Little Family Dramas

OMG, shoot me now!  Really, guys, how much more do you think I can shoulder before they just absolutely collapse under the weight?  And by "guys" I mean the people under the roof with me right now.  I'm walking a fine line between Greg and his sister who is staying with us right now.  He doesn't want his family to know he's leaving his job, but she's down here trying to figure out what is next for her family, who are needing/wanting financial assistance and thinking we should be in a good position to give it to her.  Of course, that would be awkward under any circumstances, but it's made worse because how do I explain to her that I'm not so sure we're not going to be living under a bridge without telling her why?  Okay, that's not true, I admit it.  But, if it comes to it, I'll go back to Pittsburgh and live under one of those bridges at least - they have a lot of them, and some are conveniently located near Heinz Field, so maybe that's not such a bad Life Plan.  But, the bottom line that is true:  no, I am not in a position to invest in real estate that her family can live in.  While I know that it may seem totally reasonable for someone to think I might be thinking of investing along that vein, yeah, well, not right now.  Right now, I am seriously worried about hanging onto this piece of real estate.

And, right now, this piece of real estate is in utter chaos.  I've got boxes of Mother's things all over the place, Greg's bringing home his office things (try explaining that to his sister!), Marissa has to be out of her dorm by the end of the week and has been gradually bringing her things home.  Really, I guess none of that matters all that much - it's temporary, it'll eventually get sorted and absorbed, but the physical chaos adds to the mental turmoil, and I feel fidgety and unsettled.

It's so weird that after whining all my life about not having a larger family, I would now like to be as far away from this little drama as possible.   I find myself building a high degree of resentment toward the man who fathered my children.  Yet, I continue to be reticent to speak to him openly and honestly.  For one thing, he's easily irritated lately, which irritates me in turn.  But, I also know - and share - the reason he's seeking a drastic change.  What if he's right?  What if this is the only way he can see his way up this deep, deep well we're in?  Doesn't he have the right to hoist himself up?  Yes, he does.  So do I.  At what point do we need to be physically apart to do that successfully?  I think time would answer all of these questions, but the reality of modern life is that bills don't wait.  Such weighty questions, and I feel so flighty.  What's a girl aging woman to do?

Remnants

I am about to head off to the three storage units to spend my second Sunday in a row in false, florescent lighting, stale air and dust going through Mother's things.  The house is in chaos, having still not folded in all the items we brought back from last Sunday.  It's almost like a reality show contest where it's things trying to make the cut, not people.  The boxes that make the first cut are brought back to the house and then have to be gone through again, and I have a giant trash bag and a Goodwill box filling up behind me.  The fifty duplicate photos of me in the seventh grade, for instance, definitely made it into the trash.  I begrudgingly kept one of the pasty faced, limp haired, polyester ridden youngster because I thought Marissa might get a kick out of seeing it.  But, in general, only a very few precious items will make it into the house already jammed with items from Greg's family home, Kelsey's fledging independence that never really took flight, and items from my home back in Montana that Mother never did have room for.  Somewhere in all of that we have accumulated our own stuff.  When I think about selling the house and fleeing from here, which I do often, I despair at what it would take to pack it all up and actually move with it.  Yet, yesterday when I met Marissa's boyfriend at the storage to have him hopefully take some of it off my hands, I felt vaguely guilty for being so anxious to part with the things that made up Mother's home.

These are the things that made up her life:  that horrid purple and green chair, that heavy blonde colored bedroom set with the Formica top that hailed from a time before I was born and was old and ugly in my estimation long before now.  The stereo cabinet that we once thought was so awesome and state of the art, but has only been used as a table top for years and years to hold Mother's boombox.  The World's Best Grandma mug that I had Kelsey give her one Mother's Day, the Steeler insulated jug that Mother kept with her constantly full of water.  The ten million straws and paper plates that made me cringe to think of the environmental nightmare I was creating by throwing them away.  These were all pieces of her and were important to her.  These are the things that defined her to an extent.  Of course, I know that the force of her personality was what really defined her and what I will remember her by, but there are tidbits of her life that she kept as reminders of the places she had been and the things that she had experienced that I feel torn about what to do with.  They mean nothing to me, really, but they did to her.  For instance, on a piece of Ohio Valley Memorial Hospital stationery I found her carefully handwritten rules of the base golf course.  She had a famous story she liked to tell about her forays into golf on that course:  she signed up to take lessons and would say that she was so awful that after two of them the golf pro committed suicide.  Then, after a carefully timed pause, she would crack her devilish smile and clarify that he did actually kill himself, but it had nothing to do with her.  Nonetheless, she never golfed again.  Yet, she kept those rules in what I'm calling the Money Box of momentoes.

