We Want to Know We Mattered

My mother’s day was made over the weekend by a visit from an old friend of my brother’s and his wife. While my brother hasn’t seen this friend in decades, my mom had seen the couple off and on through the years about town – or stopping by in her car to say ‘hello’ if she saw either of them in their yard. She thought the world of them but didn’t necessarily expect they felt even remotely the same.

When Christmas rolled around this past December, and they didn’t receive a card from my mom, it made them consider the last time they had seen her. Several things happened in the aftermath that kept her top of mind. Finally, my brother’s friend drove down by her house and knew immediately that this was no longer my mother’s home.

He went home and got online, started tracking down my brother, who owns a business, and managed to get his contact information. He made a call and they caught up over a 90-minute conversation with the vow of getting together soon. Next up was visiting my mom, now that they knew where she was.

Over the past year and a half, my mom’s life has changed radically. She got hurt, badly, in a fall at the beginning of 2017 and what started out as a simple lunch out with a friend resulted in my mother never going home to live in her house again. Can you imagine? You go out the door for lunch with a friend and never get to live in your house again. And the life you once had, the car you drove, your furniture, a ton of your possessions no longer is yours and, for the most part, because you can’t use them and don’t have space for them anymore.

With all of the changes – and just the process of growing older – I know my mother sometimes questions, like many of us do, what her place in the world has been. How much of what she’s done over the years mattered, and to who? Did she make an impact on anyone? How will she be remembered?

When life grows long and the world grows smaller, it’s hard not to focus on these things. We all want to feel that we have value and matter to others and that we’ll be remembered for those things.

Earlier this year, at a post-holiday gathering, some friends were discussing the passing of so many people that we loved. One friend said that she had been thinking lately about her mortality and what she would want after her death. Whereas once she was in favor of cremation, perhaps with her ashes scattered, she had now changed her mind. She wants a burial, even if it’s to be just her ashes, with a headstone to mark that she had once lived. Otherwise, who would know she had been there?

It was a thoughtful conversation and one that made me think once again about our legacy, our understanding of who we had influenced in some way or made a positive impact on – universal thoughts for sure. We want to know we mattered.

I think back on the weekend. It’s hard to describe the joy that transpired, not just for my mom, but really for me as well, which surprised me. I happened to be on my way down to visit my mom when her surprise guests came to her door. They were kind enough to wait for me to arrive so I could see them, too.

The effect their visit had on my mom, particularly as my brother’s friend recalled times at our family home so many years before, when he’d run into her at the supermarket or when she stopped by their yard, was transformative for her. It allowed her to see that regular daily interactions in her life had become good memories for others, for people she thought so much of and it made her happy.

That they took the time to seek her out, find out what had happened that made her move from her beloved home, came to visit and brought beautiful flowers and shared memories of my brother, of my father and mother, and me as well, made her feel such appreciation and so much joy.

For me, it was emotional as well. The years somehow seemed to melt away. I’d hazard none of us really saw what we look like now but rather someone we remember from so long ago. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of memories regained in just a short time.

I see how much moments like this mean to my mom, who has been blessed by kindness and care from people she’d never realized she’s touched in her life. She continues to make a difference in the lives around her. The former principal of the elementary school, where my mother served as a paraprofessional and substitute teacher at until she was 80, was a resident for a while at the assisted living my mother lives at now. I think my mom’s presence brought this 100-year-old woman to a more present state than she had inhabited for some time, perking up to share stories and memories of a different time in both of their lives.

An old friend of mine’s mother-in-law also came to live at the assisted living and in the short time before her death; she and my mother became good friends. Over a several-months-long span, the two were nearly inseparable and my mother spent time at her bedside in her final weeks. Since that time, her daughter-in-law and son have been extraordinarily thoughtful, sending my mother flowers and letting her know they care about her. It’s thoughtful beyond words – and so unexpected and appreciated by my mom.

These days, this is what matters most to her. Human connection and knowing she matters still – and always has. She’s not much different than most of us.

Next time you’re thinking about someone and what they mean to you, take a minute and let them know. You can’t imagine how much it will mean to them.

