Paying By The Inch

It’s fourth and goal from inside the one.  The safe field goal will tie the game and send it into overtime.  But you’re on the road and the crowd is rocking.  Your quarterback’s pleading during the timeout.  Your offensive line wants you to believe in them.  Begs and demands that you believe they can push forward and gain a few blades of grass and a shocking upset.

You throw off your headphones.  Shake off your coordinators all yelling in your ear.  You take the chance.  You send in the play.  You go for it.

They stuff your quarterback.  They stop you short and you lose the game by inches.  The papers blast you.  The bloggers scream for your head.  The alumni clap-close their checkbooks.  The day after your season ends the Athletic Director announces they won’t be signing you to a new contract.

Inches.

We pay by the inch.  All of us.  Too many around the waist increases our chances of acquiring this disease and that condition.  Inches dictate whether or not the new couch is going to fit through the door or whether your car is going to fit into the tiny garage at the condo you’re looking to buy.   They reveal whether you are in style or hopelessly out of date.  On target or wide right.

So much of our looks and how self conscious or confident we become depends upon inches.  How long our noses or chins or feet.  By how many inches we boast in strategic places, by how many we suffer in all the wrong places and by how many are missing in places we’d hoped for better…

How much does an inch cost?  Ask any carpet salesman.  He’ll tell you.  Or ask a plastic surgeon.  A butcher.  Ask any freshman boy undressing for the first time before swim class.  Or any girl who hits six feet tall by the time she’s in the eighth grade.  Ask the long jumper or the pole vaulter wearing the silver medal. 

How much do we pay for an inch?

Time and time again we’ll hear stories of injuries, accidents, crashes, tumors, bullets…Doctors saying, “She was lucky.  One inch to the left and she would have been paralyzed.”  Or, “An inch higher and it would have pierced his heart.” 

It’s not just football that’s a game of inches.  Life is.

I’m not sure how many inches it would have taken that day, in the middle of that intersection, to kill me.  Or to spare me completely.  A few to the left; a couple to the right?  How many inches between a close call and a closed casket?

Life continues on or life changes or life ends.  Inches.

But it doesn’t take a ruler to determine what “this close” means.  I consider my stubborn headaches and haphazard balance, the shoddy memory and the occasional ridiculous butchering of the English language simply payment for the inches.  The inches that saved me.  The inches I measure between dying in a crumpled vehicle crash and living a gift every day I’m still here.

And I’m more than happy to pay.

How many inches have changed your life?  Dictated your future?  Did he swing his fist and miss so you stayed?  Did the oncologist tell you that the size of your tumor was still small enough to treat and beat?  Did you turn back to say, “I’m sorry” before they walked out the door for good?  Did you open your eyes after the roadside bomb exploded to find the buddy beside you dead?

How much should the inches cost?

If the chance at a happy life is what we’re buying, what then are those inches worth?  How much are we willing to pay?

As survivors, we can get all tangled up in how life was supposed to be and how much better it was before it was changed and screwed up and turned upside down by some breath-taking, choking, just-plain-stupid diagnosis.  We can cling to before and cast a defiant ear at those screaming to us that it doesn’t change anything.

It’s easy, or maybe easier, to comfort with before.  To elevate and deify before.  To cling desperately to before.  To refuse now.  Or to throw anger at it.  Pills, booze.  Anything.

Something to quiet the hecklers in the mirror taunting, Why me?  Why did my house get leveled by the tornado and nobody else’s?  Why did I get the parents who were absent addicts?  Why did my husband run off with my sister?  Why did I get the uncle with the groping hands?  Why did I get the *%^#ing brain injury, tumor, bad heart, curved spine, brittle bones, missing legs, failing eyes or the million other possibilities in life?

We can deny it, avoid it, run from it, drown it, disguise it.

Or we can pay for our inches. 

We can remind ourselves with each payment that this is for the inch that saved me.  This is for the inch between Stage Two and Stage Four.  This is for the inch between chronic back problems and paralysis.  This is for the inch between brain surgery and brain death.  This is for the extra day, extra week, extra year, extra chance to spend one more moment with the people and pets I love.

