Renee Rocks

To begin with, let me say I understand that worrying about what may or may not happen is generally a waste of time. No amount of mental effort spent on weighing all the scary possibilities that we humans have to manage in our lives, is energy well-spent. We all have to realize we can’t control everything. We can’t ensure that nothing bad will happen to us. I know, I know. That’s my good sense talking. Which doesn’t necessarily reflect my emotional point-of-view. I suppose I’ll never 100% know if the ways that I think and feel and manage my life were primarily predetermined by my genetics. If I’d been raised in a different family, might I not have the abundance of worry that has been my daily companion for as long as I can remember? I’m not sure. After spending a lot of time digging deep into myself, I’m fairly certain that the initial source of my nagging anxiety traces back to when I was about four and a half years old. That was when my mother had to be hospitalized for a hysterectomy when she was still a young woman, only thirty-two. My grandmother, her mother, came to stay with us kids. I recall not being thrilled about grandma’s presence, although mostly, the hardest part that I vividly remember, is that she made me wear pigtails that poked straight out from the sides of my head. And they were so incredibly tight that I thought my hair was going to be wrenched from my skull. In addition, she yelled a lot. I really missed my mother. My brother, eight years older than me and intuitive enough to realize I was having a hard time without our mom, got this brilliant idea that he was going to sneak us into the hospital to visit her. I remember clutching a few wilted pansy stems in one hand as I held his other one, during what seemed like an endless walk to the hospital. Somehow we made our way through the hallways, ducking behind curtains and doorways until we eventually popped into mom’s room. In retrospect, I realize that she was still feeling the effects of her pain medication, but back then, I didn’t wonder much about the fact that she didn’t seem surprised to see us. The most memorable part of that visit was mom asking us if we wanted to see her incision. That long, still angry, bloody, vertical abdominal line is something I’ve never forgotten. If I was supposed to feel relieved at seeing her, I’d categorize that effort as a total fail.

From that moment forward, I developed two lasting worries. First, I acquired abandonment issues. When I started kindergarten, not long after the hospital experience, I asked my mom two questions every day. “Will you be home when I get home, “ and, “Will Miss Wyfuls (my teacher) be at school today?” My mom’s repeated reply of “yes,” was a bad choice. When either of those two things didn’t happen, I pretty much lost my mind, becoming impossible to manage. In addition, I developed an irrational dislike of all things medicine, coupled with a deep need to try protecting my parents from being sick. I became a difficult, uncooperative patient, the kid who tossed my pills behind the couch and wouldn’t take liquid medicine no matter how hard my parents tried to treat me. I also carried this huge fear that something terrible could happen to them. And as my mom in particular was frequently hospitalized throughout my life, for one illness or another, I took on the responsibility of trying to be right there for both my parents, any time they were facing a medical crisis. That started as a way to protect myself from loss, but eventually it just became my job. I still recall a conversation I had with Michael many years ago when we were young and our relationship was deepening. As his importance to me was increasing I was worried with mad thoughts like who I’d be able to save if both he and my mother were drowning. He replied, “save your mother – I’ll take care of myself.” I appreciated his permission to continue my personal assignment of taking care of mom and dad. I even dragged my babies with me to Chicago on my many hospital visits. Things got somewhat easier when I finally convinced them to move to my town, finally stopping those lengthy treks.

Interestingly, my parents always told me I was the healthiest of their four kids. I always wondered if that was organically true, or if I simply willed myself robust, never wanting to require the medical attention which dominated my mother’s life. I was in the hospital once when I was eight, just for a day, to fix my broken nose following a gym mishap. I still have my tonsils and my appendix. I was never seriously ill and never broke another bone. My next hospital stays were when I was 30 and 35, both for the births of my children. Another couple of decades later, I had two overnight stays, each one following knee replacement surgery. I blew out of those fast. Somehow, I managed to keep myself healthy while morphing all the scary medical experiences of my family into my secret weapon – using all that information I’d acquired as a frequent hospital visitor, to develop an inverted defense mechanism against my worries. Knowledge was power. I listened, watched, read and studied, eventually becoming a patient advocate extraordinaire. As years went by, I hung out by the hospital bedsides of many friends as well as family members, usually invited along as a supporter and interpreter because I had so much medical information. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked by health care professionals if I was one of them. I developed a fatalistic approach about my own health, always wondering when my turn to be incapacitated might come and how I would handle myself. Would the executive function I’d developed be available to me if I was the patient? Hard to know….Meanwhile, I honed my caregiver role, which continued up to and included being at the death beds of both my parents and ultimately, Michael. I had no idea that what started as fear could evolve into such positive a role for myself.

This past April, I was busy planning and sorting things for my upcoming month-long visit to Colorado, the one to help my son and daughter-in-law welcome their new baby, while also tending to my toddler granddaughter. On my to-do list was the Cologuard colon cancer test, a convenient home screening which is sent off to a lab that ultimately reports its findings to your local doctor. I mailed the test away and forgot about it until a week later, when an “Abnormal” message showed up in my patient information portal. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I had a potentially threatening medical problem. I moved quickly, writing my doctor immediately, who responded with a referral for a follow-up diagnostic colonoscopy. Unfortunately, there were no openings in the digestive health department prior to my scheduled departure for Colorado. I made an appointment to have the test a few days after my return home. The guidelines for proceeding after an abnormal result recommended the subsequent exam within a timeframe of 4 months. I crossed my fingers and went ahead with my trip.

