Lost in the Supermarket

Yesterday I found an old notebook that I used to keep track of things when I was preparing to move down here from WA.  It held lists of house repairs, donations for the Goodwill, things to save for our garage sale, crap to haul to the dump, items to give away to friends.  There was a tremendously long TO DO list in Phil’s handwriting that I had dictated to him while we were driving in the car one day.  This was followed by page after page of errands that I had run in the days and weeks leading up to our departure ~ groceries, packing lists, dentist and doctor visits, car tune ups, and friends to whom we’d need to say good-bye.  There was even a pro and con list of reasons for moving to San Diego.

And then, on one lone page, tucked among these lists, was a notation long forgotten. 

Phil – another illness?

You see, at that point Phil was already in the beginning stages of what would eventually be diagnosed as lymphoma.  But at the time his symptoms were non-specific, very uncharacteristic for lymphoma and frankly, confounding.  While packing up and making the transition to CA he and I were also trying to figure out what was going on with him.  He saw his internist, a neurologist and a specialist in Seattle.  He went to the ER in incredible pain.  The best we could come up with by the time we left was that he might be developing another autoimmune disorder.  In reality, it only took about 6 more weeks for the lymphoma to clearly declare itself.

I’ve talked about my little journals before.  How they held my notes during his illness and contained my brain when I had little to no sleep and couldn’t trust myself to remember details.  They funded each and every blog post I wrote during that terrible hard time.  They are a record of his treatment, his intense suffering, his humility and ultimately his release.  They are sacred because they contain notations like the one I found yesterday that might pull me up short, but remind me of other times and other places that were real and were different.  They show me that time passes and things do change.  More on that later. 

There is a song lyric that Phil would quote from time to time when was overwhelmed or couldn’t make a decision.  “I’m all lost in the supermarket.”  Such genius lyrics these are, from The Clash.  It became a code between us when we were at a loss, literally or figuratively.  We loved the idea of feeling lost in the "supermarket", a metaphor for our everyday life.   When you can't understand what's going on with you or in your relationships and that stops the normal flow of your days - the "shopping" as it were.

Well, Daddio, I'm all lost in the supermarket.  

I feel like this more often than I'd like to.  Suddenly it's like I can't do what I was easily doing everyday and it's because of something that's lacking in me, and those voids aren't easy to fill.  What's lacking stems from the tremendous hole in my life where you used to be.  That’s obvious of course, but I'm struggling to understand how I lost so much of myself in your death.  I have been profoundly diminished.  

I still can't bring myself to hang any pictures of Phil in the new house.  Like a bad part of town or a corner of the woods you wouldn’t be caught in after dark, I've been skirting around that area of life for the last little while.  I've given myself lots of reasons why I haven't put any up but truth be told, I've been hiding out.  It's just too painful.  There are a few scattered pictures sitting on shelves but the entire folder full of pictures that I collected for his memorial sits untouched in my fire proof safe.  And I can’t bring myself to hang our wedding picture.  It still sits in my closet, right where Trenna put it when we moved in.  One small example of all lost in the supermarket.  

Phil is gone.  Now we are three. I get up every day and lean into the future with my kids.  I'm much more easily frustrated. I lose my temper and yell more.  I pick my battles and try to do my best.  It's ridiculously hard being a single parent, being a 45 year old widow, desiring to be fabulous on occasion all the while recovering from a nuclear disaster.  I do have good days, don't get me wrong and we are making progress.  I’m getting closer but I’m also shocked by where I find myself.  I don’t judge it, but I’m shocked by how little progress I've made.  The relief of his death and the end to his suffering has now passed.  Now I'm on to a deeper grief ~ missing the healthy and vibrant man I loved and lived with all those years before.  I’m just beginning to really grieve.  It's a good, hard and very sad development.  

But I trust my journals, things do change, eventually.  They always do.

Hard Love

Hey Daddio,

It’s July 22, our wedding anniversary.  Seventeen years ago we stood together in my parent's beautiful garden and stepped into our adulthood together, right?  We both knew when we met each other that “this time it was different” and we got serious about dealing with our shit.   I want to thank you for taking the lead in that, for being the one to say it first, that we needed to have a spiritual foundation in our lives as well as identify the issues that would characterize our life together.  You were right about so many things and were always willing to talk about them, admittedly sometimes for far longer than I wanted to, but you were a great communicator and I was blessed by that more often than not.  Your insights are sorely missed around here. 

