Finding My Way

Four years ago today, I was presenting - for the first time in my career - at a national conference.  I had spent the first part of the week with my family at my sister’s family’s house in California and had flown from there to Minneapolis to go to the conference.  My husband and my daughters had taken a flight from L.A. back home where I planned to meet them in a few days after the conference had ended.

Things were humming along.  I actually remember walking out the door of my house to leave on the trip to go to L.A.; I wouldn’t normally remember something like that from years ago, but there were two things that have made that memory stick in my head.  I remember feeling a little more jittery than I typically do when I leave to go out of town, because this time I was traveling in a triangular pattern, first for pleasure and then for business, and I was nervous that I was forgetting something that I would need on the trip.  The second reason that I still remember leaving my house that day four years ago is that I got a concerning text message from my dad just as I was getting into the car to go to the airport.  As it turned out, that was the last text that I ever got from him - but that's not why I thought the text was important at the time I received my dad's message.

When I heard the ding on my phone indicating that I’d gotten a text, I grabbed my cell phone out of my purse so I could read the message as my husband drove to the airport.  “Met with grandmom’s dr to sign hospice papers.  Hope the girls take news ok,” Dad had typed in his typical shorthand form of texting.   As usual, I was able to read between the lines to understand what he meant despite the somewhat cryptic qualities of his message: At the age of 90, my grandmother (his mother) had been very ill for over two years. My parents had just met with her doctor to discuss her plan of care because of health problems she had been experiencing.  She had been moved into a nursing home a couple of years before due to significant cognitive decline, and at that point she had severe swallowing problems and progressing overall physical weakness.  In the meeting, I found out later, my parents had been told that her condition was continuing to worsen and that she likely only had a few weeks left to live.  My dad, acting as her representative for medical power of attorney, agreed that adding hospice services to supplement the care she was getting in the skilled nursing facility was in her best interest.  As his message conveyed, he was concerned about how my daughters and the other grandchildren would take the news of Grandmom's worsening condition.

Although I could tell what he meant by what he had written, what I realized I didn’t know as I processed the news was how he felt.  Like his mother, my dad was never very touchy-feely; there were many occasions in my life that I witnessed him keeping a stiff upper lip so as not to show his emotions and several other times when it seemed like he was just more of the mindset of “Let’s get this over with” than “Let’s think it over and share how we feel about it.”  As he liked to say: “It is what it is … because what else would it be?”  But on this day, as my husband drove down the interstate, I felt like I needed to somehow acknowledge the emotions I thought it was safe to guess that he was experiencing, and so I texted back, “You are a good son.  Your mom knows that you love her, and you are doing all the right things to care for her.”  I don’t know why I chose those words or even why I decided to say something that sentimental to him at that time; it isn’t usually how we communicated, and that’s why that moment sticks in my head.  Well, that, and the fact that, as I realized later, in what seemed like such an ordinary instant when I walked out of my house and closed the door behind me that day, I was stepping into a life so different from the way I had known it to be.

When I was about ten years old, my dad entered me into one of the first road races I had entered as a runner, and, for reasons that escape me now, it was one of the few times in my running career that I ran in a road race in which he didn’t also run. 

Like many of the races I participated in during my childhood, this one took place in a small town in Mississippi.  In my mind, the scene at the starting line that day blurs into the hundreds of other scenes like it, but what happened over the next hour stands out as a memory all of its own.  In this race, to my surprise, I found myself in a small group of runners that had broken away from the rest of the field about at the first mile marker.  Or, I should say, about at the point where I thought the first mile marker should have been.  For the first seven or eight minutes of the race, there was silence amongst the four other runners and me except for the sound of our breathing as we ran.  Gradually, each of us realized that we had probably covered a distance of more than a mile, and one of the other runners asked if the rest of us were sure that we were going the right way.  None of us were; we had counted on being able to follow signs or directions given by volunteers along the way so that we would know when we had passed each of the mile marks and where to turn on the course.  As we found out later, though, we'd passed by the first turn faster than the race director had expected, and so there was nothing/no one there to tell us to make the turn and we had continued to run straight down the street.  By the time we realized that we were probably off the course, we were well over a mile past that place where we should have changed direction.  We kept running and eventually saw an old man watering his front lawn, at which point we slowed to a jog and one of the other runners shouted to him, “How do we get back to the community center?” which is where the race finished.  The man looked at us like we were crazy and then pointed back over his shoulder in almost the opposite direction from the way we were running.  For some reason, the five of us still didn’t stop running; without speaking, we all hung a right at the next street corner to head in the direction the man had indicated, and eventually we found our way to the finish line.