I was immediately busy in Colorado. I cooked, I rocked, I shopped, I pushed strollers, I chauffeured, I read, I laundered and I sang. I even gardened. My days were full and varied. I felt lucky that at age 74, I still had the ability to do the things required for taking care of a young family. That fact was a positive as I tried staying present in what I was doing, rather than indulging in the worry about a potential cancer lurking in my body. I didn’t feel sick. But I’d had a lifetime of learning how stealthy disease can be. And my own oft-repeated line about that was “we’re all just a phone call away from bad news.” Yup. I’d been a frequent witness to those moments. So I worked hard on staying mentally balanced. Aside from the nerves about the potential diagnosis, I was also uncomfortable about my first time being accompanied to a medical procedure by my daughter, who’d volunteered to be my ride and companion the day of my upcoming test. I was always so glad my kids never had to bear the caregiver responsibilities that I took on when I was so young. This of course, was my issue, not theirs. But an extra piece of the puzzle that is me, nonetheless.

In the evenings, I spent time holding the baby, after my granddaughter was asleep, and when the tired new parents were grabbing naps to prepare for the wakeful nighttimes that come along with a newborn. Holding a small baby, so vulnerable and innocent, is always enough to make me ponder the big stuff of life. Little humans are so amazing as they begin their journey, each day bringing change and surprises. I marvel at the idea that these experiences are tucked away in everyone, and wonder if our inability to remember our beginnings, is a built-in tool to keep us from being overwhelmed. Being with an infant as an elder is quite the juxtaposition. As they begin to expand, mentally and physically, we oldies are contracting in those very same ways. While in the midst of this fresh start, I was not only contemplating my own potential devolution, but witnessing what’s becoming a more frequent part of my life, the winding down in the lives of people who’ve been part of my life for a long time.

My friend Peg lives in Denver. I was supposed to visit with her in late 2023, when my kids first moved to Colorado. But that visit was canceled when she got Covid. Some time passed. I wrote her in December to check in, but was stunned to receive her harsh news that she’d been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She preferred that I didn’t call her. That was a tough blow. I continued to send her texts and photos. When my birthday came around in late May, I was surprised to receive a message from her. I responded and asked if I could visit her. So we set up a meeting. I was quite nervous as I had no idea about the extent of her disease progression. My son, who also knew Peg, went along with me. She knew us both, but was clearly struggling with complicated short-term memory issues. We talked, had a sentimental lunch at one of her favorite restaurants and expressed our feelings for each other. She is still somewhat like herself but her memory deficits were obvious and pronounced. Within three days of our meeting, she forgot that we’d seen each other. Peg spent her career as sharp, dedicated public defender in Chicago. Seeing her losing herself was painful and disturbing and so undignified. I think brutal is the operative word. What a contrast between being with the babies and the young people. And wondering what was ahead for all of us. There are no guarantees or protections for anyone in this random world.

The other person I’d hoped to see on my trip out west was my old friend Brian who lives in New Mexico. We go back to my college days. He was close to Michael and me without ever having those times when you fall away from each other because life has done its thing and distance happens. Both of our kids call Brian “uncle” and rightly so. He is family. This past year has been a rough one for him, health wise. He’s had two major surgeries recently and just received an unexpected leukemia diagnosis. I guess all leukemia diagnoses are unexpected and certainly harsh. Currently he’s waiting for staging results and a treatment plan. We all wanted to get together for a visit but in the end, Brian wasn’t feeling up to it, so we passed on a gathering for now. We were all disappointed but we understood that in this moment, things are feeling pretty uncertain and a visit is too much extra. Having moments like these with two close friends while in the midst of my lively family and my own personal concerns was a lot. The big stuff, indeed.

My month-long trip finally came to an end. I spent the first few days back home, scurrying around, catching up with all my obligations and trying to stave off my nerves. Then it was prep day for the colonoscopy, not the world’s most fun activity, and finally the test day itself. I do not have colon cancer. I had three small polyps removed and was informed by my doctor that I won’t need another exam for seven years, absent any unexpected surprises. Seven years? Maybe I’ll still be around then, or maybe not. In any case, lucky, lucky me. This “abnormal” turned out to be a dry run instead of the real thing. I am grateful.

The weather has been brutally hot since I returned home, but I’m back to work in my beloved garden. Being out there is good for me, even when it’s exhausting. I’ve been spending my time mulling over all the big stuff that I’ve experienced in the past two months. Soon it will be behind me except for what I keep in mind to inform my choices in daily life. I hope I stay able to rely on my brain to guide me through whatever is ahead of me. But if I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that we can count on today rather than tomorrow. I’m thinking that like it’s my job.

Tonight after dinner, I took a nap, falling asleep to the sound of rain. When I woke up, I knew there was a good chance that the sky would be putting on its post-storm color show, so out I went. Suddenly, I heard “Mom!” My kid was on her front porch, as I was on mine, right across the street from each other. We met up in the middle of the road, both outside for the same reason. Whaddya know? These are the best moments. Treasures. My daughter and I got to the other side of my new role as the parent who needed help. There were no further repercussions.

