The Marker

Before my dad went on ahead, I’d never really considered the way that the birthday of a loved one can transform from something that fills you with anticipation and excitement to something that seems so sad.  It seems so odd to me the way that happens; certainly I still want to recognize and celebrate the birth of one of the most important people in my life, even when he isn’t still here to celebrate himself.  I think for my family, the sense of enhanced sorrow and grief that comes with this week is exacerbated by the fact that it was the same week that he was diagnosed with the brain cancer that took his life only ten short weeks later.  That, as much as his absence, makes it seem counterintuitive to celebrate.

For me, in fact, it feels like salt is being rubbed into a wound, and a lot of the emotions that are usually just hanging out beneath the surface on a typical day seem to be bubbling up and threatening to erupt with the week when everything changed for my dad, for my family, and for me.  The annual marker, which I prefer to avoid thinking of as an anniversary since I tend to think of anniversaries as happy and worthy of celebration, approaches without hesitation and haunts us without regard to our ongoing pain. The week represents such a major shift - an ending of things as they were and an awareness of what should have been.

I long for just one more hour, one more conversation, one more hug, one more anything with him.  I want to push through the pain and focus on the importance of the day of the year on which the man who means so much to me came into this world; the challenge to do so is far greater than I ever imagined it would be. There are so many things that my dad will not get to experience now, things he would so love to be a part of or to know about or to see.  His presence in my life continues to shape me on a daily basis, and I do celebrate that fact as much as the grief will allow. Sometimes though, especially when I can’t avoid the what if, the should have, or the should be kind of thinking pattern, I am overwhelmed by it all, missing him so much that I struggle to move through the ache. The only thing that seems to be of comfort to me when I think about those things is to remember the life that he led that I know he considered to be a great one, to recall the way he was filled with such joy and gratitude, and to recognize the fact that I know if he knew anything at all for certain during the days of his illness it was that he was loved.  Happy birthday, Dad; you are loved and you are missed.

Because You Can (Gift-giving and Perspective)

I saw a comment posted on Facebook today about whether or not a parent is obligated to give an end-of-the-school-year gift to a "bad" teacher.

That got me started thinking about - shocker, I know - perspective.

While the majority of the teachers my kids have had over the years have been good, my kids have had their fair share of crappy teachers over the years, a few of whom didn’t deserve a gift other than a dog turd and/or a swift kick in the behind.  I will admit that I didn't feel any sense of obligation at all to give those teachers a gift - and sometimes I haven't given an end-of-the-year gift for other reasons, ranging from my own manic year-end schedule to not being able to think of anything I considered to be "a good gift" to caving in to pressure from my kids not to "embarrass" them by giving their teachers a gift because they thought it would seem like - to put it kindly - obsequiousness.

Obviously, though, my perspective on LOTS of things has changed over the past few years, and I’d like to offer this perspective for consideration: we may never know what battle another person is fighting.  And sometimes it may be better to fight fire (or incompetence/rudeness or whatever the issue may be) with kindness.

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Not that someone has to spend a bunch of money or time on a gift for every teacher, especially one who has been less than ideal for a child, but maybe giving a teacher just a little something and/or a card saying thanks could make a difference for her – which may, in turn, improve her outlook and have a rippling effect on others around her – her future students or even other teachers who may have some sort of interaction with the child of that parent and other kids in the future. 

When I was growing up, my mom didn't like for my sisters or me to say that we hated something or someone.  At some point, I argued that I really did hate something - but she insisted that it was better for me to say I disliked or didn't prefer it instead.  My mom, my sisters, and I still sometimes half-jokingly say that we "don't prefer" something or someone, even today as adults.  It's a good point that choosing to use words that are less harsh may be a better idea, a point that intertwines with perspective and kindness.  (Maybe a parent who hasn't liked her child's teacher could send that teacher a thank-you note ... and could just think secretly to herself that the thing she's thankful for is that the school year is over - or that the child will surely appreciate having a good teacher after her experience with one that was not preferred.)

Parallel to the bad-teacher situation is a bad-boss scenario.  I've help a few positions in my lifetime that have unfortunately been under the supervision of someone that let's just say I did not prefer.  My distaste for these people has been for a variety of different reasons, ranging from a simple personality conflict to ethical considerations (more on the latter topic is coming up in a future blog post).  In the midst of each of those situations, I have not had the perspective that I do in retrospect; I now feel an ironic sense of gratitude towards those bosses because my experience with each of them has certainly made me value an effective supervisor - and because having those experiences has served to teach me how not to do things whenever I am in a position of leadership.

I'm not advocating giving a gift to get something in return, and I'm not pretending to be overly nice or forgiving or anything like that.  I'm just seeing this as one way to react to such a situation.  From the way I see it, not giving the teacher (or the boss) a gift probably won't be noticed by that person, but taking the "high road," erring on the side of kindness, giving just because you can - that's something that can have an impact.

At Least

I know a lot of people who are competitive, but I think in some way I am the most competitive of all of them (ha ha, did you catch that???).

Early-onset competitiveness: that's me on the left, totally out-doing my toddler sister and my granddad at pull-ups.

That's why I've never been much of a fan of "at-leasts."  

I think it all started when I was about five years old.  I remember standing in my driveway one day, eating one of those red, white, and blue Bomb Pop popsicles, and being so sad when the last part of it dropped off the stick and fell onto the driveway.  My mom, who'd seen the whole thing happen, said, "Oh, well, at least you got to eat most of it!"  

But I didn't just want most of it, of course; I wanted ALL of it (especially the blue part at the bottom, which I still consider to be the best part!).  And thus began my distaste for the term "at least." 

Growing up, I remember hearing that term used pretty often, way too often for my taste, by both adults and by my peers.   I cringed inside when I heard other people say things like, "At least you tried!" and "At least we got some of what we wanted."  Every time I heard that phrase, I knew I should probably buy into that type of thinking; I realized that it was an expression of optimism and gratitude, but I saw it as settling. 

That has changed, though, since my dad got sick.  I guess going through the experience of caring for him during those ten weeks and then trying to cope with his death over the past couple of years has changed my view on at-leasts; these days I'm actually a pretty big fan of the term.  I hear it from the lips of others who loved him too - and from those who have also who've suffered through a similar experience, and I know we are in a club of sorts whose members know the true meaning of that phrase.  I've never liked consolation prizes, but I guess that's just another example of how tragedy and hardship hammer out perspective.  

I came across an idea shared by a fellow griever yesterday that made me think about my changed feelings for at-least type of concepts.  She said she would rather have had the person she'd lost and had to have suffered through living without him than never to have had that person in her life at all.  How profound.