One Year Later

One year ago yesterday my husband woke up from a medical procedure and I said, “I have good news and bad news.”

He said, “tell me the bad news.”

So I told him. “You are a very sick man. You have five blockages in your heart and you need open heart surgery. One of the blockages is very bad. It’s perforated. It could rupture at any moment. So you can’t leave the hospital. They are trying to see how quickly you can get scheduled for surgery.”

“Holy shit! How can there possibly be good news?!”

“It’s fixable,” I told him.

“That’s not good news! Tell me the good news!”

“It’s not a terminal diagnosis. It’s fixable. It’s going to take a lot of work but you’re going to be just fine. The angels have watched over you this long, they kept you alive through the procedure today, they’re going to keep you alive through this surgery. The recovery is going to be the hard part. That’s up to you.”

“You’re still not giving me any good news.”

“I love you. We’ll get through this, together.”

“That’s all you got?”

“It’s something. Better than nothing.”

“Yes, it’s something,” he agreed.

So it was one year ago this weekend that we spent all our time walking the floors of the hospital, saying good-byes, putting affairs in order. The night before his surgery he watched the Super Bowl game from his hospital bed while a blizzard raged outside the window. I was confident the angels would see him through surgery. He didn’t think he’d survive. He did.

It’s been an arduous journey. The bypass surgery was a complete success but the recovery has not been. For the first two months he had “hospital dementia” brought on by adverse reactions to several medicines and sleep deprivation. In the first few days after his surgery I knew something wasn’t right and kept trying to get someone to listen. At one point he didn’t even know my name, only that we were “together” and in fit of anger he told a doctor we were getting a divorce. She asked me if that was true and when I denied it she demanded I get her a copy of his health directive. I did. I never saw that particular doctor again but at least others understood I was trying to be my husband’s advocate. He spent two weeks in the hospital, the first time, and should have gone to a rehab facility but he was adamant about going home. And that’s when the struggle became real.

Because my husband didn’t think he’d survive the surgery (most people would be forever grateful for a second chance on life), he took on the mindset that he didn’t ask for a second chance so why did he get it? From day one he has pretty much refused to do his part to get better. He was told to do breathing exercises at least five times a day. He did them, maybe five times over the course of the first week, then gave up completely. He was supposed to stop putting salt on his food and to limit his sodium intake. Instead he berated me or anyone else who served him a meal for not bringing him salt. He was supposed to give up smoking cigars. He did, for five months. Then one night he lit up one and he’s been smoking them every day since. He is prescribed high doses of diuretics for serious edema in his legs and feet but he generally misses two to three doses each week. He’s supposed to exercise but instead chooses to sit in a chair and watch TV. He sleeps all night sitting up in a chair. He cannot lay flat.

And so on this first anniversary of his surgery, I’m a mess. Nothing is normal. Nothing is right. We haven’t even hit a place I could call our “new normal”. In many ways I feel this is a very long Second Good-bye. The first was the weekend a year ago when we put his affairs in order as best we could without him being able to step foot outside. So this second good-bye process is all about coming to terms with the fact that his last best day was January 31, 2019. The choices he makes every day now will never allow him to have a better day than that. He has hit a couple of plateaus in the last year, so he isn’t actively regressing every day, but there is no forward progress. Today is as good as it’s going to be for him. Tomorrow might be the same and the day after that. We are stuck in our own “Groundhog Day” but because he doesn’t want to learn from the moment, there’s simply no hope of us ever moving forward.

There is no joy. There is no sunshine or warmth. We both wake up in the morning and get on with our day simply because God gave us another day. I’m frustrated with myself that I no longer have the energy to rise above that. I’m angry at the poor choices he repeatedly makes. I’m depressed that internally I want to run free and live the life I’m capable of living but I could never, ever walk away. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. Given all the struggles I watch my husband face each day, I am mindful of the fact that he has so many blessings. He does not have a terminal diagnosis. He is not dealing with ALS or Parkinson’s or some other debilitating illness that is going to render him incapable of all human function. But he will reach that same outcome because he refuses to see his blessings, refuses to follow doctors’ orders, refuses to do the hard work. You can lead a horse to water….

I’ve been down a similar path four times before, when each of my four (now adult) daughters traversed the minefield of adolescence. All the while I knew in my heart they would indeed reach the other side of adolescence and they would become independent, fully functioning, law-abiding adults. The outcome on this path with my husband holds no promise. It’s the most difficult path I’ve ever been on in my life. And I now include my own name along with all the others in my daily prayers. And I pray also that we will not have a third form of this long good-bye. I won’t have the strength to see it through.

The Dog Dies

When I was growing up in the ‘60s, I couldn’t watch the TV show Lassie without being overcome by anxiety thinking something awful was going to happen to the dog. I couldn’t watch the movie The Wizard of Oz without crying because I was so upset that the Wicked Witch kidnapped Toto. In recent years when one of my grown daughters recommended I see a movie or read a book, they knew I needed to know up front if the mom dies or the dog dies. If so, I usually would take a pass.