I will gladly settle for that.

Michael’s birthday is the last significant anniversary that ends a tough stretch of emotional hurdles for me that begins every May 1st, on our …

Birthday Boy

Michael’s birthday is the last significant anniversary that ends a tough stretch of emotional hurdles for me that begins every May 1st, on our wedding anniversary. I wrote this post back in 2018, a year after Michael’s death. This year will be the ninth birthday that has passed since his untimely death at age 67. My tall broad-shouldered husband could look quite intimidating, which was a great cover for a tender, sensitive person who cried when he accidentally broke a robin’s egg, stuck a stillborn puppy in his mouth in a futile effort at resuscitation, and was a sucker for sappy romances. Here’s his backstory. Happy birthday, baby.

When you stop to think about it, birthday celebrations are a bit odd. Although somewhere deep in our brains, the passage from our mothers into the outside world is probably recorded, we don’t have easy access to that memorable entrance. In fact, most of us remember little from the first few years of life. And yet it seems to me that our earliest years are deeply significant, combining whatever is hardwired into our DNA, with the effects of how we are treated by our parents or caregivers. My own children, now in their thirties, routinely exhibit behaviors that are virtually the same as the ones from their babyhood. We are always growing, even during infancy, and by the time we are about five, certain basic feelings are locked into us, whether we can recall how they got there or not.

Today is Michael’s birthday, the second one since his death. This day finishes off the long list of anniversaries that punctuate my month of May. Father’s Day will be more challenging for my kids than for me. But his birthdate resonates with me. As I remember the many birthdays we spent together, I find myself thinking more about the little boy who was formed before I showed up. And that little boy was always present throughout our adult life, on birthdays and all other days, as we maneuvered our way through life and its multitude of challenges.

Michael’s parents were difficult people, hardly the types that were suited for nurturing children. They give credence to the concept of licensing couples before they reproduce. So much heartache could be avoided that way. But that isn’t likely to materialize any time soon. And for my sweet guy, he seemed like an alien, a mutant creature in the cold, insensitive environment that was his home life.

Michael had an older sister. Rather than beloved children, I felt they were essentially perceived as two-dimensional objects. I think their parents didn’t spend much time learning to know or to help their kids. Rather, they hoped their children would grow up to reflect their own very clear values and choices, to become mini-versions of themselves. Their parental love was narcissistic. And putting a child’s needs ahead of their own was never part of their family code.

Michael’s earliest memory was from the vantage point of a 2 and a-half year old with pneumonia who’d been admitted to the hospital. His parents left him there by himself. He woke in the night and began wandering around, confused. The staff wound up putting him in restraints which he remembered for the rest of his life. Another one of his vivid memories was being a 5 year old child in Cleveland, who needed speech therapy to correct a lisp. He took the trolley by himself to his lessons, with a note pinned to his coat, detailing his personal information in case he got lost. As a parent, I always found those two stories incomprehensible. Actually, they were incomprehensible before I was a parent.

Michael told me that he’d actually escaped the worst of his parents’ attentions, which were initially aimed at his sister in a full-court press attempt to turn her into a stylish debutante. She had the wrong stuff. Michael did too. Both of them recognized from their earliest years that they were lacking whatever it was their parents wanted to see in them. And whatever was intrinsic to them didn’t resonate with their parents. Their most essential selves were unseen, not acknowledged, unvalued. That uncertain boy, lacking in confidence and self-deprecating to an absurd degree, came to me packaged as a strong, daring, talented man who seemed capable of anything. And he was sweet, perceptive and gentle. What could possibly go wrong? As we learned to know each other, I learned that boyish uncertainty which was constantly gnawing at him. While I pushed forward, certain there was no situation I couldn’t think my way through, Michael hung back, passive and nervous about putting himself out there, about taking emotional risks or intellectual challenges. He’d jump from a cliff, ride a motorcycle without a helmet and hop rollercoasters until his head spun. But he moved slowly and cautiously in the things that mattered most in the real life. As we made our way down the road, navigating the proverbial “rat race,” I could be found stamping my feet at the finish line, waiting for him to catch up. One of his favorite questions for me was, “would you mind removing your feet from my back?” Our differences in pace were memorable, me trying to yank him forward, and him, trying to hold his own space. Life was interesting indeed.

I tried to love him out of every insecurity that had taken root in him from the beginning of his life. He was intermittently grateful and annoyed. And I, despite being frequently frustrated, was madly in love with this sweet, gifted man who’d been unfairly treated by those dreadful parents. After a long run of twenty years, during which they heaped their abusive style on me, I divested myself of my relationship with them. I’d had enough, trying to help him maintain the hollow shell of a familial relationship. I couldn’t stand who they were, nor the damage they’d done to Michael. What kids will tolerate from their abusive parents is remarkable. But they weren’t my parents. I walked away. Michael said he didn’t blame me and had our situations been reversed, he wouldn’t have lasted six months.

Michael and I moved forward together. In time, his confidence grew as he began to build first, small personal successes, and eventually, the bigger ones that made him a fabulous public servant and a gifted teacher. And most important, he was a matchless husband and a devoted loving father.

But periodically, the childhood demons emerged and he felt less than, not good enough. Over and over, throughout our years together, he’d ask, why are you even with me? It drove me crazy.

