SMASH!!

This charming photo shows what I woke up to the Sunday morning after the Landers Cousins Christmas Party. I was pissed. Fuming. Cursed every cousin I possess. Sweet Bard, hungover and sore from sleeping on the basement floor, help me right the tree, throw all the broken ornaments away, put the undamaged ones back on, set the soaking wet presents off to the side and begin to vacuum. Ten seconds into the vacuuming, SMASH! It fell again.

Later, I got the whole story. It fell on Zach as he slept on the living room floor. He righted it and went to the couch. Later as John slept on the floor, it fell again. He put it back. When Chip came up to bed it was down for the count again, HE stood it back up. So when I came down in the morning, it was already the fourth time it had fallen. And then there was number five after the vacuuming. The tree was not meant to be upright.

Many years ago I bought, with a gift card from Pier One, a set of two gorgeous serving platters. They are my favorite dishes I have. Oblong and ovalish, deep red, one was small, the other large. Before going to bed on party night, I cleaned all the dishes. I set all the clean dishes on a dish towel, on the counter to dry. Some leaning against one another, precariously placed, in order for them all to fit.

The morning of the tree disaster, I walked into the kitchen, past the leaning tower of clean dish, and brushed against the larger of the two beautiful serving platters. SHATTER!!! A million pieces. Ok, not a million, but still. That's what it FELT like in my heart. I don't have very many NICE things. Now I have even less.

The day was not going well at all. And it was annual Hanna, Mom, Sara cookie and peanut butter ball baking day. So I cleaned up the dish, cried a little, got a consoling and warm hug from Chip, and Hanna and I left for Mom's house.

We stopped at CVS on the way. When we came out of CVS, I turned on the van and the oil light was on. I turned it off. I opened the hood. The inside was a blood bath of oil, coating every engine part there was and a giant pool of motor OOL under my car. We went inside to purchase oil. CVS, as it were, does not sell oil. Dad came to the rescue with a quart and a half of oil. He tightened up the filter thingy that men know how to do, poured the new oil in and I gave it a go. Started her up. MOUNT VESUVIUS!!! The oil erupted everywhere making the pool turn into a streaming river, as this parking lot is a slight downhill. Some fancily dressed folks were just coming to get into their car parked next to my explosion and I shouted, HURRY UP!! GET IN YOUR CAR!! FLEE!! It's coming for you!!! They laughed a little, saw the river of penzoil coming their way and scampered!

Dad took us to mom's. I was not in the mood for baking anything, although I could have done with shoving copious amounts of chocolate into my piehole, it's soothing you know. My poor wonderful patient mother, coaxed my bitchy pitying mood off to the side and put up with me for about eight hours. I arranged for a tow and they said I should be at the CVS to meet the driver at 8am on Monday.

Monday morning, 7:04, the tow company calls and says the driver is nearly there and am I there yet and he will not wait if I'm not. I may have told tow truck company man that, that was a really shitty thing to do to someone who's already in a bad place because of having a broken down vehicle with Oil Lake under it and now I'm gonna miss the tow because some incompetent can't schedule anything right and WHAT THE HELL MAN????

Amazingly, he did not hang up on me, but quieted. Softly told me, I know ma'am. It sucks. I'm sorry. But I have 60 tow jobs waiting and my driver can't be held up. Chip came to the rescue and raced me over to CVS and then took Hanna to school.

This was just too much. My poor tree and my poor dish and my poor van and poor me. I was having a serious pity party. I came home with a rental car a while later and had a nice long cry. And then I got the mail. In one envelope was a card with a beautiful fiery red ornament embossed with gold, with golden writing, For my Daughter....

The thought that my mom had to go to the store and buy only one of these cards, and that standing in the daughter section of cards did not undo her, brought me back to reality. She could have forgone the card. She had gifts to give to me. She made us brunch. She didn't need to do the card. I can't imagine the feeling of going, for over twenty years to the store, and buying TWO daughter christmas cards, and then one year, suddenly, there is only one to buy for. And she probably looked through many cards. Read the sweet wonderful words on the insides of them. Thought which ones would have been good for Kate. Felt a crack in the place that was already so frail....and still....she got one for me.

Has there ever been a more wonderful person in this world? I don't think so. Smashed trees and broken dishes and exploding cars are nothing. All repairable. It sucks. It doesn't mean I can't have a good cry when all those things happen on the same day. But then Donna puts it in perspective, and I can get the pep back in my step, leave the pity behind, and be grateful for all the GOOD.

Regret

Regret is a killer. It will drain you, punish you and haunt you. I think one of the reasons why I have been dealing with my loss at what I consider to be a "normal" and healthy rate is that I have worked hard to let go of regret.

I recently had a conversation with my mom about regret. I can't pretend to understand what it feels like to lose a daughter, and I can't say I'd be able to let go of regret, or anything, if that ever happened to me. But I wanted to try to help her rationalize and conquer some of it. I don't know if anything I said helped but I thought about it a lot after, and this is what I've come up with.

No one is perfect. Even in very strong, healthy relationships, we all irk each other to some degree. We get past those things that bother us about each other because we love each other. We all knew that there were tons of things we did, during the course of Kate's life, that annoyed her. That bothered her. That hurt her. (Ever been on the receiving end of a kaboom? Yeah! Katie Kaboom! We KNEW if she was pissed lol)

But I truly believe that in the end, when she kept saying, "Everything is Perfect", that she REALLY TRULY meant it. She FELT it. And for a long time I was just in so much awe of her (and still am!) that she could possibly say that, when she had tubes and bags hanging off of her and she weighed less than just one of my thighs and she was facing the end of her life here on earth.

But after I had the regret conversation and then thought it out, I think that one of the big reasons she felt that everything was perfect was because she let go of her regret. When we were kids, I was the big mean older sister. That's not to say that we never had fun together because we had a BLAST. But I don't think that during her illness, she ever thought of the bad stuff, even once. And I think that about each person that she loved, and loved her. We have all hurt her, because we are human. But she let go of ALL of her hurt.

We showed her so much love and commitment and did everything possible to show her how much she meant to us, I don't think there was room left in her brain, or heart, to regret anything. So for mom, and anyone who knew and loved Kate, who still has feelings of regret.....I should have done this, said this, been there for this....I think you are punishing yourself in a way that Katie NEVER would have done. I don't think for one second that anything you are telling yourself you should have done or shouldn't have done, crossed Kate's mind. She was LOVED. She was GRATEFUL. She was at PEACE. And I know, without a doubt, she would only want peace and comfort, for your heart as well.