  that this "marking time" business is common. 


Grievers sometimes take a mental note after doing an everyday thing for the first time after losing someone close to them. I've been doing just that. Saying out loud to Peter, this is first time I'm driving, first time I'm going to a movie, first time I'm going to a party. The first times have now graduated to second and thirds and the marking of time has lessened. The missing you part, however, that part has grown. 



Because, if you think about it, I've never went this long, in my entire life, without speaking to you. Ever. So, to put it practically, this has been... an adjustment. I also feel a, my-mom-is-gone loneliness, that i've never felt before. But it's not all-encompassing. Not the way I always feared it would be. There's a sadness but there's also a quiet calmness. I'm no longer worried about you. A mountain of concern and worry has left my life and that's not altogether a bad thing. The pain and restlessness that came to you with your aging was making you miserable and I didn't know how to fix it and neither did you. Maybe that's why you always had me fixing things at the house. The TV, the cable, the phone, the air filters, the clocks... something always needed fixing. 
Maybe the fixing was never about those things at all. 
Whoa. 


In this little snippet of a video I took, before things began to slip away from you, you said these two lines that sums you up and makes me so very happy. This is what I will choose to remember and hold onto for the rest of my life. 
* 

I love you, eemailah. (Please visit.)
xo,annie*(but i enjoyed it. my life was very interesting.)
:)

Dear eema,

As I drift off to sleep at night and if I concentrate hard enough I can almost hear your voice.
But almost isn't enough.
Not nearly.

Luckily, I had the good sense to save your voice messages.


But I can't bring myself to listen. For now, having this is more of a security blanket than anything else. I know it's there for when i'm ready. When I'm emotionally ready to hear you once again say, "Annihlah, boobilah, call me!"

I've been feeling mad lately. That's a legit stage of grief, isn't it? It is but I thought I was passed it. I guess I'm doing them out of order, rebel that I am. 
Why am I mad?I'm mad that your last year was so difficult. It's an unfair, cruel trick life plays on some. I don't like it.I'm mad that it has to be like this for some others who will grow old, unless we find a cure for aging. (that isn't death)I'm mad that I can't talk to you, or see you, in the physical world, in this lifetime, ever again.I'm mad that you haven't visited me in my dreams. And not one, not one flickering light! (Yeah, I'm still on that.)

But then...  then... I take a big breath and after a few moments... the madness melts away and turns into sadness and then that sadness settles down and before I know it, I let go of all of that and I'm back to doing my things. 
My writing, my auditioning, my yogaing, my TV watching, my movie-going, my loving my husband, my dog, my friends and my life, as I do. 

This strangeness, this new world without you, I know it will get easier as time passes, it's just that not enough time has passed yet. This past month has moved at a snail's pace leaving me with too much time to think, to reflect, to wonder. 
Michael Jackson, and others, want to know if i'm okay.  Annie, are you okay? Are you okay, Annie?
I am. I will be. 
I trust that you are too, wherever you are. 
xo,annie