This story seeks to increase awareness and understanding of the unique needs of individuals diagnosed with life-changing illness or injury and their families by providing insight into the life of a man as he went through diagnosis and treatment of brain cancer (Glioblastoma Multiforme - or GBM).
I've heard it said that within two generations after a person is gone from the earth that it will be as if he was never there. This is a statement with which I completely disagree, though; I think people who think like that have not considered the rippling of a person's presence, the mark that is left behind forever by association on generations to come. If something about a person affects me in any way at all, there is a shift in my actions, in my perspective, in my words, or in some other area, and those around me are likely then to be impacted to some extent, which then affects others in their path in the future. That's how the rippling effect works; that's how our presence is maintained long after each of us is gone. This is something that has become very clear to me since my dad's death, and it is a truth in which I find comfort.
Once when I was in college, I heard someone make an off-hand comment about how it drove her crazy when my dad put a glass of water down on her coffee table without using a coaster. "It's like he doesn't even think about the water marks he's going to leave," she complained. I didn't really see her point at the time and I still don't; like my dad, I guess, it's never been something that I've thought was worth adding to my Worry List.
In fact, I noticed a water mark on a piece of furniture in my house just the other day and thought, "Damn, what I wouldn't give if I knew that mark had been left there by my dad."
I don't think my dad went through life thinking about the water marks that he was going to leave behind; he wasn't that self-centered or that existential in his philosophy. I wish he could know now, though, about at least some of the ripples he created; certainly his presence and the waves of his existence continue far beyond what he was able to see.
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.
//
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 notpreferred.)
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.
I didn't go into politics - or even business, for that matter - for a reason; one that, if you know me, you probably already know: I do not have a poker face. I am not at all good at, as they say on Saturday Night Live, strategery. I don't like office gossip or sneakiness or favorite-playing. The way I prefer things to be in my work place is when, as my dad used to say, itiswhatitis - because what else would it be??
Unfortunately for me and for a whole lot of other people who live and/or work in the same school district I do, though, we have been involuntarily drawn into a situation over the past couple of years that has come to involve a lot of the undesirable aforementioned things.
As a result of the citizens of the city voting to give up their school district and the resulting imposed adoption of that system by the county school system, people in my area are talking about budgets and politics and outsourcing and other things that have regrettably become a very large part of the equation in public education. One thing I haven't heard much talk about in meetings or in the media, though, is how it feels to have been swept into this maelstrom.
This has been the most difficult, most stressful year of my nineteen-year long career with the county school district. I am proud of the efforts of many of my coworkers as we've entered into what can only accurately be described as a battle. At times, I've felt sure that I want to do everything in my power to stay with the district, to continue the work I've started, and to try to control what I can in hopes of protecting my coworkers and friends - and ultimately, the students. But, at other times, increasingly as the actual date of the change approaches, I feel as if I am in danger of going down with the ship. Like a lot of my coworkers, my health and my personal life - and my overall happiness - have suffered a lot during this past school year because of the impending "merger" - a term, by the way, that really gets to a lot of us on the receiving end of the punches. To merge means to join forces, to unite, or to team up, and to me that implies that an action is taking place between two roughly equal bodies, a situation which, in my opinion, this is not. Always a fan of running metaphors, I liken what's going on here to a runner that has dropped out of a race who later asks an accomplished runner if he can train with the better runner. One of them needs improvement; one doesn't. One needs help; the other was fine on his own - and, in fact, is likely to be slowed down if the less skilled runner joins him on training runs, even though the faster runner may still be willing to take on the job of coaching the slower one. It isn't a merger; it's more of an adoption.
In the district of people who did not get a vote in this decision, our leaders and our administrators are scared for their own jobs, for their livelihood actually, and it feels like there's an "every-man-for-himself" mentality that I have never before felt in this job. Watching the process unfold in slow motion over the course of this school year has felt a bit like Chinese water torture, and in many ways I am glad to see the year come to a close, although I feel a distinct sadness at the same time that my job and this school system - both things that I have loved and have put my heart into since I was 25 years old - will certainly never be the same after end of this school year.