In 2012 we began the long road of his cancer experience. Many of the trivialities we indulged in during normal life, were shunted off to the side as we faced months of tough treatment and uncertainty. Our feelings for each other deepened in intensity as we reveled in every moment we shared. Still, he would ask me why I bothered with him, when he could be so difficult. In 2014, he’d been through 2 surgeries, 30 radiation treatments and 18 rounds of a powerful chemo cocktail. His birthday that year had us hanging on the edge of an uncertain future. I was casting about for an appropriate gift and fretting over finding something meaningful, something significant.

In the end, I wrote him what I hoped would be the penultimate answer to his endless insecure questioning of my loyalty to him. The ultimate I would save for what was our fragile future. We were lucky to get almost three more years. Here it is, as true for me today as it was when I wrote it 4 years ago, as true as it was for the many years before I wrote it, and as true as it will be forever. Happy birthday, my darling boy, wherever you, or your microbes, or particulates may be floating through the universe. Parts of you will always be with me.

I returned from a two week trip to Colorado in early April, where I went to spend time with my son and his family as they’d just moved to a new home …

When I’m 74 – Which Is Today

I returned from a two week trip to Colorado in early April, where I went to spend time with my son and his family as they’d just moved to a new home in a new town. Seven weeks later, I’m now back there again, to help welcome their new baby who will be my last grandchild. This time, I’m staying for a month to help smooth their transition from a family of three to a family of four. I feel fortunate that in my mid-70’s, I’m still able to a significant helper to them in ways that are definitely more physically challenging to me than they were ten years ago. Anyway, today on my 74th birthday, all of us, including the 9-day-old, went out to dinner at a steakhouse. None of us had eaten a steak in what felt like forever, but tonight, all of us ate some dreaded red meat. My strip steak was so delicious I almost licked my plate. I did eat a salad and a potato so it wasn’t a total blood fest. I don’t know when, or if, I’ll ever have another one, but I’m not sorry I ate it. I got a surprise dessert with a birthday song sung by a number of wait staff and ultimately, our entire side of fellow diners at the restaurant. I enjoyed myself, although I missed my Illinois family the whole time.

So what are some of my thoughts on this definitely not-a-youngster birthday? Let’s start with how the advances of technology have altered my music appreciation. I can’t remember the exact date when I started listening to music primarily through a streaming service, earbuds plugged into my head so music can accompany me while I walk, garden and do household chores. Somewhere back in time, the stereo equipment fell silent, subsequently followed by the tape and CD players. I know there’s been a comeback in at least the vinyl industry, but when I’m mobile, nothing works as well as my tapping into that mysterious online space which supplies me with a steady flow of sound which I can tweak instantly with just the sound of my voice or the flick of an arrow. Sometimes, though, I’ll be listening to a song when at its end, my mind anticipates what album track is next and I am continually surprised that I don’t hear it. That predictability can be so great when one of those records you listened to over and over stirs up the emotions you felt way back when, during the days when hours of devotedly listening to music was a conscious activity, not just background company. Sure, individual songs trigger memories too, but they’re transient – the unrelated next track rarely is about continuing a stream of memories created over more time than a two minute song. The other day I decided to load my usually random playlist with whole albums. First up was Bare Trees, released by Fleetwood Mac in March, 1972, about a month and a half before I moved in with Michael. The cover title got air time on the radio. But that was nothing compared to listening to that album over and over again, in the beginning of what would turn out to be the love affair of my life, with deeper cuts on the record like Sunny Side of Heaven and Sentimental Lady becoming enmeshed with all the heady emotions of decades past. Regular revisits to whole albums are now in my streaming rotations. These listening moments are like a trip in a time machine that requires nothing visual to open internal doors that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I’m hoping to revisit many more of those places which exist in layered, complex places somewhere in my brain before my time on this planet is up.

The storage place for all the feelings connected to music also has me pondering everything I’ll never understand about emotions and memory. This pondering is actually a frequent pastime for me. These brains of ours, with their yet-to-be-discovered mysteries, perpetually intrigue me. I read recently that researchers have determined that the formation of implicit memories, such as the ones associated with infant caregiver recognition, are present within days of birth. Explicit memories, which involve recall, are believed to develop as early as twelve months of age and are more commonly cognitively available at around two years of age, although four is a more common time for remembering. All of them are supposedly stored within the hippocampus, adjacent to the amygdala, which develops before birth. That little nugget appears to be pre-programmed to deal with primal emotions involving fear and threat, but it also evolves over time based on individual life experiences. I marvel at the intricacies of these small structures in our heads, endlessly curious about how to access those moments which may define us but are lost to what is called childhood amnesia. I have some consistent but fleeting memories from when I was about two, but most are just inaccessible. Maybe one day, the keys to those shadowy places will become available. Meanwhile, I’m left to wonder…

During the weeks between the Colorado visits, however, I wasn’t consciously thinking about brain stuff, but rather laboring away in my garden at a fiendish pace. Missing that fleeting Illinois spring which seems shorter every year, is tougher for me than it used to be. As exciting as it is to be part of the new baby experience, I have to admit that being away from my other baby, my garden, is especially hard at this time of year. After the long gray winter days, when the weather warms up, I become single-minded, thinking of what I get to do out there in my yard. One of the few places in today’s world where I feel I can have at least a little impact, being away when the ground comes alive, where I can create a setting that can be both a refuge and a way station for all the pollinators laboring under the duress of climate change, is a big thing to me. I love to see how all those long hours outside translate into real life. I wanted to make sure I planted everything I normally get into the dirt in mid-May through mid-June, into the ground before I left. I got it all done, including ridding myself of more grass to make room for plants that are actually useful instead of just sitting around being green.