Is it worth it then?

It is to me.  I’ll suffer every stupid headache for every moment I can think and speak and write and express.  I’ll walk like an absolute goofball and suffer every stumble and every fall for each step I can take towards a hug, towards someone I love or something I enjoy, or while holding hands walking next to my niece and my nephew.  I’ll lose words and get stuck on words for every chance I still get to say, “I love you” or “I’m sorry” or “Good morning.”

How many inches are you willing to pay for?  How are you planning to pay?  No credit cards accepted here. 

Payment’s due.

Every inch that saved us.  Every inch that kept, spared and protected us.  Every inch that measures another day on the calendar.  Every inch between us and the moment we stop measuring.

It takes 72 inches to bury us.  It takes one to move forward. 

One inch to more than yesterday.  To away from rock bottom.  To better.  To OK, maybe. 

One inch to living.  To living again.

The Unforgettable Tests

What grade did you receive on your first quiz that fall in Algebra?  How many did you get wrong on your Zoology final?  What was that red-inked letter at the top of your third paper in Freshman English in college? 

Do you recall?

There are so many tests we sign up for.  To get your driver’s license.  To determine whether you are a nutball before landing a job.  ACTs and SATs and MCats and LCats and kitty kats…

OK, not kitty kats.

Your first debate.  First oral book report.  First interview.  First piano recital.  First 5K… 

Preparation.  Cramming.  Fear.  Conquering fear or succumbing to it.  The immediate response:  applause, satisfaction, shame, a lettered grade, a pass or fail, a parent’s disappointment or pride.

You blow away the Bar Exam or get blown away at the bar after you fail it.

How many mattered?  You can count the ones that did.  The ones that stuck.  The ones that hurt, wounded, fed or filled you.

I’ve come to believe that we choose the tests that will ultimately define us-determine the grades of our lives.  Maybe unknowingly, unwittingly.  Perhaps.  But we choose them.

We choose.

What are yours?

I’m not sure when the tests I chose became clear to me but they revealed themselves and I drew them close.  Close to my heart.  My success or failure in them would be a telling measure of my life’s accomplishments.  Major ingredients in the stew I call life.

Somewhere along the way I decided that there is no greater responsibility than to the children, pets and people in our lives who need help they cannot provide themselves.  What could loom higher?  Greater?  To me these felt paramount.

I helped take care of my parents for fifteen years, always aware of the inevitable ending.  The final test.  My job was, I imagined, to help deliver them to God, to Heaven, to death…with as much safety, peace of mind, comfort and dignity as I could muster.  I spent many days researching their conditions.   I spent many nights praying for the strength to do the right thing, whatever corner we turned next.  To stand up at the end and be there for them no matter how painful I suspected that moment would prove to be.

I practiced.  Studied.  There were pop quizzes along the way.  I did the Heimlich Maneuver when my dad was choking on Jell-O.  I carried him over my shoulder when he snuck halfway down the stairs in the middle of the night and couldn’t go up or down any more.  I dove between him and the ground when he lost his balance and his head was heading for the corner of the side table.  I cleared his airway with my fingers when he was choking on vomit.  I changed the dressings on bed sores those last days every two hours and moved all of his pressure points every 30 minutes round the clock.  I recognized subtle changes in behavior which indicated dangerous elevations in blood pressure.  I gave him aspirin and cold packs and averted strokes more times than I can count.

Getting ready to pass the test, I thought.  I felt ready.  Prepared. 

And then he died ten minutes after I left the hospital on that Thanksgiving night and I felt that I had failed.  Failed him.

Loved ones tell me that’s how he must have wanted it.  Chose it.  That it often happens exactly that way.  Certainly there are days I choose to believe that instead of the ridiculously-painful alternative.  After all, my mom died within an hour of us leaving her at the hospital on her last day.  Surely I couldn’t have failed them both.  Not after fifteen flippin’ years of preparing for those moments…

Other days I tell myself it really is about the journey and not the destination…Sometimes that helps.  But I can never quite escape the feeling that I didn’t show up for the final exam.  I feel like I climbed Mt. Everest and turned around a hundred yards from the Summit and started walking back down again.  That I ran 24 miles of a marathon and then simply stopped running.

