To Pat, Nancy's mother. Thank you for creating this amazing human being. My best friend. Best friend to many. Nancy had told me about some of the characteristics she got from her long-departed dad. I think she may have alluded to her independence and strength coming from him. That may be so, but she also got it from you, didn't she?
She has commented in years past about how you always call to make sure someone got home okay, "She's a worrier." Yet she always wants to know when I arrive after a particularly long or weather-filled drive, doesn't she?
The way she orders a glass of ice water with extra ice? Could that have been learned from her mom who liked everything cold?
There has been a lot for me to learn since meeting Nance. She has tried to share her taught me grace, patience and wisdom. I have learned a lot more in the past two years as she helped her husband with terminal leukemia.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone will ever know all of me. I suppose not. The woman I feel I know so well keeps revealing herself as we go through our lives together.
Just the other day I learned more about her by sitting with you as you were drowsing under the effects of morphine. I learned of similarities and differences that I hadn't even considered before.
The love does not surprise me. I thank you for teaching her to love the way you have.
And I thank you for the small mercy of passing away while Nancy was not there. Considerate to the end, you must have known she didn't feel strong enough.
Thank you for my best friend.
So... the answer is a resounding no. I am fine. Tom is okay. We'll get through. It helps immeasurably to know that a baby hadn't actually been made.
My doctor insisted on doing a D&C. As with many instances between us, I declined. I did a bit of research yesterday before calling him and found that many doctors now believe it's better to let nature take its course. And anyway, he wanted me to have it done in his office. I can only assume that would have meant getting a local anesthetic. Non-baby making pregnancy or no, I do NOT want to hear that! During my first miscarriage, the doctor and his team played music as I was drifting off to sleep. Now, every time I hear Bobby Brown singing that song, I go back to the yellow gowns and yellow lights of that room.
I took the day off today. When I spoke with Tom yesterday, he arranged to be off, too. I believe he was anticipating a trip down the hill to see the doctor. If it had been necessary, we would have gone. But the worst seemed to be over by the time I got up this morning. I'm going back to work tomorrow.
Have I mentioned that I'm a list maker? I am. I am always working on a list. Of jobs to do. Of reasons why or why not. Of the good side versus the bad. So here is a partial list of the good things for now. Don't think that because I'm not listing the bad, I don't feel it very deeply. It's just not where I'm going to focus right now.
So... the good things are (in no particular order, normally I'd prioritize or alphabetize or something, but tonight I'm gonna wing it):
*I didn't tell Nancy last week even though I really wanted to. Her sister-in-law's mother died this morning and Nancy's own mother finally got the diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer. "The cure would be worse than the cause." Yeah, I'm happy not to have added to that burden.
*I can have chocolate and/or coffee for a little while longer. I won't, though, because last week I was reminded of all the bad things that can happen to a developing baby person if caffeine is consumed. Tom and I haven't discussed it, but I'm assuming he'll still want to continue trying once we're able.
*I don't have to find out if I still fit into my maternity clothes. Okay, this is awful. I lost all the baby weight within about five days of having Mad. The 10 additional pounds is just me being lazy. Guh! I had actually wondered if Doc wasn't able to confirm the pregnancy through physical examination because I'm too fat.
*We don't have any new extra expenses coming up right away. Granted, the expenses would be less than when we had Mad, especially if we had another daughter, but the things we'd have to buy (crib, dresser, etc.) wouldn't be the little things. Of course, this could change if we manage to create a mini-Mad, but for now, no.
*We didn't tell anyone else. I didn't even give off hints that would clue people in so they'd ask. We'd taken the test at home on Thursday evening. Friday morning I faked coffee. I went to the kitchen with someone, got a cup of decaf and then left it on my desk when I headed out a few minutes later. Do I regret wasting coffee? A little, but even decaf has caf, so it's out. Anyway, by not blowing our cover, I now won't have to endure the stuff that would make me cry. And we have one particular woman in our office who loves to make people cry.
*And lastly, I'm not bothered or upset by anyone else's pregnancy. So we're keeping the drama way low-key. I do have an acquaintence who is pregnant. She's in my mommy group. Her shower is about a week away. I won't be going, but I RSVP'd two weeks ago. It's when Tom and I are celebrating our anniversary (four years married, nine-plus together... I can't wait until the "together" number is the smaller one). Plus, Lauren and I have nothing in common except our babies. Nothing. And she rarely responds to my emails or calls anyway. Frankly, I feel the fact we're shipping a gift is more than generous. But I'm not doing it for her so much as for Mad to have a better chance of a few lifelong friends.