Everybody knows that educators in this country generally don't make a lot of money. They don't win Oscars or Pulitzer Prizes or get big raises or promotions or even get much recognition by their bosses or their "customers," unless, of course, a scandal of some sort is featured in the media. The rewards we get come quietly and often only if we are looking hard for them, but most of us are lucky (and diligent) enough to see them, and we are glad to have this as our chosen career. We realize that there is no other profession that would allow us to have such a part in shaping the minds of children in this way and to impact their future on such a personal level. Teaching is about so much more than teaching - and I don't mean politics and jerrymandering and elbow-rubbing; it's about the power of relationships. It's about the connection that can be made between one person and another person or between a person and a lesson, a link that can only be developed when the learner knows that the teacher cares about him or her. When a mutual respect has formed between the teacher and the student, that's when the best kind of learning occurs.
But in an environment when educators are scared for their jobs, when school staff members know that they and/or their coworkers and friends may end up on the chopping block at any moment, when program cuts aren't a "maybe" but a "when," it's hard to be positive every day. It's hard to focus on the lessons that need to be taught - and on the children who are the most important part of the equation. From either side of the argument about what's fair or who deserves what from the limited funding available in the district now, one thing is for sure: teaching and learning have been hindered, and that doesn't feel good to any of us.
This is mostly a blog about grief and perspective, but I guess it's also about enduring and overcoming life's challenges, and I guess that's what has to be done in this situation as well.
I recently met a woman - someone I'll call Tina* - though a mutual friend. In the course of conversation, it came to light that Tina's mother had been my boss for many years before her retirement. I was particularly happy to meet Tina because her mom, about whom I will always think very highly, passed away tragically very soon after she retired, and I had never before had the opportunity to tell anyone in her family how much I appreciated the impact she had had on my life. I told her how her mom had guided me professionally over the years, and then I told her what I admired about her mom the most, which was her mom's effort and ability to keep track of the details of things going on in the personal lives of her many employees and coworkers. In a word, it was her kindness that touched me the most over the many years that I knew her - and it was that quality that I remembered and admired about her the most. Tina told me about the day five years ago when her mom died, the specifics of which I hadn't heard before. She talked about how hard it was to lose her mom and how she, as an only child, and her dad had grieved the loss differently. She asked about my parents, and after I told her about my dad's death, we talked more about grief and loss. As someone who is twice as far ahead as I am on the road of grief, she told me a few things she had come to know, like how the sadness and the pain never go away - but that things do get more tolerable in some ways over time.
It was comforting to hear what she had to say about the grief process from her perspective and based on her time frame; it reminded me of once many years ago when I went to have my teeth cleaned at the dentist's office and saw a dentist in the practice whom I hadn't met before. They had gotten a gadget to use during exams that was essentially a tiny camera that allowed them to film what was going on in a patient's mouth and then project the image onto a TV screen for the patient to view. (Stickwithme; I'm getting to the part where this ties in to the conversation detailed above.) The dentist used the camera to show me that I have some tiny cracks in some of my teeth; likely, she told me, the result of crunching ice. Although she presented that information to me more in the form of a scolding than anything else, for some reason I felt the need to explain to her why I had started the obviously bad habit of ice crunching: to combat the severe heartburn I experienced during my second pregnancy. "How old is that child now?" she asked me. I thought she was just making conversation, and I told her my daughter was five. "Well, that excuse got used up a long time ago," she snarkily informed me. Needless to say, I did not bond with that particular dentist, and I chose not to be seen by her again. I felt there were several important pieces of information involved in patient care that she was missing, ranging from general courtesy and compassion to motivation and perspective. She didn't ask me if I still had issues with heartburn or if I thought the ice-chewing had just become a habit over the years; actually she didn't ask me anything except for the age of my child, which she obviously asked only as a lead-in to the judgment she was all too eager to issue out. And that leads me to what I think is my point, and, you'll be glad to know, to how this story ties in to the first one: grief, like ice chewing and lots of other things in life, has its own time frame in every situation, and that's ok. Each person has his or her own story; each of us has traveled a different road to get to where we are today. Without having traveled that same exact road, or, at the very least, without having worked to try to understand that person's perspective, another person cannot possibly have the insight or the knowledge - and possibly the right - to stand in judgment of another person. That's one thing that I've certainly learned over the past couple of years; that, and the lasting impact of kindness.
