Worrying

For as many things as I like to think that I got from my dad, whether by nature or by nurture, we had one core difference: I am a worrier and, simply put, he wasn’t.

I, like others with tendencies similar to mine, call it planning, organizing, taking care of the details.  I consider it a necessary part of life and, truth be told, I do it pretty often; his philosophy was that whether or not one worries is a personal choice.  He and I had many conversations about this topic over the years, including several during the weeks that he was sick, and he told me many times that from his perspective there were alternatives to worrying, like “just doing it,” or “going with the flow.”  He was a great list-maker, often leaving sticky notes and legal pad pages of reminders for himself around the house, on his desk at work, and even in his car.  That, he said, was a way to get worry off his mind.

That stuff doesn't work for me, though.  I don't feel like it's my choice to worry or not to worry, and making lists (as I do as often as my dad did) lessens the worry but doesn't turn it off. 

This is what a supreme worrier I am: I often read books while thinking about trying not to leave a mark on the book that will affect its condition.  I try my best not to get smudges or water marks or creases on the pages as I read.  My dad, in contrast, concentrated on thoroughly enjoying a book as he read through its pages.  What a joy I have found it to be to look back through the books he read and to see the marks he left behind, the crumpled pages, the sticky notes, the underlined and notated passages, and the dog-eared corners.  What pleasure it brings me to look at those things and to know that my eyes are where his once were and that he so completely basked in the moment when he was there, on that page in that book.  It’s like seeing the scrawled “I was here” written somewhere, and it makes me smile and warms my heart.  It also sometimes makes me think again about the benefits of worrying less, or, as my dad would say, choosing to do something besides worrying. 

Maybe that’s why the anxiety that Dad experienced during his illness, especially during the last two weeks of his life, still haunts me so much.  It was so uncharacteristic of him to be worried, and the rest of my family and I felt so powerless in our ability to quiet his fears and quell his distress.  More than anything during his last days on this earth, I wanted to take away that worry, which I knew would ease his pain. I think back to his last night in the hospital and to the next two nights after that when I took a turn sitting up with him as he struggled to sleep and as we worked to get control of the panic and the pain, and my heart hurts to remember the worry etched in his face.  Sometimes the medicine would help, but more often it was the presence of someone he trusted completely that seemed to help ease his mind.

I remember sitting beside his hospital bed in the semi-darkness of my parents’ den after he’d come home and listening to him worry aloud about things that he could not control.  I tried telling him not to worry, I tried to let him know that we only needed to focus on the really important things, and I tried to convince him that others of us would take care of the things that seemed to be on his mental to-do list, but that just seemed to agitate him more.  Finally, I waited for him to pause to take a breath, and I said, “It’s going to be okay, Dad; I hope you can choose not to worry so much,” and he turned toward the sound of my voice in the darkness as if those words were my arms going around him.  A minute later, the talking stopped and his breathing slowed into the rhythmic pattern of sleep.  I stood up to cover him with an extra blanket and then tucked in beside him, half on the couch and half on his bed, with my head on his shoulder, thinking that maybe I could absorb the burden of the rest of his worries during the remainder of the night.

What I Miss The Most

I miss my dad, a lot, all the time.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it is about him that I miss the most.  As anyone who knows me know, I love lists.   So here’s my list so far for What I Miss The Most …

 *I miss seeing the wrinkles that formed around the outside corners of his eyes when he laughed or smiled, both of which he did A LOT.  So often people don’t want to be photographed if they are not at whatever they consider to be their best – their hair isn’t just right, they need to lose a few pounds, the weather is too hot/cold/windy, they don’t have the “perfect” outfit on, etc.  I’m so grateful that Dad didn’t worry about any of that; having so many photos of him, especially when not everything was “picture perfect,” has been and continues to be so comforting to me.

*I miss his technologically-inept, stream-of-thought text and email messages – which he typically signed with his initials in lower-case or two slash marks or both.  He didn’t worry if everything was exactly right before he texted or sent an email.  He just wanted to convey a message, and he did that so well through so much more than just with words.  His emotions (usually his enthusiasm and humor) were evident in those messages, and they were contagious.  The emails and text were full of life, just like he was.
 

*I miss his excitement for whatever was coming up – he loved to make plans, always wanted to “have something on the calendar” to look forward to.  I am finding that to be good advice for moving forward in my grief, too.

  

*I miss watching his interaction with his grandchildren.  They called him Gramps, and their relationship with him was different from every other grandparent-grandchild connection I’ve ever seen.  He was not only one of their biggest fans but also a one-man Entertainment Committee for them (and for us).  He loved to plan things that he thought would amuse and delight them.  For example, when he knew one or more of his grandchildren were coming to visit, he loved to hide from them and then jump out and “scare” them (it wasn’t really that scary because he did it every single time!).  He loved to tell them ghost stories, complete with a flashlight and scary noises for emphasis.  When my parents first moved into a new house after Mom retired, Dad schemed for weeks about how he could best use the little historic graveyard right in the middle of their new neighborhood as a prop when the grandkids came to visit.  When the day finally arrived, he sneaked around the back of the neighborhood while my mom took the kids on a walk so that he could hide in the little graveyard.  It was a grand plan, except that (a) he wasn’t really that sneaky – the grandkids knew from his behavior and the look on his face that he was planning something before they even left on their walk, and (b) some of the neighbors (who didn’t know him yet) saw him hiding under the tarp waiting to jump out at the kids and were ready to intervene (they told us later that they had been considering calling the police), thinking it was some creepy guy waiting to attack an innocent woman and her grandchildren!  

