Do Not Fear, For I Am With You

I have been struggling with much grief and fear this holiday season.  My beloved family is fractured, some of my children estranged, it seems, beyond restoration.  Being a mother has been the bliss of my life.  Without them, meaning, pleasure, any sense of satisfaction, has paled, despite the outstanding nourishment of my many friends, my remarkable daughter, who is endlessly supportive and helpful, and my delightful grandchildren.  They are all wonderful and I am truly, truly grateful for their love and infinite encouragement.  But we always want what we don’t have, don’t we?   One of our great human flaws is a recurrent inability to be satisfied by the good that we do have right under our noses.  We long for what we miss.  And I miss my children with a gnawing pain that literally howls through my every waking moment.  I try to move on, I try to be accepting, but their absence is a bottomless pit of loss and pain.

Then there is the fact of the unknown.  With the spread of the cancer, it is literally a waiting game.  Waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Waiting for the inevitable day when my oncologist calls and the result of my biannual scan is no longer good news.  Fearing that the facts would be simply too hard to face, I have never asked or researched what exactly my prognosis is.  Last month I finally screwed up the courage and looked it up.  Breast cancer which has spread to the liver has a projection of three to five years from diagnosis.  I know it could be worse.  But I am greedy, another very human flaw.  I want so much more time.  I am already a year down.  I am sad and I am scared.

My faith has been shaken.  Yet another flaw.  I am the first one to admit, I am all too human and all too flawed.  But it has been awfully hard to remain reassured by the spiritual when the corporal is so spectacularly challenging.   Loss upon loss upon loss has worn me down.  The basest, most immature part of me cries out, haven’t I had enough already?!?  I know intellectually that life is just like that.  It doesn’t matter if you have tried to be a good person, tried to do the right things.  Good intentions + going to church + doing the best you can = health, happiness and success, right?  But there is no formula, no equation.  Stuff just happens.  

I have never believed God causes bad things to happen to us, I do not believe He visits disasters upon us.  I could not believe in a vindictive, punishing deity.  But lately I have found it is difficult to believe in any deity at all. 

I have received many Christmas cards this year from the delightful people I am surrounded by.  One card was from someone who is particularly special to me.  The day it arrived was an especially busy one.  Before I could open it, I was interrupted and set it aside.  Four days later, when I went to open it and reply, it was nowhere to be found.  I felt sick.  I turned every room upside down.  Because my mobility is so limited, there are not too many places I could have lost it in.  I went through every box and basket, every surface.  Nothing.  I chastised myself over and over for being so careless, so disorganized, so stupid, so thoughtless, on and on.  I automatically invoked Saint Anthony, every Catholic’s resource for lost things.  But I didn’t really believe a word of it.                                                                                                                                  

After another fruitless round of searching I collapsed in my recliner, utterly exhausted and discouraged.  I’ll just rest for five minutes, I thought, and then I will look again.  It must be stuck in something else.  I’ll turn out every catalog, every book I have laid my hands on in the past year, every container.  As I leaned my head back in the chair I noticed a small white envelope lying face down on the corner of my chairside table.  This is a tiny table, with barely enough room for my laptop.  I had searched for card on the table easily ten times.  I had picked the laptop up each time.  There had been no card.  It wasn’t there.  But it was now.  Perched on the edge, bright white, unmissable.  

I burst into tears.  I don’t ask for signs, I never have, even when my faith was at its strongest, I never felt comfortable testing God, demanding things.  It felt disrespectful and disloyal.  But I believed at that moment, with the inexplicable appearance of a card I had been searching for over hours, God had sent me a sign.  He had sent me a message: do not fear, I am with you.

After I had children, I struggled deeply with the concept of putting God before else, as demanded in the Bible.  How could I put anything before my beloved children?  How could I?  It was impossible, nothing meant more to me than my children, not even God.  I always felt guilty about that and even slightly fearful.  How much of a sin was it?  Was I dooming myself to eternal damnation because I was putting mortal beings before the Lord?  I decided it didn’t matter.  I loved my children more than life itself and if God didn’t understand that, oh well.