My Family is My Home

heart-home Over the past decade, I’ve become increasingly detached from my home, particularly more so in recent years. I’ve found this curious, given that I’ve lived there for 30 years now. When I moved in, as a young woman in her mid-20s, with a three-year-old son and ready to give birth to my second child, a daughter, in the month ahead, I saw this home as nothing more than space for us all – albeit temporary. We had the makings of a beautiful yard, in a great neighborhood in a small town we loved. The house itself though was an end to a means. We needed more space for our soon-to-born child, and this fit the bill. Never did I imagine two more children would follow and be raised in this same house – nor did I ever think 30 years into the future it would still be my home.

With six of us for so many years in this not-so-big house, along with an ever-changing menagerie of pets, lots of toys, sports equipment, personal memorabilia and all the fundamental elements of a well-lived family life, we pushed the boundaries of our limited space to the max. I had been sure our family wouldn’t live in this house for more than a few years before moving on to something larger. As circumstances in our personal lives unfolded, it wasn’t meant to be.

So in time, the house that was rather snug became one that I was grateful to afford, especially on my own. Our family dynamic changed and I became engulfed in a new reality I hadn’t imagined as a single parent. Anything larger would have become a tremendous burden, economically and bandwidth wise to maintain.

Kids changed bedrooms, redecorating as they went, as ages and interests transitioned forward. Every parent knows, as children grow, rooms begin to feel smaller and hallways are suddenly shrinking when six-foot children make their way through the house. At times it felt as though the house might simply burst. Boyfriends and girlfriends joined the mix and quite often stayed at our house, and there was activity everywhere throughout our home. We often joked at any given moment someone in our family would be up and doing something, regardless of the time of day or night. It still proves true. We’re just not all in the same place.

Then suddenly, my oldest was off to college, and the house seemed a bit emptier. I remember sitting on his bed, in a half-empty bedroom, after dropping him off freshman year at college and suddenly sobbing, as I realized nothing would ever be the same again. The years spiraled forward at breakneck speed. Each of my four children became increasingly independent, off to explore new adventures and the family ebbed and flowed with who was at home still and who wasn’t. There were far fewer pets as the household size decreased, too. What had once been a house bursting at the seams was now a home with a lot of empty rooms – devoid of people, at least, much of the household items shifted there, not used.

I once said – and I still feel it’s true – that for many years our house was this giant, rollicking party, not all fun and games, but lots of energy and activity. The house began to feel as if I was living in the aftermath of that party, treasuring what had gone before, but left with the remnants of many years of hard family living – and an aging house to deal with just the same. I don’t spend as much time there as I once did. Life is pretty busy, and when I am home, it seems I’m rushing around to complete as much as I can in a finite time – or just not interested in accomplishing much at all. I’ve certainly learned the value of unwinding and enjoy my time on my own.

As the last of my children explores his next adventure, which will take him out on his own, it hit me last night exactly why my detachment has grown. It was never about this house. I didn’t move into it as my dream home or a place I coveted for any reason other than it was for my family. Our home sheltered the people I love most and wherever they go, wherever we all are together, is what matters most to me. I always wondered why I didn’t feel more of a sense of connectedness to my home, but at long last, I’ve realized that I’ve always seen it exactly as it has been. When it was filled with family, it had a lot of meaning, but without them, it’s merely walls, floors and rooms. I could be anywhere, but when I’m anywhere with my family, that place quickly becomes home.

On the Precipice

This has been a difficult week.

In most ways, it’s been no different than any other. Each of us in the family went to work, took care of personal responsibilities and even had a bit of social time together. We made plans for a family dinner over the weekend, and perhaps even an afternoon at a N.H. fair.

But in between, there have been tears – and a few adult beverages. There have been hugs that felt tighter, laughter that seemed a bit too necessary and memories shared and sometimes quickly swept away. It hurts less if we don’t think too much.

Yet, we can’t stop thinking about what’s going on. Can’t stop thinking about what’s been – and most of all, we think about how much longer this all will be and how it will end.

Here’s the thing – when someone in your family is gravely ill, the kind of sickness that’s gotten significantly worse over the last decade, when you witness what life has done to him and wish there was a way to make it all stop, even when that person is in hospice care, there is no guarantee that person you love will soon have any peace.

