Sunday, March 25, 2012

Where Is Home?

I have questioned myself more in the last 6 months than I have in the last 26 years. The only other time I can recall where I constantly monitored my actions to this degree is when I left Danny so many years ago. Alcoholism was just then being called a disease on a regular basis. I was at work one day wondering if everything I had done, the enormous task of moving out into an apartment for my safety, peace of mind, his peace of mind, was all a big mistake. None of my leaving had to do with love. I wasn't sitting there questioning whether or I loved him or he loved me. I was questioning whether or we would survive being married to each other. The facility social worker saw the perplexed look on my face and asked what had me so twisted up, we were only having lunch. I told her that I was feeling very guilty for leaving. Danny being an alcoholic was sick, it was a disease. Would I have left if he were a diabetic? What if he had cancer? An ironic thought, looking back now. She looked at me and said, "He is spreading his disease to you and the children. You had no choice but to leave." "Hmmm" was my only response. I let it all roll around in my head. It sounded logical, but for me the questions would continue for some time. The guilt part of it never really left. I had guilt over leaving, guilt for what I had put the children through, and ultimately guilt when he died of cancer. The last one is called survivor's guilt. Yep, I had survived and I felt plenty of guilt over that, too. I had survived a full arrest when really I had no right to, and he had died so young of a cancer that only few people ever get. It seemed so odd, so absolutely weird to me that there existed so little logic in that. My questions are different now. I am very happily married to a man I love, respect and am finding a very hard time visualizing living without. This family does not work without him. I don't seem to work without him. Without Michael, I feel like I do not make sense anymore. We have had time to face all of this. It has felt like watching a train head straight for us and we are tied to the tracks like some sort of old cartoon. Where is Dudley Do-Right when you need him. My boring every day stuff, Mike is my Dudley. He sweeps in and makes me laugh, and reminds me why life is so wonderful. But with this, we need someone else to sweep in. Neither of us is up for the task, obviously. I took a full time job so we would have some stability here. He is tied to his job that is moving to Chicago. So the question becomes, where then is home? Is home here for the few months until all the kids move out? Is home there with him and his nearly 28 years of seniority? Is home back in Cleveland, the place we moved away from to try and prevent all of this? Our house is just that, a house. These different towns, well, that is just geography. If we are splitting off from one another, where is it we shall call home? Please don't think I have some kind of insightful answer that will magically appear at the end of the blog. I am still very much in the asking stage of this process. I have no idea where our home is now. Home is where the heart is. Well, that is what the plaques say in gooby shops all across this country. My heart belongs to Michael, and he is going to Chicago. His heart is with me and I am here, so should we consider home somewhere in the middle? Maybe that would make home somewhere in St Louis, perhaps? I have never been, but heard it is lovely. If we are in fact without each other and only that makes our home, a theory we tend to stick to, then we are emotionally homeless. It was only a couple of years ago we were nearly physically homeless, and this does not feel any less stressful. We are exercising our options. I will not say what all of them are. Right now that is personal. But if at the end of the day, or at least April, and nothing comes about to change our current conundrum, then Michael may well have to meet me in St. Louis. This extraordinary love of mine is so much more than our jobs. It is so much more than a house, or town or even ties we have to all of the places I have written about today. Many people have commented that we should feel lucky to have jobs. "Hmmm" is my only response. We didn't feel unlucky until we were being split apart. Even that, it hasn't been about luck, but more of what we think we are worth. Are we worth what it will take to be together? What is the price we will have to pay for that to happen? What sacrifices we will have to make? Can we withstand the pain of those sacrifices? I have many, many questions. We are realists, my love and I. We are not irresponsible people, by any stretch. But at what cost will come for our responsibility, our fiscally conservative math, our fear of what can go wrong? Jump at the wrong time and a turbulent gust could carry us into the depths of a financial canyon. Stay put out of fear and lose out on what could be an adventure of a life time. Leave and have to start over, again. Stay and find out here is not the home we thought it was. Thinking of Michael being 1200 miles away form me is like being left behind again. I was widowed once before, I know what alone feels like. I know it is not the same, but physically alone is still physically alone. I looked at him and said, "let no man put asunder." He sat and looked into my watering eyes. That phrase was in our wedding ceremony. When someone recently wrote me, they had written, "Listen, couples do this all the time. They work in different states, towns, they travel. It's just not that big a deal." "Hmmm", I thought. Days later I wrote simply this. "They are not us." I know others do this. I know couples who spend most of their time away from each other. Most of them have been doing this forever; they set it up this way. Bottom line, they are not us. Our home isn't house, a town, or a singular person. Our home is the two of us together, laughing, loving, dancing, cooking, getting the mail, running the vacuum. Home is four legs, four arms and a singular beat belonging to two hearts.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Death Becomes Her