Remember our vows?  They were not particularly conventional: everything was in there - in sickness and health, good times and bad, 'til death do us part and all that.  But we also promised to annoy and disappoint each other, to let each other down, to frustrate and fail to deliver and totally drop the ball.  We knew who we were and how we were and we went in with our eyes wide open.  And being imperfect people, all along the way, we delivered on our promises to annoy, frustrate, disappoint, anger, and fail one another, again and again.   

Still, despite all that,we had no idea what a crucible our marriage would turn out to be, did we?

  

Do you remember that wedding we went to when the pastor said, "There are hard marriages and there are bad marriages”? The unspoken message being I guess that the “good” marriages are the hard ones?  

We had a hard marriage Phil. It wasn't all bad and it wasn't anyone's fault.  We were just two imperfect people doing their best to deal with the crap that life threw at them; working to overcome the worst parts of themselves and striving for deeper intimacy, hoping to operate with more kindness in relationship.  But damn honey!  We had 8 miscarriages, you had so many ridiculously unfair health issues, and our chosen profession, though rewarding, was incredibly stressful and we had some seriously difficult employers. I struggled with Seasonal Affective Disorder for far too long and just as we were starting to turn a new page in our life together, the unthinkable happened. 

In more ways than I fully appreciate that’s when our marriage really started to get good.  When everything became crystal clear all the accumulated bullshit of the previous years - the petty grievances and the real ones - were dropped by the side of the road.  Stripped down to the bare essentials of who we were and staring the possibility of “‘til death do us part” brought us to an intimacy that we’d never known and we came to see and know each other in a new light.  We had everything to lose, everything to gain.  For me, I experienced and understood what it meant to really live selflessly for you.  It was one hell of a way to get to that place of unconditional love, a place I thought I’d been before.  Believe me, I hadn’t. 

Looking back now, I have to admit to you that sometimes I was so spent, it seemed like the most exhausting work to keep at it, to stay in relationship.  It would have been easier to just withdraw into myself.  To turn away, close off.  But you pursued me and continued to talk to me, wanting to connect and be in relationship until your dying day.  That was always you Phil.  Always vulnerable, always trying to make it better, always pursuing.  

In the end, somehow, while enduring chemotherapy and the ravages of an all out assault on your very being you found the strength to continue to pursue me when I was exhausted, spent and at times, disappointing.  We found a way to pursue and find each other in the moments and in the reprieves.  Ultimately, I am proud of what we accomplished together.  They were sixteen great, hard loving years.  We became better people during our life together.  We have an incredible son and daughter who live on with fierce spirits just like ours.  They are doing fine and will do great things with their lives, because of you and I in them.  They will have lives full of joy and sorrow and laughter and love because that is what life is!  Like us, they will know who they are and how they are and will live and love with eyes wide open.

Phil, in your absence, and with no more chances to share in the fruits of our mutual labor with you, it now seems obscene to complain at all.   I count myself a victor who came away from our beautiful crucible with a lion’s share of lessons learned.  How I take them forward will be the way I honor you and the life we shared together. 

Happy Anniversary, you were an incredible and faithful partner. Thank you for loving me hard!

The Rest Is Still Unwritten

I’ve heard memoirs described as a roadmap for being a human.  Memoirs tell others what it felt like to have a certain experience – the good ones don’t claim to be the authority on that experience but they are bold and certain in their own particular truth and honesty.  A good memoir, in my opinion, when it’s finished, convinces you that it will be like this for you too perhaps, when “it” happens. Or, I know you know what I’m talking about because you felt it, and maybe, just maybe, you couldn't put it into words, so here the words are for you, finally.

For me and what became my cancer memoir, writing about Phil and the long process of his sickness, degrading health, the shock and even surprise when his death itself occurred ~ both the certainty that the suffering would eventually end and the hope and confusion about when, why and how, those parts came relatively easily.  The way the world always seemed to be cast in shadow offered endless perspectives to draw from for insight and commentary.  But now, most days there’s not much else I can say about it, Phil’s death.