My mother, who claimed she couldn’t grow anything and wasn’t particularly keen on trying to, said I was like her mother, my grandmother, the person she sardonically called “the farmer.” Grandma bent herself over from the waist down to clean, to scrub, to plant and to grow. She had a special way with African violets. She was also remarkably physically resilient, dying at 89, not having spent more than a week in a hospital during her long life. That despite a total of thirteen pregnancies, eight live births, and decades of physical labor. She is the one I think about as my forebear when I describe myself as sturdy peasant stock. She lived long enough to meet my daughter, one of her many great grandchildren. Along with those of Michael and my parents, her voice and actions remain remarkably vivid, wherever they reside in my head. And also, when I work in the garden? I bend from the waist, just like grandma did.

Music, memories, gardens and mysteries, all cohabiting together in whatever comprises the interior of me, myself. In the evenings after all that gardening, I was too tired to do any more physical activity. So I turned my attention to the other task that seems to be taking me forever to accomplish, the downsizing of all the stuff accumulated over all my decades on this planet. Shortly before I left town, I pulled my mom’s end-of-life file, now almost 10 years old, and parked it, and myself, in front of the television set for the purpose of thinning some of my papers. I could also feel like I was being productive while actually being somewhat lazy. In any case, I wasn’t anticipating anything more momentous than whiling away a few evening hours before bedtime.

But wow. I was so wrong. Simply by reading over those papers which described the last six months of my mother’s life, a major hole was poked into a pile of PTSD emotions I thought I’d resolved long ago. Mom died at age ninety-one, finally succumbing to the after-effects of a broken hip, after struggling for years through a couple of cancers, wildly uncontrolled diabetes and too many other illnesses to mention. I was at her side through all of it. But reviewing the juxtaposition of her challenging problems on top of Michael’s was almost, almost, just too much.

Between 2012, the year of Michael’s cancer diagnosis and July 2015, the month of my mother’s death, my life was amazingly complicated. During that time I was the primary caregiver for my baby grandson. My mom was showing signs of early dementia. To protect her, Michael and I had moved her into my house, both so she wouldn’t be alone and so she wouldn’t run through her life savings by moving into some sort of extended care facility. That plan failed when taking care of a toddler, Michael and my mom proved too mentally expensive for me. I think the worst part of that time was when mom couldn’t comprehend the severity of Michael’s disease. Her cavalier attitude about him got to be too much for me to share my living space with her. First we moved her into an assisted living facility. That experiment lasted over a year and a half, a little longer than Michael’s first remission. As his condition worsened, so did Mom’s. She began exhibiting escalating signs of the dementia. After a terrible case of the flu which had profoundly impacted her living facility, she could no longer live semi-independently and had to be moved into a nursing home. Michael had more treatment which had bought him another brief remission, but that ended at the time mom was moving into the nursing home. Meanwhile while settling her, we were frantically searching for a clinical trial which might treat his resurgent cancer.

Those months are hard for me to describe. Michael was gradually exhibiting significantly increased tumor growth. Mom was confused about what was happening to her life. She was spending down her last dollars, which I hid from her to minimize her stress. I was chasing down any possible treatment options for Michael while simultaneously trying to get Medicaid to accept my mom’s application. One day in a moment of semi-lucidity, she said, “if Michael dies, how about you and I living together?” I reminded her that we’d already tried that. Life felt pretty surreal. My older brother died that April. As mom’s power of attorney, I made the decision not to tell her of his death. I didn’t think she could survive that news. Meanwhile, Michael’s health was declining. I imagined that he would die at age 66 which seemed impossible at the time, almost 25 years younger than mom at this time. Finally in June, 2015, his oncologist was able to secure treatment with Keytruda, then being used in compassionate care scenarios for the most desperately ill cancer patients. That medication ultimately would buy him more time but at the moment, nothing was certain.

On Friday, July 24th, I was just arriving at our local clinic so Michael could have several liters of fluid drained from his chest. The accumulated fluid was the consequence of a profound immune response to his treatment. Suddenly my phone rang. The nursing home was calling to say my mother was asking for me. She had fallen on a trip to the bathroom twelve days earlier and broken her hip. She had surgery and stayed hospitalized for eight days. Her recovery was poor and after that difficult time, she was returned to the nursing home. I had just completed her application process for hospice on Tuesday, July 21st. I knew that if she was needing me, something was terribly wrong. I never left the nursing home that Friday – mom died the next day at around noon. Suddenly there needed to be a quick funeral. Michael was still alive and struggling to stay that way.

