I Think I .....Can't

It has been three weeks since the loss of my Dad and while the initial numbness is easing, the hard parts are not.

When in the thick of a crisis  I tend to say to myself,  "If I can just get through X, I'll be fine."  X being a tough day, a week, an event.   I have a way of breaking things up in to manageable mental bits so I don't go completely postal and/or collapse.   "If I can get on the plane and get home to my family, I'll be OK.  If I can get through the wake and visitation, I'll be fine.  That's the hard part.  No, wait. If  I can get through the funeral....the burial....the exhausting plane trip back to Gloucester....." .  I just keep making those little goals because the big one is too much to comprehend or manage. Like the little train, I keep chugging along with "I think I can... I think I can..."  but seriously,  right now, I think I can't.

I forgot about the next part.

The aftermath, the physical exhaustion, the mental grief.  Yesterday was a good example.  I am working on a grant for the local library and spent most of the day on my 7-year-old computer (AKA the *#&$^%  boat anchor) trying to wrestle down documents and cope with incompatibilities in software.  I thought I would take a break and sync up my iPad and iPod touch so I can have some commute-worthy books to listen to on the road.

As I watched one device sync I noticed a lot of songs I didn't recall buying.  HYMNS, for heaven's sake.  "King of the Road" by Roger Miller!  Then it dawned on me - I downloaded those on wi-fi at the hospital so Dad could listen to some familiar music.  Dad  loved him some Roger Miller.  I don't even know if he could hear them, but I played them for him.

Then I got an email from my brother with a copy of the death certificate. (I'm going to release the (Sicilian) hounds -  my husband -  on American Airlines for being so heartless.)  When another brother requested the family address book, I (as the keeper of the family minutia,  ephemera, and other stuff) popped open my spreadsheet and saw the list  of addresses and phone numbers.... including the ones for Dad.  Hard to look at that. I  deleted those  before I sent it along, but when I popped open the browser to get back to my email I saw the bookmark for his Caring Bridge website where we kept far-flung relatives aware of his status.  Another thing to delete.  A thousand little things that appear and sting and compound the loss. Even hearing the TV  commercial about "setting up financial arrangements before a loved one goes in to a nursing home" sent me on a brief ,  "I wonder if  Gary got the billing sorted out before Dad moves to.....oh."   A thousand little things.

Mothers Day is thankfully past, but made even  more difficult this year by falling on my Dad's birthday.  Really, world?  Seriously?  Not enough stress for one day?  Then a sister wisely pointed out that we gave them both the gift they have surely wanted for almost ten years - we gave them back each other.  (Can I get a "thank God for sisters" from the choir?)

It helped.  But it is the thousand little things that  rain like  fine, thin shards of glass and fall  without warning  on your head and your heart.  I know it will let up,  I know it will get better.  I went through this when we lost Mom, but I really did forget (or blocked out) this part, and I can't break it up into manageable bits because that is not how it works.  I push through each day. I crave sleep.  I turn on my sound machine app to a quiet rainstorm to drown out the noise of traffic and motorcycles.  I want it to be quiet. I want peace. I want to stop crying at unexpected moments and inappropriate places. I want the roller coaster ride to level off.

I do not want to do this part but I do not  have a choice. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.   Maybe someday, but I'm not feeling it now. I'm just sayin'.

The Family Quilt

My dining room looks like an entire  luggage cart exploded, and not in the good way.

In  a futile attempt to sort for laundering, there are  piles of clothes everywhere.  Combining swimsuits,  linen shirts, wool socks, cotton tank tops, wool sweaters,  sandal socks and long-sleeved heavy wovens into compatible loads presents a unique laundry challenge.  I also have all kinds of keepsake treasures, sympathy cards, a guest book, a tie that belonged to Dad, and over in the corner laid over a chair -  the family quilt.  It did not start out being called that, but has become that as a result of life (and death) just....  happening.

The double wedding ring quilt was originally a gift to my parents on their 45th wedding anniversary in 1995.   My sister Pat pieced the top and she mailed it to me for the hand quilting.  I had it spread out on my dining room table for what seemed like an eternity (I was new to quilting at the time) and when I finished my part  I mailed it to my sister Peg who did the binding. (Note to Peg  - We still all believe you farmed it out to someone else to do the beautiful, turned edge binding.  I'm just sayin'....) We gave it to them on their anniversary and they had it on their bed for many years.

