Visits to the Windy City

Greetings from Chicago,

As I a sit at my kitchen table performing my morning coffee ritual, I’m reminded about all of the fun times I’ve had with my mom in my studio apartment over the past few months. My fiancé Ted has been in El Paso for a yearlong clerkship, which while difficult (especially while planning our wedding!), has a silver lining to it. It has allowed my mom to stay with me for extended periods of time since we learned of her ALS diagnosis. Her visits here have brightened and added so much to the past few months for me. Before her diagnosis, I thought of the 12 months where I was living alone as a sentence that I had to put my head down and get through. The time was slogging by, and all I wanted to do was to skip this track on my life’s CD (Annie, do you even know what those are?). My perspective all changed in October, which is when time suddenly became the most important thing in my relationship with my mom and family. Now I don’t want time to go by, and I can’t get enough of it.

I find myself reminded of my mom randomly throughout the day, like when I’m sitting at my kitchen table sipping my morning coffee. It was her idea to move the table right up against my couch (I guess it doesn’t really qualify as a kitchen table, it’s more like a round café table), which is a move that has transformed my studio and has made it feel much more spacious. I’m sure this sounds pretty insignificant, but it was such a creative solution that only she would come up with. There are also now twinkle string lights around my standing lamp, which when she was visiting around the holidays were her solution to not being able to fit a Christmas tree in my apartment. Now we’re into February, and I can’t bring myself to take them down. They are a shining reminder of her, and how she helped make my studio, which was once a place where I was waiting for time to pass me by, a home. We moved a lot growing up (I think I can count a total of 8 houses) and somehow, even though our houses changed, it never felt like our home changed.

The physical distance from my family has been challenging, and I find myself feeling guilty for ignoring and not thinking about what is happening. The reality of her diagnosis is scary to let myself think about, and it’s not something I take great joy in talking about. Ignoring it for short periods of time allows me to function, make it to work on time, go out with friends, get to the grocery store, or make a yoga class. If I don’t keep moving, it can paralyze and overwhelm me, making it difficult to get through my day. I haven’t told may people in my life what we are going through, because I get worried that someone might ask me how she is doing and how I’m doing at an unexpected time. However, it has been nice to just have a few close people to be able to say, “it’s shitty” to.

I find myself holding onto small tokens that remind me of my mom. I have eight voicemails from her from over the years that I am waiting to re-listen to when the day comes that she can’t use her voice to communicate. I have a note that she wrote me when leaving my apartment after a recent visit that I have tucked away in my bedside table. And most importantly, I also have a lifetime of memories with her, and if all of us have anything to do with it, we have a lot more to come. Dare I say I’m grateful that her ALS has made me realize how precious of every visit, every phone call, and every text is.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this. I’m so grateful for the love and support you have given my mom, and she tells me all the time how much it means to her.