After sleeping on it last night, and in the context of my own life here in Kansas, here are my thoughts about my mom, and my dad, after seeing them this past weekend.
The visit with my mom was as good as could be expected. She is very depressed now, sleeping most of the day and hardly eating anything. She had a CAT scan on Friday, the results of which they’ll get from her oncologist Tuesday. Both of my parents are expecting that the doctor will discontinue the chemotherapy as it seems it is only killing her blood and not impacting the cancer at all. While he told them both her condition was terminal in February, reaching this milestone puts a fine point on it, and accepting it has been hard for both of them, particularly my mom.
I am not planning on going back now until Memorial Day weekend. The trip is too far, and too exhausting to make in a two-day weekend, plus I need time to recover emotionally - and to prepare for the next visit. The person I saw this weekend was much less my mom than even two weeks ago. While in my mind I have been going there to see her I realize that I’m really supporting my dad, who has stepped up to the responsibility beautifully, but who still needs a place to talk. I am honored to be there for him, and I am proud of him for the caring, loving attention and support he is giving my mother.
Not going back for at least two weeks, and maybe three, increases the likelihood that I’ll never see her alive again, but I think I am prepared for her death (as much as anyone can be prepared for the death of their mother). I’ve said the things I need to say and I feel balanced in my relationship with her right now. The waiting is the hard part now. For her, for my dad, and for me.
(As seen on inluminet)
Go watch this: WWJD.
What would he do indeed?
Seeing my mom this weekend was harder than ever. Her depression about dying is very evident now. She readily admits that she is tired and just wants to quit. At times you can see utter defeat and despair on her face. My father remains steadfast and dependable, he has been by her side every step of the way through out this cancer, and I know he will stay with her through the end. My respect for him has grown anew watching how gentle, loving, and caring he is towards his wife of 45 years.
Being there is good and difficult at the same time. Arriving means I have to leave too, and I know that goodbyes are hard for my mom. She has had lots of visitors in the past few weeks, including her brother and sister. Both left knowing that their goodbye was the last time they’d see her in person. As much as I want to see here every weekend now, I think waiting a couple of weeks is better. The trip is physically and emotionally tiring for me, and I know it leaves my mom depressed when I have to leave. I think is is helpful for my dad to have me there as he can talk about what he’s been through. As my mom retreats farther into her depression he is getting less and less of her. I know that he struggles with wanting to honor her wishes and being stymied with her lack of interest, and lack of verbal expression.
As for myself I am very depressed this evening. Knowing that two or three weeks maybe more time than my mom has, and contemplating not returning there for at least two weeks is very difficult. I know that I am walking a thin line between taking care of myself by seeing her, and taking care of myself by staying away. I think I am content with the efforts I’ve made to see her and talk to her. As she becomes less involved in the world around her I will get less and less from seeing her. With the memories of Michele’s death indelibly imprinted on my mind, I have to be careful about adding too many images of my mother’s decline to the mix.
Finally I am depressed today since it is my birthday, and the first birthday without Michele in ten years. She always made an effort to make me feel special on my day, and I miss that terribly tonight. There was no party this year. I made my own cake. I got one card with a generous gift from my parents, and not even a phone call from my brother. Two of my best friends did call, however, and that cheered me up a little.
Now I think I’ll go cry myself to sleep.
To be or not to be - Shakespeare To do is to be - Nietzsche To be is to do - Sartre Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
Once upon a time a friend asked me if I was a “human being or a human doing.” At the time I didn’t think about it much, but over the years I realized that I tended more towards the doing side. Only through a lot of hard work in concert with my relationship with Michele did I manage to reach “being” status.
In the months since Michele’s death I think I have reverted to merely doing. Going through the motions, as it were. There’s a certain comfort in just living by remote control. You don’t have to make decisions or worry about feeling. You just exist. You just do.
I’m now at the threshold of wanting to be again. And yet I am afraid of leaving my cocoon of isolation. Returning to the world of the living, the world of the being, forces me to take another step away from what was and towards what will be. It is a step away from Michele. Like forging new friendships, or experiencing new activities, I feel like my return to being moves me away her even further still.
There’s no timeline, no schedule to maintain in grief. I fully understand that I will cycle in and out of denial, anger, acceptance, doing, and being. I just don’t always have to like it.
