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?

Resolving to Not Resolve

Beginning week 2 of the furlough from work.  I had no overwhelming plans for what to do or  make, finish or start but I think I have set a new record......low.   Since the Bernina is still in a different repair shop,  I'm left with way too much time on my hands to ponder the purchase of a 2nd, used machine.  I feel guilty just writing it about it - it seems like such an extravagance. But as to the long list of other things I could be doing?  Aside from cleaning out my closets and delivering an overstuffed car load of clothing and miscellaneous household goods to the local food pantry thrift shop.... nadda.

The one thing I have accomplished during this unpaid, stress filled furlough is epic sleep. Maybe it is a reflection of the exhausted state that most of us function in year round, or it could be a symptom of depression.  Probably an unhealthy combination of both but I flat out refuse to guilt myself about sleeping.  Sleep is wonderful, blissful, and free -  and I feel it so deep in my sore bones. Before he left for work this morning, my husband came in to our bedroom to kiss me goodbye.  He leaned over and saw that my electric blanket had timed  off, and flicked it back ON.  What a stellar guy.  I rolled over on my side and just faded off for another hour or so, and it was bliss.

I have also had time to read blogs and admire what others are working on, doing, or surviving.  The woman over at Toddler Planet has my heart in the palm of her hand.  Go over and visit, send her your very best energy, love and light.   The older I get the more I seem to know people who are suffering and  struggling with health issues.  If you do not know about Caring Bridge free websites go and find out now.  You will probably need one someday for someone you know. They are a marvelous and  remarkable way to keep family and friends updated and  involved without causing stress to the one who is ill.  We have a CaringBridge page for my Dad and it warms my heart to see my cousins and aunts and uncles leaving him little notes of love and support, telling him what they are doing, etc.  I'm not sure that Dad comprehends it when we read him the entries but I can tell you that we,  his children,  have taken such comfort in reading those guest book entries.  It is a wonderful thing.

I have one week of furlough left and I have resolved to resolve.....nothing.  I live with enough demands on my time, my pocket, my sore bones and my spirit. I'm going to watch Downton Abbey every  time it is on television.  I am going to read and doze and take a couple of obscenely long showers and use some French soap I've been saving up for something special.  I am special.  I am using that lovely soap on my tired body and I will  inhale the fragrance and I will allow myself the pleasure of rest with no demands.

Seriously?

The last two weeks have been a hazy blur, and not in the good way.

Dad suffered a  series of markedly down-turning events that necessitated a very quick trip home.  As a consistent target for TSA bitches  I'm not a fan of flying to begin with - much less when the day has to begin at 3AM to catch a 6AM flight. The TSA's were manageable on the outbound flights from Boston, no hammer complexes there.

After a few days of hospital roulette (never knowing who the next assigned doctor would be, ever getting an update on some test results, or wondering if the wastebaskets would EVER be emptied) we ended up moving him to a local rehabilitation center.  For reasons known only to fans of the movie Birdcage,  I have nicknamed the place Bob Fosse.  I spent the next few days there with my sisters and brothers trying  vainly  to honor my Dad's wishes about his health care proxy.

"Fosse" is a Catholic institution that currently has 3 local priests  with a parent/patient currently in-house; consequently the place is crawling with RC priests.  I'm ok with that, my little brother is one of them.  Here is what I am not OK with:  one of them (pretty much a stranger to me no less)  took the opportunity to get all pastoral on my ass at a time when I was trying to pull myself together and say goodbye to my Dad for what well could have been the last time I will see him alive.  I told him three times I was not going to have that conversation with him right now, and that I really had to concentrate on my father.   I understood his deal,   I knew he thought he was being helpful, put he pushed back with a lengthy  fairy tale  about how " your  Dad's suffering is  not in vain, his suffering will save other souls and that when he is in heaven there will be people lined up to thank him for his suffering because he saved their souls....."    and I threw a big, red bullshit flag.

Seriously?  A line of people thanking Dad?  It sounded like a coffee shop in a bad Disney movie.  I am  RC by faith and by grace but what heaven will or will not be is not definitively known to any of us. We can hope, conjecture  and read Catherine of Siena until we are blue in the face but I believe our puny human minds cannot begin to comprehend what lies ahead.  I think it is much bigger and better than anything we could ever come up with and I am content with that knowledge.

Father Get-All-Up-In-My-Grill was shocked when  I threw that BS flag and tripled his horrifically patronizing efforts to educate me on the error of my thinking. It set off an avalanche of reprimand and judgment.  ( I was also told to go to confession.)  He started peppering me with questions, all of which I answered pretty calmly.  Here is a sample:

Father Grill:   Are you married?

ME:  Yes.

Father Grill:  Children?

ME:  No.

Father Grill:  (One eyebrow critically raised)

ME: I had ovarian cancer.

Father Grill:  Oh.  (Evidently that was pardonable)  What is your married name?

ME:  Ciolino.

Father Grill:  Ciolina?

ME: No.  Ciolino - with an O at the end.

Father Grill:  Oh, is he Italian?

ME:  No, Sicilian.

Father Grill:  (Scared look)  Ohhh, Sicilian.  Did you learn to make the pasta?   (SERIOUSLY, HE SAID THAT.    I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP. )

ME:  No.  I don't have to.  My husband makes it when he wants it.

It went on longer than I ever should have permitted and he left the room wearing more skin on his body than I ever should ever have left on it.  I was angry and shaken and grieving - and all at the same time.   I refuse to dwell on it or give it any more time or thought than I already have.  Instead, I will take that experience and offer the following suggestions for visiting the sick that all of us can use:

1. Speak softly.  Noise in the sickroom is anathema.  Ditto for perfumes and well-intentioned  aromatherapy.


2. Be brief.  The family and the patient are both exhausted.


3. Be useful.  Ask  them if you can bring them water, coffee, dinner - anything. Walk the hall with them.  Anybody need to be picked up at the airport?  Anybody need a ride to the hospital?


4. Be present.  You don't need to regale them with stories of your own family illnesses and/or deaths, it isn't a throw-down.  Just be present.


5. Be honest.  Spare them the "oh wait and see, he'll be good as new in no time, " especially when that is NOT going to happen.


6. Be cognizant. It is about what they need, not what you want to give them.

I remember years ago when we lost mom and people started showing up at my folk's house with all kinds of food.  It was all home cooked and all wonderful.  Since there were about 24 of us there at the time (children & grandkids, spouses, etc.) it made meal times much  less difficult. Then, and I'll never forget this,  someone showed up with a huge box of stuff and just left it very quietly.  It was filled with big packages of paper plates, cups, napkins, rolls of paper towels.... and toilet paper.  It was the most incredible, thoughtful,  useful thing ever.  Who knew?  Someone did, and I'm happy to pass it along.  We should all be so useful.  Seriously.