Category: Life Changes

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Hospice

IMG_1060Two women came out of the room closest to where I was sitting in the hallway with Natalie, Eric’s mother.  Natalie has been through another round of hospitalization, and this time the doctor suggested she be discharged to hospice.  The Connecticut Hospice is in a beautiful location, on the water at the entrance to Branford Harbor.  Sunday was a gray and windy day and the wall of windows in the lobby opened to waves sloshing against the rocks along the shore.

The older of the two women put her hand on my shoulder and stood next to me.  Natalie was dozing, I was sitting quietly, content just to be there with her through her cycles of waking and napping.  “I know what it’s like,” the woman said.  “It’s good of you to be here.”

I looked up at her.  “I know what it’s like too,” I said.  “I’ve been through this before.”  I nodded towards Natalie.  “I was married to her son who died.”

“My son, 46-years old.”  The woman gestured towards the room she’d come out of.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.  “Her son, Eric, was only 54.  Ocular melanoma.”

“Brain tumor,” the woman said, and again I said, “I’m so sorry.”  The other woman with her just stood there nodding.  We all looked at each other, quiet, letting our shared language of ages and diseases settle between us.

The women were gone by the time Natalie opened her eyes again.  The sound of a trio, violin, piano and guitar, playing holiday music came down the hall from a common room. “Let’s get moving,” Natalie said, not for the first time during the visit.  “Okay, let’s move.”

“Why don’t we stay here,” I said.  “We can listen to the music.”

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Lucky

I ran into a friend last night while out with David.  “How are you two?” she asked.  “I hope things are settling down.  When I saw your last blog post I thought ‘No, not more tough stuff.'”

She’s right.  Enough tough stuff.  One afternoon shortly after Eric was first diagnosed with metastatic ocular melanoma, and we realized how very sick he was and how little time he had left, we were lying on the bed together talking.  “We’re the luckiest unlucky people in the world,” Eric said, and I agreed.  The cancer was enormous bad luck, but we were so lucky in so many ways — our love and marriage, our children, our family and friends, our comfortable and privileged life.

After Eric’s original diagnosis, three years before, I’d thought a lot about the concept of luck, and how often we only perceive our good fortune in contrast to what could have been worse.  Here’s the poem I wrote then.  I’m still as lucky as ever.

LUCKY

to be alive after an accident,
after a grave illness, to be able
to recover and comprehend
all that could have gone wrong

the wrongness that happened
the reference for all that’s left intact.
Why do we need misfortune
to remind us how full the bucket

of luck is, each moment unfolding, one
glow after another, out in the silver
dawn, out in the indigo dusk, hauling
our luck around with us, holding on.

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Repositioning the Fan

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“Our family’s fan is positioned too close to the source of shit,” Sam said to me Sunday evening, as we were leaving the hospital.  We’d been visiting a dear friend, hospitalized because of troubling symptoms, yet to be clearly diagnosed.  We had a Thanksgiving weekend rich in family and friends, all gathered essentially to love each other.  “Your family has a remarkable capacity for being together without any conflicts,” David said to me at one point over the weekend.

True, but in the midst of the weekend gathering we’d gotten a phone call about our friend that let us know, once again, the fan was in the direct path of the shit.  But our Thanksgiving weekend was also full of fun with epic eating, hours of sitting in the warm sunshine on the south side of the porch, and a walk everyone was able to take on Friday morning, including my mother who was in the hospital herself, barely able to get out of bed, just a few weeks ago.

The domed pile of brush I’d been adding to all summer and fall got torched on Friday night, burning quickly in a hot whoosh of flame, then settling down into a warm, firewood-fed campfire.  A gang of Sam’s friends had come for the weekend, and along with family, and more friends, a ring of us sat around the fire talking and laughing and telling stories.  Feeding the fire, we were feeding our selves, soaking up the fundamentally satisfying act of watching wood burn while sitting with people we love.

So I’m repositioning the fan, or at least putting it on oscillating mode, so it can swing between all this weekend’s memories — the food, the fire, the family and friends laughing and walking and sitting in the warmth of the sun and the burning wood, and yes, the suckiness of more illness in our lives.  Back and forth.  Here we go.