Since October 23, 2010, the day when the cancer in my dad’s brain was discovered, in many ways I have felt like I did out there on the course in that race so many years ago: lost, confused, exhausted, and in a state of disbelief as to how the whole thing even happened.  But, also like my experience in that race, I am comforted by the fact that I am not having to cover the distance by myself, and somehow that gives me the strength I need to continue along the course.

And that, I guess, is one way that I have changed, in increments over the past few years: I have come to see and to believe that it is human tendency to adjust despite pain and loss – and that resilience is born of character and nurtured by love and connection.

I Think The Myth Is A Myth

I spent a lot of time on the road during the ten weeks that my dad was sick, driving between my house and my parents' house and between my house and the hospital or the rehab center.  During much of the time, I listened to talk shows on radio stations like "NYU Docs."  Early one morning when I was on my way back home after having spent the night with my dad in the rehab center, I happened upon a talk show on the topic of the emotional aspects associated with aging.  The conversation broached the subject of terminal illness, and, before I really realized what I was doing, I had called in to the show and was on the air.  

"Stephanie from Tennessee is interested in finding out how to help her father who has recently been diagnosed with brain cancer," the host said as a way of introduction, and somehow I found myself on the air telling the short version of my dad's illness and asking for advice on how to address the emotional issues that were coming along with the changes and the challenges he was experiencing.  Right away, the host started talking about how we should be helping my dad to identify the legacy that he would be leaving behind.  As I listened to her talk, I felt a burning sensation in my gut for which I could not immediately identify the source; as the host made a few more statements and then closed the conversation, though, it hit me: she thought I was asking how to help him cope with his impending death.  I wanted to call back to tell her that my question was aimed at helping him have the best life he could, not the best death, but at that point I was crying so hard I knew my words would not be able to be understood.  I wasn't nearly ready to go to the depths of that subject yet, not for even a second, not on any level.  

Several days later I thought back to the words of the radio show host and thought that maybe I should remind my dad about some of the important things that he had done in his life so far - and also talk to him about his goals for the future related to accomplishment.  We'd had lots of conversations since he'd gotten sick about things he wanted to do (his Revised Bucket List), but maybe it was a good idea to broach the subject of what he felt he needed to get done, in whatever time he had left.

Looking back, that seems kind of ridiculous; knowing my dad as I did, I should have known that he would see that type of thinking as way too philosophical.  He was much more of the "just do it" mentality than the "talk about it/plan it out" type.  And he would probably never have been done; he would never have allowed himself to run out of items on his "to-do" list.  I can not at all picture him kicked back, thinking, "Well, I've done all that needs to be done in life; I'm just going to relax and do nothing for the rest of the time I have."  There would always have been one more challenge that he would have assigned to himself; that's just who he was.

The thing that made me remember back to that radio show and the conversations and thoughts that followed was an article that I read this week called The Myth of Finding Your Purpose.  I was expecting the article, written by a woman who had gone through cancer treatment, to be thought-provoking, and it was - just not in the way that I expected.

"Your purpose has nothing to do with what you do," the author says, and she goes on to explain that she thinks one's life purpose "is about discovering and nurturing who you truly are, to know and to love yourself at the deepest level and to guide yourself back home when you lose your way."  Reading these words, I feel that same burning sensation in my gut that I felt from the response of the talk show host on my interstate drive that day nearly three years ago. This time I can identify the source of that burning easily, though: it's anger, annoyance, and aggravation.  It's a fervent desire to dispute what she is saying, because I feel to the depth of my being that she is wrong.  She is wrong.

The purpose of life is connection; it's doing good, in whatever way and on whatever level works for each person.  It's erring on the side of kindness; it's experiencing gratitude; and it's doing what we can to leave the world a little better place when it's our time to go on ahead.  

The point she makes about the danger of only being able to feel worthy based on the feedback from others isn't new: that's called codependence.  Reading back through her article makes me want to get out my red pen and write in my own comments and corrections: for example, when she says, "When our purpose is external, we may never find it. If we tie our purpose or meaning to our vocation, goal or an activity, we're more than likely setting ourselves up for suffering down the line," I want to draw a little caret symbol in between the words "is" and "external" in the first sentence and insert the word "only," and I want to do the same thing in between the words "tie" and "our" in the second sentence and insert the words "all of."  While I'm at it, I'd like to do the same thing just before the word "goal" and squeeze in the words "or to the achievement of a specific" so that the declaration becomes "When our purpose is [only] external, we may never find it. If we tie [all of] our purpose or meaning to our vocation, [or to the achievement of a specific] goal or an activity, we're more than likely setting ourselves up for suffering down the line."  My point is this: despite the fact that people are going to disappoint us, that there will be times when we will feel that our efforts have gone unrecognized, and that sometimes we won't be able to do what we set out to do, in my opinion we need to do our best to, well, do our best to leave a positive mark - yes, an external one, because when we're gone, that's all that will be left of us.

