Giving Thanks 2012

Thank you to everyone who commented on Bennett's previous post.  He really appreciated each comment and encouragement regarding his writing.  I also enjoyed reading them and my mother's heart swelled with pride seeing all the accolades sent his way.  That piece of writing was from a school assignment that just happened to come along during the anniversary week of Phil's passing.  His teacher had been giving the students one word starters for narrative stories to begin from.  Bennett had worked with the words "help" and "hurt" previously and fate brought him to "loss" the day he posted on my blog.  He told me about having written about his dad and cautioned me against reading it, not wanting me to get sad.  But I loved it when I read it and I wasn't sad at all.  I remain very happy about the progress he's made and his ability to share his feeling both verbally and in written form.  I am most proud of the incredible insight he's shown into his inner life.  It bodes well for his future.

A year ago today I was in world of hurt.  Phil had died a little over a week earlier, I had just thrown together a somewhat hasty memorial service due to the impending holiday season and the long siege of his illness and the culmination of the days and weeks and months of fatigue came home to rest on me with a surreal finality.  My best friend from Washington, Tricia, had stayed behind to mop up and take care of me and the kids and we had chosen to eat out instead of  cook.  I was way beyond spending anymore time with my family or  friends and we thought eating at a local restaurant would be easiest.  What a nightmare.  The noise and banter of the other diners was just the beginning.  We were so out of place in our grief.  We had no business being in public let alone, joining in this most familial of holidays.  It was brutal and to a person we couldn't wait to get out of there.

Now it's one year later and I am hosting Thanksgiving in my new home, expecting 25 family and a few friends and I am in a good place.  I've survived my year of firsts and am moving into my future with optimism.  If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you know that I've always had a grateful heart amidst the trials.  On this day, as ever, I am thankful for the steadfast people who walked with me this last year, sharing my inner life and the pain and grief there.  Your love and compassion, words and silences, your steady presence and understanding of my anguish have helped me heal.  You have made all the difference and I love you.  Thank you!

SHATTERING CHANGE

by Bennett Conrad 

"I have good news and bad news, which do you want to hear first?"  "The good news!" my sister and I exclaimed. 

"Well, Donna, Jeff, David, Rob, Jamie and Grandma are all coming for a long visit."

"Great" we replied.  

"Don't get worked up because the bad news will bring you down.  Dad's cancer is getting a little overwhelming, so Dr. Kossman took him his off chemotherapy."

"You're not saying what I think you're saying, are you?"

"Yes, and it's very sad."

Mom stopped talking and began to cry.  So did Olivia and I.

"First Libby, then Grandpa, and now Dad!" I yelled in outrage.

"I know, it really sucks," whimpered mom.

"Why now? It's almost Christmas and then his 50th birthday." I croaked.

"Bennett, we'll be able to see him before he's gone."

"Really?"

"Yes, at the hospice center."

Two days later... he was still as a statute, but he was clinging onto life.  Grandma, David and two of my aunts sat around his hospital bed trading stories about Dad and saying quiet prayers.  David, my uncle, held my dad's cold hands for about 5 whole hours.  Then the worst, the cruelest, maddening part of the day came, we had to leave.  I stood up, walked over to Dad's bed and whispered in his ear, "I love you."  Suddenly, Dad sat up and opened his eyes; he looked grand, like cancer hadn't laid one poisonous gnarled little finger on his great life.  He took my hand, looked me in the eye and said, "I love you too."  Then he slipped back into unconsciousness.  I was the last person to ever speak with him. 

We got into our car and slowly drove away; devastated.  And that was the last time I ever saw my father.  Philip Taylor Berry Conrad died on November 15th a year ago today.  I will always remember him as a cunning and loving father, a blindingly fast and strong athlete, and one of cancers bravest, fiercest, and most determined competitors. 

Life is Beautiful

“Life is Beautiful” directed by and starring Roberto Benigni is the story of a devoted father and his son who end up in a Nazi concentration camp.  In an attempt to hold his family together and help his son survive the horrors of the camp, the father imagines that the Holocaust is a game and that the grand prize for winning is a tank.  At the time the movie came out I didn't have any children, but just watching the previews and imagining what the father had to go through, the pretending and the elaborate charades, it was unbearable to watch, let alone consider being in that position myself.  And the title?  I knew what it was suggesting but I just couldn't get there at the time.  I love movies and will watch most anything across all genres.  I've never seen this movie and I probably never will.  At first I just didn't want to "go there" but now, it's a moot point.  

See now, I get it.  Life is beautiful.  Although I haven't been through anything nearly as horrific as the Holocaust I know what it is to want to protect your children.  Protect them from seeing their young, strong, capable father slowly wasting away in front of them.  Shield them from the realities of depression and cancer and chemotherapy and grief that encroached on our lives and their childhood.  And yet.  To deprive them of these basic truths of their lives would have been to deprive them of all the beauty that is life.  I don't need to see the movie because I've lived that story.  I don't need to watch it unfold on screen and ask myself "what would I do in a similar position?"  I was refined in the crucible of Phil's unrelenting illness and death.