Now I am in the land of grief – the process, the journey, the wandering.  There are no more facts or figures to report.  There are no more updates or data to interpret.  The need for my clinical skills is long past and I am left with the plain story of survival, coming to grips with the fact that my life will forever be divided into “before” and “after”.  Even my children are moving on in their grief, with the resilience of youth and the blessing that time affords them in the abbreviated economy of their lives.  My old life ended at the same moment that Phil’s did and it will never come back.  The loss of a spouse has been described as the loss of one’s “present” ~ I so totally get that. 

 I look around now and can’t help but see how people move through life as though their days aren’t numbered. As I continue to hear news of deaths or tragedies and how they shock people into another mental state, “the shallowness of sanity” is exposed again and again, just as it was for me.  As Alice went “through the looking glass”, so too did I undergo a radical change in perspective.  There is no going back to life as I lived it.  There were a multitude of things I set down in order to carry the weight of Phil’s illness and death and I realize I don’t ever need to pick them up again.  I consider that insight a divine gift, a silver lining to all of this – a very costly, but divine gift. 

How incredible too that this new mental state offered me an opportunity for tremendous growth!  As my wandering gains focus in this new headspace I have choices I get to make.  I have been given a fresh start, a new perspective, and what lies ahead is my future, full of possibilities and endless potential.  I’ve been blessed with another precious gift from this wreckage.  Yes, the wreckage remains but I am learning to dive it better with each descent.  I'm finding that I can come up for air more often and for longer periods of time.   Yes, I am grieving the loss of my "present" life but what I have gained is the expanse of the rest of my life.    

For me and my house, the rest is still gloriously, unwritten.   

Camp Erin

I'm not entirely sure what I expected to hear from Bennett when I picked him up from camp on Sunday but I knew he'd have an incredible story to share.  I'd made arrangements for Olivia to be with friends so he and I could have the drive home alone together.  She and I had driven him to Camp Erin on Friday after school - a bereavement camp for kids who have experienced the loss of a loved one, sponsored by The Moyer Foundation and San Diego Hospice.  We had to straighten out his name tag (his first and last name are always getting switched around) but it was smooth sailing after that.  It was classic Bennett from then on, "Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out Mom, I've got this".  He was all set to make friends and "do camp".  And do camp he did.  

By all accounts, Bennett stepped deeper into himself this weekend and tempered the core strength and self awareness of his that has burgeoned this year.  One after another his counselors told me what a pleasure it was to have him in their cabin and what a natural leader he is.  They told of Bennett putting his arms around kids who were struggling with their grief, just sitting with them or encouraging them with a kind word.  And of how he led their cabin in the "GaGa" tournament victory (some high-action ball game, the hit of the weekend for all the campers)!  A wounded healer and athlete, he is his father's son in so many, many ways.  

On the way home Bennett filled me in on all the fun stuff they did - the canoeing, the pillow fights, the food, the farting, and the ghost stories.  He shared about the grief work - the memory board where he put Phil's picture and told his story, the lanterns they built and sent floating into the lake, the art projects they did together to commemorate their loved ones.  And about losing his voice because he laughed and yelled and screamed so much.

And then he turned the conversation to his whole life, outside of camp.  The things he said and the way he connected the dots and made sense of who he is and what's happened to him thus far in life... amazing.  As his mom, I'm not worried.  My son knows who he is.  He isn't looking to anyone outside of himself for validation or approval.  

He loves his dad and misses him but his life isn't going to be defined by Phil's death.  

As I told him, he is so far ahead of the game with that going for him.  I am so proud.  So in love with him.  So thankful.  

God is good, all the time.    

It Ain't That Hard

I heard Deepak Chopra speak many years ago when I was a PA student at Duke.  It was a silent snowy day and campus was eerily quiet.  I didn't see a soul until I entered the SRO auditorium and even then there was a subdued atmosphere, everyone whispering in hushed tones and huddled together for warmth.


The topic of his lecture is lost to me now but there is one thing that remains with me from that night.  He was talking about road rage and our hurried life style in this country; how we are always rushing to and fro, how what we are all about is more important than anyone else's business.  He challenged us to think about the person in the car that cuts us off, the car that won't let us pass, the driver that flips us the bird.  He challenged us to consider what their emergency is.  Maybe, just maybe, they are in crisis and have fewer tools in their tool box than we do.  Maybe, just maybe, they are in need of grace and we can give it to them.  Maybe, just maybe, they are going somewhere more important than we are.  Maybe, just maybe, we can exhale and let them go by us and we will be better off for having done so.  