Reading the rest of the article really only exasperates me even more.  To me, the platitudinal (not sure that's a real word, but if not it should be) bullet points about mindfulness of one's self, releasing all shame, and elevating one's own energy sound empty, or made-up, or both.  "To remember your holiness and treat yourself accordingly ... "  REALLY??  If I were buying what she's selling, I'd spend the rest of my days sipping a cold drink on a sunny beach and nothing more.  I'd be full of inter-connectness with myself, all right, but that's about it.

And to her last point: "What if your purpose is to bear witness to your suffering?"  As my dad would sometimes say in a Scooby Do voice, "HUH??" 

CLICK HERE FOR THE SOUND EFFECT I'M TALKING ABOUT!

Unlike the author of this article, I don't think that suffering is "essential;" I think it's most likely unavoidable, but those things aren't the same.  As I've said before, my family didn't need my dad to have to suffer in order to appreciate our lives or to love each other fiercely; we already had that going.  I'm not disputing her point that a person who feels fulfilled and loved is much more likely to be in a position to give back to others, but I just can't agree that a person's purpose is "about finding and nurturing yourself ... not an external ... accomplishment ... even if that ... is the most important discovery of all time."  I don't like the way she refers to some of the people she's met ("brilliant and effective activists," at that) as "messes;" my god, aren't we all in some way or another??  

As anyone who has read pretty much any of this blog or talked to me for any amount of time about perspective probably knows, I don't dispute the fact that inner peace is an important goal, one that can often be reached through having a certain perspective and by making choices about how our circumstances are viewed; I just don't think it's the most important goal in life, and I certainly don't think it's my only true life purpose.

For more food for thought, here's a video of a presentation by a speaker I think is very insightful and interesting:

Dr. Brené Brown at TEDxHouston

Connections

As a child, I loved nature and the outdoors. When I needed some alone time, I would often grab a plastic milk crate and, with that in hand, climb one of the pecan trees in our backyard.  High up in the tree, I would place the crate upside down in the branches and sit on it so I could relax as I felt the breeze blowing through the limbs and watch what was going on below.

One thing I've found since my dad went on ahead is a renewed feeling of that love for the open air and the peace that it gives me; it makes me feel some of the connection to my dad that I, like many others who have lost loved ones, am seeking - so much so that we often end up noticing, watching for, and even collecting things that remind us of our loved one.  Just like I did up in those tree branches many years ago, these days I find peace in the sight of a rainbow or a particularly magnificent sunset or a bird that seems to be looking right at me for an atypical amount of time.

A few months after my dad died, I mentioned in conversation with a friend that I derived a little bit of comfort in having some of my dad's things with me - an old shirt of his, a pair of his socks, a book of his with the corners of some pages folded over where he had marked his place.  My friend, who had been through the loss of a parent before me, told me that she understood, and she predicted that at some point I wouldn't feel as strong of a need to hold onto my dad's things because I would feel connected to him through my memories instead.  She may be right, but I'm not there yet.

For as long as I can remember, my dad had a favorite pillow.  He was always a little particular about things that affected the quality of his sleep; I guess that came from getting up so early to run for so many years.  For years while I was growing up, he had an orthopedic-type of pillow that he slept on every night; he even took it on road trips so he would have that one instead of having to sleep on a hotel pillow.  There were several instances when he left his pillow behind in a hotel room, and, when he realized his mistake, he called the front desk at the hotel and with his usual friendliness persuaded an employee to mail it back to him at home.

When I went to the hospital to be with my dad when he first got sick, I brought a pillow from my house.  The pillow case was one that my daughters had tie-dyed months before; I thought it would be good to have an extra one at the hospital for Dad or whomever was staying there with him to use, and I knew the original design of that pillow case would differentiate our pillow from one that was hospital property.  That pillow ended up following us along during the whole time Dad was sick, going with us from the hospital, to rehab, to the hotel where we stayed when we took Dad to the Brain Tumor Clinic at Duke, to my parents' house, to the hospital again, and finally back to my parents' house.  When we brought Dad home from the hospital the last time, we bought about a dozen new pillows to use to position him to try to keep him comfortable in the hospital bed; we encased all of them in blue pillow cases which we'd also purchased just for that purpose.  The pillow in the tie-dyed case wasn't needed anymore, and so I took it to sleep on, first at my parents' house and later at my own house.  I sleep on that pillow every night now; it, like the outdoors and like some of Dad's things from when he was healthy, bring me some comfort in an unexplainable way, especially at night when I seem to need it the most. 