How many moments are lost forever…

I don’t get to retake them.  There are no makeup exams.  I only had two parents.  Some days I’m like, Thank God we only get two because I couldn’t bear to bury another one.  

But it hurts.  Guts me.  Still.  It holds close where tears stay. 

The unforgettable tests.

Kids grow up.  Parents grow older.  Pets begin to slow.  Friendships drift.  Marriages hit rocky patches.  Years fly.

Which are your tests?

To raise children who will, one day, become decent members of society?  To show your kids how to handle adversity, bankruptcy, infidelity, cancer?   To repair a damaged friendship?  To rise to the top of your company or make the most money in your family?  To be the best sprinter, shooter, passer, kicker on your team?  In your league?  In the world?  To be skinnier than her or wealthier than him or more popular than all of them put together?

To survive whatever is your personal diagnosis?  To get the nerve to leave your marriage or get the nerve to try fixing it?  To make it to retirement?  To hold onto your job?  To have the best lawn in the neighborhood?   The loudest voice at church (we know who you are)…

Are the tests you choose as broad as wanting to green the planet and save the polar bears or as intimate as wanting to lose forty pounds or overcome your not-so-secret dependency on pain killers?

Do you know?

There are a lot of things that are difficult to live with.  Bad hair, of course.  U of M losing nine games last season, certainly.  No chocolate in the house when you’re PMSing, most definitely.

Traumatic brain injury?  You betcha.

But, for me, one of my remaining tests doesn’t feel like simply living with brain injury.  The test, in my mind, is to, every day, force my damaged peanut and faulty memory to recall what I’ve deemed more important.

I have friends and loved ones living with cancer, daily chronic pain, crippling MS, debilitating arthritis, slow-stealing dementia…

One of my tests is to remember even when I struggle to remember-that life is not to be wished away.  The end of a hard day, the end of the work week, the end of a seemingly endless sermon, the end of humid August. 

How dare I wish one moment of my life away when I know, too well, how frighteningly close I came to losing it?  Shame on me. 

My test, too, is to find balance when I have no balance.  To tally joy and laughter for every tragic, sad moment life reveals.  To find firm footing in the choices I make and the people I love when my legs are rocking and rolling like they have no bones.  To walk tall and confidently in the better parts of my convictions even when I must use a wheelchair. 

To seek out calm, quiet happiness, pure simple happiness, in my head when it is so often filled with loud pounding pain. 

To know that, of all the things that we can live with or end up having to live with, the worst of these, by far, is regret.

What is your test?

Your unforgettable test?

I love the saying that, “If you’re not coaching it, you’re letting it happen.”  I’m an athlete and a coach still in my head, despite what that snickering bastard of a scale says.

I believe that everyone has tests.  Unforgettable tests.  Tests which will define their lives.  We choose the subject.  We choose the class.  Sometimes even, we choose the teacher.

It’s September.  Football weather.  I raked today.  Nights are cool now.   Summer’s over.  I hear the bell sound.

Class is in session…

Life’s Resume

From the time, it seems, we are barely in high school, we are coached, advised and prodded to start putting together our resumes.  We are taught to acquire “smart” victories and garner certain strategic awards, rack up hours of community service and put together a comprehensive picture of our best selves in order to make us marketable and fine choices for what we hope will be satisfying and well-paid careers.

In today’s economy, with so many jobs lost and so many people needing to reinvent themselves, the scrambling unemployed and under-employed are retooling their resumes and hurrying to add more attractive fonts and eye-catching phrases that “pop”.  A lifetime’s worth of work needing to fit onto a single page. 

While I was watching coverage of Senator Kennedy’s funeral today, it struck me how full his life’s resume.  Story after story this week and into today of instances and events, gestures and words which so many consider selfless, humorous, generous, thoughtful.  Unforgettable.

I don’t think all of his fit on one page.

Made me wonder how hard we work to pad our life’s resume.  Made me wonder how much we impress upon our young people the importance of filling a life’s resume that will highlight a history of selflessness, humor, generosity, and thoughtfulness.