For the past 37 years, I have personally owned a pet, mostly cats, which means I really should say I’ve been owned by cats since we all know they rule the house. But I also owned one dog. The last 15 years belonged to Charlee Girl, a black and tan Lhasa Apso. She came into my life when I was going through divorce and my ex-husband was sneaking into my house in the middle of the night. I needed a dog to bark and warn me about ex-husbands and teenage boys.

We rescued Charlee from wretched conditions at a pet shop, brought her home, gave her a bath, and let her eat as much food as she wanted. We tucked her in that first night and promised we’d be there for her first thing in the morning. When we let her out of her kennel the next day, she couldn’t hide her joy, charging from one end of the house to the other, jubilant that she had been given a forever home. And for that she was forever grateful.

Without any instructions or training Charlee understood the job she had to do. And she did it well. She didn’t need to worry about Kate because she was away at college. But Charlee helped calm extreme anxiety in Brianna. She put flame to the spark in Emily to become a veterinarian. She listened without criticism to Rose’s eclectic music and hours-long discourses on life. And for me, when all hope was lost of ever loving another man, she taught me about unconditional love.

As time passed and teenagers grew into adults, we all knew Charlee Girl was growing older too. We nursed her through two ACL surgeries, the extraction of several teeth, two bouts of pancreatitis, and some nasty, life-threatening allergic reactions. It was our honor to care for her after all she had done for us. She certainly had earned her stripes, in spades. Showing her our respect was easy.

Charlee started to decline about a year ago, and Emily encouraged me to consider the amount of suffering the old girl was going through. Nearly deaf, her eyes overcome by cataracts, and joints aching with arthritis, I watched and understood, but I couldn’t get the rest of the family to agree. About two weeks ago, when we were all away from home, Charlee had a panic attack when she struggled to see her way out of a room and instead got wedged behind a door. I cried when I found her, covered in “stuff”, weakened by her anxiety. She never fully recovered.

The vet said her heart was failing and she didn’t have much time left. There was nothing that could be done now except love her. And so we began our long goodbye. Each of us in our unique way sought her out and returned to her the unconditional love she had always shown us. I tried so hard to tell her she had served us all so well, that she deserved to be free of pain, and to go across the Rainbow Bridge and enjoy her new world. But she either didn’t want to listen or her deaf ears wouldn’t hear or she just wasn’t ready to go. She hung on.

Finally, the heart-wrenching and unpopular decision had to be made. Charlee was so uncomfortable, so freaked out by not being able to see or hear who was touching her, that her days and nights were filled with anxieties. I believed it was more respectful to honor her life by allowing a peaceful, planned passing rather than a tragic, pain-filled, emergency. So I made the call.

Today we said goodbye. She really didn’t want to leave us and we didn’t want her to go. But we celebrated and gave her a juicy steak, honored her life and service to us for 15 years, offered prayers and blessings for safe passage across the Rainbow Bridge, and made certain she knew she was loved right up until her last breath. Charlee Girl was the most caring and compassionate animal I have ever known. I will miss her more than words can say.

Not the Mom I Want to Be

I want to not be a mom anymore. I want my heart to not care anymore. And yet, I am so ashamed that I feel this way. I have friends who have had to bury their children! How despicable I am to even think such things. But it’s true.

I didn’t grow up knowing a mother’s love. The last of eight kids, I was just more work for my mom. Instead my three older sisters took care of me. By the time I turned twelve, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and fought a horrific battle, dying two years later. At the end of her life, we were complete strangers and I had no comprehension of what it means to be a mother.

When I became pregnant for the first time, my heart ached for the mother I never knew. I wanted to ask her questions, to understand what my life would be like as a mom. Holding my newborn in my arms, my heart melted and I was forever changed. I committed myself to my daughter forever. I promised her we would learn together what it means to be a mom. At the time my doctor said two things to me that I’ve carried all these years and at my age now know them to both be true. “You are a dyed-in-the-wool mom.” “You’ll be a mom until the day you die.”

I wish it wasn’t true but it is. I can’t turn off being a mom just as I cannot cause myself to stop breathing. Caring as I do, being a mom is going to kill me someday. My heart will shatter.

My daughters are grown. There are four of them. The oldest is 32 and the youngest is 24. The first three are married, the last one is not. The first has two children. The third is expecting her first. With the exception of the youngest who still lives in my home, I consider them all launched. All four are strong—in intellect, in will, in opinion, in passion. Each one thinks life has tested her but the reality is not one has truly been challenged. Even so, I know them each to be a survivor.

Perhaps it is this strength that causes such a heartache for me. I want them all to lean on me, to share their burdens and their joys, to keep me in their lives. One is very good about that and another is somewhat good about that. The other two are not good about that at all and fight me tooth and nail, in passive-aggressive style, whenever I try to connect or, heaven help us!, try to plan a family gathering, which is the reason for my heartache today.