Oh, and in some weird karmic way, I have further evidence that Celine Salon (Dion) and I are linked. She is also no longer pregnant. I don't know how far along she was, but I'd be willing to bet the full extent of my extra cash (right now I believe that's the eleven cents sitting in the cup holder in my car) that she's having a much harder time than we are. That sucks... what is it The Rambler says?... oh yeah, sweaty donkey balls. I say that lovingly even though I have always, always denigrated her singing (ahem... when I wasn't secretly singing along... shh). The fact that her version of "At Last" was our song is only because Etta James' was too scratchy and Cyndi Lauper's was just.too.freaking.weird (no matter how much we wanted to love it)... and *sigh* yes, because Celine Salon's version rocked. Until it became the soundtrack for Fancy Feast commercials. Whatever.
Nancy's husband passsed away nearly 24 hours ago. It is so strange.
Aside from a recent rant, I generally don't talk about work here. That being said, I have to get this out.
I work with high school students who have moderate- to severe developmental disabilities. They can stay in high school until they are 22; I've had this job for six years. Even though there isn't much time to "hang out" in any one class, I have gotten to know some of my students pretty well over the years.
My first year was more about not screwing up than really getting to know people, since I'd bumped a beloved woman out of the job. So when three students died that year, it was shocking, but not personal. Almost every year we have lost students to congenital illnesses, one to cancer (who, regardless of her level of disability, was eventually able to say "no more" to the treatments; she was over 18, unlike the boy in the news). We've had kids age out of foster care and have to leave school prematurely. The grandmother who cared for one of my favorite students ever (he had Grandma buy work boots so he do the jobs I brought to class... even though the jobs involved envelope stuffing and the like, not anything requiring steel toes and good traction) passed away, so he was taken in by an aunt and uncle. He now goes to school about 25 miles away.
Two years ago I even "lost" a student to runaway marriage. That was an experience, let me tell you.
Last year, no one died. All of the "losses" were simply due to aging out of the program.
This year, knock on wood, so far so good.
Except that things aren't all that good.
Today I learned that the heart of one girl is essentially giving out. The parents are "happy" that she will likely make it to graduation, since she was never meant to live this long. This girl isn't all that aware of her situation, which is a sort of comfort.
Another one of my students, I'll call him Raj, has a brain tumor "so deep they can't operate." The good news is that it's not untreatable, but the boy is understandably upset about the whole thing. He's one of my exceptional kids. Any set of tests and assessments would indicate that Raj is well within the mentally retarded range of functioning, but he gets things. A neighboring teacher mentioned that they'd just gotten the news and that Raj was crying earlier. Fortunately, he's surrounded by loving adults at school (which is not always the case, despite what most people think). Before I left his school this morning, I pulled him out of class briefly to tell him I'd heard, that I'd be pulling for him, that I love him and that everything will be okay. I gave him a hug.
One of the persnickety parts of working in education is the righteous outrage toward adults who physically overstep their bounds with students. So part of me was thinking, "You could lose your job for this." Displays of affection, no matter how innocent or well-meant can be misconstrued. I'm not seriously worried about it; the hug took about 1.5 seconds. Still, it did pop into my mind.
When I was talking with Raj, I acknowledged that he can't have surgery. Even though his eyes showed his emotions, his response was classic teenaged boy: "Yeah, but it's good, because then they'd have to shave my hair off." He ran his hand over his head as he said that, and I could feel his relief. I didn't chuckle, but it wasn't easy. We talked briefly about alternatives to surgery. He seemed to have a pretty good understanding of the basics and we didn't drag things out.
After leaving I wanted to call Nance and tell her, but it's hard to know when to say what to someone who's already dealing with so much medical drama. Yesterday Ken was re-admitted to the hospital, into ICU no less, for a rapid heartbeat. Hopefully he'll be home again soon. So I didn't call her. I'm telling you instead.
For quite some time now, I've been giving death a lot of room in my brain. As a child of the Baby Boomers, the first exceptionally healthy generation of the world, I have not had to deal with it directly very often.