Senator Kennedy had a huge family.  He was charged with filling the paternal role for fatherless nieces and nephews.  He was a Senator.  A public figure.

A busy guy.

And yet so many have told how he personally called all 171 families of those who died in 9/11.  During the week his nephew JFK, Jr. was missing and then found dead, he called every day to check on one of his staffers who had lost his mom.  Story after story.

He made the time, took the time, prioritized the time to pad his life’s resume.

These are the things that I remember.  These are the things that “pop”.

Is it important to ask, from time to time, what will they say about me when I’m gone?  What am I doing to fill my life’s resume?

Some will laugh and cast aside the notion, stating that they don’t care because they won’t be there to worry about it.  But I think the questions are critical in inspiring us to build a volume of work and deed which is notable for its compassion, valuable to the people we raise and influence, and memorable for it’s grander humanity.

Our time is so fleeting here.  What can we do in this short period of time that will last beyond it?

Is it simply our children?  What, then, are we actually teaching our children?  What are they going to take of our lives, our words, our examples?  What, today, would they write in their eulogies of us?

Maybe most important is to keep close the truth that we do not possess, every one of us, the gift of long life.  Perhaps it is worthwhile to not keep our life’s resumes for that time in the future when we believe there will be fewer crisis, fewer demands on our time, fewer challenges…

Today may be the last day for us to add to our life’s resume.  What is going to pop?

What will our spouses, partners, children, friends, neighbors, colleagues-say about us?  Is it all that we intend?  Is it all that we hope?  Is it already enough?  Right now, are we enough?

Or are you like me, humbly realizing today how much work lies still before me, praying for time.

What Is It We Are Really Fearing?

In this current economic mess, even as there are modest signs of recovery, there is evidence that the patient is getting sicker.  There lingers a widespread palpable fear that is scaring the bejesus and sucking the life out of countless- more than a 94 degree afternoon with high humidity and bad hair.

Will I lose my job?  Will my spouse/partner lose his/her job?  Will I miss my mortgage payments?  Will I lose my credit rating?  Will I lose my house?  Will we have to move in with the in-laws?  Will I have to uproot my kids from all their friends and move somewhere else?  Will I have to pull my kid out of college?  Can I find another job?  Am I too old to change careers?  How can I lose my health insurance?

A thousand fears.  A thousand sleepless nights.  A thousand unanswered questions.

Maybe I’ve had too many cognitive martinis but it seems I’ve coasted through this recession from a curiously buffered and hazy distance.  A strange objectivity.  Watching it all happen around me.  Hearing the tormented worries of so many people I love and, yet, not feeling that same fear. 

Oh yeah, that’s right.  I already lost everything…

I feel bad when I hear the real fear in people’s voices.  They can’t hear me when I tell them they will make it.  They can’t hear me when I tell them it’ll be OK.  That maybe new opportunities are knocking.  That maybe their real life’s work is about to begin.  That maybe they are meant to emerge on a wonderful new path.

It’s too big right now, screaming in their ears.   Raging in their darkest, prickliest doubts.  Whispering even as they try to sleep, “It’s coming.  It’s coming…”

Ruin.

I was thinking today that perhaps it is so scary simply because they’ve never experienced it before.  We fear what we don’t know.   Sometimes it renders change and sometimes prejudice and often it isn’t as hard or awful as we’d feared.  We just feared it because we didn’t know.  Hadn’t been through it before.

So what does all this financial ruin mean?  What is this scary monster hiding under so many of our beds during this recession?  Would it help to know?

I can tell you I lost 80% of my wealth after my injury and subsequent inability to return to my career.  You can do the math on your own incomes and imagine your own lot but what it looks like from my front window is this:

When none of my insurances would accept responsibility for my situation 13 years ago when I got hurt, I didn’t receive any income for seven months.  Seven.  That would take us to next March right now if you stopped receiving any income today. 