The last time I saw my two grandchildren was six months ago. They live two hours away. Their mother, my oldest daughter, has given a dozen different reasons why she didn’t want to come to my house to celebrate Christmas. Her three sisters came.

Now I’m trying to plan a get together, free of the emotional tug that happens over the holidays. Despite the fact that I have a large house and could put everyone up for the night, my oldest is again the holdout and is insisting that we all rent hotel rooms for our family gathering. Fine, I can do that! If that’s what it takes, then so be it.

Not so easy. My husband won’t go; he thinks it’s ridiculous to spend so much money to get locked up in a hotel, even if there is a pool. My second daughter’s husband feels the same way and would rather stay home and care for their animals and avoid the inevitable drama. And my youngest can’t afford to spend the night and doesn’t want to share a room with me and besides, she thinks it’s absolutely ridiculous that her older sister won’t come to our house.

I just want to spend time with my daughters! All of them in the same room at the same time! I feel defeated. It’s never going to happen again in my lifetime. How do I tell my heart not to care so much? How do I push aside my disappointment that I can’t be the mom I want to be, that I don’t have the relationships with my daughters that I wanted?

 

Struggling at The End

Our dog Charlee Girl is fourteen and a half years old. She’s a sweet, compassionate personality and adores her family. When she’s been laying down a long time, she struggles to stand up—being the old lady that she is—but she pushes through her arthritic pain anyway just to greet one of us when we arrive home. About a year or so ago she lost her hearing, but she still looks to our faces when we talk to her, trying to read our body language. Dutifully she barks when she realizes someone is at the door, often after the fact since she can’t hear the doorbell. Despite her old age and accompanying health issues, she regularly proves she still has a will to live when she rolls around on her toys or attempts to chase a bunny in the yard.

In the past couple of years Charlee has had a number of ailments, but the most serious were pancreatitis and bladder stones. We thought each would be a fatal blow, but she survived. The pancreatitis was especially troublesome because Charlee is a very finicky eater. Unlike other dogs who will vacuum up anything you put in front of them, Charlee won’t touch most foods. It’s a struggle on a good day to get her to eat. So when she’s sick, it becomes much more complicated. As a result of the pancreatitis, we have to make sure she never goes more than eight hours without eating something. You’d think it would be easy to get a dog to eat. If she’s not in the mood to eat, Charlee will run away when she sees one of us preparing her food. She’s a small dog—something she despises in moments like these—so we’ll go after her and drag her out of her hiding spot and carry her over to her food bowl. Often we hand feed her every bite, sometimes shoving the food into her mouth. It’s not a fun struggle.

Around Thanksgiving Charlee came down with a bladder infection—common in old lady dogs—that just wouldn’t go away. The first antibiotics she was prescribed hurt her stomach. We understood this only by her moans and the fact that no matter what we did she refused to eat. There was a great debate in our house about whether this was Charlee’s last stand. Why force food on the poor old dog if she’s ready to be done with her struggle? But as we argued this, she would go charge into the living room and roll around on her toys and crouch down asking us to play with her. Her will to live is as strong as ever. So we gave up our fight and gave Charlee exactly what she wanted. Chicken and ground beef. It was a relief because she wants to eat it and we no longer have to hand feed her or shove the food down her throat. The vet said to mix in rice with it, but Charlee quickly learned to pick out the meat from the rice. So now we don’t even bother with the rice. She just finished up a second round of antibiotics and got the all clear from the vet.

Our family has agreed that Charlee is at the end of her life and our duty now is to make her last days—whether they be weeks or months—as comfortable and as happy as possible. Even though we know a diet of chicken and hamburger will cause a return of the pancreatitis, that’s what Charlee wants to eat so that’s what she’s getting. And we’re putting her on a doggy anti-anxiety med to help her manage her separation anxiety when we’re at work during the day and her “sundowning” behaviors at night. So long as Charlee continues to roll on her toys and chase bunnies, we’ll do our part to keep her alive. She has a strong will to live.

Life is a struggle. Literally.

On the other hand, in contrast to Charlee, is the daily struggle with my husband who thinks he’s dying and who is on the fence about whether or not he wants to live. Granted he is 73 years old and has a lot of health issues, some of them very serious, but he’s a long way from dying. That doesn’t matter because he has given up. He sits in a chair all day watching TV, smoking cigars, drinking sugar-filled sodas, and eating anything he wants. I stopped buying most of the foods and beverages he likes a long time ago but that only caused him to go to the store and buy those foods on his own. (Hey, at least he got out of his chair and away from the TV.) But it also gave him cause to complain that I no longer love him since I won’t give him what he wants. He has pointed out on numerous occasions that I give the dog what she wants but not my husband.