She had an ornate box full of the photos and things that were most precious to her and it was in there.  Along with a parking ticket with a man's name written on the back.  What was that all about?  Was the man handsome maybe, and did they have an impromptu flirtation right there at her illegally parked car?  All these intriguing mysteries mixed in with a dozen pair of slippers by the same company in different colors, and every recipe ever published.  So, do I keep the little red parking ticket, never knowing why she did, or does it go in that big trash bag behind me?  For now, I'm keeping it. 

Some Random Thoughts

Reason 9,999 You Should Not Work with Your Spouse:
In case there are some people who do not know, my husband and I work for the same company.  How that happened is and of itself sort of an interesting story.  We have worked together several different times over our lives together actually; it's how we met about a zillion years ago.  I am not a proponent of spouses working together after our various experiences.  I think by and large we conducted ourselves fairly well, but there have definitely been times when it's been a Bad Thing for not only us, but the people we work with.  But, for the last eight years or so - maybe longer, I've lost track - he's been with the company I have been in and out of.  I've been his boss, he's been mine.  This time we're in different locations, so it's been okay.  Until today.  Today the news broke across my location that he resigned his position.  I was innudated by people asking me, "So, what's he going to do?" and congratulating me, thinking it's surely to take another, better position (because, I mean, who would be nuts enough to leave a secure, fairly well paid position in these insecure times?).  If you ask me a direct question, I will give you a direct answer, so I told people flat out that I was not happy.  Some tried to defend him, others were just uncomfortably silenced, others told me they would pray for me.  Nobody can tell me how I'm supposed to make my mortgage payment, however.  They don't know.  Neither do I.  Finally, after over-hearing this play out over and over again, my co-worker came over to catch me dabbing away tears and told me to think about going home.  I did think about it.  I didn't do it.  Finally, word spread and people left me alone.  Much later in the day, the woman who runs the local branch (my group actually works for the corporate office which is in Dallas, we just share space with the Austin staff..long story) and apologized.  She had heard I had been approached several times.  She allowed that she probably would have gone home.

The Weird Advent of Social Networking on the Web:
I noticed when I signed in last night that I had lost a follower.  I don't have many, so it's pretty noticeable.  A weird array of emotions passed through my mind:  did I write something that offended her, did she finally just get sick of my constant downer posts (I would), or did she simply finally think, "There's no way this stuff is true, no one has this much bad luck."  I don't know, but I thought hard about it, wondering if I should try and spice/lighten up my blog.  Finally, I convinced myself that it is what it is.  Grief is ugly, it's raw, it's up and a lot of down.  I want people to see it.  I want people who have daughters and sons who are struggling to know that the threat is real.  You really can lose a child if you're not vigilant, and I want them to know how awful, really awful that is.  So, I'll keep going.  Hopefully I'll touch someone and they'll do something different and better for their children as a result.  I like it when I can make someone smile too, but right now, I have to confess, there's not much to smile about in my neck of the woods.  I think this is all just part of the journey I have to make now.

However, I got to thinking about how different socializing is these days.  It's awesome to be able to communicate with friends you have across the country or find people you haven't seen in years.  I love that part of online networking, but I have also been "unfriended" on Facebook too, and had the same emotional reaction I did last night.  Why did they drop me?  What did I do?  I know some of my friends have experienced the same sense of bewilderment.  This is a new thing for us older folks: having a definitive count of how many people value you enough to befriend you online, and knowing when they no longer feel you are worthy.  But not why.  This is not how my generation grew up.  We could be a lot more passive about it if we wanted to actually.  If you didn't want to be friends with someone any more, it was a lot easier to simply fade out of their life without them even noticing for a while.  You just didn't write or call anymore.  When caller ID came along, you could avoid their calls, and things were great.  Now, you know exactly who and when you were dropped, but you can't even ask why because they've blocked you, so you're left licking your wounded ego.  This is something that my daughter may take for granted, but it still really awkward for me.