The picture for this blog is one of my youngest child, my Betty, in high school as she pretended to be dead from a car accident. The point of it was to keep kids from drinking and driving. I wrote her obituary, had no contact with her for nearly two days, as she played dead for her school project. It made me sick to my stomach. It made me cry at one point, because she had already lost friends to car accidents. Drinking or not, accidents till happened. I was thinking about the last month, the car wreck that could have easily killed two of my children, the emotional wreckage of what is tearing my family apart, the nervous wreck personality traits we have all shown at one time or another, as if we had taken turns falling apart on schedule, as to not overwhelm the others. I had felt wrecked. I had begun to feel as I did when I was a nurse and it was pneumonia season. The Midwest winters were especially harsh to those who could least afford it's vigor. I would bundle up in the middle of the night, shovel my car out and head off to do the death count for those who didn't survive. I was used to walking in to ambulance drivers carting off another corpse, another mother, father, uncle, aunt, sister and brother. I had gotten used to hearing the death rattle in the distance, as I sipped my coffee, listening to the report of night shift. I had become accustomed to bio-hazard bags filled with pus, blood, mucus and dead tissue, sitting in the hall to be carried to the proper dumping ground. I was used to it all. Very little could penetrate my crusty exterior when it came to certain death. Betty, my youngest recently lost another friend to a car crash. It's not her first. It's not even in the top three, but there it is another obituary of such a young soul lost way too early. She doesn't drive because she lost two friends when they were very young, 16 years old. The car flew, as if with wings into trees. The site is still hard to look at all these years later. I still think about their mothers, just like I am thinking about the mother of the boy who lost his life this past weekend. Betty knows the clock is ticking for and her driver's license. She will have to drive, she will. She will have to trust that she will be able to go from point "A" to point "B" without dying for the privilege. She came to me tonight and we talked briefly about how many of her friends are dying. I looked at my child, so wise beyond her years. Some people face more because they can cope, even when they are certain they can't. My earlier blog said I didn't think God gave us stuff to handle, well, maybe I was wrong. Betty and I have so much in common. Our internal strength helps us cope with extraordinary circumstances, watching people perish right in front of us. We are able to do the right thing by them, their memory, their legacy. Once when I was at an uncle's funeral, I stood before the casket, dry eyed and a relative called me heartless, mumbling it under their breath. It was meant for me to hear, for me to feel guilty for not falling apart, for not grieving publicly. I looked at them and shrugged. I had nothing to say about it. I am not a public griever. I cried softly at home in my pillow where I was safe to do so. At the funeral, I stood stoic, silent, showing nothing on my face. I was blank. I had seen things like this hundreds of times before. He was elderly, sick, gravely ill and not able to recuperate. I wished him peace. Peace is what I think he got when he finally let go. I could say that all my experience with death prepared me for Danny's cancer and inevitable death, but it did not. That was one time when I walked around in complete and utter shock. There had been many times I feared for his life when we were married, but his death is not something I really saw coming. I did what I always do and just stood, stoic, silent, looking upon his face in his casket. I showed nothing. I am certain there were those who thought me heartless, who thought I felt nothing since we were divorced, but the truth was I felt so much my body's only coping skill was to remain upright and keep breathing. I am good at taking care of those who are no longer able to care for themselves. I have personally escorted hundreds of people to the other side, whispering love to them and allowing them to move seamlessly through themselves and onto a place I am without doubt was better than the place they left. I have taken care of young men with very young children die quietly at home, as their wives gently kissed their forehead one last time. I am good at death. I am practiced and capable at letting others go. Betty has been to more than her fair share of funerals. She is good at wearing appropriate clothes, walking silently to the casket and praying over her friends. Suicides, car crashes, other dramatic endings have happened around her in her world, all the while she stands stoic, silent, like her mother, as she cares for those who are not coping with the loss. It makes me proud and it makes me sad that she, so young has had to face so much of this. She comes to me when it gets to be too much. I listen, hold her and let her do her thing so she can bravely face the tragic circumstances with grace. She is her mother's child, my youngest. She has so much of my DNA on her face, my morals in her behavior, my strength in her character. She is now practiced in the art form of not falling apart, even when circumstances seem to demand it. Death becomes her, just like me. My darling girl will bury her friend, the charming boy who gave her rides throughout high school, who made her smile when she was having such a tough time. She will enter this situation with the grace and poise of someone much, much older. This last month has been tough. But we are all still here. Even as I think it is unbearable, I remember that we are all still here.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

