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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Love You Forever

April 17, 1977 was a lovely, warm, early spring day in New York City.  On that day, in St. Vincent’sHospital in Greenwich Village, at the age of 22, I became a mother for the first time.

I had been very excited about having this little person.  It was uncommon in those days to find out the gender ahead of time, so we did not know if we would be welcoming Anna or Ryan.  Even as recently as 1977, in a supposedly modern hospital, we had to jump through hoops for my husband to be with me through labor and in the delivery room.  Not only did we have to attend classes, we had to get special signed permission from our obstetrician.  (I also had to get special dispensation to not have my arms strapped to the side of the delivery table in leather straps, something I was horrified to see on the L & D tour with the Lamaze class).  My doctor’s name was Hardart and he was indeed the son of the Horn and Hardart automat fortune.  A legendary devout Roman Catholic, he was the go-to GYN for nuns.  There were always at least two in the waiting room.  He also refused to dispense birth control.  I took care of that myself, so that was not an issue for me, I went to him because he had a good reputation in our family.

The baby was due April 1 but made no appearance.  The ensuing 17 days were incredibly long.  My grandmother, mother and aunt called me every single day, as if I would not have let them know if I had had the baby.  My aunt, a nurse, worked at St. Vincent’s at the time.  If she did not get me at home, she would call the L & D floor looking for me.  By the time I actually did get there the reaction was “Mrs. Cooper!!  We’ve been waiting for you!”

Ever the obedient pupil, I followed to the letter the instructions to eat lightly as my due date approached, so I would “avoid going into labor with a full stomach.”  It was promised whatever I ate would reappear if I over did it.  So for three weeks I ate nothing but broth, crackers and jello.  By April 16 I looked at Dennis and said “F this, I am starving!!”  We went to our local Italian place where I had ravioli, garlic bread and stuffed clams.  I went into labor at one in the morning.  (And for future reference I noted it all stayed put, thank you very much.)

Giddy with excitement and relief, we raced to the hospital at practically the first contraction.  Way, way too early.  Labor and delivery units operated under strict and Draconian protocols.  Once you got to the hospital, you were confined to bed and not allowed to walk or do anything to keep your labor manageable, except the Lamaze breathing.  Patterned breathing can be effective, but it does have its limits if you have no other tools to use.  We got there around three a.m., having no clue it would be 13 more very long hours of labor.

Around noon I did opt for one shot of Demerol, the only medication I ever took in any of my four labors.  It did nothing but put me to sleep in between contractions.  I would wake up in extraordinary pain and then conk out again.  At one point I gazed over, half asleep, to see Dennis sitting in the bedside chair, engrossed in the Daily News (the Son of Sam killer had struck again during the night). I could have cheerfully choked him at that moment.  It still makes me laugh to vividly remember thinking I would give anything to be sitting in that chair reading the paper.

Once the baby was close to birth, there was a mad flurry of (pointless) activity as I was whisked to the delivery room.  I won’t even comment on the medieval absurdity of this treatment.  But for me, the bottom line at that moment was, I was about to have my baby.

He was actually held up by his feet in the stereotyped way you see in the movies. His little body was sort of flat, all soft angles, and his skin was a translucent pale greenish color.  Then, as I watched, all the angles puffed out and he pinked up from head to toe as he took his first breath and let out a cry.

He was simply lovely.

One of my favorite pictures of us, his first day of kindergarten.

And he stayed lovely.  He rarely cried and had a sweet, solemn demeanor that took in everything.  You could practically see the wheels turning as he observed things.  He had an adorable chuckle when something tickled his fancy.  It was such fun to watch him develop and grow into a little person.

Trust me, he was not perfect.  But he grew into a boy and then a man I was so proud of in so many ways.  We had some very rough times after his dad died.  But as adults, we seemed to have found a common ground.  He was completely independent and self-sufficient, but as I became more financially comfortable, I was thrilled to able to help him a little more.   He traveled a lot and always sent a postcard or brought back a thoughtful token, like wool from New Zealand where he and his wife went on their honeymoon.  And little resin tea bag rest with a kiwi on it.  When I first got sick he said to me that if I got worse, I would never have to worry about where I would live, I would always have a place with him and his wife.

We went to museum exhibitions together and talked about movies and books and politics.  He asked me to hold the Bible for him as he was sworn in as an attorney.  He and his wife, who I love dearly, bought a charming home and we had a fun family Easter brunch there the first year they were in the house.  They welcomed me to their lake house, where her family has vacationed for a century.  I was thrilled for them as they began their life together.

In May of 2010 he had some time off for the first time in probably a decade.  He had worked his way through college and law school and then went straight to work, with no break.  He invited me up to the house to have lunch with him.  He made a fantastic salad.  I gave him his birthday presents and belated wedding presents, two little oil paintings that reminded me of their place in the Adirondacks.  We had such a nice afternoon.