Big Ben, You Suck:
I have no idea whose less than brilliant idea it was to open the NFL Draft during a week night, but Steeler/Pen fans were faced with the hard choice of whether to watch the draft and get a peek at our future or watch the Penguins present.  I am pretty sure most of the people in the 'Burgh are doing what I'm doing:  watching hockey.  And for the same reasons; 1) it's fun and 2) they never mention Ben Roethlisberger, they don't show his face, and we can just focus on the sport at hand.  I am following the draft on a separate tab online, but I can barely even bring myself to do that because every time I look, I see the sidebars about "Will he be traded?", "Should he be traded?", and ruminations about his six game suspension, yada, yada, yada.  I generally hang on every word I can see about my beloved Steelers, but I've seen enough of the logo splashed across every media outlet in the country for weeks now in a negative light. Ben, my wounds are open and you are the salt.  Stop shaking it in there, buddy!  Get your head on straight.  The one on top of your body.  Put the other one away.  In the meantime, Go, Pens, Go!

Two Lives Unfold

I've heard so many people who have lost parents describe it as a roller coaster ride.  I've had a similar feeling often during the last few weeks.  On the one hand, this is how it's supposed to go.  A parent is older, it's inevitable that at some point you will be faced with this.  If the parent was sick or suffering, then that release from the pain is a comfort, but they're your family, so you still miss them.  And so on.  Then, of course, there's all the incumbent work that comes after the death to close down a long life.  Memories come flooding back, some good - hopefully most good - some maybe less good, but still part of the fabric that makes up one's life.  Nothing brings all of that home more than going through old photographs.  I have only just scratched the surface; Mother kept everything, but she kept it in no particular order, so every box I open is a surprise, but I have run the gamut of emotions in just the cursory examination I've been able to give them.  I've marveled, I've laughed, I've cried (often), and I've cringed (very often) when I realized that we actually not only were seen in public wearing some of those outfits, but thought we could be photographed in them!  I thought I would share some of what I have found so far as a little mini-journey through the lives of my parents.

Where are the pictures of me, you ask?  Oh, just wait, I'll entertain everyone with some, I am sure.  For now, let it suffice to say that I have made the realization that the primary difference between the photos you have of yourself and those your parents have of you is this:  you tend to edit the ones you keep of yourself.  They're the most flattering or they are at least funny if they are not flattering.  Your parents, who love you generally no matter what, keep all the photos, no matter what you look like.  Theirs are therefore the more realistic account of how you really looked during your youth.  And let me just say that some of the outfits I remember because I thought I looked pretty good in them...yeah, well, I didn't!

Sliding

When you experience an extreme irrevocable trauma like we did when we lost Kelsey, it's kind of like being dropped suddenly into the bottom of a deep well with no provisions.  I have this mental picture of that well in The Ring, remember that movie?  You wallow around in there for a while, maybe looking for a door or another easy way out that isn't there, some of us longer than others, then you have to make a decision:  you are either going to climb up and out or stay down there and die.  And, I'm finding, it's every man for himself on the way up.  It is very hard to reach out to help someone else when you're clinging to dear life yourself.  Did I really think it would be straight shot up to the top of the well?  Well, yes, actually, I think I did.  I think I sold myself that bill of goods so I'd have the courage to even try it.  The fact that it isn't, apparently, comes as no particular surprise however.  What did surprise me was that I got pulled back down by a member of my own party.

When we all got back from Washington, we all had to re-evaluate where we were down in the well.  And, without exception, we had slid back down the walls at least a bit.  For my husband, he really hadn't made it very far up to begin with.  I may never be able to know his thought process, but from my observation post he finally got to the point where he had to do something to get himself climbing or he was going to die down there in that well.  How he decided to help himself is the controversy.  He mentioned vaguely one time a few weeks ago as I was trying to head out the door for work that he wanted to make a dramatic change, but promised we would discuss at length before he did anything.  Last Monday, again as I'm trying to pour coffee into the travel mug to head to work, he announced a major decision.  One he has not shared with the rest of his family, and he has asked that I not divulge (and, of course, some of them check into this blog from time-to-time, hence the vagueness).  One I agree that, in the long term, he should pursue, but not the way he's doing it.   For a couple of reasons:  he'll be left with no direction, no reason to even get out of bed in the morning, no matter how much he hates what pulls him up.  And, secondly, we have bills to pay.  If you can't figure it out from there, well...