In those seven months, I used credit cards, in large measure, to survive.  Thirteen years later, I’m still paying for a can of coffee I bought on my Target card in 1996…

After not getting money for seven months, I resumed receiving an income of 85% of my former wages.  I could no longer afford my new house so I downsized to a smaller house and, two months after I bought it, my former employer found a loophole that immediately terminated the disability insurance I was receiving from them.  Yikes, now I was in trouble.  But I hung onto that house for five years and that’s longer than this recession is going to last. 

You can do this!

Financial ruin means I don’t even look through the catalogs they continue to send me a dozen years later.  They sit in a pile in my corner for friends and relatives to page through when they visit.  

It means I continue to wear two pairs of sweats that don’t even have any elastic anymore (when they fall down, I tell myself I must be losing weight).  My t-shirts have holes in them.  I buy everything I can at the Dollar Store (except coffee-don’t ever buy coffee at the Dollar Store).  I have had exactly two sets of sheets for thirteen years.  I reuse vacuum cleaner bags.  Sometimes I use paper towel for coffee filters.  I ask for coffee and cream for Christmas.   Any new clothes are gifts. 

I color my own hair and even have cut it myself a time or two.  OK, maybe ten.  There aren’t maintenance actions any more.  No upkeep.  Not for hair highlights or dental checkups or rotating tires.  You go when there is an emergency.  You go when you sell your favorite mementos on eBay or in a garage sale.  Whenever you have an emergency, it takes months and months to recover even a hundred dollars.

You don’t have credit so, if you don’t have cash, you don’t get it.  You lose your house and you move back home into a basement.  Creditors call and they really don’t believe you when you tell them you don’t have any money.  They imagine that you are hoarding all your money and are simply enjoying hearing from them every day.

You meet friends for a meal out maybe a couple times a year.  You eat well one week a month when you can afford to buy fruit and a decent cut of meat or fish.  The rest of the month you gain weight on cheaper meats and fattening fillers of rice and pasta.  You go from sirloin to chuck, Folger’s to Kroger’s,  and from Jiffy to no brand…

You make presents for loved ones when you used to enjoy shopping for expensive gifts.  Walking the malls during the holidays used to feel exciting and giddy with a wallet full of cash and plastic.  Now there’s really no sense to it at all except for the exercise.

You wash your laundry more times than you’d care to admit in hand soap.  You hang clothes out to dry when you can’t afford to fix the dryer.  You simply sigh when the gutter finally falls off and you can’t afford to replace it.   You drive in the middle of August with your heater on because you can’t afford to replace the radiator.

Is this the fear?  Is this everyone’s fear?  That they will end up like me?

Imagine that.  To be the poster child for everything that everyone you know doesn’t want to end up like.  

Laughing here.

I’m laughing and not crying because I know that, when you’ve lost everything, you haven’t lost anything.  And when you’ve lost everything, you have no idea how much more you could lose. Or how much more you can gain.

When it all gets down to brass tacks, then you actually take a look at what the hell brass tacks even mean.  And, if you’re as fortunate as I’ve been, you realize that you didn’t lose anything that meant anything at all.

I don’t fear losing anything in this recession because they already came and cleared out the cupboard 13 years ago.  I don’t fear losing everything because I’ve long ago filled those cupboards with the things I found that were actually important to me in this life and actually irreplaceable.  And they weren’t anything I could order out of catalogs.

But what I do fear is losing the people I love because of the stress they are experiencing during this awful time in their lives.

Stress kills.  Make no mistake about it.  I’ve read that stress affects a body more than aging, obesity and smoking.  Think about that.   Although it’s easier said than done, worrying really doesn’t help anything.  Worrying is simply asking for things we don’t want.

You’d be amazed at how much satisfaction, happiness, reward and love you can experience and enjoy while living in your parents’ basement with an awful hairdo and eating plain rice twice a day.   You’d be amazed at how far you can go with a 12 year old car and three dollars in your purse.  It would blow you away how inexpensive it is to decide that different isn’t always worse and that making lifelong dreams come to life is extraordinarily cool at any stage and at any age.

I once had a fancy office next to an indoor waterfall, an assistant, expensive suits and fresh flowers on my nightstand every payday.  Now I’m an author and a public speaker.  I’m watching curled up Basset balls and calling high school football games and enjoying the time of my life.