It's not that people around me never died, but they were rarely loved ones. Uncle Keith died after a bar fight when I was seven or eight years old... the same summer that our guinea pig, Trouble, died. My dad's great-aunt died before that, but I'd only met her once, so the memory probably lasts due to Dad's sadness over the loss. Aside from that, one of Dad's coworkers died a few years after Keith. Every other death I knew about was either an animal or I learned about it through friends or the news. I was insulated from it for most of my life.
Maybe if I’d had faith or more experiences dealing with death, I wouldn't have been so obsessed about it. Who knows? But I recall as a young child, worrying every night that my mom was out doing a Tupperware party. Was she alright? Would she make it home? Later, when I was a teen, it was just Mom and me living together. She got a job traveling the western half of the US. I would drop her off at the airport with nearly as much barely contained emotion as if I'd never see her again. Waiting at the gate to pick her up (which in those days meant waiting outside for her to deplane by taking stairs down to the tarmac), would find me fighting back tears.
I suppose in both instances, the Tupperware parties and the traveling, I was terribly afraid of being left alone. Sure, I had Dad, but he was really my stepfather with his own kids. I wasn't as comfortable around him as I would have been if he'd always been there. And when the traveling job came around, he and Mom were divorced; I wasn't sure where I fit in with him and his new family then.
Maybe some of my fears come from the fairly random religious education I received. In San Diego, the children (four of us) would go to a Baptist church on Sundays with my grandparents. Images of hell haunted my dreams for years. When we moved close to LA, my parents sent us to a Gospel church with the neighbors ("the neighbors" from whichever place we lived were often my parents' source of a free Sunday morning). The father of that family was also the pastor of the church, and he was the leader of Sunday school for kids my age. He had a very strange view of people, especially considering that he had such a large family. I recall his lectures about how all of us were born liars... even babies just born, crying when they didn’t need food or a clean diaper, were lying. Naturally, it all led back to hell.
As a teen, I dated a guy who all too easily changed my whole wobbly belief system by pointing out different proofs of evolution. I should have been relieved that his explanation would have eliminated my concerns about hell, but that thought never occurred to me. Instead the focus shifted from an almost certain trip to eternal hell to nothing (cue crickets... wait, don't... there's nothing).
In any case, you put all this stuff into the blender of my mind and add my own thoughts on the subject, and death is a scary thing.
Five years ago I started a new job. Within the next six or seven months, nine people I knew (directly or not) passed away. One of them was my ex-husband's grandfather's funeral in Oklahoma. It might have been then that I started to realize that I'd spent so many years fearing death, but I hadn't truly dealt with it for a couple of decades.
A few years later, Corey and I went to Utah to visit my grandparents. My dad and his buddy were heading up to Salt Lake City for a race, so they dropped us off on the way. I'd had a few sessions in the tattoo chair by then, but nothing very recent. I'm not sure how long it had been since we'd been to Utah, but it didn't occur to me to cover the tattoo on my chest... until my grandfather stopped short of giving me a hug to tsk-tsk at what I'd done to myself. Between that and the fact that my grandparents hadn't seen my dad since the divorce – for some reason I believed they'd be happy to see him again – I guess no one should be too surprised that my grandfather had a heart attack that night. It was fairly mild, as heart attacks go, but tests revealed that a quintuple bypass was needed to clear out the major blockages. (Yes, I see that our visit and my tattoo weren't the only things at work here.)
The surgery had to be done in Salt Lake. Grandpa spent two months up there, and they only let him go back to St. George when they did because depression from missing his wife was creeping in and inhibiting recovery. He made it back to St. George, but he never made it home. Two years were spent declining in a care center due to depression, possible strokes and then the onset of dementia. A few months before he passed away, Corey and I again went to St. George. We helped Grandma run errands and visited with Grandpa quite a bit. Despite his troubled memory, he knew who we were each time we dropped in for a visit.
It was clear we were likely seeing him for the last time, and I tried to gear up for it as best I could. One thing that helped was knowing that my brilliant, funny, steady old Grandpa would never have wanted his life to end that way. When he died, it was tough, but he wasn't suffering anymore. My old Baptist upbringing told me he was in a better place.