I was sent reeling by this decision.  And it's hard to know what the right thing to do is.  For me, this is catastrophic on many levels, but can I really deny him what he thinks he needs to get past this dark place in his life?  Am I obligated to stay and support him (literally and figuratively) while he works through this?  Within a few short days of my blogging about the state of our marriage in comparison with the dire predictions facing most couples coping with a loss, I am suddenly not at all sure we won't fall into that 75%-80% category.  Is grief recovery really that selfish?  Because what he is choosing to do is extremely selfish.  My reaction to it equally so.  Does it have to be in order to get past it?  Who knows, this is stuff grief counselors are paid to help with, but who can afford that now?  The isolation I feel suddenly is pretty complete.  I am left contemplating how quickly things can change for the worse, but how hard fought every little joy or measure of comfort is.

What's that?  Have I talked to him about it?  Oh, hell no.  I have not.  I know that I should, but when I contemplate how I can tell him how this is impacting me without trying to tear him down or belittle his own need for recovery, it doesn't play out well.  And, I think he's not ready to handle his part of the conversation well either.  It's pretty clear he's on a power play, and I'm just a penalty killer, trying to keep him from scoring his goal.  I'm on the other team right now.  And, frankly, I'm not up for a fight.  I have a lot of work to do trying to sort through the jumble of Mother's affairs, liquidate her stuff that's jammed in those expensive storage units.  I have a job, thank you very much.  I simply do not have the energy to handle this. How can he believe I really do want him to be happy again, or at least find some measure of peace, when I'm not sure he's pursuing the right course and he is so convinced he is?  Because, who knows, maybe for him he is.  Everything is a jumble.  Oh, and by the way, Big Ben, opening up my home page every single day to see your face attached to some new piece of information about what a scumbag you are IS NOT HELPING!!

The only conclusion I've made so far is that the worst part about the well is that it's so dark and cold in there, it's very difficult to find your way.  

More Things I'm Still Learning

After an Earthquake Comes Aftershocks

Who knew?  Which of us could have told you that Mother was the slender thread that kept the fabric of our lives together?  Not me, certainly.  I would have told you the opposite.  I would have said that, through no fault of her own, Mother kept things riled up.  Her disease kept me under constant stress and made it impossible for us to try and put the pieces of our shattered family back together.  However, a few weeks after her death, I have to say having her around and in our care meant we had a focus other than on what we lost when Kelsey died, and we had a purpose.  Now, without her, things seem to be in free fall.  Maybe it's all a bad dream.  All of it.  Big Ben, Santonio, Fast Willie going to Washington, Game One of the Ottawa-Pittsburgh series, and the rest of my personal life.  But, I kind of doubt it.  I think it's actually happening, and I'm just that screwed.

I can't tell you I was that surprised when it became apparent fairly quickly that Mother's death was a trigger to relive Kelsey's.  While the two situations were different in almost all respects, there were some things that just brought us face-to-face with the fact that we had just been through this.  I chose to have the same funeral home handle Mother's arrangements, so we shook the same hands, sat in the same little conference room and glanced over the same memorial book selection that we had done a few months before.  The same decision process had to be followed, even if all the decisions were radically different.  Trust me, planning your relatives' funerals is not something you want to get overly familiar with.  For me, I can say that every time I heard the very heart felt condolences of friends and family, I would think, "You have no idea.  This is nothing compared to what I've been through."  That would immediately be followed by a twinge of guilt, as though I was not sufficiently bereft of Mother.  Did I not love her as much as I should?  I hope I did, but I will readily confess that losing a parent completely pales in comparison to losing a child, and there's just no getting around that.  Mother, in her younger, pre-Alzheimer's years, would have known that to be true.  She had her own brand of sorrow along those lines.  Yet, with every mention of a death in the family there was that unspoken caveat, "...again."  Therefore, it should be no surprise that I was not the only one in the family who felt it.

I noticed it in Marissa while we were in Washington and she would mention Kelsey often.  Just in passing.  Neutral voiced memories of things they did when they were young or the way Kelsey thought or would react to a certain situation.  Things like that.  Nothing bitter, particularly sad, or uncomfortable at all in her tone that caught my attention.  But I noticed how often her name came up.

