Guys, I'm Figuring It Out

 My mom died two weeks ago.

I'm not going to try to make it flowery, or create some kind of soft-blowing euphemism - that's just the truth. And it pretty much sucks. I'm not saying it was anything I wasn't expecting, and I know that nearly everyone in the world experiences loss at a similar level at some point in their lives, but it doesn't make the event of death any less weird. And that's what it is: effin' strange, yo.

My mom had been in and out of the hospital pretty consistently for the last three years. On Superbowl Sunday in 2010, I got what I thought then was THE call, but now I guess it was just A call: "Megan, you need to come home." That was the beginning of a batsh*t crazy spell for me. I quit my job, I jumped hardcore into my improv/writing and I got into a long distance relationship.

I remember coming home from that trip and being so dumbfounded by the events that it was as though I was mourning my mother while she was still here. At the time, I was working on my two-woman show, A Night of Well-Adjusted Ladies, and I didn't even know if it would have its debut because the doctors told us my mom had three months to live. Well that crazy B pulled through. And things were pretty good actually. For a little bit anyway.

My mom struggled with alcoholism the entire time I knew her. When I was little, it was less apparent. I just assumed that all children had to deal with belligerently drunk parents, and that it was no big deal when my dad would instruct me over the phone how to make eggs in the microwave so my brother, sister and I had dinner to eat. I was only 4 years old. If I saw the wine bottle on the table I knew to dump it down the drain. I didn't know what alcohol was, I just knew that it made mommy sleep too much and we couldn't get to school. But it wasn't a big deal then. That was just life. It was all I knew. (And Alex seemed to think we were doing okay.)

When I got older and began attending sleepovers, I started to realize that this was not the case, in fact I was the WEIRD one. Gasp. My friends had parents that DIDN'T DRINK? Well that to me, just seemed bonkers. But it also seemed really awesome, and eff yeah, I was jealous of you guys, in case you ever wondered. On a "positive" note, my mom was usually too tipsy to notice when we were smashed so I gained some level of popularity from having a party safe-house in high school. But, meh, was it worth it?

I left for college, and shit got super weird. I was spared most of this, but I did get to have one interesting conversation with my mother where she told me she had been doing crack. "It's a lot of fun!" according to her. At least in her head, she was always having a good time. This was the beginning of the end. She slowly started losing her grip on reality. Couldn't keep a job, isolated herself. She really built the walls of her own prison and inhabited that space for the last years of her life. Apparently Judge Judy and NCIS are always on in prison (she loved that sh*t).

This was followed by several years of resentment, hundreds of passive aggressive phone calls, a lot of tears, and then finally the inevitable shitload of sorrow that eventually comes as a result of dealing with a loved one with an addiction. And, What do I take from this death? Well for 1.)- it's made me a lot more conscious of the fact that we only have one body and we should take care of it. Go to the gym and eat some spinach, people. 2.) Life goes fast and YOLO, so make the most of the time you have here and try to weigh out the things that value most i.e. Your daughter's beauty pageant > Bottle of Gordon's vodka. 3.) No one is perfect. We are all human, and despite the fact that my mom had a lot of problems, she still had the capacity to be loving and proud. 4.) Set goals for yourself. The minute you stop trying is the minute you start dying. 5.) Love the path you carve. Shit happens. Make the most of it. 6.) You're not a drunk if it's only wine and beer . . .  But I could go on forever . . .

I like to think that she did find some joy in these last years, because to be completely honest, sh*t got dark. But maybe there was some light for her? And I certainly think that although it blows donkey d*cks, she's in a much better place now. And now that it's over, I can appreciate her for who she once was and not what she became toward the end.

Maybe I'm writing this too early, because I feel like there is still some anger sprinkled amidst these words. Even so, I'm never going to be able to perfectly articulate the way I've felt for these last two weeks (See also: Effin' Weirdest I've Ever Felt in my Whole Damn Life.) But with this tragedy also comes a sense of relief, a sense of understanding. It's the end of a struggle, the end of an era. And despite all of the sh*t, and putting all of the pain aside, I don't know that I would change much of my story, because it makes me who I am today. Okay, so maybe I would like to be less afraid of how to act around people's normal families, or maybe I wish I didn't deprecate myself and my situation in a way that makes other people uncomfortable, but eff it, that's my world. If you don't like it, you can take a hike, and all that jazz. And crazy old Lisa would tell you to eff off too, because I get that from her.

Oh and if you've seen my show, A Night of Well Adjusted Ladies, you know Lisa liked to buy a lot of weird shit off of the TV (sometimes I think she just wanted someone to talk to because we sure as hell stopped answering the phone). Approximately 5 days before she landed herself in the hospital for the last time she made this purchase, which is the greatest gift she could have given her family in a time of grieving:

This woman was legit decrepit at the end. She had a broken neck, people. AND SHE BOUGHT HIP HOP ABS! Even better still, the first disc is missing. WE CAN'T FIND IT ANYWHERE! Do you think she is doing Hip Hop Abs with Jesus right now? Well no, she isn't, because God is a hoax, but if that weren't the case, oh man they would be so sexy.

Mom - looking forward to having a glass of Pinot Noir with you in another life. And in this world you can drink all the wine in the world, and you never get sloppy, and you never get fat, and you can always hit the high notes in Cold as Ice by Foreigner when you're doing Karaoke. Mom, I love you and I'll miss you.