*Her real name isn't Tina - and her identity probably really isn't a secret if you know me and my work history, but I prefer to use that instead of her actual name to protect her privacy - and since knowing her identity isn't the point of this story.
An article ran today in the Huffington Post's Healthy Living section that may be of interest to anyone who is grieving or even who knows someone else who is suffering from grief: Griever's Gold: Cherished Memories The advice given in this piece is reiterative of some of what I've written about in this blog, especially the way the author launches into her list by saying, "The following five techniques can help a griever shift perspective." The insight about the way people who are grieving consistently indicate that they would not trade away memories of their loved one in exchange for having the pain of their loss erased is interesting, I think, a different kind of spin on the idea that, no matter how dire or tragic one's situation seems, it's always a wise perspective to realize that things could be worse. I also like the way she talks about shift and how it tends to occur in grief over time; it's really quite incredible that way comfort seeps into our lives to help (not to heal, I don't think) with the rawness of the pain thrust upon us when we lose a loved one.
The third item on the author's list, "Share stories with other people," reminds me of the quote that affected me so much when I saw it hanging on the wall of the grief counseling center where I went not long after my dad's death:
Every grief needs a thousand tellings.
Although this may not be true for everyone or in every situation, I have found the "telling" to be helpful in my own grief process. And finally, the fifth item, "Give thanks for the gift of this person in your life," which is my favorite on her list because it is totally dependent on one's perspective: instead of feeling only sorrow and anger for the loss of a loved one, one can choose to be grateful and happy for having had him to love at all - and to have experienced the impact of that person AND to have the honor of carrying him forward.
Every time I see this portrait of my dad standing in the redwood forest, I think of the word "IMPACT."
I heard a line from the AMC TV show "Mad Men" quoted the other day on the radio. The commentators were discussing the topic of materialism and how they feel it has affected our children's generation as a whole. On the TV show, which is about an advertising agency in NYC, the agency's Creative Director Don Draper is disturbed by his observations of the actions of people whom he feels were motivated by their greed for money and success. Don starts to reconsider his own definition of happiness and in the process comes up with the line from the episode that was being quoted on the radio: "What is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness."
lippsisters.com
That quote got me started thinking about the way so many of us set up happiness to be something that isn't really obtainable - or at least that isn't sustainable. Maybe that's what makes some people feel like rats running on a wheel, as if they are "caught up in the Rat Race," always chasing after one more thing instead of taking the time to appreciate what is already in their possession or what has already been achieved. Something I've learned over the last couple of years is that happiness is a feeling that is often easy to attain in the moment but difficult to maintain over time. Happy moments can be both big and small; happiness can come when its arrival has been anticipated, or it can come by unexpectedly, as a welcome surprise. For most people, happiness is transient; it ebbs and flows depending on so many other factors. The way one feels going into a situation or even at the start of the day does not necessarily determine the way one feels at the end; in the same way that you can start off on a run feeling great and end up limping home, you can wake up happy and end the day feeling miserable. Happiness is unpredictable and oftentimes completely out of our control, which is exactly what makes it a defective goal. In many cases, it's nothing more than perspective.
It also strikes me that happiness isn't something that translates into goodness; a bank robber or even a serial killer can feel happy with what they have done. A life can be full of happy moments but be lacking in meaning and impact, yet another reason that in my opinion happiness isn't a suitable goal.
Another lesson that I have gotten from life over the past couple of years is that during those times when happiness is in my grasp, when I am fortunate enough to be in the midst of joy, pleasure, or contentment, I need to breathe it in, to savor it and to remember it, because life is nothing if not uncertain, and we need all the reserves we can get.