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Walking Evening Into Dusk

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My days have felt focused and scattered, frenetic and flattened, too short and too long.  Trying to hang on to my balance in the swirl of events I’ve been living through lately, I’ve found walking the evening into dusk and then darkness has helped a lot.  I grind through the day getting what must be done done, or whacking away at some item on the long list of things I thought would have been done long ago, but aren’t.  Suddenly the day is almost over and a walk lit by the last of the light has been seeming just right.

A favorite track crosses the hay field at the top of Harmony Hill, then follows a trail into Northwood Meadows State Park, making a loop around the pond.  Yesterday the evening light turned rose as the clouds picked up color from the setting sun and the pine needles along the trail fired into a deep orange.  The pond reflected the changing light, from pink to gray to the last of the day’s blue.  Walking back to the car the trees were black and the path was white, drawing my attention to exactly where it should be, right there, right then, right now.

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Life’s Left Turns

Navigating the unexpected left turns in life is no easy thing.  Taking a left turn is always tricky — assessing the oncoming traffic, making sure there’s space for you to cross lanes, moving swiftly but confidently in the face of not being quite sure what might pop up in front of you.

After Eric died, I read a good bit of Pema Chodron, and was very attracted to her messages about embracing groundlessness — letting go of our expectation that life always has to be happy and perfect and planned, and realizing that life is a process unfolding in unpredictable ways that bring both joy and pain, loss and gain, grief and acceptance.  Being truly present in each moment of my life, and understanding that that’s really all there is, was a lesson I learned through my grief process, and one I have to keep relearning.  Remembering that my attachment to the idea that I know exactly where I am and where I’m going is an illusion, and that the groundlessness of life is going to catch up with me over and over again is helpful.  Get back into this moment, because really, that’s all there is.

It’s warm enough to be on the porch writing this afternoon, and I’m grateful for the soft air and the shelter that lets me be outside as intermittent showers veil the fields surrounding me.  The maples that still have leaves are yellow, and the oaks are amber behind the gray rain.  This is a moment to savor as I spin the wheel to the left.

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Yom Kippur: Memory, Love, Stones

Last night at Kol Nidre services, the eve of Yom Kippur, I sat next to a woman who was the pianist at services for many years.  She turned to me when I sat down.  “Hello, Grace, I’m Justine.”  I told her I knew her and was glad to see her again.  At the end of the service the Rabbi asked that we leave quietly, as the Yom Kippur service doesn’t officially end, but extends for 24 hours, with breaks for sleeping and resting.  Justine turned to me and said, “I know I’m not supposed to talk, but I just wanted to tell you how much I miss Eric, what a special man he was.  I wish I’d known him better.”  This is the seventh Yom Kippur since Eric died.

After my D’var Torah during Rosh Hashanah last week, a member of the Temple told me she’d gone to the Temple’s section of Blossom Hill Cemetery the day before.  Part of my D’var Torah talked about visiting Eric’s grave and leaving stones there.  He has a lot of rocks on his grave.  More than any other gravestone there.  “I had some young ones with me, and one boy wanted to know what the stones on the graves meant,” she told me.  “I explained that loved ones visit the graves and leave rocks as reminders of their visits.  Then he asked me how come some of the gravestones don’t have any rocks.  I explained the best I could, that maybe their family is far away, or gone.  Then the boy pointed to Eric’s grave and said, ‘Well look at all the rocks on that gravestone.  A lot of people must love him.'”

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A New Year

Today is the fourth day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  This year I was given the honor of delivering the D’var Torah during the second day services; it’s a tradition at Temple Beth Jacob for a member of the congregation to be the guest speaker on the second day.  A D’var Torah is a talk related to a portion of the Torah (first five books of the Jewish Bible), usually that week’s portion to be read during services, often including life lessons and commentary.  A sermon, in other words.

Eric was deeply involved with Temple Beth Jacob, and had written five different D’var Torah commentaries over the years, for different occasions.  I read them all, trying to plan what to say.  It was wonderful to reconnect with Eric in that way, to remember his commitment to Judaism and to sustaining a strong Jewish community.  I didn’t end up with a plan about how to focus my D’var Torah, but I did end up talking about the Yiddish saying, “One plans, God laughs,” and how planning can be laughable, in both a discouraging, and encouraging way.  Because our plans often get interrupted by unfortunate events, but we also often end up in fortunate places without any planning on our parts.