It was an unimaginable time. That whole experience and the feelings about all of it, apparently lies stored along with the music feelings, memories and complex emotions in some small place in my head. The entirety of all the trauma and terror, the sadness and bitterness of having to sort through so many layers of pain, all at the same time, came roaring out of me, requiring nothing more than flipping through a pile of forms and documents one evening with the television droning in the background. I’m still surprised at how raw I could feel all these years later. Just exactly how deep is my memory reservoir anyway and why is everything that happened still so vivid? Michael stayed alive until May 28th, 2017. After all that had happened, that was something for which I will always be grateful.

So ten years past that old person anthem of my youth, the Beatles’ “When I’m 64,” this is me at 74. I’m still needed and still being fed, like the lyrics in that song. Also still wondering a lot, working a lot, still being in the moment, and still remembering the past and sorting through its evolution prism of time. What’s next and for how long? I guess we’ll see…

Me and Fern – aged seven. The years just relentlessly roll on. I could never have imagined all the varied iterations of my life as I’ve passed …

Still The Perfect Day…

The years just relentlessly roll on. I could never have imagined all the varied iterations of my life as I’ve passed through the decades. This photo of Fern and me was taken in March, 1958 when we were just seven. We’d known each other since the previous fall, the beginning of second grade. That year we’d skip a semester, combining all of second grade and the first semester of third in one year. We were advanced. Moving kids ahead was popular back then. It’s still hard to believe how two little kids can just immediately make a lasting connection but that’s really how it was. We wound up in different classes during both the rest of elementary school and high school but that didn’t matter. When we went off to college in September, 1968, we were roommates. We had some bumps along the way, but until that awful moment in 1988 when Fern ended her life, we remained close friends, sisters, family. That relationship lasted thirty years, until we were thirty-seven years old. Today is Fern’s birthday. She would’ve been seventy-four, as I will be in ten days. She’s been dead now for half my life. And yet, her impact on me remains. Three and a half years ago, a miraculous turn of events brought all her journals to me, stimulating me to write the following notes. They are an introduction, as this paragraph is, to my memory of “The Perfect Day.”

Today I finally opened the two boxes I received last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. I was waiting with intention, knowing that the boxes contained all the journals of my friend Fern, journals I tried desperately to acquire after her suicide in October, 1988. I knew I needed to be alone when I finally had those journals in my hands. That they are with me now is an incredible gift. I am now their resting place. For years during our youth, we shared journal entries with each other. Despite that intimacy, I’d learned through my life experiences, that as intimate as any human being can become with another, there are deep parts of ourselves which defy our best efforts to share. We enter this world on our own. Despite the deepest love and understanding, we also leave on our own. I’ve lived those moments several times over. When I opened the first box, I found a notebook from 1966 in my hands. It fell open to a sweetly written page Fern wrote about me when we were eleven years old. But although I’m generally pretty good at not reading the end of the story before the beginning, the next journal in my hand was the last one in which she wrote, the journal that was in her hands as she died. I’d often wondered about that, whether there’d been a suicide note left behind. This journal is that note, fully describing her last thoughts, her last moments alive. I was informed of her death a few days after it happened. She was far away from me, near people I didn’t know. I pieced together the facts of her end by talking with strangers. But I keenly felt how horribly wrong everything had gone for her. Tonight I’m surrounded by her writing, in longhand cursive. Her pain was even worse than I’d suspected. I found myself thinking about this blog I wrote to describe how we’d managed to understand what would be a perfect day, so many years ago. Now more than ever, I understand what a remarkably brave person she was, struggling with inner demons her whole short life. Publishing this is part of my bearing witness to her remarkable courage and spirit.

This is a photo of me and my friend Fern on my 16th birthday over 50 years ago. We met when we were 7, in second grade in Chicago. We were an unlikely pair. She was shy and awkward, I was outgoing and aggressive. We became best friends. Through elementary school, high school, as unsuccessful college roommates and beyond, we shared a deep, intimate relationship. We wrote 3 snotty novels together as teenagers, we saw the Beatles together and imagined being old ladies, rocking in our chairs, harmonizing to all their songs. We had the same crushes and didn’t mind sharing. We talked on the phone for hours, eventually graduating from gossip to big ideas and deep thoughts and feelings. After many years, we knew Fern had serious emotional issues. She struggled through them while becoming a court reporter, a pianist, a bowler and eventually, a PhD candidate in creative writing. I tried really hard to help her but I was no match for the depth of her pain. She killed herself in 1988, two weeks before our 20th high school reunion. I’ve never really gotten over it. I miss her all the time. A wrong and unnecessary death. But aside from the countless memories, I am left with one permanent gift from our life together, the perfect day.

One hot summer day in 1966, we were just a couple of kids with nothing to do but amuse ourselves. Our friend, Mary, who lived in a big building right on Lake Michigan invited us over to hang out. We walked there, sweaty, but not caring as we watched the sidewalks shimmer in the heat. When we got to Mary’s, other friends were gathered, girls and boys, sitting on the large concrete patio that overlooked the water. The air felt cooler there. My main crush was on site which made the day glow for me, and Fern’s was there as well. We were utterly innocent. A glancing accidental touch of a hand was a dream you could live on for weeks.

There was a neighborhood bakery called Burny Brothers. I remember the pink boxes so rarely seen in my house and to my delight, Mary’s mother had bought their cinnamon rolls which I’m sure were the most delicious ones I’ve ever tasted. We snarfed them down as we kidded and flirted and the hours flitted by. Eventually it was time to go home. As Fern and I lived only a block apart, we left together. On the way home, we decided we were hungry and decided to stop for a burger.