Yesterday I was returning a video to the Red Box at 7/11 and I couldn't find a parking space in the lot.  There was a pick up truck blocking the lane and a red-faced young kid was shouting at the driver to move her ass out of the way, waving his arms and swearing a blue-streak the whole time.  The driver was so flustered in her attempts to do so that she backed up over the curb into the bushes.  As I found a spot way out of the way and walked over to the rental return I crossed by her and saw her crying.  Her passenger called out to me, "Excuse me, can you help us?"


It turns out they had been driving around for over an hour looking for a street that was several miles away.  He was overdue for dialysis and had missed his bus so his wife was driving him -- she spoke no English and he was legally blind and couldn't drive himself.  They were so far out of their element.  I rummaged around in my car, found a highlighter and wrote directions on a paper plate.  Hopefully they made it to their destination.    


I thought of Deepak. 
I thought of all the times people had stopped to help Phil and I.  
And I thought of all the times I've been disappointed by people who can't see beyond themselves.  


It's pretty simple.  As my snarky and wonderfully loving friend Anita posted yesterday on her Facebook Status: "Guide to not being an asshole: Don't be an asshole.


Love wins every time.

That Place

It's been a particularly rough few days for me. The kids are fighting more, my fuse has become short, and I wear lethargy like a lead apron.  The boxes are becoming more and more difficult to face each day.  The high of moving is gone and we are all feeling the downturn.  There is much more to it of course.  There always is.

We've made several trips back to the rental to gather up straggling items, do a final walk through, take out garbage and set aside our Amvets donation. On each visit I've remarked to myself how glad I am to be out of that place with it's crumbling pathway walls, waist high weeds, wobbly faucet, 1950's insulation and chronic smell of smoke and ash.  That place that until two months ago had no heat. That place so poorly managed.  That place where Phil died.

If you ask the kids are they going to miss that place they'll say "No" very emphatically and might even call it a slum.  I'd have to agree with them.  But our hearts are sorely hurting for having left that place all the same.  For no matter the condition of that house, it was our last home with Phil.  It was the place where we witnessed his final hours of courage and humility and the place we gathered to share our heartbreak and sorrow.  It was the place where neighbors cradled us in their collective arms and cared for us day after day after day.  From this point forward we will only move further away from that place ~ which is both good and sad.

Life is a gift.

It's Monday morning now and it's clear that the vacation is over. Life is a gift, let us live and love accordingly.

I received horrible news last night that a lifelong dear friend of my family had died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving behind a wife and two daughters in their early 20's. He was in his early 60's, a surfer and runner and very full of life. He, like Phil, wasn't supposed to die young. And he, like Phil, was one of the really good guys. He loved the Lord and made the world a better place by being in it.

Now his wife and daughters will embark on the journey the kids and I are on - learning to live without a husband and father they thought would be there. Diving deeper into a faith they've only begun to plumb the depth of. And coming to terms with the edges of themselves that are raw and uncomfortable and need grace and mercy in the most difficult of moments when they are fatigued, overwhelmed, grieving and missing their loved one.

But having walked this road ahead of them I know a few other things they will find on their journey as well. They will find good Samaritans who will feed and cook for them, wash their laundry, clean their house, take care of needs they don't even know they have. They will find peace and comfort in memories and in the letters and cards that come their way. God will comfort them with deep refreshing sleep that defies explanation given the circumstance. And He will provide sweet moments of relief from the pain in the form of joy for old friends reconnecting and reunions with loved ones to shoulder the burden of sorrow.

As I dropped my kids off at school this morning they were so eager to run off to share their vacation experiences with their friends. I hadn't told them about our friend's passing yet. There will be time for that this afternoon. I wanted them to have their day today. For me, I have had a different attitude toward life for a while now and this just solidifies it. I agree whole-heartedly with my sister Anita who says she has no more naïveté thinking everyone is going to live a long life. There have been too many early deaths in our circle.

Life is a precious gift. Let us live and love accordingly.