Happiness
Sometimes happiness is really just as simple as making a choice to appreciate and be grateful for what one has, instead of thinking about would have/could have/should have been, instead of worrying, instead of comparing what one has to what someone else has, and instead of wishing for something more or something different. To me, it seems that happiness comes much more from perspective than from reality.
"Happiness is in the heart, not in the circumstances." ~Anonymous
One of the things that has brought me the most meaning in my life has been motherhood. It has also brought me considerable happiness, even though not every moment of every day is filled with sunshine and singing. In the words of an extended family member of mine, "Mothering is the hardest and the best thing that you will ever do." I'm sure this extends to fathering, too. Parenting is difficult, but it's an investment, a legacy that will continue far longer than the days we have left on this earth.
When I think back on some of the biggest moments of my life - graduations, weddings, vacations, things like that - so much of what happened then is a blur, and I don't think that the only thing that plays a factor in that is my increasing age and decreasing capacity for remembering things. I wonder if I was present enough in those moments; I wonder if I took the time during those events to breathe in the happiness and the joy that I was experiencing. If I did, maybe I should have done even more of that, enough to make more of what I felt in those moments carry over to my memory. If I didn't, I am regretful that I might have been thinking more about things that I perceived as being not just right, or about things that were bothering me or stressing me out in the moment, or about what came before or what was to come afterwards. In either case, one thing I have learned is that sometimes all I can do is try to learn from the past - and try to do better in the future. I thought about happiness and memories and perspective a lot during my sister Nancy's labor and delivery a couple of weeks ago. "Rememberthis," I said to her several times during those hours before and just after she became a mother: "Rememberthis; besuretorememberthis." I hope she remembers it all - and I know I will, because it was nothing short of wondrous. As the newest member of our family was born, everyone in the room knew what happiness was: it's being together with the people you love, it's the warmth that comes from working together for a common goal, it's the promise of good.
"Remember this."//
As Lao Tzu said, "Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."
I talk a lot about perspective, but I think about it even more often. It's one of the few things that keeps me from coming apart at the seams during the Mad Tea Party of life.
I like to read about things that give me perspective and about the impact that different people and experiences have had on others. One thing I have realized in thinking about the legacy that my dad left behind is that little things can make a big difference - little things we say, little things we do, and even little things we think. Each of these can serve to shape each of us into a person with a bigger heart, a better outlook, and a broader perspective. As Mother Teresa once said, "None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful."
In keeping with that theme, I have decided to compile of list of things that can bring perspective and post those ideas periodically as challenges to myself and to others. Some will be fun, some will be thought-provoking, some will be service oriented or otherwise actionable. All will be targeted at contributing to the perspective of anyone who participates.
Here's the first one:
Let someone know the impact he or she has had on your life.
This idea came to me from a message that I got from a person who knew my dad many years ago. The person had heard that my dad was sick but didn't know that he had died. In reading some of the entries in this blog, he recognized himself as one of the guys in the story that I told here:
When he read that story, he said, "I tell the story of that race in Mississippi all the time to people. I learned a life lesson that day. A great story was told through his life. I can recall all those runs and races and his smile that seemed too broad for his little body."
When I told him that Dad had gone on ahead, he expressed sadness and regret that he had not been able to tell my dad how he had been impacted by him. He said, "I wanted to tell him how his life story connected to mine. He was largely responsible for my love of running and in many ways responsible for my future."
Thinking about his words and the words he said he wished he had told my dad made he think about the fact that there are many people in my life to whom I haven't reached out in some way over the years to let them know how they influenced me.
What he said made me realize that end-of-life regrets are not only for people who are nearing the end but also for those left behind who haven't delivered a message that we wish we had.
In doing this first Exercise in Perspective, you may choose to communicate with a person from your past or from your present, someone younger or older, someone who served as a mentor or a teacher to you or just a person who caused you to think or act differently than you might have otherwise. Your message can be delivered in writing or verbally, and it can even be as basic as something like, "Thank you; knowing you has helped make me the person I am today." The only criterion to this challenge is that you reach out to a person who has left a mark on you in some way, and the point is this: don'twait. Do it now; the person to whom you deliver your message will be glad, and so will you.