This last year has been one of the worst for my husband. He came down with an upper respiratory infection in April that turned violent and eventually the infection affected his heart rhythm. All these months later he’s still being doctored for it and has to take several pills each day to prevent a stroke or heart attack. At the time he was prescribed all these medicines he was too sick to manage the details so I did. I bought him two pill boxes—one for morning, one for evening—to make it easier for him. He often forgets to take the meds, even though the pill boxes are always right next to where he eats his meals. If I remind him, he complains that I’m “hen pecking” him. When he does remember, he loudly complains about how he hates to take pills. To me, him taking his pills is a matter of life or death.

It’s obvious he battles depression and he is being treated for that. But what happened this year is he was faced with his mortality for the first time in his life. Amazing given how old he is. But when others slam the door on Death’s face, he seems to have decided to leave the door open and think about how easy it would be to just step across the threshold. I cannot begin to understand the value in contemplating that thought when the truth is there is a lot of life left to live, but it’s going to take a little effort. It’s the effort part that prevents my husband from getting out of his chair.    

Right after Thanksgiving he came down with a chest cold. It was a common cold, nothing near as bad as what he had last spring. But with his heart issues, any sickness can quickly become life threatening. With all the meds that he takes, he’s limited in what he can buy over the counter to treat a cold. I suggested several times that he go see the doctor to get something for his cough but he refused. He did go to his regularly scheduled checkup with his cardiologist and learned his heart was not in a correct rhythm again. His meds were changed and now he’s back in a regular rhythm but he still has this cold. In the evening when we’re watching a movie on TV, he’ll sit in his chair and open his mouth and wheeze loudly to get my attention. I reached a point of having no patience and asked him, “What do you want me to do? Do you want my pity? My sympathy?” He didn’t answer. Later he told me he doesn’t think I love him anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I want him to have a strong will to live. I want him to rise above all his aches and pains just to see another day come. I want him to have the same character that Charlee Girl has. But I can’t force him to go to the doctor and get an inhaler to make it easier to breathe. I can’t make him get out of his chair and exercise. I tried controlling the food brought into this house and that didn’t work. I can’t change his behaviors any more than I can force him to want to live. It breaks my heart that he doesn’t feel motivated to make his life better so he can live longer and we can be together longer.

My parents died when they were young so I’ve never witnessed these end of life issues up close. It’s a daily emotional struggle to watch my dog desperately fighting nature and illness in order to have one more roll around the floor with her toys while my husband sits in his chair whining about how life is unfair and he wants it all to be done so he can feel better.

This last year has given me a new appreciation for caregivers and for people who truly are at the end of their lives. I pray my heart withstands the loss of my Charlee Girl when the time comes. And I pray my patience and love will be strong enough to foster my husband into a better frame of mind so we can have many more years together.

Challenge of the Ordinary

A few months ago I didn’t want to write. Everything that came to mind was a whine and I didn’t want to be that person. So I made a conscious effort to focus on living an ordinary life. It was an easy decision. Instead of fretting about how we would pay our bills that month, I walked in my backyard and took photos of my flowers. Rather than screaming in frustration from being overwhelmed, I sat on my deck and looked at the moon and stars. I thought my plan was working because life became a bore.

What I didn’t realize was that several issues were simmering and I was trying to ignore them by insisting on the ordinary, not the real. Instead of acknowledging my emotions and feelings, I was dismissing them. Had I known what I was doing (and I should have seen it), I would have changed course. Hindsight is perfect. Unfortunately, everything came crashing down this past weekend when something happened to cause hurt from nearly 40 years ago to rise to the surface. And when it did, it dragged a couple of my daughters along for the nasty ride. I’m still processing all that transpired so I’m not ready to write about the weekend’s events just yet. But I do need to acknowledge the overwhelming hurt so I can ease the pain in my heart and put myself back on my feet.

It’s always a surprise to me when something in the present day brutally tosses me back to the mid 1970s when both of my parents died. For as often as it has happened, you’d think it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore. But it is because it’s always unexpected. I’ve spent countless hours in therapy doing the “good work” all the experts told me I needed to do to live a normal life. Evidently there’s a difference between normal and ordinary.

So even though I thought I had done all the hard work, apparently there’s a lot of hidden baggage I carry around from the past. Those forty years seem a lifetime ago. So long ago that in fact I’ve forgotten what it was like to be a child, to have parents. I’ve forgotten their voices, their laughs. Without photos I would have forgotten their faces. But I haven’t forgotten the hurt from some of the decisions that were made at the time by others that impacted my life and hurt caused by the way a couple of siblings treated me then and off and on for the last 40 years.

So much time has passed that sometimes my brain plays tricks on me and I wonder if it’s created a revised version of my life. It’s as if I was plopped into this world at the age of 16, the youngest sibling in a dysfunctional family that didn’t want the burden of another member. No parents to guide us. No adult to show me the way. Yet, I had received enough teaching and training that subconsciously kept me standing tall, capable of supreme independence, driven to survive. No matter how often or how hard I fell, instinctively I found my way to getting back on my feet. And even though I thought I had conquered each dragon, the ashes of feelings and emotions still had some warm embers, albeit buried deep.