But here I was, facing Christmas Eve alone, the night we traditionally had come together as a family and celebrated the holiday.  The night I cherished as a representation of everything I loved most in the world, the night I had the opportunity, shallow though it was, to tangibly demonstrate my love for them by giving them things I thought would make them happy.  The sadness of being by myself, of knowing that they were deliberately choosing to exclude me from their lives when I needed them the most, was overwhelming.  I had laughed in God’s face and told Him He meant less to me than these people who were wounding me so deeply.  And He was saying, I am here anyway.

Some may scoff at what appears to be my fanciful superstition.  Some may say say that the card had been there all along and I just missed it.  Some may argue there is a perfectly logic explanation for missing that glaring white envelope all those hours.  And I might agree with all of them on some level.  But I am making a choice.  I am choosing to not be miserable.  I am choosing to be reminded that I am not alone.  I am choosing to not be afraid.  I am gratefully, humbly choosing to accept the gift of God’s love and comfort.

Isaiah 41:10

10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

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Christmas Reverie

In this season of promise and expectation, my thoughts go to the myriad of Everyday Angels that surround me, my powerful circle of love and hope. You all, who have given me so much, will be in my heart forever.  I know you will be richly rewarded for your gentle kindnesses and loving generosity.  Especially those of you who know my many flaws but love me anyway, thank you for being role models of compassion.  Your humanity inspires me.  I pray that you all will be showered with blessings.

No matter what, I am so grateful for my children and the many treasured Christmas memories that revolve around them.  Throughout the years, you four, individually and collectively, have given me more joyful moments than you will ever know.   There is nothing you could ever do or say that could change my love for you.  That love is for eternity.

December is such a busy month, and not just because of Christmas.  In our family, we have significant dates on both ends of the spectrum of life.  I have two precious grandchildren born in December.  And, sadly, my husband Dennis died in December, five days before Christmas, twenty years ago this month. Our kids were 6, 8, 15 and 16.  I was 39 and he was only 40.

His death was a hideous shock.  He was an active guy, slim and athletic.  But he apparently had congenital heart disease that was never picked up.  The worst thing I have ever had to do in my life was witness the suffering my children endured at his loss and not be able to fix it or make it go away.  Every subsequent family milestone that I went through alone at first was excruciatingly painful, then gradually faded to a dull poignancy.

We have four grandchildren now, will have five in February.  He would have been a marvelous grandfather, because he was a big kid at heart.   He was always up for playing a game, reading a story, going for a walk or making up silly sayings. 

A tugboat pilot, he was very good at his job.  But it was a career he had been caught in, not a career he had chosen.  At 17, a neighbor gave him a job at Circle Line, the Manhattan sightseeing boats, as a line catcher, the lowest job on the pier.  (This neighbor just happened to be a VP at Circle Line).  Dennis was a reliable, hard worker and popular with the other guys, so he easily worked his way up to deckhand.  Because he was ambitious, he studied for and obtained his pilot’s license, a notoriously hard accomplishment.  He became a captain at Circle Line and then a pilot on the tugs.   

But what he really wanted to be, more than anything, was a high school gym teacher.   He would have been fantastic.  He loved kids and he loved sports, he was a natural.  When I “helped” our kids with their homework, I was shrieking maniac within 15 seconds.  He was endlessly patient.  But he never had the luxury of quitting his job to go back to school, he had a family to support.  So he settled for being an autodidact and was quite learned in many subjects, especially the Civil War and geography.  We used to challenge each other to Jeopardy.  Getting comfortable on the sofa, our younger son would sit between us and keep score.  We’d turn the show on and most of the time it would be neck and neck.  But if I won, it was usually just because I had a faster mouth.  He was always a good loser, whereas if I lost, I would pout.  It was years before I could watch Jeopardy again.  It just made me too sad.

He was a die-hard New Yorker, something that had bonded him with my grandfather.  These two complicated men had a genuine respect and fondness for each other.  And like my grandfather, not-so-deep-down, Dennis was a quiet romantic.  His favorite movies were West Side Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Quiet Man and Dog Day Afternoon, all films about flawed men with huge capacities to love.   He had a soft spot for animals, with their helplessness and unconditional affection.  He was especially fond of an obscure TV movie from 1969, J.T.   It has only been broadcast once or twice since (although it is available here on YouTube, in 4 parts).  J.T. is set in Harlem, a touching but raw story about a lonely boy who secretly nurses an injured alley cat while trying to cope with the challenges of inner city life.  Dennis saw himself in that little boy and talked about comparisons often.  Although he had his melancholy streak, he was incredibly funny and had a sharp wit, but plain old slapstick, like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, could leave him crying with laughter.  

