On Loss

On Loss

 

            I have lost a great many things in my life. Teddy bears for one, a koala to be exact.  I desperately wanted my father to turn around and go back to the house I had left it at, but he didn’t.  I sat in the car, crying for what seemed like endless miles.  I remember thinking, “he could turn around if he wanted to, if he cared about me he would turn around, adults can do anything they want, if he wanted to he could”—on an on my mind went—playing out the injustice of it all.  I vowed that day that if my child ever lost anything so special to her, I would turn around, I would make a call, I would not let it go and let her cry. Simply accepting the loss was (and often still is) unacceptable to me. 

            I know that there are some losses in life that one must accept, but I’ll be the first to admit that I have a hard time with it. If I set a goal for myself, no matter how small, it must be attained.  If I have an idea, I have to see it come to fruition.  If I make a plan, it must be acted out.  I will find a way to see it to the end.  I refuse to let it fall into the harsh and calloused hands of Loss.  Yet even with this attitude I cannot escape Loss— loss of sleep, loss of time with family because I just have to get ___ project done now, loss of money because I have to get ___ project done now, loss of true clarity because I’m so focused that I lose my vision, loss of a chance to… you name it.   It doesn’t matter what I do; sometimes Loss marches in and sits boldly at the table waiting to be fed. 

            No matter how unacceptable I may view Loss’s behavior to be, I’ll admit there are times when my actions invite her in.  I leave the door open and the welcome mat out.  I will concede that.  However, I never did anything to merit one of Loss’s cruelest deeds.  Just as I became a mother myself, Loss stepped in with Death smiling at her side, and snatched the one person who at the time I needed most—my mother. I did the usual process of grieving.  I walked the twelve steps, or however many there are in the grieving process.  I’ve lost count— I’ve been up and down them so much.  I suppose I could say I have dealt with my loss, but that would be a lie.  No, she still comes around and stares at me as I dress, as I drink my coffee, and as I kiss my daughter before sending her off to school. I see Loss eyeing my little girl, but I try not to let fear grip me.  I just pull my daughter close for one more hug and worship the moment, because that is all it is and Loss will come.  I must accept it and not fear.  

Tears Revised

TEARS

            From the time I first heard that my mother had cancer, until the time that I received the call that she was admitted to the ICU, and even after that, there were no tears.  There was only the desire to fight along side of her.  To do anything that she needed. To “be there” for her—whatever that would mean.  No tears. 

            When I watched her go from a vibrant woman to a silent shell, no tears.  When I tried to hug her and she pushed me away because she could no longer take the feel of things touching her skin, no tears.  I remember a doctor telling me the technical term for her action, but I swallowed it, like the lump that formed in my throat and forgave it as my mother had forgiven me so many times.  

            When my father and I had to make the decision to admit her to the hospice room, I didn’t know what that room entailed, but I knew once my mother entered it, she would not be coming out.  No tears.  We all—my father, my Uncle Mike who was my mother’s brother, and my two older brothers, Lonnie and Todd—gathered in the small hospice room and tripped over one another, and slept on recliners and makeshift bed chairs, and sat on window sills and waited.

The dreams I had while waiting for the inevitable were grotesque and disturbing.  One woke me up, and everyone around me as well, for I jumped out of my recliner and yelled out something.  I was so frightened by the dream because in it my mother’s bed was bouncing off the floor from her uncontrollable convulsions.  She was struggling to breathe and had one hand up by her neck as if she was choking and the other was reaching for me.  The room was eerily dark, but I could see that her eyes were wild with terror, and I couldn’t do anything.  I think I must have yelled for help and that is what woke everyone up.  Through blurry eyes I saw my dad standing in front of me and felt the light touch of his hand on my shoulder, “It was only a dream.”  I explained to him that my dream had been of my mother.  “She was struggling to breathe.  The whole bed was shaking and I couldn’t help her.”  My father repeated, “It was only a dream.” 

            He then explained to me that her passing wouldn’t be like that, that she would simply and quietly slip away.   Reassured by his comment and lulled by the sound of my mother’s breathing and the small click of the oxygen machine, I fell back to sleep. 

            It wasn’t long before the sound in the room changed.  It was slight, but startling and we all got to our feet.  My father moved closer to my mother’s frail body on the bed.  I saw my uncle who had been on the hard chair next to my mother cover his mouth and heard him breathe hard and quick through his fingers. My father turned to me, took a few steps in my direction and said, “She’s gone.” 

            Tears.  It was as if every painful moment came crashing in on me at once.  I couldn’t breathe, and my father held on to me so I wouldn’t crumple to the floor.  My brothers watched us and wiped their eyes.  As I held onto my father, I realized that my mother was free.  She would no longer have to endure treatments and vomiting and pin pricks and hair loss and the endless list of demoralizing effects of cancer.  It should have been enough for me to realize that she was free, but it wasn’t.  She was free and I would have to learn to walk in this world without her…but I was crippled by tears. 