Events of this past weekend stirred the fire. I managed to stay calm and talk to my daughters so they feel a little better but this new hurt left marks on them too and it’s going to take a long time before they can put it behind them. I’m not sure I will ever be able to let it go, knowing that I’ve carried this for a lifetime already. An expert would correctly label this a core hurt, which means my current anger and hurt latch on to and dredge up every single moment of hurt I’ve felt since becoming an orphan. How is that even possible? I’m a finite being but these feelings are infinite! I’m past the middle of my life, and I truly thought I was done with all this old hurt. “Fat and Sassy” had become my new motto. So why in the world do I have to go through this again?

It was a painful way to learn there is indeed a difference between living a normal life and living an ordinary life. Ordinary is much more challenging than I thought. It requires balance. It requires that I keep an eye on the real. It requires that I feel and experience emotions. Maybe the best I can do is strive for “my normal” and put ordinary back on the shelf.

Behind Anger Is Loss

My bestest friends in the whole wide world are too kind. They listened to me whine and complain this past weekend (again) about how I’m so frustrated and angry with not having any money. They let me carry on and on when they should have told me to shut my mouth and get a grip.

The problem is, I can’t get past my anger. I’m still mad that I lost my job in 2008 and that we lost all our savings in the market crash. I’m furious that it took me three years to find another job that didn’t come anywhere near the salary I needed. Okay, I just nudged myself in the ribs. I need to shut up about it.

But it’s hard to be quiet when it seems the whole world is angry along with me. We’re in the throes of a nasty presidential election and candidates are struggling to appear poised and composed. Their followers prod them with chants of rage and the main networks run those scenes 24/7 to boost ratings. Protestors are breaking out in fights at campaign rallies, and others are blaming the candidates for it all. I can’t remember a time in my life when so many people were so angry.

Today I had an Aha! moment. I’ll bet many of those angry protestors are people just like me—working in a lower job, making less than we need (if we’re lucky enough to have a job), frustrated by the fact that eight years post-recession we are no better off. We just want all the bad stuff to stop!

Sure we can point fingers at the current president and the president before him. If we really want to, we can go all the way back to when Ronald Reagan was president and blame him. Assigning blame isn’t going to change the situation. It might make us feel better, but the fact is we’re angry because our dreams were shattered or even worse, they never even had a chance to come alive.

Therein lies loss. And knowing that just makes me all the angrier. I despise loss. It’s right up there with cleaning toilets and picking up dog poop. I don’t want to deal with loss anymore. I just want to leave it there in a pile and walk away from it. Let someone else clean up the mess because I’ve had my fill. Just like Howard Beale I want to yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

I’ve been swimming upstream for more than eight years trying to find the root of a small tree that I can grab hold of and secure myself. I’m tired. The water’s cold. And it’s crowded. There’s no room to move about because so many of us are treading water. How are we ever going to lift ourselves up out of this damn stream?

Visiting with my friends this weekend I learned they’re in the stream with me, furiously swimming along, trying to make ends meet, and trying to find that root to grasp. But they’re dealing with it so much better than I am. If they’re angry, they aren’t showing it. If they’re depressed, they’re hiding it much better than I can. I know they’re tired too. But what is their secret? How are they dealing so well with their anger and loss? They look composed and pulled together. I feel like a hot mess beside them, flapping my mouth, spewing words without thinking.

“Good morning, Mr. Beale. They tell me you’re a madman.”

Grief, the Uninvited Guest

In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross authored the groundbreaking book On Death and Dying. Someone gave a copy to my mother in 1973, when she was battling stage IV cancer at the age of 45. I have no idea where the book came from, only that it showed up one day. Was it a member of the clergy who gave the book to her, perhaps hoping to help her face her mortality? Maybe a friend or neighbor gave her the book, not knowing any words of comfort to help my mom deal with the vast emotions she must have had knowing she was leaving behind a husband and eight children and a half-lived life.

I never liked that book. The title alone scared me like nothing else. I was twelve when my mom got sick, and the thought of her dying was not anything I wanted to dwell on. To me, that book represents the cruelty of cancer because that’s what I was dealing with when the book came into my existence. In truth, I’ve never read the book. Although I have researched and experienced first-hand the theories that Kubler-Ross introduced on the five stages of dealing with grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. And for some reason still unknown to me all these years later, I took that book when my mother died and hid it in my bedroom. I didn’t want anyone to have it. When I went away to college and our family home was sold, I packed that book up with the rest of my belongings. When I married and moved into a house and started a family, that book came with me. And many years later, when I was divorced and remarried and moved into a new home, that book followed. It is somewhere in the house where I live, sitting on a bookshelf or packed up in a box in the storage room. I have no idea where it is. I could probably locate it if my life depended on it, but it would take me a while. Funny thing is, I don’t want the book. But I can’t bring myself to throw it or give it away. Someday in the future when I move again or if someone is going through my belongings, the book will show up once again. Maybe I should ask a specific friend who is a therapist why I cannot bring myself to get rid of it. Maybe I don’t want to know.