Golf was such a passion that he would have pitched a tent out on the green if he could have.   He was a great athlete and probably could have played professional baseball if he had had the encouragement and support he needed as a kid.

Twenty years is an awfully long time. We had been married for 17, known each other for 20, had four wonderful children together.  He had a hard life and dealt with many challenges, some more successfully than others.  He was a very good man at heart, but I know he always wanted to be better.  He was always striving.  I am so sad for him that he has missed so much.   Sometimes it seems as though he will walk through the door any second.  It happens far less now, but I still find myself occasionally thinking, “oh, I have to tell Dennis” and then I remember.  I think he would have been very proud of my accomplishments.  It feels desperately unfair that his life was so short.   But I want to believe he is in a place of happiness and healing, far better off than I can comprehend.

Merry Christmas, Dennis.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Fragment of a painting, Shooting Star, by

Thank you Lord, for making Yourself one of us.  Please strengthen our faith in You.  Please make us worthy of Your love and of each other.









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Just One More Time

On scales large and small, I have had to re-invent myself any number of times throughout my life.

As a four year old, I had to learn to live with a disability after an accident caused me to lose my right eye.  I had to adjust to my realigned peripheral vision, deal with curious, sometimes rude, people who questioned me about my bandages and then my prosthesis.  In general, I had to learn to become a normal-but-different little girl. 

Each age brought new opportunities to try on different personas.  I never found a perfect fit, because I was interested in so many things that I was like a chameleon.  I could wear a different identity a dozen times a day.  Bookworm, writer, poet, hippie, rebel, compliant, outspoken, shy, tomboy, girly girl, daydreamer, protester, studious, overachiever, slacker, sad, carefree.

Reinvention happened over and over.  Wife.  Mother.  Widow with four children.  Career, advancing from front line entry level to executive. Homeowner, giddy with pride.  Graduate school, 4.0.  Living the good life, traveling, enjoying my grown children, grateful for all of this and my many wonderful friends.  So happy! Then MS and everything starting to slip through my fingers.

More reinvention, in reverse. This disease chipped away at all my selves, gradually stealing my career, independence, dignity, security and, unbelievably, my children.  For my oldest son has slammed the door of his life right in my face.  My younger one told me he couldn’t cope with me being sick, so he just avoids me

MS – the gift that keeps on taking.  As years passed, I was gradually adjusting to these new personas.  I could not accept them or embrace them.  I could not say stupid things like “I am so glad I have MS because it forced me to stop and smell the roses.” (People actually say that!) I could smell the roses just fine before, thank you very much.  I desperately wanted my old life back.  But I was finally acknowledging that was never going to happen.  So I needed to deal with it.  I needed to keep, keep, keep reinventing myself, no matter how much I hated it.

I starting writing again, something I had given up on after college.  Love of words was embedded in my DNA.  Besides being a mother, writing my blog is hands down the most fun, rewarding thing I have ever done for myself.  And with writing came new friends and renewed contact with old friends.  I will never fail to be astonished at the amazing, giving, caring people that surround me.  Their endless affirmation has kept me going.

Then came breast cancer.   Of all the f-ing things.  What is with this, God?!?  I don’t get cancer!!  No one in my family gets cancer.  But I managed to hit the crap lottery again.  Time for a whole new reinvention. The Before Disease, MS, was incurable and painful and cruel.  Cancer can be all that and more.   New vocabulary, new doctors, new procedures.  Lumpectomy, radiation, hormone treatment.  I was not a candidate for chemo, as I had too many health complications.  Chemo could kill the cancer but it was more likely to kill me first.  This was a blow.  But, ok, I’ve dealt with blows before and I will do it again.

It Just Keeps Coming

This week brought news that I must reinvent myself for what will probably be the final time.  The cancer has spread. 

Now I know none of us are getting out of here alive.  I had just hoped for a bit longer than 59 years.  I never thought I would have to reinvent myself as a dying person.