This is where we stopped, The Red Hen. For a buck, you could get a burger, fries and a Coke. For me, it was always special to eat out, even at fast food restaurant. Mustard on burgers? Unthinkable at my house.

We strolled outside and sat down on a hot bench to eat and talk over every minute detail of the day. As we ate and chatted, we watched an auto mechanic come out of his shop and get ready to slide underneath a car. He had a portable radio with him which he flipped on before he disappeared on his little rolling cart. And suddenly, Paul McCartney’s unmistakable voice wafted out as we heard Eleanor Rigby for the first time. What a great moment. As we sat there in bliss, full stomachs, dreamy dreams and the perfect musical accompaniment to what had been a perfect day, we had a simultaneous realization. We’d been talking about turning 16, which meant summer jobs and responsibilities. Before we knew it, we’d be thinking about college and adult life and all that is implied by those transitions. We were keenly aware that what was ahead would likely be harder, and that the landmark events like getting a driver’s license, college, work, maybe marriage and kids, would be frontloaded with expectations. And miraculously, we knew that those futures were full of land mines that could easily blow up in our faces. The day we’d just shared was a perfect day, a carefree day, when nothing bad happened, nothing hurt and every tiny sunny detail felt just right from start to finish. We promised each other that we wouldn’t ever forget it and that when all that adult load came down, we’d be able to go back and remember what was simple, carefree and ultimately the best time ever.

This year will mark the 37th anniversary of Fern’s death. Along with the weight of that totally wrong death, I now carry the memory of that perfect day by myself. It still works for me. I’ll always be grateful for it. 

Life can be so serendipitous. Way back in the late summer of 1970, when I was beginning my junior year of college, my friend Maurine and I moved into…

Kim, Sheila and the Grocery Store Woman Who Will All Vanish

Life can be so serendipitous. Way back in the late summer of 1970, when I was beginning my junior year of college, my friend Maurine and I moved into our first apartment together. Maurine and I were friends through both elementary and high school and had consistently maintained our relationship. She was transferring from Wisconsin to Illinois for our third year. Back in the old days, the university required students to live in the dorms until the end of sophomore year, unless you pledged a sorority or fraternity and could move into that house. So this was my first apartment, although Maurine had already experienced that lifestyle in Madison. That little place on Armory Street, basically two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bath was the beginning of a new adventure together. I don’t have any photos of our apartment but it was memorable. A remodeled house, it was located on the west side of campus, stashed between fraternities, big apartment buildings and other converted older homes like ours. Only $150 per month, we barely looked at it during our one hour fast pass through the place on one dark afternoon during the summer before we moved in. The price was definitely right which at that point was our primary consideration. When we later saw it in daylight on moving-in day, we were stunned. The walls were painted black with purple accents. The rooms were hopping with fleas left behind by cats – my mattress was so full of fleas I required treatment at the local hospital. Our landlords, twin brothers in their 50’s named Earl and Pearl Kelsey, must’ve painted that room with five coats of white paint before the darkness was finally concealed. They also kept spraying the place with insecticide, so powerful I thought I might die from the toxicity. We wound up pitching that infested mattress into the garbage, then heisting a still wrapped one from a nearby construction site so I could sleep in peace. Wild, wild days. In any event, after our first year experience in that dingy spot, we shifted neighborhoods, moving in 1971 into what was commonly called liberated territory.

We had good friends who lived in the home next door to our new apartment. The Gemini Drug Counseling house was located right across the street from us. One block to the west was Earthworks, an alternative community center, a gathering place which had a store, a garage, a bike shop and a restaurant called Metamorphosis. Other divergent businesses and organizations sprouted up to offer services with a political conscience. That neighborhood was a safe haven for those of us who felt so alienated from mainstream America. To the east was the Print Shop where mostly self-taught printers produced the protest literature and art of the times. At any moment, our street was home to any number of dogs, our pets who roamed around without leashes, as unrestrained as we were back then. Those moments and spaces in time were the most significant in shaping my evolution into adult life.

This lengthy preamble is actually part of the background for how I met Joanne, who lived in the house behind ours on Main Street. She was one of the neighbors whose social lives, classes and political interests overlapped with ours. Even more interesting was the fact that Joanne went to the same high school as Michael, who I would meet shortly after my move to my new apartment. The two of them were friendly with each other but not close. I became more connected to both of them than almost any of the other new people I met during that time. It’s fair to say that beginning of these powerful relationships figured significantly in the emotional foundations of my life. I was twenty years old when I met those two – we all grew up together. Maurine, my old friend moved back home to Chicago after finishing college. Our long friendship has lasted for more than six decades. But I wound up staying permanently in my college community, ultimately moving in with Michael about nine months after we met. Joanne stayed around too and just a few years down the road, was elected assessor of the city. Because I’d had some managerial experience with several hundred campus apartments by that time, she hired me to manage manage commercial property assessments. I became a certified specialist in that area and spent most of my adult career working with Joanne.