In 2001 we lost Mom to pancreatic cancer.  Shell shocked and grieving, we at least had the presence of mind to know her casket should be draped with a quilt - but which one?  She had made so many beautiful quilts.  We decided on this one and it looked just beautiful.  Our plan was to cut the quilt in to 3 pieces (for each of the 3 daughters who made it) and call it good.  Thankfully, as we stood there with a scissors in hand we realized that if we cut up that quilt we would have the unholy wrath of our mother upon our heads for all eternity.  So we left it with Dad. He put it back on his bed and for the next almost-10 years he kept it as a keepsake of her.

Those ten years were a tremendous gift.  Mom always said, "When you call home, if a man answers - hang up."  Mom wanted to be the first on any scoop.  Consequently,  Dad always played back-up to Mom so those first visits home post-Mom were a little strange.  We actually had long,  terrific  conversations.  I learned so much about him, his youth, his life, just everything - and it was wonderful.  Bonus - we had some seriously great laughs. I always took a hand sewing project home with me, I think he liked watching me sew and it removed the necessity of feeling like I always had to have something to say.  I have great memories of watching football and baseball games with Dad, chatting, silent, commenting, silent, sewing, silent....... redefining "quality time" in a way I hope you are all lucky enough to realize in your lifetimes.

In the past few years his health plummeted, the Parkinsons ramped up and was joined by dementia and a host of other issues.  He moved from assisted living to nursing home to skilled nursing care.  His death is a most conflicted mess of emotions - I cry for both grief at losing him and relief that his suffering was finally and  mercifully at an end.

Out came the family quilt, placed lovingly on his casket.  It looked so right. The other half of that wedding-ring couple was reunited  and things just seemed to be back in balance.  As a family we have decided that the quilt will be placed on all of our caskets (or urns placed on top of it) when we leave this earth.  I like the eternity of the linking circles in the quilt, the connection with our parents that it represents, and the fact that it is a physical, touchable reminder of the power of  love  - the love of our family, and especially the love of the two people who gave us life.

Sidebar:  When  Grandma Major (Dad's mother) was in the nursing home, my mother made her a lap quilt out of scraps of our old dresses and pantsuits.  This was so long ago that most of the squares were polyester double knit (eeessh).   We still have the precious keepsake and it was covering Dad when he left us. The hospice worker on the final  night vigil had with her a Methodist hymnal.   While baptized a Catholic when he married my mother, he was born and raised as a Methodist.

How is that for interlocking bands coming into full-circle perfection?

The Schoolgirls of My Japan

In 2004  my husband was president-elect of the local Rotary Club.  One of his "duties" as incoming president was to attend the Rotary International conference  to be held in Osaka, Japan.   (Sidebar - the man who held the office one year after Joe went to Chicago.)  The local club paid for Joe's airfare, conference registration and a hotel stipend.  We agreed it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for both of us to go  so we swallowed hard and bought my plane ticket and added to the hotel stipend kitty so we could upgrade to a really nice hotel.

(Note:  Okay, I am not a total bitch, but I have rules and standards  about hotels. My feeling was we were arriving in a very foreign country with no guide or tour or assistance and I wanted a sanctuary hotel with a Western toilet, thank you very much. )

[caption id="attachment_1652" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="To the left of the hotel is a beautiful, multi-level green garden, nestled among the shops and offices. "][/caption]

The Swissotel Nankai at Namba was all of that and more. I could go on for days about the beautiful linens, the marvelous toilet with an instrument panel for swishy warm water (and air) features, or the delicate porcelain of my  morning  coffee creamer  that fit in the palm of my hand,  looking for all the world to be a fragile,  dainty blown egg. I could regale you with stories about how we ventured out unaccompanied and explored  Osaka and Nara and surrounding cities by train, bus and subway.  (We did get pretty horrifically lost once, but recovered quickly and found our way back to Osaka and the aforementioned sanctuary hotel, thank you very much.)

But this is about my schoolgirls.