I recently read about how sometimes people who are going through the grief process think about what it would be like to have one more conversation with their loved one.
Thinking about that is complex for me, because, as far as I knew, my dad didn't think that he wasn’t going to survive his cancer diagnosis, and so the things that I'm guessing typically come up in those one-more-conversation type of exchanges weren't on the table for us to talk about when he was sick. We didn't talk about end-of-life kinds of things during the ten weeks we had after his diagnosis; honestly, I don't know that any of us could have withstood that type of emotional wrenching, including my dad. He knew that we loved him, and we knew that he loved us, and I think we thought there was still time to talk about everything else. Part of me wonders now if we should have been straight up with him about what
was going on medically; after all, he was an adult and maybe it was
underestimating him or overprotecting him to keep that information from
him. He knew his diagnosis, but he didn't know the prognosis. The bottom line, though, is
that my family and I did what we truly believed was in Dad's best interests at
the time, given what we knew and the resources we had.
We didn't LIE to him, but we did skirt around the truth about his prognosis and the severity of his illness on the
few occasions he asked us about it, when he said things like "What if the chemo doesn't work?"
and then we said things like, "It will, Dad! We just have to get through
it." He asked one of his doctors a few times about the usual prognosis of someone with his same diagnosis, and they told him the truth, but all of us, Dad included, discounted what they said because Dad wasn't "usual" - he was extraordinary. Towards the end, he asked me a few questions like, "What's it like to die?" and "Do
you think it’s cold in heaven?" (he hated to be cold), and I am so very
glad that I answered him truthfully then. Most of the things I said to him though, when I realized how very limited our time together was going to be were part of a one-sided conversation - when he couldn't talk back, and when I'm wasn't sure he heard me. Looking back, I think it would have been so hard for us to say goodbye to him and then to have him say it back; the pain and sorrow that I see on his face when I picture this scene in my mind are heartbreaking, sending a stream of tears down my face, and that's when the vision is only in my imagination. I think Dad might have viewed his own farewell message as quitting, and I am glad he was spared that, at least.
So when I think about what our conversation would be like
had he gotten an extra few minutes tacked on at the end of his
life, it’s hard for me to picture anything other that what we did talk about
when he was so sick. Given that, I
want to respond to the question of what would I say to him now - not as if he
is still alive but as though he and I are able to communicate now, with him being wherever
he is in the afterlife and with me being here on earth:
Dad,
There are a few things that I want to be sure you know, and
if I can be assured that you realize and understand these things it will help
me to better deal with my grief:
I miss you so much, every
day. You had such a big impact on
my life and on making me into the person I am today, and the things you taught me
and the lessons I learned as a result of having you for a dad are carrying
forwards, still affecting me every day.
So much bigger than that, though, was your impact on the hundreds of
other people you knew and even on the thousands of other people you came into
contact with over the course of your life. What you left all of us with – and all of the people with
whom WE will come into contact with in the time to come – is your perspective,
your view on kindness, and your joy and gratitude in all kinds of situations. Because of you, I know that I am lucky, no matter what is
happening around me. Because of you, I know that I
can decide to be happy, if I choose. And because of you, I know that family comes first but that every person is important and
that being kind and giving to others is a privilege, not a duty. I wish you could realize how many
people admired and loved you; I think while you were sick that you might have gotten confused on just
how many friends you had because we discouraged people from visiting you then because we were so worried about you catching their germs. I’m sorry that we didn’t find a way for
you to see how cherished you were by so many. Finally, I want you to know that we will be forever grateful to you for the way you fought so hard to hang
in there through so much over those last ten weeks, I want you to
understand how we are so appreciative of every bit of light you brought to us over the years, and I want you to know that I will
think about you and try to make you proud every single day, for the rest of my life.
Dad, with Mom and friends on a camping trip several years ago
My dad was always one of those people about whom it could be said didn’t meet a stranger. He honestly considered every person with whom he came into contact to be a potential friend, and he was consistently and genuinely kind in every situation. He once told me that he didn’t see why everyone didn’t make an effort just to say hello to every person with whom they crossed paths. “Even a dog knows it’s better to wag his tail to greet people he passes on the street,” he said.