In early June my children’s father entered into hospice care, a bit surprisingly, at least to us, even though we had been watching his agonizing decline for such a long time. This past winter brought a fairly severe injury and surgery, and he’s been increasingly less active since. What we see now is barely a glimmer of who and what he once had been – and with each day, there’s a bit of improvement, a bit of decline, a bit more decline, then perhaps a better day, although at this point, what really can be considered better?

We’ve been in a holding pattern for so many years. No one but our immediate family can even imagine it all – and we share it with each other in ways that run deep and run strong.

The greatest tragedy of our collective lives has not been just losing this person, but losing him incrementally over the course of so many, many years. He’s been gone for us for so long, yet his physical presence, while just barely, is still here.

Earlier this week, we met again with hospice care providers, who offered kind words, spoke of discontinuing medications, procured funeral home information and yet, none of us have a window into the length of this journey. This man is stubborn, but he may finally be ready to let go in the months ahead.

As a family, we may soon face that final loss, the acknowledgment perhaps of what we’ve felt for so long. We’ve never truly had a chance to grieve as we experienced one thing after another over the past 20 years, focusing instead on holding things together, finding solutions and pushing emotions as much as we could to the side. That’s not to say emotions haven’t run strong; that we haven’t had our own mini-breakdowns and crises of the heart. To feel anything at all sometimes is to begin to feel it all – and to get through it has almost pushed us to the point of desensitization.

That seems melodramatic, but it’s been 20 years of appointments, of medical tests, of more and more medication, psych evaluations, cognitive testing, of medicine mismanagement and misusage, of supportive devices and therapies, hospitalizations and adult daycare, of increasingly difficult behaviors, of safety issues, of car accidents, of impairment, of anxiety and physical harm, of managed care facilities, of brain surgery, of a family pushed to the very limits of love and acceptance and a man who was loved dearly who never accepted his illness or realized that no matter what happened to him he was someone of great value to this world with so much still to contribute. The list could go on and on, and the heartache could match it along the way.

There have been countless discussions around long tables, with caregivers and caretakers, with medical and mental health professionals, with good people often doing the best they can, with little to offer that could ever change a thing – and we’ve told his story, told our stories, offered medical history, becoming a bit more jaded and disheartened each time.

This past week has been a difficult one – one more table, one more discussion, some tears, another emotional visit and time together as a family. We’re on the precipice now, holding our breaths not sure when the ledge will break. We know all too well how painful the plummet will be.

Indisputable Proof

I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning and reorganizing lately, some of it because I have a little bit of extra time on my hands and even more, because it’s way overdue. It’s easy to get in a rut maintaining a household, not making too many changes and yet as time goes by, there’s so much less that I need. What’s most amazing is no matter how much I clean and discard, there is still so much more to deal with – it’s incredible how much one accumulates over 30+ years with a family.

As part of the process, I’ve been cleaning out old photos, and coming across lots of slides. Early on, long before digital cameras, we took a ton of photos with a Minolta camera and generally shot slides since processing was so pricey. The best ones we made prints from and put them in albums, but all these years later, even the marginal shots are precious and worth saving. So, I’ve been scanning slides, saving them digitally and even introduced my mom to the effort to help. Sadly, there were many slides that haven’t withstood the years, which makes it even more important to capture what I have while I can.

Just as I accumulated a ton of material items over the years, I have even more in the way of memories. Some have lain dormant until the visual reminder sparked those memories. Like many of the objects in the house, filed and boxed away for safekeeping or convenience, I did the same with many of the things that came my way – putting them in boxes to unwrap later, I guess, for when I had the detachment of time to take them all in.

I’ve grown so used to life as it now is that I sometimes forget what my life once was – and as I scanned slides and viewed many of the images with my mom this past weekend, so many memories came alive again.

I often tell myself that while my life had been pretty special when my kids were young, I also know that the distance from those years often lends a rosier vantage point than maybe it really was. But as I looked at pictures from my late teen years, from the early days when I was dating my one-day husband and the earliest years of our marriage, the proof is indisputable. It wasn’t just pretty special – it was extraordinary in so many ways.