For not ever having read that book, I know everything about it. Grief is a repeating process. And it strikes whenever you have a sense of loss in your life. You don’t have to be dying to feel grief. Children can experience grief when their parents get divorced. Teenagers go through it when they break up with their first crush. Adults go through grief during a job loss or financial hardship or divorce. Even those dealing with alcohol or other drug addiction experience loss and grief. There are many different ways we feel loss, and unfortunately for some of us, we experience loss many times in our lives. No matter how many times we process our emotions through the loss, we still have to deal with the grief. If we don’t, it festers under the surface and comes out in myriad unhealthy ways. It isn’t like the chicken pox in that it comes once in your life and you’re done with it. No, it’s a cruel and twisted thing that can happen many times, striking when you least expect it and often in a time of great stress.

And so it happens that Grief showed up this week while I was on vacation from work. In hindsight, I’m not surprised it showed up. I’ve been shoving down my emotions about my current job for months. This week off was a break from all that, allowing feelings of loss to sneak to the surface. An uninvited guest, I ignored Grief at first. Then I was pissed and tried to show it the door. Please go away, I begged it. But it wouldn’t go. And now I’m in a funk. It’s all because I so desperately want to find a new job and no matter how hard I try, I cannot land a different job. I had a really great series of interviews in the last month, and with each one I could imagine myself in that new role. I allowed myself to dream about the possibilities. But I haven’t been able to close the deal on any, and so I am experiencing the loss of those dreams. Now that my week off of work is coming to a close, I’m reaching the point of accepting the fact that I’m stuck where I am. Five stages of grief in the span of a week. No wonder I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.

One thing I do know—I must face that Grief. Head on. I must acknowledge it now that it’s surfaced. I must feel it. If I don’t, it will multiply and fester and fill every pore of my being. And then I truly will not be able to function in an interview, if I’m lucky enough to get another. The few ounces of confidence I’m hanging on to will dissolve. All the things that are right in my life will go wrong.

So I will face it. And I’ll be gentle to myself in these last three days of my time away from work. Whatever tasks are left on my to-do list will take low priority. Instead I will spend my energy consoling, nurturing, being patient, forgiving, honoring. Hopefully when I return to work, I’ll have the strength and the courage to face the madness without getting stung by its viciousness. Any maybe, just maybe, I’ll have some energy left over at the end of each day to keep looking for a different job.

October 29, Again

I was reminded the other day of a scene from the movie Field of Dreams, when the main character, Ray, looks over to home plate at his dad who was in the prime of his youth. Ray says to his wife, Annie, “I only saw him years later when he was worn down by life. Look at him. He’s got his whole life in front of him, and I’m not even a glint in his eye. What do I say to him?”

One of my brothers recently shared some old photos that were taken before I was born, and one included my parents. My dad looked just as I remembered him. He always wore his hair in a crew cut and he wore glasses. Other than that, his face never changed. Unless he smiled. What a fantastic smile he had.

But the photo of my mother didn’t look anything at all like I remember her. She was thirty-two years old when I was born, the last of her eight children. In the photo she is young, not quite thirty, with no lines in the corners of her eyes. She has on a necklace and lipstick. And a Mona Lisa smile. She died at the age of 46, on October 29, 1975.

So young when she died, and yet, I only knew her when she was worn down by life. I was only twelve when she became sick and at that age I was just beginning to comprehend that there was a world outside of my own being. I’ll admit I was a sheltered, spoiled brat. I took my mother for granted, but what twelve-year-old doesn’t? Had I known then what I know now…

It’s been thirty-nine years since she died. My memories have faded quite a bit but when I gather an image in my mind of my mom, she is middle-aged. She has salt and pepper hair and a “belly”. She has crow’s feet at her eyes. And she is distracted, not by her eight children but by all of the flower gardens in the back yard. She loved her flowers! And if I ever wanted to find her, that’s where she would be.

Tonight, on the eve of the anniversary of her death, looking at that photo, I can’t help but wonder, if I had a chance to talk with her, what would I say to her? We’d need a lifetime to get caught up.

The Winter that Was

It was a horrible winter. Everywhere, every person complained about the cold or the snow or the ice or combinations of the three. We have family in Atlanta who had water lines freeze between the road and their house, so they went without water until the city could make the repairs. Two of our daughters are teachers and both of them had more school days canceled this year because of snow or cold weather than they’ve had in all the last ten years combined. It was so cold that more than 90 percent of all of the Great Lakes were frozen over, something that no one can remember ever happening before.

Living in Minnesota, we’re used to cold weather and snow. But this winter was especially harsh. We had bitter cold weather in early December that just would not go away. We kept thinking it would change and we’d un-scrunch our shoulders, but no break came. We ended up with 37 days when we didn’t get above zero. At all. Not during the day, and certainly not overnight. We went more than three months with temperatures below freezing, not once going above 32 degrees. It was horrendous.

