The luckiest Girl in the world

I’m not one to get terribly upset by the death of a celebrity, but for some reason, the death of Lisa Marie Presley, blanketed me in a feeling of melancholy.

I didn’t know her, I wasn’t a follower of her music, but as a kid, I though she was the luckiest girl in the world. My parents were fans of Elvis and my dad took my mom to see him at the International Hotel in August 1969, a year before I was born. At that concert, my dad tipped the maitre’d really well and got a table near the stage. When Elvis was kissing the ladies, he urged my mom to go get a kiss from the King. Unfortunately, she was too shy for a smooch. Ugh.

I probably would have been just as nervous to go get a kiss. Elvis was a handsome devil who was larger than life. In 1976, I named my first pets, a couple of hamsters, Elvis and Priscilla. Unlike the real Elvis, hamster Elvis tragically ate his offspring, which the real Elvis would never do. I lost interest in hamster Elvis after that.

Real Elvis died the day before my birthday on August 16, 1977. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news—planted, probably three inches away, in front of the boob tube surrounded by a sea of shag carpeting. He died young, not a member of the tragic 27 club, but at 42, which seems like a spring chicken to me now.

Lisa Marie was 54 when she died, just two years older than me, which makes me think that maybe she wasn’t the luckiest girl in the world. Her beloved son, Benjamin, took his own life in 2020 and she was grieving that loss, which she wrote about here.

The statement she made in that essay that resonated with me the most was this, “Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe. You do not "get over it," you do not "move on," period.”

The truth of that statement hit me this week at the funeral of my friend’s mom. The second I sat down in that church, tears streamed and pooled into my mask. I couldn’t stop crying and this is soooooooooooo not me. Sure I felt empathy for my friend and her loss, but I didn’t know her mom, so the waterworks weren’t really for Ruth Eastland. Although she sounded like a hell of a gal and the service was beautiful.

This crying jag was all about the death of my own mom, who never got a funeral due to Covid after her death in October of 2020. As I sat in that pew, guilt and grief and anger bubbled up inside me in a jumble of confusion. My eyesockets were the only escape for the sadness, so I dabbed at them furiously with wadded up tissues, as my grief counselor’s voice echoed in my head, “feel your feelings.” So, I did. I sat there and I felt them. I cried, I wiped my tears, I blew my nose. At one point, I had to leave the room as I was about to have a coughing fit, which during a pandemic might cause some panic. My first instinct with all my crying was to be ashamed and go hide in the bathroom until the service was over, but I didn’t. I returned with fresh tissue to cry some more.

Grief is normal. It’s the price we pay for love. And to love and to know love is lucky.

Without Pants, Pam & Paula Gain Pandemic Pounds!

How’s that for click bait alliteration? If I am being totally honest, my sister Paula and I both wore pants during the first year of the pandemic. But, and it’s a big but…they were of the sweat, legging or pajama variety. There were no buttons or zippers acting as a barometer of our expanding mid-sections.

When the library closed in March of 2020, I went from getting 10k steps a day to sedentary sofa sloth who binged daily on sourdough bread and Tiger King. I blame Joe Exotic for my muffin top.

I know you’re probably confused by this post, (where’s the death? the vampires? the menopause?) but I will get there, pinky promise.

That third photo is of my sister and I in 2017. If memory serves, I was visiting her in California and we were at a movie theater watching Wonder Woman (WW). There is probably a box of Hot Tamales on my lap and a bucket of buttered popcorn goodness between our seats. Why? Because the whole point of going to the movie theater is to consume overpriced sweet and savory snacks.

Fast forward a few years to 2022. I had a new full time job and none of my work pants fit. When I bitched and moaned about buying new pants in a bigger size, my sister encouraged me to try WW, formerly Weight Watchers. I hemmed, I hawed, I blamed my lack of movement on the weight gain, but as my sister has told me for as long as I can remember, “You get fit at the gym and you get skinny in the kitchen.” In other words, Pam, if you’re stuffing your pie hole with endless slices of warm toasty fresh baked bread and butter, you can’t possibly work all those calories off on the treadmill and still have time for a full time job.