During the time that Dad was sick, we received many cards, emails, Care Page messages, and phone messages of concern and love, and we appreciated all of them. On the front lines of the war we were fighting, we were frantically trying to keep our heads above water, plugging the holes in the dam for as long as we could, though, and the daily challenges and the shock with which we were have to cope were so overwhelming that it was all we could do to get it together to post on the Care Page every couple of days or so. Returning individual phone calls and emails was just too much, both because our time was spent focusing on Dad and the things that needed to be taken care of as part of taking care of him and also because it was just too much to even consider detailing the tragedy of it all out loud outside of The Bubble of our immediate family. It was just one of the cold hard facts about how it was when Dad was sick; our propensity to reach out was thwarted by the outrageousness of what was happening, but unfortunately the closing of the ranks ended up being something that we later learned had affected how Dad felt about himself and his views about the impact and the quality of his own life.
Not long after the second round of chemo, Mom got a phone call from one of Dad’s best friends from the small town in Missouri where my parents used to live. Dad’s friend said that he was going to come over to visit Dad. Other friends had offered to visit many times since Dad had gotten sick, but up until that point we had declined their offers for several reasons, most notably that we were concerned that contact with others could impact his health both physically and emotionally. We’d been warned by the oncologist about the dangers of germ exposure for a person on chemo. Another concern was that Dad’s problems with memory and reasoning would travel like wildfire through the gossip lines and reach his coworkers and his clients, which would be a source of embarrassment to him. Because of the logistics of caring for him while he was sick, Dad didn’t have a lot of privacy, and we felt strongly that we should do what little we could to protect him.
But this friend wouldn’t take no for an answer. He insisted that he just wanted to check in but assured us that he wouldn’t stay long. We were worried that Dad’s friend would not be able to hide his shock when he saw the changes that were so apparent in Dad. As much as possible, those of us who were around regularly were striving to act as if it was no big deal that Dad had to use a walker to get around the house and that he needed reminders about what day of the week it was or the fact that he wasn’t going back to work the next day.
On the day of the visit, Mom and my sister helped Dad get ready, and he was seated in his chair in the den when his friend arrived. The conversation flowed without too much of a hitch, and, after about 30 minutes, Dad got up to go to the bathroom (of course, without waiting for help). He used his walker to slowly make his way down the hallway, and his friend didn’t miss a beat; he expertly disguised the shock and sadness he must have felt to see such drastic changes in the man with whom he used to share the course of their weekly Saturday morning twenty-mile runs. When Dad resumed his position in his recliner, they visited for a while longer and then his friend said he had to go. Dad was both exuberant and exhausted afterwards; he lied down on his bed to “rest his eyes” with a big smile on his face.
Of all the memories I have from during the time surrounding Dad’s illness and subsequent death, this is one of the ones that is guaranteed to make me sad to the core every time it pops into my head:
Late one night when I was sitting up with Dad several weeks into his illness, he abruptly changed the subject from whatever we were talking about by saying “I don’t even have any friends.”
“Oh Dad, you are wrong,” I said, with tears in my eyes, “and I wish you knew just how wrong.”
With his eyes wide in amazement, he said incredulously, “I am?”
“Yes, Dad,” I told him, “I know you are usually the one who knows best about a lot of issues, but you have to believe me when I tell you that you have more friends and more people who love and respect you than anyone else I know.”
“OK, I hope you’re right, because it’s really important to have friends,” he said, and then he drifted off to sleep.
I’ll never know if he fully believed me or otherwise realized the depth of the truth to what I said that night. In something that I think we could only have seen in hindsight in our situation, I wish so much that we had encouraged any of Dad’s friends who were so inclined to visit while he was sick. Being a true friend was one of the many things at which he excelled, and he needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his friends were rooting for him as he fought, that the many people who cared about him were there for him in the shade as well as in the sunshine, and that those who knew him were changed for the better for having known him.