I am a mother and although my first instinct will always be to protect my children, I also take into consideration what is ultimately best for them.  When a teachable moment comes along I seize it, because in their lives, as in mine, it is what it is.  With Phil's cancer, we were all dealt a shitty hand, he more than anymore.  But I tell you, the way that man played his hand was inspiring to watch and be a part of.  I am changed forever.  If I'd shielded Bennett and Olivia from that by pretending or sugar-coating it, it would have diminished what he was teaching them in the face of his greatest challenge and what I believe will be some of their greatest life lessons going forward.  Phil was showing them that life is beautiful and worth fighting and suffering greatly for.  He was showing them that love is beautiful, that family matters, friends matter, faith matters.  He taught them how to suffer with dignity and die well.  Phil lived a life of love and was a good father to his children to the very end.

Thank you Phil, you are beyond beautiful.

   

Steel Nation

My Sunday Best

It's quite easy for people to find our house when coming over for the first time.  We're the one's with a Steelers banner hanging in the front yard.  We understandably stirred up some interest with our neighbors when we put it up and it's definitely been a conversation piece.  Although The Chargers aren't remotely on par with The Steelers we still have some die-hard fans here.  My parents for one have been season ticket holders for over 45 years.  They even flew to Miami for that joke of a Super Bowl.  My brother Stephen drives down from Redlands (a couple of hours away) to enjoy the season tickets next to my parents which he bought from their best friends when they became available.    

Until we put up the banner we hadn't heard much from our neighbors.  The street is wide and quiet and though folks had waved and smiled as they drove by no one had actually introduced themselves yet.  Something about hanging that banner tipped the scales and one by one they started making their way over to say something.  Comments ranged from "what's with the banner?", to "that's my son's favorite team", to my personal favorite from my next door neighbor's father-in-law, "the Steelers made me a lot of money in the 70's!"  

Inevitably Bennett or I would explain why we had the banner up in the first place.  Our Daddio was from Pittsburgh, he had died in November, and we all bleed black and gold.  Anyone who had even the slightest problem with it would have quieted down after that I'm thinking.  I married in to this passion for the Steelers and it's a great legacy from Phil that I share with my Pittsburgh friends.  It's hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it - being a part of Steel Nation.  But it is everywhere.  The kids and I see Steelers bumper stickers, license plate holders, T shirts, paraphernalia of every kind down here.  

To be fair, tomorrow I'll be wearing my #14 Dan Fouts jersey when The Chargers take on The Raiders (boo hiss), having been raised watching the Titans Kellen Winslow, Charlie Joiner and John Jefferson in the era of Air Coryell.  However, when the Chargers have six Super Bowl rings that's when I'll hang their banner in front of my house.

Game Changer

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

After writing the last post I went back and read the blog I posted at this time last year.  It was very instructional and surprising at the same time.  It reminded me to consider perspective yet again.  As I well know but often forget, things can change very quickly, in a matter of minutes.  Other times they change imperceptibly, particularly when we are marking time and hoping for a specific outcome.

This time last year Phil had a normal bone marrow biopsy and a PET scan showing that his lymphoma had regressed and he was responding well to his chemotherapy.  There was a small area in his chest which appeared to be residual scar tissue but otherwise he was looking fairly good.  We were referred to UCSD for a bone marrow transplant consultation where we set those wheels in motion.  We were cautiously optimistic even though the lymphoma continued to plague Phil with effusions.

And it was around this time last year that Phil went to Atlanta for a buddies trip - to see his high school friends whom he'd been getting together with for years.  It was a calculated risk, that trip.  He had developed new swollen lymph nodes prior to his departure which we weren't certain about.  By the time he came home from that trip he was drastically altered.  He came home with another pleural effusion and over the course of the next 2 1/2 months he'd deteriorate quickly despite an incredible will to live.  

Two and a half months.  I don't recall things changing so quickly or declining so rapidly.  Each day was crammed with so many things to attend to, appointments to keep, endless emotional ups and downs.  It was all so surreal and time took on the quality of suspended animation.  It's no surprise to me that I lost sense of time.  As my counselor so aptly put it this week, "don't be surprised by your capacity for storage.  You had to put a lot of stuff away for later because of the chaotic nature of your life at that time."  Well, I've been doing a good deal of unpacking lately.  All of the sudden there seem to be a lot of packages showing up on my front door. 

I don't think it's any coincidence that it is happening as I am rounding the bend into the anniversary of Phil's death.  The routine of school, the approaching holidays, the heat and humidity - everything conjures up memories of those last days.  As I lit a candle the other day the scent of it instantly took me back to our rental house on Lomita.  I saw Phil in repose on our red couch, his feet swollen and propped up on pillows, in his hand the cup of "juice-water" he continually drank in those last days.   I felt the bond of the circle of friends and family gathered there with us, surrounding him with immeasurable love and care.  Those last days were time multiplied.  

Now, as I go through the stuff that's showing up for me (my storage unit so to speak) I'm increasingly anxious to get through this year of firsts.  To get it over with and start into the next year, the year after Phil died.  Yet when I pause to reflect I realize I don't want to miss one moment of the next 2 1/2 months this time around.  At this point last year I was inconsistently available for my children's needs emotionally.  Thankfully there were other wonderful adults who stood in the gap.  Now it's just us, Sally, Bennett, and Olivia day in and day out.  

In these last weeks something subtle and sweet has been slowly developing between us a midst the anguish and anger we feel ~ feelings we too quickly take out on one another.  We are all quite tired.  We are collectively ready for a change.  For our little threesome a crucial part of moving forward in change will require that I consistently be there for them as the painful and sad moments ahead intensify.  "Life is change, growth is optional."  I want to continue to show them the way through to growth and healing.  May it be so.

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!