For us Northerners, we tend to take pride in surviving such extremes. We earn bragging rights by being able to say we can tell the difference between minus 10 degrees and minus 20. And having the unfathomable experience of brutal winter year after year, our hearts are filled with renewed spirit and hope when spring finally shows up. We do this every year. And we are stronger for it.

But this winter took a toll we weren’t yet ready to pay, and for that reason we will always remember it with great sadness. It was the winter that felled our black lab, Diva.

Aptly named, Diva was the center of her universe. We lived in her house, and the food we bought to feed ourselves she thought we bought for her. Our bed was her bed. My closet was her hideaway. She was the first in line for every meal or treat, the first at the door to go outside. She was the Queen of the House.

Despite such a prima donna attitude, Diva took her alpha dog responsibilities very seriously. She was on the clock 24/7, always the first to let us know when someone entered our cul-de-sac. And if that person dared to step foot in our yard or onto our driveway, Diva would sound the alarm in such a way that no one could ignore her. There was no reason for a doorbell. No reason for anyone to call and let us know they were almost here. Diva was on patrol.

We didn’t have any unwanted critters in our home or yard for Diva was always on guard. She had a keen sense of “good” people and we learned long ago to trust her instincts. If she didn’t like a person, we took another look ourselves. She had exceptional hearing and always knew when a storm was approaching.

In the end, it was a storm that felled her. In early March, we had a nasty ice storm followed by several inches of snow. Any other winter, we would have had signs of spring in March. We would have been near the end of the worst. But not this winter. It was March 13, a Thursday night, when we were eating supper, and Diva asked to go outside. For much of the winter she did her business on our deck and didn’t bother to go down the steps out to the yard. But this night, she choose to do just that. And she was out there longer than usual. And I wondered about that, so I went out and found her sitting at the bottom of the steps to the deck. Panting hard. Full of anxiety, and yet unable to move. She could not get herself up on her legs. I walked down the steps to talk to her, to check on her, and found a puddle of vomit. And I knew then, this was not going to be good. As I reached her, I slipped and fell on ice. And suddenly, I understood the “big picture” in its entirety.

I righted myself and ran back up the steps, grabbed a throw rug from the kitchen floor, and yelled for my husband to come help me. I threw the rug down on the ground, on top of the inch of ice, at the bottom of the steps. And carefully I lifted the rear end of this 110-pound black lab, and helped her get up on all fours. So far so good. But she could not put weight on one of her back legs. And she fought with all her might to get up those deck stairs, all four of them. But she made it, and she was driven to get inside the house. So she limped and struggled and got into the kitchen and collapsed on the floor.

She laid there for just a few minutes as I took inventory of her legs and couldn’t see anything obvious. Her panting was steady and fierce, and she was determined to get farther into the house. She stood and tried to walk, but fell. She tried again, and fell again. She propelled herself forward with each attempt and managed to move to a favorite rug at the bottom of the stairs going up to our bedrooms. And she stayed there a while.

My husband and I assessed the situation. We knew it was bad, but we didn’t want to believe it was THAT BAD. We figured she would rest, catch her breath, and she’d be fine. After all, this was Diva. This was the dog who at age three jumped out of a car that was going 70 mph, and survived with just a small scratch above one eye. This was the dog who had scared a few cats out of some of their nine lives. She was built like a horse. She had incredible strength. Combined with her determination, nothing could stop her, even if she was thirteen years old.

As she lay on that rug, in obvious pain, Diva was determined to make her way up the flight of stairs to our bedroom. We told her to lay, to “stay.” And she did. But only long enough for us to get distracted by other things. And with our backs turned, she managed, by will and determination, and with incredible strength of her chest and front legs, to make her way up to the second floor. None of us witnessed the struggle it must have been for her. And truth be told, we are all glad. We could not have handled the sight.

But she made it upstairs, to her favorite spot. She didn’t sleep the entire night. She didn’t move. She panted nonstop, and we brought her water. Lots of water. By morning, we knew she needed to get outside to empty her bladder, but we also realized she couldn’t do it on her own. She could not stand on her hind legs. And we could not carry her.

My husband called our vet and they sent out a “doggie ambulance” with a stretcher. Two men carried her down the stairs, struggling with each step from her weight and the unbalanced load. My husband rode with her and I followed behind. Arriving at the vet’s office was like a scene out of a TV hospital drama. Three people were standing outside waiting when we arrived. They each took hold of the stretcher and carried Diva in to the “emergency room.” She was surrounded by people on all sides, every person taking an assessment of some sort. And Diva smiled. She loved the attention.