He has never voluntarily spoken to me since that day.

I do not know what happened.  I do not know what I did to upset him or hurt him.  I have agonized over that day, and others, trying to remember what we talked about, what I might have done, but I cannot think of anything.  I have teased him, tried to cajole him, and finally wept and begged him to tell me what I had done and how could I fix it.  But he has only said it is about him and this is something he needed to do.

I have cried more, prayed more, tortured myself more over this than any bad thing that has happened to me in my entire life.  When he had his own little boy last year I thought, now he will know, now he will understand, and he will come back.  But he didn’t.

When he was born, my family descended on St. Vincent’s like a joyful cloud.  My grandparents, my parents, my aunts.  Time has taken a painful toll.  My beloved grandparents are gone now, as are Dennis and my mother.  Even the hospital doesn’t exist anymore, it went bankrupt and closed in 2010 after serving New York City  for 161 years.  The aunt I was so close to, my mother’s youngest sister, the one who called me every day those last three weeks, no longer speaks to me, as we vehemently disagreed over the care my mother received in her last months.  My own nuclear family is fractured by sadness and reproach.  And I don’t even know how it happened. 

Another of my mother’s sisters used to send my grandmother flowers on her own birthday, to say thank you for having given birth to her.  I want to send Ryan virtual flowers, a virtual botanic garden, to thank him for making me a mother.  Despite everything, being a mother is the best thing I have ever been, it is the job I have been happiest at, ever. 

As multiple sclerosis progresses, I recognize how numbered my days are.  I do not have decades left.  I will hope against hope that whatever occurred that caused him such distress can be reconciled  and resolved.  We are missing so much.  As hard as it is for me, it is equally hard to think of him suffering.  He will always be my precious boy, no matter what.





In My Life, the song he picked for us to dance to at his wedding.

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A Bump in the Road

I’ve been pretty sick for the past few weeks with lymphedema and cellulitis in my legs.  The pain is consuming and I haven’t been up to doing much, but to distract myself I have been watching old comedy shows, including Frasier, which I think is the wittiest, funniest show ever.  It never fails to make me laugh.

Here is one person’s compilation of her favorites:


 

I could probably post another hundred and still keep going.  It is just endlessly funny.

Ironically and unexpectedly, one episode made me cry instead.    Frasier is telling Roz how wonderful it is to be a parent.  He says:

“You don’t just love your children, you fall in love with them.  It’s that same rush, that same overwhelming desire to see them, to hold them, to bore other people to tears with every detail about them…”

That really hit a nerve.  That is the way I feel about being a mother to my children.  I don’t see them nearly as much as I’d like to and that makes me sad.  I miss them so much.   But I think of them all the time.  It is hard not to.  Not only are they in my heart and my memories, but their pictures are everywhere and I even have my son Ryan’s cat, who is curled up next to me on my pillows as I type this.

Miss Perri

So watching these old shows has been a little like life itself – lots of laughing and some crying too.

Fingers crossed the specialist appointment I have next week can help my legs and relieve this pain.

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My Personal Mother's Day

Today, Sunday, April 17, 2011, is the thirty fourth anniversary of my becoming a mother. It is the thirty fourth birthday of my first born.

He was due April 1, so he was maddeningly late. Those last two weeks my mother, grandmother and aunt called me every day to see if there was any news. My aunt worked at the hospital where I was going to have the baby. If she called and I wasn’t home, she would call the Labor and Delivery floor to see if I was there. When I did finally arrive, the nurses all exclaimed, “Mrs. Cooper! We’ve been waiting for you!”

To say I was thrilled with my little boy does not even begin to cover it. He was a beautiful baby, pink and round. And so good! He rarely cried, slept like a log and solemnly took in the world with his big blue eyes.

He was a friendly, engaging toddler, interested in everything, talking non-stop, and always, always wanting to learn. When he was three he had me copy out the alphabet for him and show him the letters for his name so he could learn to write it. On his own he did this. Although the very first thing he wrote were the words “fire truck”, as that was his current obsession.

He was always mature for his years and a hard worker. When he was 13, again all on his own, he went to the local pizza shop and asked for a job. They gave him a broom and he has been working at some job or another ever since.

When he was twenty, he explored the country, working his way across the United States, from Maine, down the east coast to the South and across the South to California. It took him more than a year. I was worried sick the whole time he was gone, but I was so proud of him. Most people only dream of such an adventure, he actually did it.

He worked his way through college and law school, graduating with honors, and now is a respected attorney with a prestigious firm. He chose a lovely woman as his wife.

My sweet and funny little boy has brought me more joy than he will ever know. Nothing will ever change that.

As Robert Munsch wrote in Love You Forever…

“I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.”

Happy birthday. Thank you for making me a mother.



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