Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 51

Going Home

My last trip “home” to my hometown in Illinois was for my mother’s funeral three months ago. Last week it was to drop off some of her things to my sister and then spend a few days visiting people in Naperville.

I often say that while my home is in Albuquerque where I now live, Naperville and the Chicago area are where I am from and who I am. But I didn’t realize how good it was to be there until I arrived.

I will admit I’m not a fan of humidity, and mosquitoes and I haven't been friends in a few long time. In New Mexico I can wander outside with worrying that I will be scratching the bites for a week. All that aside, staying with friends across the street from the house I own in the first development of the subdivision where I was raised has become going home to me.

Cemetery Gardening

Before leaving to Niagara Falls, we stopped at the cemetery because I wanted to “visit” my family. When my[image error] mom died three months ago, it was rainy and snowy and the cemetery staff had put down plywood and a tent so we couldn’t see the graves of my sister and dad. This would be the first time I would see all three of them there together.

The entire grassy area was overgrown– clovers, weeds, you name it. It isn’t normally like that but they have had quite a bit of rain and I’m guessing that there hasn’t been enough time between rains for the grass to dry long enough to be mowed.

After my sister died, my dad visited her grave every day for at least a year. One time I was walking to the car and he asked where I was going and when I said to the cemetery he handed me a broom so I could sweep her headstone. After the tree by Denise’s grave died, my parents paid for a new one so she could still be under the tree, one reason we had picked that site in the first place.

A Place of Inspiration for Me

In the next few weeks, my web site will under go a transition as we take the focus off photos of me and put on what
inspires me instead. 

Yesterday, we headed north to Colorado Springs, Colorado, on our way to Illinois with the trailer of my mom's stuff for my sister. Colorado Springs is one of the most significant places in my life because of the summer I spent as a communications intern for USA Boxing at the US Olympic Training Center. While I often talk about the internship in the context that it was the summer after my sister died, spending time there was much more than that for me.

And One Final Piece

There is a trailer in my driveway attached to my car filled with my mom's belonging that are going to my sister in Illinois. And at the other end of my house two rooms sit nearly empty. 

I have been cranky much of today and I know it's because this trailer is the final piece of letting go of my mom's physical life. As my boyfriend and I drove to pick up the trailer, I was feeling annoyed about even having to do the trailer (having hauled one once before I know what a burden it can be), and I switched the radio stations to hear "Everyone Rose Has Its Thorn" come on by Poison. As I have written before, that was a favorite song of Mom's. I know that she was telling me she is with us as we take this journey.

I also know that she wanted to make sure I had a good laugh– we all have seen the Uhaul trailers with the citiies and sites painted on the side of them– and the one we got has the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, on it. She my dad, and sister Denise once went there and it was actually a magnet I kept from the many mom had collected from various places.

Life Equals Painting

Over Memorial Day weekend I thought it was the perfect time to paint a room in my house. I had already bought the paint and because it's the smallest of the bedrooms, I believed I could accomplish this on my own.

The room was turquoise and I was going to convert it to "green tea" but first I had paint the ceiling white and cover the faint peach color I had used before. This went really well and I was impressed with myself.

"I'll be done in no time," I thought, patting myself on the back.

That's when trouble set in. The paint brand I normally use apparently has been altered in some way and isn't nearly as good as it once was (you can see the photo to figure out what brand I'm referring to). Now I realize I was covering up turquoise so after seeing I would definitely need two coats of green, I set to painting the room white. I figured it was better to go with one coat of white and one coat of green rather than two coats of green.

And that's when trouble set in, as well as darkness.

Ginger and Mom

When I went to visit my mom's cousin in California in April, I asked her which of my books she had so I could bring [image error]her one she didn't own. I figured I would take the fiction until she surprised me and asked for the book about "your mom and her dog."

It's hard to believe that it's been seven years since I wrote and published Ginger's Gift: Hope and Healing through Dog Companionship. While the book is a memoir focusing on how I went from no dogs to four (especially amusing to anyone who knows me since the family joke was that I never touched our family dog, Chaos), it came together after we adopted a dog we named Ginger for my mom in 2005.

Graduation Thoughts

I have several high school graduations in my life this spring– my nephew and a friend's daughter whom I have [image error]
known since she was a few years old. This morning I was thinking what is the most important thing I could say to a graduating senior. At first I thought there was a lot I could say and then I remembered the one thing a high school senior told me last year.

I had spoken at the advanced health classes at my high school– my own teacher Steve Mazzarella had asked me to speak– and he wanted me to talk about my journey and where it is today. Some of that was about my sister's death but also what has happened since then and the many roads I have been on. I found myself sharing that I am divorced among the other life events, something I never thought would happen to me. 

After I was finished with one of the classes, one of the students came up to me and said how much she appreciated that for them, in a time of so much unknown, that I shared that even though so much has happened that might not be positive, I keep going and that I still have a great life.

The May Writing Reward

Each month I'm trying to create a writing reward that is unique, something to keep me motivated to write 50 pages. At some point I also will be upping the ante from 50 pages but right now that's working well.

In April, in Southern California, I saw a Waring drink mixer (milkshake machine to me) at Crate & Barrel and it reminded me how much I had wanted one some years ago. I never got one, although I'm not sure why, and when I returned home I decided it would make the perfect writing reward. 

I ordered it early in the month of May so the box, one that was much too large, from Amazon stood on one end in my office where it glared at me daily. I couldn't forget what I had agreed to do.

Ready for a new chapter

I felt an immense amount of sadness after I dropped my sister off at the airport a few hours ago. I turned off the [image error]freeway and instead of going home, went north to unload a car full of donations to the local Animal Humane Thrift Store. It felt strange to leave all the items on the loading dock as I drove away– especially a living room chair that she spent much of the last year sitting in in her bedroom to watch television. 

But I also felt a sense of relief. My sister stayed in what was Mom's room and now will become a second guestroom in my house. And in two weeks my boyfriend and I will will driving a trailer to Illinois to drop off the furniture and belongings that Karen wanted to keep. The north of end of my house will be mostly empty until I get back from that trip.

This morning though, all the boxes were stacked in a second room mom used (my old office when I lived here before my divorce) and Mom's bedroom was fairly empty. I looked around and said to Karen it was like she had cleared out her dorm room.

Sorting the Stuff

Thankfully for us, my mom moved several times in the last years of her life– leaving us with a lot less to sort through than if she had left a full house of stuff behind. But that doesn't mean it's been any less easy.

While I had started to sort and pack up some of mom's belongings, my sister Karen flew in this weekend to help finish it out and also to pack up what she wants to keep. 

Before we started on Sunday, we went to Mass and the communion song was "Be Not Afraid," a song played at my sister's funeral and at mom's as well. When I turned the car on to head home, "Hot Hot Hot" was just beginning. A definitely favorite of Mom's and one she always made clear she wanted played at her wake (which we did).