Dad laughing, after a shaving cream attack by the grandkids

*I miss hearing his voice – talking and singing and laughing.  We have some audio recordings of his voice, but of course it’s not the same.

 

*I miss his goofiness, his sense of humor, and his willingness to take a joke and to make fun of himself.  When my younger daughter was learning to ride a bicycle without training wheels, we had a set of Barbie biking gloves, helmet, and knee pads (in case of a fall).  Dad saw them later in our garage and put them on himself, which was funny - but not nearly as funny as it was when he discovered the knee pads were so small that he couldn’t get them off without assistance.  (We "let" him wear them for awhile just for effect before we helped him get them off.)

Dad, hamming it up with Mom's purse

*I miss the inside jokes and the memories that only the two of us shared.  There were so many, and I'm so afraid that I will forget some of them.  Some of them are important; others are not so much but still help to quell the pain in my heart when I think about them, like when I was a teenager and I bragged to him that I was learning sign language.  He said, "I already know sign language!" and then demonstrated his skill level by flipping me the bird with both hands (all of this while he was driving down the road).  


*I miss his perspective, his positive attitude, and his way of dealing with different types of people and situations.   He never missed a chance to say hello or to speak kindly to another person.  He always looked on the bright side, and he felt so lucky every single day that the rest of us, by association, did too.

I am sure many more things will go on this list in the days, months, and years ahead.  Simply put, where my dad used to be, there is a hole in the world, one that I keep finding myself either having to walk around or falling into.

New Orleans On The Mind

My dad loved New Orleans.  He thoroughly enjoyed the food, appreciated the people, delighted in the music, and, of course, he LOVED the Street Beer!

 

Dad, making a presentation to some of his clients at a meeting

When people asked Dad what he did for a living, he said that he was “in the grain business."  During his career, he managed several grain elevators, supervised the opening of a rice processing plant, and, in 1993, joined an agricultural marketing consulting firm as a principal commodities broker.

Not long after he graduated from college and got his first job in the field, he joined the Mid-South Grain Association, a trade organization for people in the ag-marketing business.

During the course of his career in the grain business, the Mid-South Grain Association was a constant for Dad.  He served as president of the organization for several years and was secretary-treasurer for the past 18 years. He was always so appreciative of the numerous friendships he developed through the group and enjoyed organizing their semi-annual conventions, one of which was always held in February in New Orleans.

My sisters and I and our spouses tagged along several times when my parents went to the convention in New Orleans, always a fun time for all of us and a good opportunity for us to see Dad “in action” with so many people he had known professionally and personally for years and in some cases for decades.

When Dad got sick in late October, he had just begun planning for the convention the following February.  He still had to line up guest speakers, get people registered, and coordinate with the hotel where the meetings were always held, the Royal Sonesta.  He had quite a long To-do list going, and this became one of the things about which he worried while he was sick.

After Dad was admitted to the hospital, while he was in the Neuro-ICU for several days awaiting surgery, he was on several different medicines, including a massive amount of steroids to address the swelling around the tumor in his brain and a type of pain medication that we later learned resulted more in increased anxiety and talkativeness than it did in pain relief for Dad.

My mom, my sisters, and I took shifts, often in pairs, to be with him 24 hours a day, and, as I’ve mentioned, we took careful notes about everything that went on.  One of the things we wrote down was what he said, especially when it related to things about which he was concerned. 

During those long, scary nights in the ICU, he talked endlessly, often about not feeling well, having a bad headache, and being very tired, all of which made sense given what we knew about what was going on with him medically.

Just a few hours before his surgery, he seemed to finally be getting some rest, but he kept talking in his sleep, saying things like “I’m bored,” “I’ve got to know when I can run again,” and “I don’t know why I have to be here.”  He also said some things that weren’t in context, like “I’m going to the oyster bar,” and “I’m going to eat a dozen.”  In between comments, he kept repeating a number that didn’t make sense to us, and, after hearing him say that same number over and over, I decided to use my cell phone to Google it.  It turned out that the number was the telephone number to the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans.  Apparently, he had New Orleans on The Mind.

Over the course of the next several weeks, we made lots of notes of things that Dad told us to write to complete the Convention-Planning To-Do List, and then we passed it on to someone else in a leadership position with the organization.  Dad still worried about it frequently, but we tried to reassure him each time he brought it up that it was being taken care of. 

After Dad went on ahead on January 5, Mom was asked to continue taking part in the convention and with the organization, if she felt up to it.  She had worked side-by-side with Dad for all those years in planning for and putting on the convention, and she definitely knew the ropes.  Because Dad was so concerned that the convention go smoothly, Mom felt that carrying on with that task was a good way to honor his wishes and to uphold his legacy in the professional realm.  She did get the job done, coordinating the planning for the event, and, with my husband and me, attending the convention to represent Dad as he would have expected us to do. 

I’m sure that Dad was watching over us during our time in New Orleans and that, although he might have missed being there, he was proud that we honored his commitment and that the show went on.