Greg, on the other hand, said very little.  He had flown in to DC separately from us, and was turning immediately around and flying home after the services.  I wondered more than once why he even bothered coming.  If it was to comfort me, he could have saved the fare, because I spent more time worrying over him than anything else.  Part of the sacrifice of having eight dogs, none of which are particularly young, is that we don't travel together often.  One or the other of us generally has to stay behind to be a zookeeper.  And, given the fact that I am the one with the affection for out of town sports, it's usually me that goes.  Marissa is more often than not my companion.  So, Marissa and I have developed a level of comfort with one another on the road - more or less - that Greg and I do not have.  While Marissa and I are trying to build our travel resumes, he's become a home buddy.  His pleasures are simple and don't involve trying out new things.  As a result, he appeared to me to be uncomfortable, unduly tired and just plain out of his element.  I knew it wasn't all just because of the trip.  He didn't have to say it, he was thinking about Kelsey too.

I described it recently as a bad acid flashback.  I've never dropped acid, but really, what else could it be like!  Clearly, Death was hanging around us like a cloud.  Again.  And he wasn't a welcome guest. 

Things eroded from there. 

Things I'm Still Learning

There have been some good lessons I have learned.  Some about myself, some about life in general.  Some have not been so good, and some I am still trying to sort out and see where the lessons will take me.  But, at the beginning of the NHL playoffs, I figured I should explain about one of the things I'm still learning about, which is that...

...I Like Hockey

I mean really, really like it.  For one thing, no one who laces up skates for Pittsburgh was being threatened with criminal charges in the last month, or had to hold a press conference to offer a tepid, ineffective and insulting apology to their fans.  But, more than that, I really just enjoy watching the game.  I'm watching the Red Wings and the Coyotes now - not a thing in black and gold in sight.  Granted, I'm not hanging on every move in this particular match up, and I can't tell you the first thing about any of the Phoenix players (the Red Wings I am more familiar with), but it's still a lot of fun.  For one thing, it is an extremely fast paced game when something exciting might break out at any second (a goal or a fight), so you take your eye off of it at your own peril.  The action is rapid and fluid, with the puck changing control from player to player and team to team within literal seconds.  To really follow it I have to pour my entire concentration into the action - it's all about keeping your eye on the black disc being batted around in furious, dizzying fashion.  Since I am still learning the game, I am all the more absorbed in every move made, trying to figure out the difference between slamming someone against the glass as strategy versus "boarding" which I've seen players ejected for.  And, I for the life of me can't figure out icing - when is it icing versus just sending puck down out of contention to allow your team time to regroup?  And, I'm still ferreting out what is acceptable, simple aggressive play versus something that will draw a "major" penalty, which brings me to the other draw to the sport.  Violence.  Controlled to a degree, but definitely a game where a mean streak is a plus.  Earlier in the regular season, I listened to an ex-player providing color commentary as he tried to explain why it's not only okay, but preferrable for a group of men to get into a momentary punching match.   As he said it, the entire Penguin team was locked in a bunch with the entire opponent roster, all trying to scuffle in heavy pads while balancing on tiny steel blades on a sheet of frozen water.  No real damage is done, and the officials broke it up without much trouble, but I've seen fewer games without a fight than I have with at least one.  Of course, he didn't have to justify it to me, I am amused by it.

The level of skill and athleticism these guys possess is amazing.  I admire the skill of the players at this highest level.  To fly across the ice at the speed they do and maintain control of a small, slippery object that five other guys are trying to get away from you in unfriendly fashion is actually pretty awe inspiring.  My main complaints are that a) it's not more generally popular and b) I wish I hadn't wasted all this time figuring out what a great game it is.

I will fully admit I began my journey riding firmly on the band wagon.  As the Penguins, with their baby phenom Sidney Crosby, began their ascent, I would pay luke warm attention in the abyss known as the football offseason.  Then, two years ago, when the Penguins made it all the way to the Stanley Cup final, I took a little more notice.  Last year, of course, Sid the Kid hoisted the Stanley Cup after seven hard fought games against the defending champs, and I was almost hooked.  This season, with my entire life upside down and shaken up, it's been like a Godsend.  Because the best attribute of a hockey game is the fact that for a solid two and half to three hours, it's all completely about the action on the ice.  There is no time to ponder how hard real life is, it's about the fluid flow up and down the ice, back and forth, dodge and pass, thrust and parry with a punch thrown in there now and again.  The most stress you have time to consider is when it's your goalie under attack.  Everything else is white noise against the magnetic draw of the white ice.  How could I have missed the beauty of this all these years?  I have no idea, but I thank God and the Canadians for it now.

And...Go Pens!