It didn’t take long to get the news, she had torn her ACL. Four years earlier (and 25 pounds less in weight) Diva had torn the other ACL. At that time, she underwent surgery and three months of rehab. In the months that followed, she developed arthritis in both hips and it was difficult for her to get the right amount of exercise. Now, at thirteen and carrying much more weight than she could handle on three legs, the prognosis was not good. She had several tumors on her body, cataracts in both her eyes, as well as teeth and gum issues. The vet told us she likely would not survive the surgery, and he doubted he would find a surgeon who would agree to it. And if a surgeon did agree, and if she did survive, would we be able to provide the aftercare she needed? The vet told us it would not be three months of recovery this time, but much, much longer. And he wondered about the quality of life would she have. He asked some tough questions, but questions that needed to be asked just the same.

Diva was my husband’s “baby.” Diva was his “Superdog.” I don’t think my husband ever once believed she would die someday. Certainly, he never expected to find himself standing in a vet’s ER making the decision to end her life. He was devastated. One of the receptionists brought him a chair to sit on and I dug out some tissues from my purse. I asked the vet to give Diva some medicine to make her more comfortable so she could relax while we said our good-byes.

She settled down and quit panting, and relaxed in a way that made me realize she had not relaxed in more than four years. I grabbed my husband’s hand and forced him to pet her. I pointed out how relaxed she was. We talked about how much pain she must have been in for the last four years. He told the story to the room full of professionals of her jumping out the car window all those many years ago. He cried. He grieved. And then, he told the vet he was ready. And he said his final good-bye. In less than a minute, Diva was truly at peace.

It’s been more than a month since, and we still feel her loss every day. Even now it is a struggle to share this story, but I must. I need to let it go.

It is warmer now, and Diva would have loved to go walk in the sunshine, to prove to all the neighborhood dogs that she had earned more stripes from surviving another Minnesota winter. But sadly, she didn’t. And we will always remember the dreadful winter that was.

Turning Points

I’ve had a rough week with my daughter Brianna, and today my mind went back in time and I was reminded of a moment when my dad was really angry with me. I was sixteen and it was late September and a bunch of my friends were gathering at Bob’s house after school. I wanted to be there too. My dad didn’t like Bob, but I’m not sure why. I truly think it was because my older brothers didn’t like Bob’s older siblings. I asked my dad if I could go and he said no. Uncharacteristic of me, I went anyway. And later that evening when I came home, my dad was furious with me—for disobeying him and for not calling to let anyone know where I was when I didn’t get off the school bus at home. My dad yelled at me that night. It was the first time he had ever done that and I was devastated. I knew what I had done was wrong and my heart ached with the guilt of having disappointed my dad. As it turned out, my dad and I never discussed that night again, and in my mind we never resolved our feelings. A little more than two months later my dad died. I carried guilt from that after-school outing through all of my life until last year, when a spontaneous email discussion helped me to finally have closure. You can read about it here.

In looking back on my life, I never considered that argument with my dad to be a turning point—the point at which a significant change takes place. In my mind, the death of my mom and then two years later the death of my dad combined into one major turning point. Everything about my life changed. Everything. Right down to my personality.

I was reminded of that argument with my dad in the midst of this tough week with Brianna. Yesterday morning I shouted at Brianna in much the same way my dad shouted at me all those long years ago. This argument with Brianna had been going on for a few days. With the help of modern technology, it had a longer than normal life through text messages on phones and instant messaging through the Internet. At one point in the argument Brianna extended it to include her three sisters by sending a Facebook message to us as a group. Now, as I write this and have some distance between me and this argument, I can smile about that. Imagine getting a group message on Facebook in which you’re thrust into the middle of an argument. You have no idea what started the argument, why such a trivial thing even matters, and how you got involved in the first place.

Kate, my oldest, brought a bit of perspective to the argument when she wrote about how she was holding a two week old baby with casts on both legs. It made the trivial argument seem so lame. Indeed it was. But each one of us knows that Brianna wasn’t really arguing about the trivial matter. What caused Brianna’s anger to rise was that she felt none of us were there for her when she needed us.

Feelings of abandonment are some of the most crushing feelings we can ever feel. Such feelings can be devastating and can take months, even years, to heal. It’s interesting for me to note that a majority of the turning points in my life occurred at moments when I felt all alone in the big, scary world. Sure there were family members around me and I had friends in my life but I didn’t feel they were really there for me. Maybe they thought they were helping or trying to help, but my feelings told me I was standing alone in the world. Because I felt I had no one but myself to rely on, and because I had this innate need to survive, I was forced to put one foot in front of the other and find my way. Maybe I am a stronger person for it. Maybe those moments wouldn’t have been such powerful turning points if I had had someone else to lean on and guide me.

Knowing today that my youngest daughter has those same feelings is tough to acknowledge. We live in the same house. We talk and interact every day. I thought I was helping and guiding. The last thing I’d want any of my children to feel is all alone in the world. It’s also tough to accept that I would yell at my daughter in the same way that my dad yelled at me, a moment that caused so much guilt and disappointment, that lasted most of my life. It was a turning point for me at sixteen. And now, it seems this new argument is another turning point for me. Will the argument of yesterday morning be a turning point for Brianna? Sure wish I had my dad to talk to about this one.