While Dad was sick, he was often preoccupied with the concept of time. He frequently asked what time it was, which was very odd because, pre-tumor, he was one of those people with a hard-wired sense of time, so innate that he could wake up in the middle of the night and know exactly what time it was without looking at a clock. He also had a flawless sense of direction, which came in very handy on his thousands of long runs and bike rides.
His illness took both of those away from him from the very first day, though. The directional awareness wasn’t as much of a problem; he was pretty much confined to the hospital or to the house while he was sick, so getting lost wasn’t really a risk. He was aware of his confusion about the concept of time, though, and it disturbed and frustrated him greatly on a daily basis during that time.
From the day that Dad was diagnosed and continuing to the present day, I've felt like there is a ticking time bomb following me around. I constantly feel like somehow, somewhere, time is running out, and I'm hyper-focused on the fact that there just isn’t enough time. Obviously, that started when we were told that Dad’s time was limited. The sand was flowing way too quickly through the hourglass, and then Dad started revising his Bucket List, which further drove the point home. Of course I know that no one is guaranteed anything in life, certainly (and painfully obviously) not time, even when a person has done all the things that would seem to be a shoe-in for ensuring longevity. But it's still an anxiety-provoking issue, and it certainly was for Dad and for my family following the diagnosis.
When I think about the concept of time and whether or not someone can ever have enough, it reminds me of the way that when my children were little they always said “too much” whenever they were asked how much of something they wanted. After hearing them reference a quantity in that way a few times, I realized that it was because when they got a drink, a snack, books, or toys for themselves, I would usually say “Don’t get too much!” (i.e. Don't spill the food/drink or don't get too many things out because that'll be more to clean up later.) They used the term "too much" to mean “more" at that age, and that’s what we wanted in terms of time with Dad.
As I began writing this, I was thinking, as I have so often, about how I don’t think there was enough time for Dad, and then a thought popped into my head: maybe it was those of us left behind who didn’t have enough time with him. Maybe his benchmarks were met, if his interpretation of enough wasn’t related to time but to quality and to things like loving and being loved, feeling like one has made an impact, and being able to look back and say, “What a great life!”
In this video clip from the movie The Bucket List, Morgan Freeman’s character Carter tells Jack Nicholson’s character Edward that the Ancient Egyptians believed that, when a soul got to the entrance of heaven, two questions were asked, the answers to which determined whether the soul was admitted or not. Without a doubt, Dad could’ve answered YES to both, and in that way he did have enough time - enough to find joy for himself and to bring it to others, both many times over.
My dad and his mom, at the library dedicated to her at her church
Today marks my paternal grandmother’s 91st birthday, her first since she went on ahead.
My dad’s mom, whom I called Grandmom, died on April 19, 2011, after an extended illness, a series of strokes that took her independence, her vitality, her dignity, and finally her life.
When she first got sick and it became evident that she could no longer live alone, even with home health services, my parents moved her from her small hometown in Alabama to an assisted living facility very close to their house in Tennessee. At the time, Grandmom was sad that she had to leave her house, her town, her church, and her friends, but she trusted that my parents were making decisions in her best interest and that they would be there to take care of her, and they were.
A series of continued strokes pushed Grandmom along her downhill descent cognitively and physically in a relatively short period of time. We still got brief glimpses of the smart, fiercely loyal woman she was before from time to time, and in those moments it was humbling to see how happy she was to have us visit and how grateful she was for anything that was done for her, especially to my parents. My mom, her daughter-in-law for 43 years, so like a daughter to her, made sure that Grandmom’s hair and nails were “done,” as Grandmom liked them to be. She bought new clothes for Grandmom and did her laundry every week, and she read to her and talked to her about current events and family news, both of which Grandmom loved before she got sick. She decorated Grandmom’s room at the assisted living facility and later, after Grandmom declined even more, in the nursing home. Mom was the one who noticed if Grandmom’s feet were cold or if the skin on her hands seemed dry and then asked the staff to be sure there were socks on her feet and lotion on her hands during the times we couldn’t be there. She took care of Grandmom in many ways, and Grandmom and many others of us appreciated it more than words could express.