So these two people who played such critical roles in my life had a lot more in common than simply attending the same high school and college. Their personal styles were also quite similar. Unlike me, a person who has always been willing to discuss virtually any topic, regardless of societal taboos, they both had clear boundaries about what they were and were not willing to share. And although, I think both of them would have been described as friendly, neither of them had what for me, was the pretty regular experience of being approached by total strangers, who within minutes, were confiding astonishingly intimate details of their lives to me. After many years of being with me during episodes like this, they would routinely admonish me, especially when going somewhere that would likely afford someone the opportunity to approach me for those conversations, to “make no eye contact with anyone.” They felt that if I never looked directly at an individual, the odds of me getting involved with some lengthy conversation which had nothing to do with whatever or wherever we were going, would definitely be reduced. The fact is that I could be standing with them in a line at the grocery store, be seated with them at a table in a restaurant, or be waiting to board a plane, when some person would make a beeline right toward me and immediately begin confiding a stunning tale or other to me, as if I was their best friend. Or maybe, an on-site therapist…

Throughout our long lives together, these incidents happened frequently. Michael in particular, especially as years passed, would always remind me that our lives would be perfect if I’d only stop talking to everyone. I would remind him that I wasn’t usually the person starting these interactions, although in truth, once they’d begun, I had a hard time extracting myself from the sometimes truly interfering episodes. I honestly had no idea what silent signals I must be emitting, that for some reason, were received by a stranger with a profound need to talk. But these situations were always part of my life.

I’ve always wondered if there would ever be a scientific foundation for these kinds of experiences I have which don’t happen to everyone. Our brains remain mysterious on multiple fronts and are constantly being studied. Or is it not the brain, but rather a genetic reason that makes me more inclined to be approached? How about a mysterious communication pheromone? No scientific evidence suggests a messaging system for my issues. But who knows? I’ve wondered as I’ve definitely aged and that my social world is no longer as expansive as it used to be, if I’d lose this mysterious personality component of being a receptor to total strangers. But no. Recently, on a trip to Colorado to visit my son and his family, I had two really random moments with a couple of different people in very different locations. One was Kim, a 70-year-old library volunteer and the other, Sheila, a pharmacist’s assistant and a mom, watching her daughter play in the park.

One morning I took my book-loving granddaughter to her local library. I was just standing near her, watching her read, when a pleasant woman approached me and asked if I’d found everything I needed. I replied that I had. She then asked me about my granddaughter. I explained that I was visiting from Illinois and that this little one and her parents had only recently moved far away from me and the rest of our family. Within minutes, she started explaining how she was estranged from her eldest son and had never seen her granddaughter. Kim, (I asked for her name) began crying, explaining that she wasn’t really sure what had gone wrong between them. We talked about how time felt so different as we got older, with windows of opportunity to fix family issues growing smaller with each passing year. But the time we were finished, she said she felt better and was motivated to try repairing her relationship with her son at least one more time. So much for an innocent trip to the library.

I met Sheila at a little park near my kids’ house. One afternoon, my son and I had walked over there with the baby so she could use the slide. She was interested in the girls playing there, however, girls who kindly included this little toddler in their game. Sheila, the mom, then struck up a conversation with us, pointing out her nearby home and describing the city to us, as she was a lifelong resident. Within minutes, I knew she’d been divorced, had one older child from a former marriage, and knew where both she and her husband were employed. But what she really wanted to talk about was the fact that her dad had died a month earlier, that her mother couldn’t sleep by herself in her home and that she was the only one of her siblings close enough to spend the nights with her mother. Apparently her mom and dad did everything together during their retirement, rarely leaving each other’s side, not even to run a quick errand. She wanted to know what to do to help her mother establish some independence while still struggling with her own grief over her dad’s death. That was a lot for a casual chat in the park. When our talk ended I gave Sheila, the total stranger, a hug and walked away. My son, who wound up participating in some of the interaction, shook his head and remembered the “don’t make eye contact with anyone” admonition from his father.

I’ve thought about Kim and Sheila several times during the past few weeks since I returned home. Although for the most part, I feel these incidents are probably just an easy way to spread a little human kindness, I’m still not sure why they happen. At this point in my life, I’m really concentrating on my own inner thoughts most of the time, which somehow, hasn’t quelled whatever makes me continue to have these random exchanges. Just today, I was leaving a store, pushing a cart, which in addition to groceries, held several pots of flowers I bought for my garden. As I exited, a woman walked right up to me and started a conversation about how anxious she’d been recently, as she was just returned from traveling and was afraid she’d missed all the spring colors. As she bent her head to catch a whiff of the blossoms, she prattled on about how she needed the comfort of new life from nature to keep her spirits up in these challenging times. I could totally relate to that. We spoke for a few minutes. Why me, I thought? As I walked away, I realized I didn’t ask her name. I thought about Kim and Sheila once more and added this woman to the random people who will all, and have all, ultimately vanished from my consciousness.

I’m soaking in my own spring pleasures right now. I don’t know whether anyone else will be entering my personal space as the season progresses. I do know I’ll be thinking of Michael and Joanne, those two who spent so much time watching me navigate through all the soon-to-be-forgotten people. I’ll be thinking of Maurine, too. Unlike the vanished …they’re always on my mind, along with the memories of our long life together.

Hurricane David at peak, 8/31/79 – Wikipedia Today, while trying to hold my head up and keep going, I suddenly remembered this long-ago moment which …

Like a Hurricane