A truth I can’t dismiss is this: I had a genuine love story. So many happy times and so much love. It wasn’t perfect, but it was perfect for us. And out of that love, our story grew to encompass four kids that brought such joy to us – and we had so many adventures together for so many years.

I think I pushed some of this away for a while; it doesn’t hurt as much if you lessen the magnitude of the loss. I made up scenarios in my head that told me that had some of the heartbreaking stuff – illness, issues related to that, separation and more – not happened, it still didn’t mean that our lives would have continued to be as good as they once were. But it’s hard to know that, hard to guess what two people might have been like in the future based on whom they were once upon a time. So it was easier to second-guess who we had been, what we once had.

But there we were, once upon a time, in full color across my laptop screen. Pictures don’t always show the truth, but these have back-stories to corroborate what had been hidden away in boxes, in a dark closet at the end of the hall.

And as I remember it all, I can now smile as I do. Life seldom unfolds as we planned, but I am blessed to have all that I had and still do.

Fourteen Years Gone

My father passed away fourteen years ago today, and it strikes me that he has now been gone more than a quarter of my life. Something about that is beyond bizarre to me, and yet his influence is felt every single day. I feel him in my attitude, the way I talk, and the manner in which I approach life itself.

So much has happened since he died – so many things I wish I could tell him. He wouldn’t say much in response. Never a big conversationalist, he would most likely nod or smile, or scowl dependent on the subject matter. He could get exasperated pretty easy, but I like to think he would have mellowed a bit more with age.

My mother always says that my father would never have survived in these times. He’d find them too upsetting, the world too crazy. I don’t know – he was pretty realistic. As an engineer, he looked at life strategically and was a straight shooter in his response to what life handed him. Or maybe she just knew him so much better than me and perhaps his failing health was in response to the world around him and his internal strife in viewing it.

Maybe I just idealize the man that has always meant the most to me. Continue reading “Fourteen Years Gone” →

Undecking the Halls

Many feel a distinct sadness when Christmas ends and it’s time to start storing away the holiday decorations for yet another year. I don’t.

Christmas, as much as I love it, begins to feel like much too much – and I love the tradition, the beautiful Christmas tree and decorations, and most of all, the special time with my family and my friends. But suddenly, I’m ready, and I welcome clearing the shelves, the tabletops, the windows; you name it, I may have put a holiday decoration there. I’m ready to pare it all down and return to simpler space.

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Resilience

There’s a Japanese red maple tree in my side yard, massive in stature, its normally vibrant, deep red leaves darkened by autumn to a rich purplish-black hue. The tree came to us as a sapling – a gift to my oldest son when he was just a young boy, by a beloved grandfather who would one day betray the grandson he adored.

The tree has weathered much; New Hampshire nor’easters are never a gentle thing, yet the tree persevered and continue to grow no matter what kind of battering came its way. Over the years, it’s not only grown, but flourished, and then a couple of years ago, a particularly treacherous storm almost split the tree in half. We lost about a third of its branches and a piece of its trunk, and I wasn’t sure if it would survive.

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Road-tripping Through the Maritimes

Having recently returned from a family vacation in Canada, I started thinking about its origin and what it actually ended up being. Many months ago, my oldest son expressed an interest in going to the Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware, which featured a ton of bands over a four-day period. He bemoaned the fact that most of his friends were too married or too broke to commit at that point, and I glibly said, “Well, I’ll go.” And I would. To his credit, he didn’t immediately say, “Seriously?” Given our mutual love of all things Foo Fighters-related (we actually saw the band together for the first time a couple of years ago), we both were pretty excited about the possibility of seeing them again. We each requested the time off from work and said we would order tickets soon—but first we would see if my youngest son wanted to go.

He wasn’t sure. It was a financial commitment he wasn’t ready to make. So we waited, and then we kind of knew the answer, but we waited. As a couple of weeks went by, we kept waiting on getting tickets and for no particular reason. And then I started thinking about it, and wondering, “If I spend the money on a four-day festival and then lodging, food, travel and all, would I rather be spending it on something more?” But I didn’t say anything. I already said I’d go. Meanwhile, we waited and occasionally would mention, “Hey, we better get tickets,” and do nothing.