 

IT’S PERSONAL 

            There is nothing that, well maybe nothing is too strong of a word, but there isn’t much, that brings me greater joy than seeing my little girl run through an endless field of grass squealing with delight and laughing as she races her cousins to the fort they built.  

            All year long I look forward to summer because it is the one time of year that I get to see my family and enjoy the peace that comes with open spaces, fresh air, and miles of green grass.   When I am on my brother’s farm in upstate New York, I can relax and know that my daughter is safe—well, relatively safe, except from the usual kid hazards of cuts, scrapes, and bruises from playing and climbing trees.  She can be off playing for hours and I do not have the overwhelming, and at times unreasonable, urge to check on her every few minutes to be sure she is all right.  I don’t have to sit outside and watch her ride her bike up and down the street for fear of cars driving too fast around the corner, or for fear of kidnappers or older, untrustworthy boys.  I am at peace—the kind of peace one feels when one knows, this is how life is supposed to be. 

            Life is different now than it was when I was growing up.  That may sound like a lead into the old cliché of “when I was growing up we used to walk to school barefoot, through the snow, up hill…both ways,” but life has changed, and not necessarily for the better.  When I was young I would be outside more than I was in.  I would leave the house practically at sun-up and would not come home until after sundown.  Sure, I would check in with my parents, but they were not constantly checking on me because they did not have the same fears that are readily present today.  Life is busier now and plagued with worry and fear.  We do not trust each other fully and are often second-guessing even well meaning people.

            I cannot help but ponder why.  I suppose we could blame advances in technology, but it’s not really technology’s fault.  It is our own and how we have chosen to use the advances.  Think of television and especially news programs.  Turn to any news channel, and I do mean any, and you will hear story after story of how someone has caused harm to someone else—this child was taken—last seen in her front yard, this girl—brutally murdered and the suspect still free; this store—robbed and one man killed with three shots to the chest.  It’s endless and the newspaper is no better—unless you choose not to read it.  The media is used to broadcast disaster and declare messages of fear.  Rarely is the story positive, and if there is a positive story, it’s one of the last ones mentioned.  Stations will often use the positive story as a hook to get you to keep watching the program.  Up next —which really means, at the end of the show and after a plethora of “drug-yourself-and-all-will-be-well” commercials—the story of a little girl who saved an entire neighborhood from disaster…and people will continue to wade through the morass to get to the positive side of the news. The concept of making sure that people know what is going on in the world is not bad, but the rapid fire of negativity leaves one questioning, doubting, fearing. Even if you try to tell yourself, “Well, that’s not how everyone is” in the back of your mind, a seed of fear is planted. 

            There is also the issue of the computer.  A fantastic technological invention in itself, but how we have chosen to use it has had, in some instances, a rather negative effect.  It serves many purposes, and is designed to bring people together—opening up lines of communication that otherwise would be impossible.  It has allowed us to access a wealth of information and has given us the opportunity to communicate quickly even over great distances; however, those lines of communication are thinly drawn and easily manipulated.   Does anyone really know the person at the other end of the line?   Because there is no face-to-face contact, people can pretend to be something they are not, creating new personas and manipulating others.  People have used technology to steal people’s identities, to hack into systems that would have been inaccessible before, and to lure people into traps of all sorts.  Internet havoc, and without computers it would have never been possible.   But can we really blame technology? I think not, although it has afforded us more opportunities for unchecked evils.

            What is truly at the root?  Ultimately it comes to a break down in values, an anything goes mentality that has written God out of every aspect of our lives as a nation, right down to taking him off our currency and practically writing him out of our history.  Because we have no fear of God or his word, we have allowed (as my brother Todd would say)  “sin to have a comfortable seat.”   We have made concessions in the name of not offending others.  Even as I write this there is a twinge in my heart that says, maybe I shouldn’t, someone might be offended.  But I write it anyway, because I believe that if we had our values straight, I would not have to fear letting my daughter play on the streets in my suburban neighborhood, and I would not have to retreat to the rolling hills of upstate New York to find peace and tranquility away from the majority of society.  If we lived according to God’s principles, it would not matter what technological advances were available to us because we would have the conviction to use them for good.    I know it sounds too good to be true, but wouldn’t it be nice?  It’s not to say that those who follow God’s principles can do no wrong, because of course they can.  But I have to think that if we valued what God valued—truly valued it—then instead of slashing tires, we would mend them, instead of breaking our neighbor’s fence, we would fix it, and instead of abusing a child we would laugh and run with her through the grass. 

              

True Light

This is what I came up with for the picture of my grandmother that I spoke of in an earlier post.