Yesterday I made a cheesecake following my mom’s recipe. This is true New York style cheesecake; obscenely rich, creamy, and decadent. It’s also quite an undertaking to make with a pound of cream cheese, a pound of small curd cottage cheese, a pint of sour cream, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, vanilla, flour, a graham cracker crust, and four eggs.
Once everything is well mixed (thank goodness for a stand mixer) and poured into the pan you bake it for an hour and a quarter. Then you turn the oven off and let it cool for two hours before taking it out and letting it cool more on the counter. When it finally reaches room temperature, you cover it and refrigerate it. Twenty-fours hours in the refrigerator helps to bring everything together taste and consistency-wise. Or at least that is the plan.
In hindsight I should have either used less than all the batter when filling the springform pan. My pan was full to within a fraction of an inch of the top; this sucker is going to expand considerably as it cooks. Next time I’ll either leave an inch or so of clearance or make a collar out of parchment paper to contain the mushroom cap. Luckily I had the foresight to position the pan on a cookie sheet so nearly all of the overflow that spilled was caught and dealt with easily. While I haven’t had a piece yet I think the sides look slightly overdone. Instead of cooking it at 325 I need to lower the temp perhaps 15 or 20 degrees during the cooking stage. Despite the overflow and cracking in the top of the cake it looks and smells just like a cheesecake.
Towards the start of the cooling stage I called Illinois to talk to my parents, and to ask mom some questions about the finer details of cooling the cake. Do I open the oven door for the two-hour cooling period, or leave it shut? In talking to me dad I learned that her decline is speeding up. He says that she is now displaying some memory loss and some disorientation as to when and where, and what’s happened recently. I can only imagine how extremely difficult it must be for my father to see her decline on a daily basis. Last fall she had a bad episode of back pain and the pain medicine caused her to hallucinate quite badly. She is using the same medicine now, and the same or higher dosage, so it is hard to know if her lapses are drug induced or an indication of further spread of the cancer.
After talking to both of them I sat at my desk and just cried and cried. I fear her time is now very short, and I think this weekend will truly be the last visit I have with her. Dad says that she is becoming increasingly inward and reticent to talk, so I may not even get much of a visit with her this weekend. All of which just plain sucks.
Last night as a result of the suicide survivor’s group I’m attending, I came to a new understanding about faith. Or perhaps I should say the beliefs that sustain or hinder a person’s faith. For much of my life I have struggled with what I now call dogmatic religious beliefs. I’ve never been one to accept things merely at face value, especially if there was no supporting argument except for, “you just have to believe.'
Several years ago I ran across a quote from Reverend William Sloane Coffin that states, “Faith is not belief without proof, faith is trust with out reservation.” This simple statement has given me a entirely new outlook on matters of belief and faith. Perhaps it is only a semantic game, but I can easily trust without reservation things I couldn’t begin to believe without proof.
One of the key things I trust is that we all have multiple lives, that we are destined to instantiate on this physical plane again and again, learning lessons while traveling along a path towards achieving a state of complete grace and love. I have believed this to be true since the first time I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull at age fourteen. Other books, Illusions among them, and discussions with Michele and others, have given me a sense of peace about why I am here and where I am going.
Believing, as I do, that this current lifetime is but one step on a path stretching far into the distance, makes it easier to accept Michele’s death. I still feel pain and sorrow, and not a day goes by that I don’t want her back her with me. But I know in my heart, and in my soul, that she is okay. Moreover, I know I will rejoin her between the end of my current lifetime and the start of my next one. Perhaps she will even play a role in my next lifetime.
Where the group experience really hit me last night was seeing just how damaging to a person a dogmatic belief system can be, particularly if it is accepted with out question. At least two of my fellow survivors are really struggling to move past the mere idea of suicide, let alone the suicide of a loved one. My thought is that having been conditioned to accept things without question by their faith, they are ill-equipped to face a world filled with events that acceptance along cannot reconcile. More sobering than this thought is the question I am now asking myself: where in my own life am I as blindly accepting of beliefs or ideas detrimental to me, as they are of a religious foundation that is hindering them rather than helping them?
Six new television ads from the new “Get A Mac” campaign at Apple. The “Viruses” one is laugh-out-loud funny. (“I’m just going to crash…”)
Get A Mac Ads
verb 1 attempt to explain or justify (one’s own or another’s behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if they are not true or appropriate.