My talk went well, and those at services on Tuesday were uniformly positive in responding to my talk (I talked a lot, also, about Eric, and David, and the twists and turns of life and death and moving on — I’d put the talk up here, but it’s too long for a blog post).

But best of all is the herons I’ve seen every day since the beginning of the New Year.  Great Blue Herons were Eric’s favorite bird, and I see him when I see a heron.  The last two mornings, out for my morning run, a heron has lifted out of the brook I was running past and slowly flapped its long wings to cruise along the course of the water.  “Hey, Eric, Shana Tova,” I thought and heard Eric saying back to me, “Good job.”

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Coincidental Conversations

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Three times in the last week I’ve stumbled into wonderful conversations with people I didn’t know before we started talking, and found much to affirm the almost constant swirl in my own head about what I’m doing with my life right now, what I think I should be doing, what I could do better if I’m not doing things exactly right or according to some indiscernible grand plan, and how I might be doing something different if that’s what I want.  Or think?

Sound confusing?  It is, but the conversations helped.  The first was with a long ago friend of David’s, at a birthday party for another long ago friend.  A group of people who had either lived in or been connected to a large communal household in the Boston area 40 years ago had gathered for the celebration, and David and I had a long talk with Barbara, another artist, trying to understand what role art and painting plays in her life.  Right now she’s not interested in “having a show,” painting for the purpose of selling her work, or even painting for anyone else.  Instead, she’s interested in finding her voice as a painter, and trying to explore and understand the role of creating beauty as a primary purpose of art.

As she talked, I could feel her thoughts resonating with ideas of my own I hadn’t even articulated to myself.  Why do I want to write?  Why aren’t I writing more?  Who am I writing for?  Is it enough just to write when I want, however I want, for whatever reason?  Does ambition about getting published and read and recognized help in the writing process, or hinder it?  And do I even care about any of that?  Talking to Barbara helped all these questions come to the forefront, and I’m far from answering them, but I know this is a conversation I want to keep having, however I can fit that into my life.

On Tuesday, with clear days and clear calendars ahead of us, David and I went north to the White Mountains for a couple of days.  We hiked first up Mt. Madison and spent the night at the Madison Spring Hut, allowing us to stay above tree line on the grand Presidential ridge.   The Appalachian Mountain Club huts provide sleeping bunks and hearty meals to hikers at high elevation locations, making staying in the mountains a truly in-the-mountains experience.

The night at the hut gave David and me time to summit both Madison and Adams, two of the tallest mountains in New Hampshire, and the chance to share dinner and breakfast with two interesting people, extending our own dialogue, both internal and between us, about what we’re doing, what we want to do, what we should do and how do we fashion our lives in the absence of huge jobs and the presence of significant creative urges.

Francois is from outside Montreal, and was on a multi-day hike, peak-bagging, and staying in shape for his central goal, which is to climb the highest peak on each continent. He’s already done 4, including getting to the summit of Everest last May.  He’s driven by a singular goal, focused, direct and intent.  Talking to him about his adventures was wonderful, because he seems to live with very few questions about what he’s doing.  When we asked him why he’s climbing the highest mountains in the world his answer was simple.  He loves it, he loves mountains, he loves the process and opportunity for success.

We also spent a lot of time talking to Cathy, the mother of one of the hut crew members, there to visit and spend time with her daughter in the mountains. Cathy is between major projects at this point, her children grown and starting out in their own lives, her own career as a landscape architect on hold for now.  She’s interested in writing, community design, food security, urban garden planning, and her family.  Talking to her was, again, like talking to myself.  What is this later life I’m experiencing for?  What’s the best use of whatever time I have left, where should I put my focus?  What am I doing?

One thing I’m doing is finding interesting people who are happy to talk about what they’re doing, whether they have a clear answer to why they’re doing what they’re doing or what it means, or they don’t.  Because it’s really all the same, isn’t it?  We’re here and we’re doing the best we can.

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I Love Weddings!

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Now my children are tied for having the best wedding ever.  Adrienne and Matt were married almost four years ago in a perfect NH lakeside ceremony.  Sam and Marianna were married on Sunday in a perfect, East Tennessee farm ceremony.  The last week of wedding prep was very very busy, too busy to be writing about what I was doing, just doing it.  The culmination of all the months of planning and decision-making and preparations and lists was one of the things I love best — a wedding, the grandest kind of party.