The pillow that followed us

I imagine that it is a universal struggle for those of us left behind to decide what to do with the belongings of the person who has gone on ahead.  Dad would tell us to get rid of it all; he'd think we were being silly and sentimental, and he would point out that it's just stuff.  And it is, but his possessions marked his place in the world, and, in a way, I feel like they still do.  

Everything that changes in my parents' house - even in my house and even in the world around us - is something that takes me further away from him.  The first few times I was at my parents' house [I know I should just call it my mom's house, but sometimes I revert back to referring to it as theirs] after Dad died, I found myself looking around for dust - not to check my mother's housekeeping skills but because I had read somewhere a long time ago that household dust is made up of mostly skin cells, and so I reasoned that some of Dad physically was still there.  I felt - and I still do to some extent - desperate to hold onto anything that has the possibility of making me feel connected to him.  

Along the way, we've cleaned out and gotten rid of some of Dad's stuff; we donated some of his suits and most of the many pairs of running shoes that were crowding his closet.  It felt a little like ripping off a band-aid, except for the fact that it still hurts afterwards too.  Again, I am sure he would have wanted us to give those things to someone who will use them, but letting go of any of it is still a really hard thing to do.  I just don't want to lose any more of him.  

Sending a Message

I would guess it happens pretty often that after someone on goes on ahead, people who cared about him or her look back over old emails, letters, cards, and notes sent to them in the past by that person.

Dad, as a student at Auburn long ago, writing a paper in his dorm room

For me, looking back at things my dad wrote helps me to remember and to feel connected to him.  In doing so in the weeks after his death, my mom, my sisters, and I noticed a trend that we hadn’t noticed before: whether his message was written by hand or typed, he very often finished up the note by signing his name or writing his initials (sometimes even in lower case) and then adding two slash marks underneath, as if he were attempting to underscore the fact that he had ended that message or thought.  As with many unique practices or quirks of a loved one, this tendency seemed endearing to us, something that was a little peculiar but that was a trademark of sorts of his.  It reminded us of how lots of other people sign off with an “XOXO” to signify kisses and hugs or as a symbol of love, and so my family started using Dad’s special mark as an expression of love at the end of things we write to each other.  

On the day that marked one year since my dad’s passing, my mom, my siblings, and I decided to do a balloon release to honor him that day.  That afternoon, I bought four blue balloons (blue was my dad’s favorite color), one for each of my daughter, my husband, and me, and at 5:05 p.m. (five being his favorite number), as the sun was beginning to lower on the horizon, we stood in our driveway and released them.  We didn’t speak any words of wisdom or say anything in tribute; the moment seemed peaceful as it was, and I guess we wanted to keep it that way. Each of us lifted our eyes to the sky and let go of our balloon, one at a time.  

After a few second of watching the balloons drift upward in a cluster, my daughter decided to take a few photos.  As the balloons faded out of our sight, we looked back on the camera screen at the pictures she had taken, and below is what we saw in the progression of shots … notice the pattern of the balloons in #5 – a backward slash mark to us but a forwards one from above …

Look at the balloons - they are just over the top right corner of the house.

What’s Next?

I think that, like I do, my mom and my sisters are glad that we were with Dad when he left this world.  (I’m not sure we feel LUCKY about that; LUCKY would have been if he didn’t have to go at all!)  We have all, though, really struggled with flashback images of those last days, hours, and minutes.  I think all in all, though, I haven’t wrestled as much with our his final moments as much I did with the WHY or HOW of so many things, from how such a health-conscious person got such an aggressive cancer to why we had to fight for the many of the services that Dad got while he was sick when they should have been at-the-ready.  

I think the majority of people in my family believe that we will connect with Dad again in some way on some level at some point.  My mom, my siblings, and I have each sensed my dad's presence at different points and in different ways over the past fifteen months, and it comforts us in our grief and keep us going to feel that the potential for more of that exists.  

I realize that some people, even those who believe in heaven, don't believe or aren't sure if there are windows or links between those who are there and those who are here.  

For those who don’t believe that people who have gone on ahead can break through and connect with us, though, here's a story that may change your mind, and I've got another one that's on a more personal level coming up …

FIVE MINUTE VIDEO CLIP

Just Maybe, Part 2

It makes me feel a little better to think that my dad is around me in literal, living form.  When I sat down on my deck to write this, a blue butterfly circled just over my head several times.  It makes me smile even through my tears to think that maybe, just maybe, that was my dad (whose favorite color was blue), swooping in to check on me. 