I started thinking about Canada. More specifically, I started thinking about Prince Edward Island, a place I hadn’t been to since I was a teenager and where my maternal grandparents were from. It’s also the place my mom spent many of her childhood and young adult summers. I kept thinking how amazing it would be to bring her to the island one more time; how excited she’d be. Continue reading “Road-tripping Through the Maritimes” →

That Crooked Little Finger

It was his pinkie finger that took my breath away. I literally gasped when I saw it. The man himself was fairly nondescript, on TV talking about something—I have no idea what—wearing a billed cap and casual outdoorsy clothes. He was a middle-aged man that I noticed out of the corner of my eye while tidying up my living room. For some reason, the peripheral scene suddenly captured my full focus for a second or two—and then I gasped as his hand came into view.

There was his littlest finger, different from the rest; not just smaller, but crooked, bent at the knuckle joint midway, frozen in its misshapen stance. He couldn’t straighten it if he tried—I know that, because I tried to straighten my father’s pinkie countless times throughout my childhood, convinced that if I just pushed down on it gently enough or maybe this time, firm enough, I could make that finger straight again. It fascinated me.

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Open to the Possibilities

The new year is off and running, and I suspect at a faster speed than I am thus far. In spite of some of my best intentions with nearly two weeks off, far less was accomplished than I had hoped for and mostly because I ended up sick and with two additional days off from work as a result. At least I think I had two additional days off, but they passed in mostly sleep-induced blurs—I know there was a huge snowstorm and I even made a brief call-in for a meeting, but the rest seems far removed from any conscious activity. So here I am, four days into January, four doses of antibiotic in my body and starting to feel almost human once again. Almost.

I’m revving up for what I know will be a busy week ahead. You can’t be out of the office, even during the holiday season, for two weeks and not have a whirlwind of activity just waiting for you to step back into—and we have a new baby heading our way within the next two weeks, too. Everyone’s been sick in the family, including the mom-to-be, and my plan is to jump back into work, have everything ready to lend support to the new family in whatever way they need, and off we’ll go. . . Continue reading “Open to the Possibilities” →

Pet Shifting

For quite some time now, it seems like most weekends have demanded an early rise; not quite as early as a normal workday, but early nevertheless. This weekend promised to be the first in a long time that I had no definite morning plans – no reason I had to get up early and I was psyched. Chances were I wouldn’t sleep all that late but it was nice knowing that I had nowhere I had to be.

Last night, however, I was out until fairly late and as a pet owner, that meant my dogs had been kenneled off and on a good chunk of the day and evening. In addition, one of my sons had asked me to watch his dog for the weekend, too. I arrived home and took the first shift of dogs out (mine) and got them settled before visiting briefly with our ever-growing kitten that would not be welcome upstairs once my son’s dog entered the equation. His dog would like nothing more than to ferociously chase the kitten around, barking like crazy, terrifying the kitten to no end. I have a feeling that the dog would simply stand there looking silly if the cat stood its ground, but I’m not going to take that chance. Next up, it was dog #3 out of his kennel and outside for his walk.
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Gratitude for a Magical, Manic Month

This has been a memorable, yet exhausting month that began with a landmark family event and ended with a huge event of global proportion that was shared, coincidentally, with the very person involved in the beginning of the month event – and what a month it’s been!

My eldest son married his longtime girlfriend-then-fiancé on September 2^nd, and the rehearsal and dinner were the evening before. While for most, Labor Day weekend is often greeted with sadness, signifying the end of beloved summer, for us it was a weekend to look forward and the primary focus of our summer months. In fact, summer fun seemed secondary this year as we busily prepared for this momentous family event. In a flash, that wonderful weekend was over and we plunged into the next things on the docket as the happy honeymooners made their way to Jamaica. Within a day or so, my youngest son left for his second year of college and all of a sudden, I was alone – living alone for the first time in my entire life; well, as alone as one can be with 3 grown cats, one frisky kitten and two insubordinate dachshunds.

Continue reading “Gratitude for a Magical, Manic Month” →