I know it is counterproductive, but in these early days I find myself thinking of all the things I will never do.  I will never have a chance to live in England, which had been a lifelong dream.  I never will publish that novel.  I won’t see my adored grandchildren graduate from high school, marry, start their own families. I will never go to another Springsteen concert.  There are so many books I will never read.  I am crushed by all the fascinating places I will never visit, the wonderful people I will never know, the dear and wonderful people I already have in my life and will never see again. 

Now I must acknowledge my prince will never come.  I will never again have a life partner, someone to help me carry the sorrows and relish the joys.  There is too little life left.

So many nevers.

A dear friend was visiting last week.  She has been resoundingly healthy for most of her 70-odd years.  But this past summer she had surgery that, while serious, should have been very straight forward with an uncomplicated recovery.  It did not work out like that and she is still recuperating.  As she was leaving she said something about her ‘new normal’.  Isn’t it funny, I said, that a ‘new normal’ never means anything good?  We laughed.  But it’s true.  New normals are always about loss and forced change.  They are always about having no choice but learning to do things in a new way, without the normal, and usually beloved, thing that is now gone. 

My new normal is currently an excruciating awareness of my mortality.  Every act, every conversation is fraught with portent.  How much longer?  Is this the last time I will do this, see this, talk to them?

It is very strange, this particular new normal, and I am struggling with this particular reinvention.  

But I am nothing if not stubborn.  I will not go quietly or gently into the night.  Even with my limited capacity, I am going to do as much as I can in as much time as I have.  In my mind I am WILLING the radiation to work.  If sheer force of determination can cure me, I will live forever.  I am heading into cancer kicking and screaming with objections, praying fervently for a cure. 

I am not ready to go just yet.  Stand by for further adventures.  Because we all know there are going to be some.

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Mother’s Day

The first time you hold them, you actually do count fingers and toes. Who knew? You trace the swirls of those soft, sweet, pink ears. The downy cheeks, the lashes, the button nose, the rosebud mouth, all go into your permanent file, memorized forever. The details are a little different for each child, but they are equally indelible. In your heart, they are perfection.

 I always wanted to be a mother. It was my only career goal and I prepared for it with more zeal than I ever put into my actual education. I read. And read. And read some more. I was going to be the best mother possible for these little beings.

I was the best I knew how to be. That does not mean there are moments, many of them, of which I am less than proud. I was young. I was human. And I had a very, very hard life. But I loved them with every breath. Loved. Them.

 Still do.

I told them I loved them frequently. I acted in a way I believed sent them that message. My own poor, unhappy mother told other people she loved us, but she never told us. As a matter of fact, in my case at least, she actively told me I was worthless and good for nothing. She acted as though she despised us and couldn’t bear to be with us any more than was strictly necessary. She spent almost every waking hour in bed.

I worked hard at being the antithesis of my mother. Much hugging and kissing. Active involvement in school. Played games, sat and colored, took them on trips. Listened to them. Engaged with them. Because I wanted to.  It was fun. It was a delight to see those adorable smiles, hear those laughs and giggles and “I love you Mommy”’s.

In the New York Times on May 10, 2012, Timothy Egan wrote a moving description of his mother and her final weeks in The Last Mother’s Day. I foolishly read it while eating my lunch. Foolishly, because two sentences into it I was a sobbing, gasping mess, choking on my salad. I should have known from the title.

He said this about losing a mother: “…you also lose the true keeper of your memories, your triumphs, your losses. Your mother is a scrapbook for all your enthusiasms. She is the one who validates and the one who shames, and when she’s gone, you are alone in a terrible way.” With my own heath ebbing, and this being the first Mother’s Day since my mother died last year, this really resonated with me. I have often considered how, with my husband gone, there is no one else who knows the details of the days of their births. While I have written down what I do remember, there is no other perspective.

 In the movie Parenthood, Steve Martin is constantly striving to be the father he did not have. His neurotic fears include one in which his child has grown into a crazed shooter from the top of a building. While attempting to talk him down as he rains bullets on his helpless victims, Steve instinctively cries at one point, “Nice shot son!”, ever trying to be the supportive dad. Sometimes that is how I felt, desperate to promote their self-esteem, directly counter to the manner in which mine had been chiseled away. Anything to spare them the pain I experienced as a child who felt, who was told, she was unloved and unwanted.