Summer Sun

As I open my eyes, the sun is quietly peering through the half open blinds and gently casting its warmth across my bedroom floor.  I lie in bed for a while watching the sun move slowly across the floor and slide over the little red and blue flowers on my comforter as if it wishes to say hello.  I reach out my hand in greeting, and as I trace my finger around the flowers’ edges, I muse about the particularly profound beauty of the early morning sun peering through my window on a summer’s day.   Oddly enough it’s not the same at any other time. Perhaps because there is a simple delight in knowing that I don’t have to get up, there is pleasure in the softness of the sheets; a warmth that envelops not just my body, but my soul as well.   The winter sun does not shine into my room until my day is glaring at me and demanding I give it my full attention.  The spring sun is shy and hides behind the lampshade.  No.  It’s the summer sun that knows me best, and it is not long before its soft light gently nudges me out of bed.  As my feet touch the cool floor I am reminded of how happy I have been since my husband and I had the carpet pulled and the floor resurfaced and stained a milk chocolate brown.  With a smile, I sit at the edge of the bed, running my foot along the floor’s textured surface admiring how the light changes the color and reveals hints of red—it’s beautiful. It doesn’t matter that it took weeks for the men to complete the job of laying the floor, and I don’t mind that there is a chip on the edge of the tile floor in the bathroom where the tile and the concrete meet (though it wasn’t there before the men came).   It is of no consequence that the sink has a crack in it and the water leaks out a bit from the side of the faucet, or that the shower door does not slide smoothly from side to side as it once did, or that the paint is peeling a little on the door jam where the cat has been clawing at it.  As I stand looking in the mirror with the summer sun warming my room, it means nothing that I have failed and fallen short at times in my life, or that my feet and hands are beginning to show that I am getting older.  I take in the imperfections: each nick and scratch, each freckle, each wrinkle and line, and for one brief moment I accept where I am and who I have come to be.  The summer’s sun has this effect on me. 

 

            Since I am a teacher, a wife, and a mother, I hardly find the time to stop and truly enjoy all of life’s experiences, but the summer affords me moments like the one I previously described, and it gives me the opportunity to slow down and appreciate even brief moments of clarity. 

            One day while in class I remember thinking as I stood for the national anthem, “I don’t feel my life.” Looking around my classroom at all of my students I realized, “Everything I do is for someone else.”  I could not hear my inner voice that used to tell me that life was beautiful, meaningful, and worth all the effort.  I know I should have been gazing at the flag and remembering those who have given their lives so that I could be free, but instead I read the posters on the wall. The posters in my classroom have always reflected sentiments of hope and belief in oneself, but as I stood there I questioned—who am I now?   It’s not to say that at that moment I did not believe that life was worth all the effort, but I couldn’t feel it.  I couldn’t feel anything.  It’s one thing to have an intellectual belief that life has meaning and that you, as Walt Whitman said, may “contribute a verse;” it’s quite another to have that belief radiating in the heart, giving one an illuminating faith. 

            When I was younger, I believed in what the classroom posters said, and I thought I always would.  Life has a way of changing one’s perspective—and of giving one perspective.   For me, perspective came in the whispers of a summer morning sun. 

Some works I've Created

  

TEARS

            From the time I first heard that my mother had cancer, until the time that I received the call that she was admitted to the ICU, and even after that, there were no tears.  There was only the desire to fight along side of her.  To do anything that she needed. To “be there” for her—whatever that would mean.  No tears. 

            When I watched her go from a vibrant woman to a silent shell, no tears.  When I tried to hug her and she pushed me away because she could no longer take the feel of things touching her skin, no tears.  The technical term for her action was given to me, but I swallowed it, like the lump that formed in my throat and forgave it as my mother had forgiven me so many times.  

            When my father and I had to make the decision to admit her to the hospice room, I didn’t know what that room entailed, but I knew once my mother entered it, she would not be coming out.  No tears.  We all—my father, my Uncle Mike who was my mother’s brother, and my two older brothers, Lonnie and Todd—gathered in the small hospice room and tripped over one another, and slept on recliners and makeshift bed chairs, and sat on window sills and waited.

            The dreams I had while waiting for the inevitable were grotesque and disturbing.  One woke me up, and everyone around me as well, for I jumped out of my recliner and yelled out something.  Through blurry eyes I saw my dad standing in front of me and felt the light touch of his hand on my shoulder, “It was only a dream.”  I explained to him that my dream had been of my mother.  “She was struggling to breathe.  The whole bed was shaking from her convulsions and I couldn’t help her.”  It was only a dream. 

            My father explained to me that her passing wouldn’t be like that, that she would simply and quietly slip away.   Reassured by his comment and lulled by the sound of my mother’s breathing and the small click of the oxygen machine, I fell back to sleep. 

            It wasn’t long before the sound in the room changed.  It was slight, but startling and we all got to our feet.  My father moved closer to my mother’s frail body on the bed.  I saw my uncle who had been on the hard chair next to my mother cover his mouth and heard him breathe hard and quick through his fingers. My father turned to me, took a few steps in my direction and said, “She’s gone.” 

            Tears.  It was as if every painful moment came crashing in on me at once.  I couldn’t breathe and my father held on to me so I wouldn’t crumple to the floor.  My brothers watched us and wiped their eyes.  We were crippled by tears, and my mother was free.