Not long after he went on ahead, I had to go out of town to a conference for my job.  When I say I was not very focused on the presentations at this conference – that is an understatement.  I was barely hanging on.  If not for the kindness of my coworkers who were also there, I would not have been able to find the hotel, make it to any of the sessions, or figure out at what restaurant to eat during that time.  At one point, I felt another onslaught of tears coming on as one of the sessions ended, and I went outside and sat down by the hotel pool to try to collect myself.  About 60 seconds later, a little bluebird landed near my chair on the concrete and hopped over to within a few feet of where I sat.  “I’m trying, Dad,” I said.  The bird looked at me and just sat there peacefully for a couple of minutes more and then flew off into the sky. 

If it is him, if he can see us, I know for sure that he is happiest when we are happy and that he likes it best when we are together as a family.  When we were on our family trip to Destin this summer, I kept thinking that if Dad was around in spirit or other form, he would have been glad that he could check in on all of us, his children, our spouses, his grandchildren, and my mom, all at once.  Dad loved being efficient! 

Who knows for certain how things work after people go on ahead?  All I know for sure it that it makes me feel a little better to feel a connection with my dad, and thinking that he can see or hear me is one thing that gives some peace to me.  So when I see a squirrel stop and stare at me when I’m running or when a beautiful bird or butterfly floats by me, I will be thinking …

… maybe, just maybe, he’s just checking …

Symbols and Signs

Recently I went to visit my dad’s grave for the first time since his funeral.  I’ve actually never visited anyone's grave before, except to stand beside it as we laid to rest the remains of another family member.


I’ve heard some people say that it can be peaceful or healing to visit the grave of a loved one.  Because it’s the location on this Earth where the last bits of cells of that person are, it seems logical that one would be likely to feel some kind of connection there. 


My dad's body - or his ashes, rather - is buried next to the plots of my maternal grandparents.  The cemetery is a beautiful place in the country, with big trees and rolling hills.  Their headstones are very nice, and they have colorful silk flowers in the grave marker vases. 


I vaguely remember meeting with the guy from the funeral home (Mortician? Undertaker? Funeral director? Salesman?) with my mom and my sisters the day after Dad died and being asked what inscription or symbol we wanted on the front of the Dad's tombstone.  “How about ‘What the hell just happened?’ ‘Hell, no, this isn’t happening!’ or ‘Cancer sucks!’?” I remember thinking at the time.  I was holding on so tightly to the conviction that the night before - and, actually, the entire 75 days before - had all been just a really bad dream, one from which I would awaken and be shaken by but then go on with my Real Life.


Many of the big decisions about the burial had already been made:  Dad and Mom had made most of their own “arrangements” (what a freaky term) years in advance, and Dad had said for as long as I can remember that he definitely wanted to be cremated when he died.  The three things we had to decide on that terrible day were about the urn, what would go on the tombstone, and what would be written in the obituary. 


For the urn we chose a basic wooden box; we thought that Dad would think the vase-type urns were too “girly,” too fancy for his taste, or - as he sometimes termed things - "a waste."  We convinced the funeral home guy to let us use his computer and then we somehow found a way to type up the obituary for the newspaper.  Once that was done, the decision of the grave marker was all we had left to do there, and, for some reason, it seemed like the most important of the three to me. 

We flipped through the “Marker Manual” and, in much the way Dad picked out many of the things he bought for as far back as I can remember, we were able to make the decision because we knew what we wanted when we saw it:  a winged foot, which is the symbol of Mercury, the messenger, the Greek god of trade, and a commonly used logo for the sports of track and field and cross-country running. 




The day I went back to the cemetery, I stood for a while in front of my dad’s grave and waited.  I looked around in search of some kind of Sign.  I found myself thinking, “Come on, Dad!  Give me something!”  Finally, I sat down on the grass in between the plots of my dad and my grandparents and decided I would try to just breathe, just take in the scenery, just sit there and pay my respects to them.  A little voice in my head kept butting in and saying, “This is crazy!  Dad’s not dead!” but I kept at it anyway.


After about 10 minutes, I decided it was a little crazy for me to be sitting there waiting for something; while the cemetery is a pretty piece of property, it certainly isn’t where I spent any time with my dad or my grandparents, and I didn’t feel any special pull or connection to them there.  As I stood up to leave, I felt tears forming in my eyes and then spilling over to fall down my cheeks. I looked around one more time and then started walking towards my car, feeling lost and alone and so, so sad.  I don't think the cemetery is a place of peace for me right now; I don't think anywhere really is.