In the movie The Big Chill Jeff Goldblum’s character, Michael, gives the great line, “Rationalization is more important than sex. […] Ever gone a week without a rationalization?” In the past few weeks I have been struggling with rationalizations I’m making now, particularly since they are juxtaposed against ones that Michele and I made just a year ago.
You see, while Michele’s mom was declining in the winter and spring of 2005 we talked repeatedly about either her going to North Carolina, or the two of us going. Michele’s mom had a difficult mental illness that made seeing her tough at best. She had grown increasingly paranoid and scattered in the final months of her life. Michele struggled mightily with the decision to go or not go. Our financial situation played into her thoughts as well, even though I assured her that money was not an issue when it came to seeing family.
For many reasons we decided not to go visit her mom. The morning that we got a call at 2 am telling us that she was in the hospital and wasn’t expected to live, Michele was faced with the awful reality of her choice. After getting the money we needed from my parents, we made a mad 1500 mile dash through airports, and on planes in order to arrive at her bedside just an hour or two before she died. Michele never talked about any regrets resulting from not seeing her mom sooner, but I strongly suspect she felt them.
In the weeks since learning my mother’s cancer was terminal I have made several trips to see her. Many of the geographic barriers that played into the decision not to visit my mother-in-law don’t exist between where I live and my mom lives, and while I have some issues with my mom, they aren’t as severe as the ones existing between Michele and her mom. Still I am feeling guilty about being able to see my mom more or less when I want, while (I think) Michele felt like she couldn’t see her mom. Knowing that the relationship the two of them had was entirely theirs, and that it had existed long before I came on the scene, doesn’t really let me off the hook. If Michele were here now, she’d encourage me to see my mom as much or as little as I wanted. She would go with me or not as I wanted. I know that I offered her the same conditions and support last year, and yet I can’t help but feel badly.
I’m sorry Michele, that we lived so far from your mom, and that you weren’t able to have more contact with her. Or perhaps contact with her without all the stress of travel and staying in strange places. If I in anyway prevented you from having access to your family I am very sorry. My hope is that I didn’t interfere, that you were able to make the choices you did without interference from me.
One thing I did learn from her is how critically important it is to take care of one’s self in all interactions, big and small. While no one is pressuring me, I have felt like I should return to Illinois every weekend to be with my parents. I have had to overcome this desire in order to take care of myself. Rationalizations about everything I do these days, seems to be the defining factor of my life. I know rationalizations are always there, I’m just not used to them being so figure in my life.
I’m not sure how I missed Cinderella Man in the theater, but I am glad that I finally got to see it. A great comeback story made even better by being true.
Rating: Worth buying a copy of to add to your collection
In moments of lucidity, brief moments of calm snatched from between bouts of crying and rage, I wonder what happens next. Where does my life go from here? Will I become an eccentric old man who carefully observes the routines that allow him to navigate the endless cycle of weeks until his death? Or will I reinvent myself as an eligible, slightly tragic figure of a man, who is perhaps attractive to someone, and end up with a new relationship?
There are days, to be perfectly honest, when I can’t see continuing this lonely existence. Since I am currently in a place of pain and suffering it is hard to imagine life with out those emotions. I’m just of half way through the year long period of no major changes I set for myself following Michele’s departure from this mortal coil, and now I am faced with the loss of my mother. Not to give mom the short end or anything, but I am not going to languish for twelve more months starting now - I can’t.
Waiting a year to make major changes is fine and dandy for moving or taking on a new job. The emotional ruler I have to measure my reaction to a new dwelling or a new employment engagement is long on angst, anger and pain, but rather short on happiness and joy. Any situation that I felt good about today would likely be one I’d hate in a few months. So I won’t move, and I’ll only change jobs if I must. Certainly meeting new people is (or can be) as momentous as finding a job or moving. Since I don’t have a spare emotional ruler to size up people; I’d have to use the same one that would have me living in a cave and working for Ebenezer Scrooge.
The other factor working against me are the limited opportunities I have to meet people. Being an introvert I don’t gravitate towards social settings where I might come across new friends. I have started spending time on the weekend camped out in the nearby Panera Bread just to get out of the apartment and at least see other people. While being out like this is nice, it does at times make me painfully aware of all the people who are together. Having been single until my mid-thirties I now full well what it is like to be single in a world full of couples. My fear is that the landscape for people in their mid-forties is even bleaker.
I guess being an eccentric geek isn’t the worst future I could face.