The wedding was at Evereux Farm in Bean Station, a beautiful piece of land owned and stewarded by Rob and Lisa Ray.  Being long time friends of Marianna’s family, they graciously offered to host the wedding on the farm.  The sweetness of the land, an open slope under tall trees falling away to a pond with Cherokee Lake and tree covered hills on the horizon, was the perfect setting for a country wedding.  The biggest worry was the heat, but the day cooled off just enough by the time of the ceremony, and the sun had swung west far enough so the guests were sitting in shade.  By the time everyone was dancing under the tent no one cared anymore about sweat and fallen hairdos.

The rattlesnake who’d been living in the stone wall behind the tent was caught and captured on Thursday when we were out at the farm for the tent set up.  Luckily, “Alan,” as Sammy named him when he and Rob Ray drove him to a far off hill to relocate him, came out for a nap in the sun during the afternoon.   Rob raked him into a garbage can and off he went.  And lived on in name only at the Rattlesnake Bar.

The wedding included a continuation and expansion of the dress swap tradition.  At Adrienne’s wedding, my sister Meg and her daughter Amelia and I were all admiring each other’s dresses at the beginning of the reception.  So we decided to swap dresses throughout the reception, all being about the same size, and did a three-way swap, all of us wearing one of the three dresses at some point in the evening.  We promised we’d do it again at the next wedding, and we did.  Then Pam, Marianna’s mother, wanted in on the fun, so she joined the swap, and at one point I was wearing Pam’s dress and she was wearing mine.   Was this the first wedding ever when the bride’s and groom’s mothers swapped dresses during the reception?

Every wedding has its last-minute cancellations and guests who never RSVP and then show up.  And having an old college friend call you the night before the wedding to say he’s here, he’s coming, then show up with an uninvited and unannounced guest isn’t that unusual.  But having that friend show up with a woman wearing four-inch heels that get caught in the soft grass of the farm and a poofy net-skirted dress with a tiny strapped top that shows off the spider tatoo spanning her chest, and who turns out to be a porn star at ease discussing her current work (girl on girl only these days) like others were discussing their graduate degree programs or new jobs  is pretty unique.  Porn star wedding crasher — a new one for all of us.

Emilio was the ring bearer and was almost unbearably cute.  I’ll let the photo tell that story.

On Sunday morning I drove out to the farm with Adrienne and Emilio, so I could help put Emilio down for a nap and so Adrienne could help with “day of” task management and take her turn getting her make up and hair done.  I took the opportunity to go for a long swim in the pond.  As I walked down the slope to the water, a heron lifted up and flapped its long wing beats off across the open fields.  Eric comes to me in herons, as they were a favorite bird of his.  The moment was only one of many moments of Eric’s presence, noted and silent, throughout the whole weekend.

And finally, the highlight of all highlights, my son is married to a wonderful woman.  And my daughter is married to a wonderful man.  And I’m married to a wonderful man and his wonderful daughter Melia was part of the whole family wedding weekend and now there are sisters everywhere, because Marianna has three of them and we all have Melia too.  Lots of love.  Such blessings.

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Change of Status

I changed two things in my blog bio yesterday.  First, rather than saying The Truth About Death would be published in April 2012, it now says the book was published.  Hurrah!

Also, I removed “widow” as one of the many words to describe myself.  A widow is “a woman whose spouse has died and who has not remarried.”  I’m married, in fact, today is the first anniversary for David and me.  We didn’t tell anyone, other than Emilio (who so far is showing amazing skills at secret-keeping) for a long time, for a number of reasons.  We were planning to get married someday, in fact felt married, but found out last April we needed to be married by June 15 when David was also leaving his job in order for me to get on his health insurance.  The “domestic partner” provision we’d thought would cover us is only for same sex couples.  So, we got married in a hurry and decided to keep it to ourselves, mostly because we were too busy in the whirlwind of winding down our jobs and in our family lives to make a big deal out of getting married.

We started telling our children, our families, and our friends, about two months ago.  Now we’re telling everyone.  Happy Anniversary!