Dad played a different but equally important role during the last few years of Grandmom’s life. He was her connection to the past, the one she always recognized and the person for whom she always lit up. He was her bridge to socialization; he made friends with the other nursing home residents and the staff on her behalf and encouraged her to join in on the social activities scheduled at the nursing home. He loved to escort her into the main room of the facility for special programs, especially the musical ones. As usual, he provided kindness and comedic relief to everyone around, and, most importantly, he loved her unconditionally.
At this time last year, just after Grandmom’s 90th birthday, she took yet another turn for the worse, this time with significant swallowing problems and a cough that just wouldn’t quit. Her doctor met with my parents and broached the subject of hospice support being provided in addition to the care she was receiving in the nursing home. It was obvious to anyone who had seen the changes in Grandmom that, while she did have good care, she did not have good quality of life. She had lost the ability to feed herself and now couldn’t even swallow without choking, which resulted in some of the food or liquid spilling over into her lungs. It was clear what Grandmom would have decided had she been able to make that kind of decision for herself, and so, with a heavy heart for the loss of the woman she used to be, my dad signed the papers for his mom to begin receiving hospice care.
The doctor told my parents that Grandmom could possibly recover from the cough but that she wouldn’t improve functionally and that she could be with us for a matter of days, weeks, or even a couple of months. In the last text message I ever got from my dad, he told me about the hospice decision and expressed how sad he was that it seemed like she didn’t have much longer to live.
But Grandmom surprised everyone; in fact, she did so more than once over the next six months. She did recover from the cough, and then she took another turn for the worse on the day after Thanksgiving, this time coming so close to death’s door that the hospice nurse told us to hurry to her bedside to say our goodbyes. She had the rattley-breathing and was unresponsive, and she hung on by a very thin thread for days before she rallied to her former state. It wasn’t yet Grandmom’s time to go on ahead.
And so, as she continued on hospice, we continued to visit her as much as we could, but, due to his time in the hospital and then in the rehab facility, Dad could not visit, as he usually did several times per week. We told ourselves that Grandmom didn’t notice his absence; certainly she didn’t ask about him, but, with the nature of her own state of confusion, it was impossible for us to tell what she was thinking. Dad worried so much about her, and he was relieved and grateful whenever we visited her and reported back to him that she was doing as well as could be expected. It was one of the few things we were able to do for Dad during that time that made him feel a little better, and we were so thankful to have the opportunity to spend extra time with Grandmom and to do something to take away a little of his anxiety.
By the end of November, Grandmom had healed from the infection in her lungs. Her health stabilized over the next few weeks, but, devastatingly, Dad’s continued to decline. It was so completely surreal for us to bring in hospice services for Dad too just before the New Year and then to have him go on ahead shortly thereafter. How was this happening? Grandmom had been so sick for so long, and Dad was the picture of health. It was simply unbelievable to everyone who witnessed it.
There is much, much more to The Grandmom Story, some from the time between when Dad went on ahead and a few months later when Grandmom did too and a lot more from her Real Life, before she got sick.
A couple of years before Grandmom got sick, she gave me one of the best gifts I’ve ever received: a collection of several decades’ worth of journals that she had kept of her life. I had been asking her about details of her life for a long time, trying to get to know her as a person not just a grandmother, and seeking to procure her history to learn from and to share. She made a decision to entrust those to me, an honor which I do not take lightly. I told her at the time that I would one day write her story. She told me she would like that and even bragged to some of her friends about it. Further down this road of grief, I intend to keep that promise and to share her story, which, by the way, is fascinating and full of surprises and, not surprisingly since she is indeed my dad’s mother, full of perspective and life lessons.
Grandmom was a woman to admire, a person who touched many lives and who had a far greater impact that she could possibly have realized. I don’t know if they serve birthday cake where she is now, but I do know that she is at peace and that she is most certainly with her husband (my grandfather) and my dad, and that in and of itself is cause for celebration for her.