So, we keep the memories. We shore up egos. We can, sadly, be the ones to tear those egos down as well, even if it is unintentional. Mothers are pretty powerful. Another reason I have had such a reverence for the role and my part in shaping the children who were placed in my care.

Things have not been easy. There have been hard times, disagreements and hurt feelings. But nothing could ever make me want to take back even one second of my life with them. I treasure all those happy memories. I cherish each one’s uniqueness. I respect each path they have chosen, even when it has taken them far away from me. Even when it has broken my heart. Because only they can determine their own journey.

They are not ‘mine’. They do not belong to me, they are their own people. But they are an integral part of who I am. Even if human and flawed, as we all are, they still hold me with a power that is stronger than gravity. Robert Munch’s book has the refrain of my motherhood:

“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always.

 As long as you’re living,
My baby you’ll be.”

Thank you, my four children, for making me a mother.

Steve Martin in Parenthood on the Importance of Being Supportive (because everything is always your fault anyway):
or http://youtu.be/Mn5ayQd7Y0Q

 

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Farewell, Mr. Handsome

Ten years ago my daughter struggled with picking out a name for our new grey kitten. She couldn’t decide between Sparky and Pickles. So our poor little new family member got stuck with Spickles. I maintain his name was actually Edward, because he deserved something with more dignity. But I mostly called him Mr. Handsome or My Sweet Boy, because he was both of those things.

He was an indoor cat, we live on a busy, busy road. But he and our other cat were always angling to get out. He shot out the back door like a rocket yesterday, as he has done before, never venturing farther than the yard. But this time he didn’t come home. My neighbor called me this morning. Mr. Spickles was lying in front of his house. He apparently had been hit by a car.

My heart is aching. He was gentle and affectionate and would climb on me and cling like a baby if he wanted some cuddling. If you rolled up a piece of crackly paper he would gleefully bat it all over the place. He loved to play with our Corgi (read about her here), they would chase each other back and forth through the length of the house. It added a zoo-like atmosphere at times, but was hilarious to watch. By the time Bella the Maniac Shih Tzu came along I think he just wasn’t up to her shenanigans. Or maybe he simply missed his old friend. At any rate, he definitely was slowing down.

I am so grateful to my neighbor and his friends. So kind and compassionate, they gently placed him in a box for me and carried him back to the house. If they hadn’t called, I don’t know when I would have found him. Their thoughtfulness eased the blow a little.

We will bury him behind the garage, next to Corrie, his racing cohort. Goodbye, Mr. Handsome, my sweet boy. Thank you for ten years of unconditional love.

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Anniversary

Thirty four years ago today, at 11:30 a.m., in the Mansion Chapel at Georgian Court University, I was married. I was 22, Dennis was 23 and we had no idea what we were getting into. Which I guess was a good thing.

It was a beautiful Fall day. At the reception, at Peterson’s Sunset Cabin, we danced to the dulcet tones of the Moon Misters. It was a really fun wedding. Everyone had a good time.

HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED

Peterson’s, which was a Shore landmark for over 50 years, has been closed since the 1990’s. This blogger captured it perfectly, including haunting pictures of the abandoned ruin it is today, http://www.lostdestinations.com/peterson.htm.  

Dennis died in 1993, so this year he is gone exactly as long as we were married.   So unimaginably sad.  He never saw our children grow up or got to meet his grandson.  My son brought my grandson to the cemetery instead.

I don’t think students are allowed to get married in the Mansion Chapel at Georgian Court anymore, although I may be wrong about that. The Mansion Chapel, originally the conservatory in the George Gould mansion, is so much prettier than the stark Student Chapel on campus.

But the relaxed informality of the Mansion, where I actually lived as a senior, changed forever the afternoon someone walked off with a priceless Tiffany lamp.

 AND THE SEASONS, THEY GO ROUND AND ROUND...

Thirty four years. Thirty four years of everything life consists of: happiness, pain, sorrow, the gift of four children, much laughter, much loss, much tenacious determination. 

Astonishing that so much time has gone by.   That 22 year old is literally long gone.  She is part of who I am now, but I am such a different person.

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.
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