As I said goodbye to him, I mentally looked around at all the people I loved. With the exception of Corey, everybody was older than I. That type of extended youth... of always being "the kid," I believe, was pretty common for people of my generation. It was time to get ready for a new reality to set in. I pictured my life as some sort of modern day battle scene from Gone with the Wind, with dead bodies and smoke and dust everywhere.
It hasn't been like that, thankfully, but Grandpa's was the first in a series of springtime deaths. He was followed the next year by Grandma and last year by my good friend Carol. It was getting so that I was semi-jokingly warning my friends and family members to be extra careful this spring.
Fortunately, this spring brought Madelyn's birth and no deaths for me to handle. There is something that happens to a lot of new (again) parents, though, which is probably nature's way of protecting families. My risk tolerance has dropped way down. Not that I was a huge risk taker before, but now I find myself stepping more carefully and taking the time to really look where I'm going.
As an imaginative person, I see myself falling down the stairs that I always insist on taking at work, tripping over the wooden curb outside my home or doing any number of incredibly silly things that result in my immediate death. As a clumsy person by nature, my concerns aren't entirely unfounded. But how much time should one give to worries about dying stupidly? And how much of my life's energy have I wasted worrying about something that hasn't happened? It's not as if I'm psychic (well, Tom says I am, but with another syllable in the middle), so there's no reason to believe that my imagined body at the foot of the stairs means anything other than I'm worried about leaving. (Well, that or it could just be me recalling the times I have fallen down the stairs, both as a child and as an adult...grr!)
I recognize the need to prepare for most of my loved ones to pass before me over the coming years. But how much time have I already spent worrying? How do I find the balance between the very real concerns that Mom won’t be around as long as I’d like with the very real fact that I should be making the most of whatever time I do have with her?
I guess the question I’ve been struggling with is this: Why do we act like we’ll live forever, when those who know they are dying seem to get so much more out of life? How can I maintain that sort of end-of-life appreciation now, when the people I love are here and I’m here and we can make a good life together? And is it possible to do that without obsessing about death all the time? Because I can totally see myself slipping and falling to my demise because I was too distracted thinking about how I might slip and fall to my death.
I haven't written on this blog for over five years. I guess the whinefest I left last time I was here was just too damn annoying to return. One of my friends, Tiana, recently established a blog here, so I figured I'd send her a little shout out. It took me about five minutes of fooling around to figure out that I'd never remember my user name/password combo. Once that was all squared away I reminisced (after gagging during the last post) by reading some of my other essays.
I've also been following the blog of a woman whom I guess a lot of people followed, Michelle Mayer's Diary of a Dying Mom. She passed away today. Reading her posts have often left me in tears. Heck, thinking about her posts has often caused my eyes to sting.
It's admittedly shallow, but I don't tend to carry other people's problems around with me. It's not exactly an out-of-sight-out-of-mind deal, but it's close enough that I'm not proud to admit it.
But Michelle and her family, especially her young children have weighed heavily on my mind. Maybe it's because of my own two kids and how I worry about what will happen to them if anything should happen to me. It's probably also the clear, open way Michelle has written about her experience and journey from life to death. Somewhere along the blog I could see that she's the type of woman I would have as a friend, and I felt like a friend to her, silently cheering her on. Even as she said her good-byes, I hoped that the disease that was claiming her life would miraculously reverse itself. It did not.
I wondered how I would react when she passed away. My heart has been aching for the past several days. Between yesterday and today I must have checked her blog 10 to 15 times at least. The image of all those people waiting for the light to go off in Evita has come to mind frequently.
This evening, the news came that she had passed away earlier in the day. As soon as tears started to well up in my eyes, I calmed back down. What a relief for this wonderful and brave woman. And there must be some relief for her family, too, who have seen her through the last year or so of what must have been intense suffering. I am sad. I'm sad for Michelle and for her family and friends. I'm sad for me.
But I'm hoping that Michelle isn't really gone; I hope she's finding out what's on the other side. I hope that it is peaceful and pain free, filled with people who love her and have been waiting to welcome her. Her grandmother, for example. I can't buy into the Baptist version of heaven that I was raised with, in part because I can't believe that streets paved with gold and pearly gates are truly of any value beyond what we place on them here. Perhaps the John Whatshisname's version is the one she's found. In any case, hope Michelle is able visit her mother as requested.