It Sounds Perfect

This morning, Mike and I hid away in our newly decorated bedroom for most of the morning. You see we have worked so hard painting, installing new cabinetry, and a ventless fireplace. Next week the stone wall behind the fireplace will go up. But for now, the two of us on this chilly Houston morning, put a fire in our new fireplace, grabbed our respective cups of coffee, and headed for refuge. There we were, snuggling in bed, watching the flames lick the ceramic logs, with candles lit and ambiance firmly in place, whispering to each other our words of love and adoration. The picture looked perfect. But here is what has been going on... Mike and I after 30 years of knowing each other have been so stressed out we turned our fear into anger, resentment and deafening silence. So stricken had we become, with all the daunting changes we are facing and the bone chilling accident remains of last week when our children survived a devastating car accident, that we had started yelling just so we could be heard. We were in the same room, but the not the same universe. Both of us caught in the mire of new jobs, high personal expectations and unexpected injury, that we could no longer see each other. The stress, the constant palpable beating of the failure drum, was drowning out our voices and our good sense. We slipped, we fell, we began doing the very thing that destroys marriages, we stopped telling each other what we needed, or that we needed anything at all. We began living as separate and apart. That phrase is one I am familiar with, "separate and apart" it's the legal term they use in divorce court. Having been divorced once before, I know the devastating consequences of living that phrase. The accident with the kids brought a kind of sick perspective to all that has been happening in our household, in our marriage, in our own heads. We have been living in fear of all the "what if" questions that circle around in our heads when the future has scary terrain ahead. The visual of my son dazed walking around a clearly destroyed car, with his sister bloody and sitting on the ground, is the picture I have fought hard all week to remove. They were saved by grace and airbags. They will be O.K. We will be O.K. Last night I saw Michael and I in third person, as if I was a stranger watching inside our house. We had kept to our respective corners, licking our wounds, having no idea how to reach out in our time of need. We need each other, like air to breathe and water to drink, we need to be comforted, to be loved, to be heard and seen and held by each other. I sat floating above the situation wondering how in the hell we had gotten here. It was so unlike us, so not the way we do things. The truth is we have been handed too much. What I suddenly knew for certain was we needed mercy, from God, from the outside and definitely from each other. People love to throw the "God doesn't give you anything you can't handle" line at me. I will say as of today, I believe that to be a load of crap. What has been coming at us is Godless. He has nothing to do with it. There was a young man who recently lost his friend when his friend was beaten to death by thugs. He went through grief counseling. He did everything everyone told him to do and then he committed suicide. What he was handed was too much for him. God didn't kill his friend, make him feel helpless, hopeless and want to end his life. God had not handed him any of it. The world, some sort of evil had shown up and loaded him down until he just could not take it. My only solace in this horrible tragedy is he is now at peace and I have learned something. What I learned is when I am being faced with incredibly hard stuff that seems unrelenting, I need to put my ego away and beg for mercy from anyone who will listen. Yes, of course I asked God, but I should have also asked Mike, my kids, my friends, all of whom when I did ask, showed up in spades. My problem, the lesson is, I originally didn't ask for anything. This morning I asked for everything. I asked Mike to forgive me, to help me, to hold me, to kiss me, to lie to me if need be, that everything will be alright. I asked and asked and asked. I asked my friends to stand by me when Michael moves to Chicago. I asked my brand new job to allow me to stay home with my daughter when she needed me, I asked for help in every direction. God grants me nearly everything I ask for. He granted me love, when I felt there was none around me. He granted a morning of peace when chaos had filled my house for months. He granted me time with my beloved, so we could look at each other and see the pain, offer the forgiveness, show our compassion, and express our love. God did not merge Michael's company, wreck my car, or put on undue stress in our lives. He did not allow for this to happen, it happened without His consent. Being His child, I do not believe for a minute, anymore, that He gave me any of this. What He did do is tell me if I needed help, all I had to do was ask and resources on earth and beyond would show up. And they have. This morning looked perfect, because it was. It was the healing salve my soul needed to face another day. Michael and I are not perfect, we are needy pathetic souls, smart and driven employees, hard working, loyal, strong, independent thinkers. We are joyful and mournful. We are human, mind, body and soul. This morning I prayed for an open heart and an open mouth to ask. I prayed for my beloved that he too would be a strong enough of a man to ask me, too. My prayers got answered in every way this morning. Although I no longer believe God gives me crap to handle, I do think He gives me grace to ask for help.