Why "Say Yes To The Dress" Makes Me Cry

I love the TV program "Say Yes To The Dress". It's my guilty pleasure. Watching women of all ages choose their weddings gown is more than just fun. It's heartwarming and a bit embarrassing. It's sometimes downright maddening. And it's always touching.

There's a bride whose groom is deployed in Iraq. There's a bride with Stage IV breast cancer. There's a bride who's marrying a woman. There's a bride who's marrying for the first time at age fifty-three. There's a bride who's a total bitch and a control freak (and her fiance ends up dumping her before the wedding).

Lately, these stories make me cry.

Because nearly all of the brides shop for their dresses with their mothers. And in almost every case it's a time for some major bonding. The mother sees the daughter in the dress and that's it -- the two of them are sobbing and hugging and it's everything you ever dreamed it would be. A passing of the torch.

When I was thirty, I got engaged. (I later called it off.) My mother and I went shopping for a dress. She tried to steer me toward something simple. "An A-line will suit your figure," my mother said. What she meant was, "An A-line will fit you." She always thought I was fat.

I don't remember any of the dresses I tried on. I don't remember what I chose. I ordered something, I know that. It's amazing to realize this -- and even more amazing to write it where others might see it -- but I don't remember one thing about the experience at all. But I do remember what did NOT happen: my mother did NOT cry, my mother did NOT hug me, my mother did NOT tell me I'd make a beautiful bride.

It wasn't that kind of an experience for us. For me.

I've been thinking about this now that my mother is gone. I've concluded that the grieving process is as much about yearning as it is about missing.

While she was alive, I yearned to know that my mother thought I was beautiful and a wonderful daughter and everything she'd ever wanted and more. I yearned for her to throw her arms around me and hug me, telling me she loved me this much (arms open wide) today and that much (arms open wider) tomorrow. That was never going to happen. But for as long as my mother was alive, that possibility existed.

And so when I sit in my living room and cry through episodes of "Say Yes", I know what those tears are about. They're about those moments my mother and I never had and were never going to have. For the boundaries that framed our relationship. For the yearning that remains even when the missing begins. For the love I feel despite the disappointments.

Accepting that and still loving...that is something remarkable.

Defending my life

My friend Susan is a psychic and an intuitive counselor. So when she recommended that I watch that old Albert Brooks/Meryl Streep film, Defending Your Life, I figured that she knew I'd like it...

I may even have seen the film 20 years ago or so when it first came out. I can't remember. Albert Brooks plays Daniel Miller, an ad exec living in L.A., who crashes his brand new BMW convertible into an oncoming bus and dies. He is sent to Judgment City -- the comfort stop between heaven and a one-way ticket back to earth to try and get it right another time around. There, in Judgment City, the newly dead are asked to defend their lives during the day and are free to socialize and dine in the evenings. In Judgment City, Daniel meets Julia, played to perfection, of course, by the luminous Meryl Streep.

Daniel, as it turns out, is not as evolved as Julia, and the judges decide to send him back for another shot at life on earth. Daniel isn't sent back because he's a bad person or a failure. No, he gives to charities and he earns a good living and he does lots of things right. Daniel is sent back because he lives in fear. The motivating force in his life is Fear. Fear of what people will think, fear of what people will say, fear of making a fool of himself, fear of being laughed at.

(This being Hollywood, Daniel overcomes his fear in the final three minutes and is happily reunited with the heaven-bound Meryl Streep. Roll credits.)

Lately, I've grown afraid of dying. I think that given the circumstances that's probably pretty understandable. And it's a fear I'll work on in time. But here's another fear: an old fear and a fear that is limiting and will stop me in my tracks if I try to live in this moment. Fear of going broke. Fear of not being able to afford. Fear of being a spendthrift. Frivolous. Out of control. I grew up with my father's fear of poverty. I internalized that fear and made it my own.

I don't want to get to Judgment City and discover that because I was always so concerned about financial security I missed the point. So I've decided to commit to something as a first step of pushing past this unfounded but disproportionately sabotaging fear: I am going to stop talking about money. Period. Punto y aparte. I am setting a goal of making myself go one entire month without so much as a peep about how much something costs. That goes for the internal dialogue, as well.

This ought to clear out a lot of fear and also a lot of fear-based thinking. Lots more room, lots more energy for something else. We fill the spaces we're not using. I'll pay attention to what I make room for. Maybe it will be some grief and some sadness; maybe some memories that hurt a little bit but feel good, too. Maybe some fun. Maybe a new hobby. Maybe time for blogging. Maybe a friendship. Maybe a connection.

Maybe seems so much more promising to me than fear. There is possibility in Maybe. That feels right. Should make it so much easier to defend my life and defend my choices when the time comes...

Breath(e)

This is the first day of my blog.

I'm calling it The Older Orphan because that's who I am. My mother died on 3 May, 2010, just five weeks ago, and my father died in December 1998. I'm 51 years old. And now I'm an orphan.

Orphan. That word always felt so Dickensian: a small, grimy-nosed boy in a torn and tattered waistcoat pleading for another ladle of watery gruel. But now it describes me and hundreds of thousands -- millions? -- of people just like me. We're losing our parents and we're standing alone, no one watching our every move, no one cheering or criticizing or laughing or wincing at our foibles and our achievements.

My mother had Alzheimer's. So it's probably accurate to say that I actually lost her a number of years ago. I thought I'd feel a huge surge of relief as soon as she died. And I did. Of course. Who would want anyone to suffer those indignities, year after year? So, yes, I am relieved. And I am also incredibly sad. I thought the relief would outweigh the grief. Not the case. The grief is the more powerful of the two emotions.

What I grieve is my loss. What I grieve is the passing of time. It -- life -- is whizzing by, sometimes unnoticed and rarely feeling like it's being squeezed for every drop it's worth. I spend a lot of time thinking about the past. I spend too much time fantasizing about the future: the relationship I'll finally have, the retirement I'll be able to afford, the jeans I'll finally squeeze back into. The present is sacrificed to rewriting history or scripting what's next.

I am determined to change.

The weekend before my mother died, I watched her as she breathed. She was being administered morphine and Atavan; she was alive but no longer reachable. I imagined my mother hovering somewhere between this world and the next. I watched that breath. It was shallow. Just one breath, then another. Then a pause. And then another breath. And as long as that breath came, my mother was alive. Life is in that single breath. We don't know if another is coming. But in that moment, there is breath and so there is life.

It was such a humbling realization because I'd never before allowed myself to distill it -- life -- down to such small proportions. Before that weekend of my mother's death, life was big and complicated, with plans and chaos and concessions and priorities. And then suddenly it became clear. That the only thing we can really experience is the single moment of time in which we are living. Right now. Breathe.

Making my life smaller but more intense. That's what I'm thinking about.

I have no idea what I'm going to write about. But I've told myself that I am going to write every day and I'm going to tell the truth, no matter how trivial or mundane or embarrassing.

My goal is to make this blog an authentic ride through my life. Maybe, if my fantasies come true, fellow orphans will speak out and share their stories and talk about how hard it is to finally stand on your own two feet and do the hard work of being in your life. Maybe other people from our generation will join the conversation and say, Shit, I'm really scared that my mother or my father is going to die. Or, Shit, I'm really scared that I'M going to die.

And then we come together and remind ourselves to live it in this one moment. And breathe.