So, I joined.

Paula and I will be talking about our pantsless pandemic journey to WW on Zibby Owens’ podcast “Moms Don’t Have Time to Move & Shake” on July 21! You can tune in wherever you get your podcasts, like here on Apple Podcasts.

You can also witness my menopausal brain fog in action on this week’s What Fort Worth Reads.

If you are into menopausal vampires or death professions, and let’s be real, who isn’t? I would like to gently nudge you in the direction of your favorite online book retailer to purchase either of my books. These books are cheap, but never easy, and they both explore heavy topics with a dash of dark humor for palatability.

Speaking of patatable things, what’s your favorite snack that you smuggle into the movies?

Comment on this post and I will enter your name into a drawing on August 1 for a special prize.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.

In case you were wondering, that is not me in the photograph. I can’t even remember the plot for V for Vendetta and I really don’t know anything about Guy Fawkes day, but November 5th is a day I will never forget. You see, way back in November of 2009, I went to Texas to interview Khristian Oliver, a man who was scheduled to be executed on November 5. I did this for my thesis about death and death professions at Goucher College. This thesis later became the book Death Becomes Us.

Anyway, meeting Khristian Oliver had a huge impact on my life. Call me naive or whatever, but I couldn’t believe that the state of Texas was going to kill someone. And they did. I was right outside. And then I went to a funeral home and there he was, cold and lifeless on a gurney. It was absolutely horrifying and surreal.

Then I met his girlfriend, Sonya Reed, who is also incarcerated but shouldn’t be and I adopted her feral cat from the women’s death row unit and went to a Pentecostal Church and scared a bunch of people, mainly myself, and well…read the book. Or just read old entries on this blog.

Anywho, when my agent was unable to sell it to a traditional publisher, I decided to publish it on my own as a way to honor all those people who let me take a peek into their lives. I released it in November of 2015. In February of 2016, I was interviewed by Krys Boyd on NPR’s think and to this day, it has been the highlight of my writing life.

Fastforward a few years. I had an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and what did I do with all that serious nonfiction training? I’ll tell you what I did. I wrote a very weird book about a menopausal vampire on a quest to become mortal again. You would think I would have learned my lesson after the first book. You know, write something that is on an agent’s wishlist. But no, I didn’t do that. Most publishing houses had strung up strands of garlic to keep the vampire tales away. I was told there were too many of them (thanks Twilight and the vampirepalooza it inspired) and they were oh so tired of reading yet another blood sucking novel no matter how original it might be. So, I opted for a small publisher (Fawkes Press, not Guy Fawkes Press, but hmmmmm) with a release date of, you guessed it, November 5, 2020.

And then we all know what happened in 2020. There was a lack of toilet paper. Everyone started baking sourdough bread. I got to hide my RBF behind a mask. I started a book club on Facebook to help other debut authors who had to cancel their launch and in person events.

And then about a month and a half before my book peeked it’s pasty little face out into the sun, the unthinkable happened. First, my stepdad died, and then five days later, my mom became extremely sick and was admitted to the hospital with Covid. It was horrible. It’s still horrible. She died October 21, 2020.

So, let’s just say my head, or my heart, wasn’t in the marketing game after the book’s release. I did manage to get interviewed by Ron Charles of the Washington Post because he loved my press release for the blood drive I had orchestrated for the book’s launch. And then a book to film agent called and wanted to work on getting Forever 51 turned into a series.

So, why am I telling you all of this? It’s November 5th. My book baby is now this many.

So, happy birthday, Veronica and Jenny! I loved getting to know you and bringing your stories to life. I am foregoing the cake and opting for something warm, dark, and red to celebrate your first birthday! Here’s to many more!

f you’d like to gift someone a signed copy of Forever 51 for the holidays, I have a few copies collecting dust on my bookshelf. For twenty bucks, I will sign/inscribe something to your BFF and pop it in the mail for you.