While wandering through Nara Park we stopped at the  Toshodai-ji Temple where we found a busload of Japanese students all wandering about with little notebooks in their hands, obviously there on an assignment that would enable them to mingle with non-native tourists. Most of the girls  just looked at us, giggled, and shyly scattered.  Once we sat down on  a bench  we were approached by four beautiful girls who, in halting English,  asked us if we could help them with their English lesson.  We proceeded to answer their questions, sign our names in their notebooks, let them take our pictures with them while  all the time giggling madly like 6 year-olds.   (In fairness,  they were giggling too.)  It was all too hilarious - between their halting English and our feeble attempts at the Japanese phrases we learned for the trip, the whole thing was entirely too funny to be borne.  They were so charming and adorable and sweet and innocent.  Their "homework"  provided us with one of the best memories of the trip.

[caption id="attachment_1667" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Ikebana"][/caption]

I loved Japan.  Profoundly. Our trip there was like nothing else I have ever experienced.  We wandered up and down streets of towns where no one spoke a word of English, and yet we were greeted and kindly welcomed everywhere we went.  Even in restaurants we managed to point at menus and communicate we were open to tasting whatever they thought we would like. When we got lost or turned around we were quickly rescued by someone who would observe our confusion, hold our map and look at us as if to say, "Where do you want to go?" and we would point at the map and they would point us in the direction we needed to go.

Now it is seven years later and I watch the news reports with a knot in my stomach. When I see people looking for their lost family members  the emotion swells up in me and I feel my nose and eyes  ache and grow warm   with tears.   I feel helpless and sickened and overwhelmed.  I look at our pictures from the trip and the faces of  those schoolgirls  and  I wonder where they are today.  Have they started college by now?    Are they near the worst of the earthquake and tsunami damage?  Are they safe? I think about all the ema we left at every temple we visited, writing our prayer intentions and wishes on them and hanging them carefully among the others.  I brought home a few extras I made and holding them now I close my eyes and  make a spiritual  ema for the people of Japan.  I  pray for their safety,  for the continued  grace they have shown in the aftermath,  for the unthinkable sacrifices made by the Fukushima 50 and their families,  and especially for the well-being of my Nara schoolgirls.

[caption id="attachment_1673" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Photo by Ilya Genkin www.genkin.org"][/caption]

 

The View from a Pew

I need someone to please tell me who is in charge.  We are running out of grownups in my family and I am sitting closer and closer to the front pew in church.

When making a graham cracker crust last week  I instinctively reached for the phone to call my mom and ask her about baking temps.  She has been gone for 9 years but she is still my go-to person.  I had no idea how much information was stored in her head until we lost her.   She was the central pivot in our family, keeping everyone rotating in orbits, tracking the whereabouts, births, deaths, marriages, arrivals and departures of the vast tribe that is our extended family.  When that ship sailed, so did a mountain of information.

We lost another grownup this weekend - My Uncle Ed.  The McGill side of my

[caption id="attachment_1616" align="alignright" width="193" caption="St. Leonards - the McGill "Mother Church" "][/caption]

family has/had a nice tradition at funerals.  We line up in semi-birth order, the cousins are together, the grandchildren of the deceased are together, the siblings, etc.  We then march into church with the immediate family sitting up front, then the grandkids, cousins, etc.  all in order.  I have noticed that as the years pass, I have moved closer and closer to the front pew. The people in church are mostly younger than I am - and sitting behind me.

When I am  in  Iowa or  Wisconsin with one of my sisters, we chatter endlessly on those long drives across the plains to Nebraska.   When we get stumped on some bit of family history or knowledge we hit the invisible OnStar button on the dashboard and say, "OnStar, could you ask Mom (enter question here.)"   Mom was our OnStar.  Our "MomStar" if you will.   A vast repository of  wide-ranging resources, trivia, experience and wisdom.

As I lose more and more of those grown-ups from my childhood  it makes me feel a little wobbly about who is in charge - who are the grownups now?  Me - an OnStar?   It is not an option.  We are destined to  step up, take the place of our elders  and pass along  those same things.  We are  the role models, supporters, informers, and safe-harbors of their life's  journey.

We are the grownups now.  We have the view from the front pew.