The recession cannot take the only thing that really matters.  Not unless we allow it to.  It cannot take those people and pets we love from us unless we allow the stress to chip away at our mental and physical health, leaving us…

Dead.

Just for the fact that it’s almost 4 in the morning and I’m enjoying cognitive martinis after watching four Basset Hounds all weekend….Let’s pretend….

Say we all died today.  All of us.  Gone.  We all get to the other side of the lawn, waking from our dirt nap,  and we find out that THOUGHTS REALLY ARE THINGS!!!

That all we needed in our lives was to imagine, to voice, to believe, to determine, to strive, to dream….That all we had to do was to stop walking around saying we are fat cows or that we have huge butts.  That we simply needed to stop saying we would never get another job making X amount of money.  That we only had to stop saying no one will hire me, no one will love me, no one will understand me, no one will see that I’m good enough, pretty enough,  interesting enough, smart enough, capable enough or lovable enough…

What if we found out that all we needed to do was to become aware of how often we tell ourselves detrimental things that end up being drawn in and becoming self-fulfilling prophecies?  That all we needed to do was to realize that we are capable of anything?

Wouldn’t we all be red faced then?

Change is shocking.  You are humming along and feeling pretty good about yourself and tomorrow you lose your job.  Or you acquire a brain injury.  Or your spouse drops the divorce bomb.  Or the doctor’s office calls and asks you to come in to hear your test results.  Whatever.  A thousand possibilities.

Your life gets turned upside down.

If you realize what you truly need and you can look around each night and count it, you’re going to be OK.  If you’re fortunate enough to wake up tomorrow morning then you still have the chance to change and better what you don’t like about your life, regardless of how many arrows are coming your way.

We don’t have to waste time fearing the unknown because there’s already enough of the known to keep us busy.  We don’t have to fear what’s going to happen in ten years because we don’t know if we even have ten days.  A million things can happen to change every moment.  And if we’re alive and if we’re reading this right now and understanding it, we’re already armed with enough ammunition to make it better.  To make this life something we really want to live and enjoy, not simply to survive and endure. 

Happiness can be found beyond our greatest fears.  Dreams can be realized no matter the bank account or the stage in life.

Just ask the poster child of ruin. 

Writers, All Of Us

Over the years people have asked me what it’s like to be a writer.  They tell me they “could never do that” when I believe that we are all writers.  All storytellers.

We rewrite our personal histories to quiet regrets, to prove any number of favorable traits, to impress bosses and employees, new lovers, family and friends.  We decorate the oft-harsh realities of our pasts to color our present.  To entertain.  To comfort.  And, especially, when our present isn’t what we had hoped it would be, our gussied-up pasts remind us that yes, we have been something special in this lifetime. 

I often noodle this question, when is enough enough?  What job or career is the one that cannot be recovered from if you lose it?  Which is the one we cannot move on from?  The one that nothing can follow?

If you are a professional baseball player, is that it?  Your family, your hometown, your friends…They’re all so proud of you.  Surely that must be the one career you can’t recover from losing.  But even if you are the best on your team or the best in the league, is that enough?  Is it enough when there have been thousands who have become professional baseball players before you?  And, even if you are the best baseball player that has ever laced up spikes and taken the field, what does that mean?

What about becoming a doctor or a lawyer, going to Yale or Harvard?  Is that enough?  How about if you become a millionaire?  Surely that must be enough then.

But there are 8.7 million millionaires in this world.

People in my community struggle so much with the life they lost.  The careers left behind.  What they cannot do any longer.  Often, as it becomes more apparent that we will not return to those abilities, we paint them and retell them and romanticize them until nothing we are and nothing in our present or our foggy futures could possibly be as good as before we were hurt.

I’m sure that, if I live long enough, I will be the best caterer that ever choreographed a seven course dinner.  Just you wait.  Laughing here.

So I’m wondering exactly what particular job or position is enough.  That one title, that one achievement…that so stands alone that we cannot recover its loss?

Michael Jackson was one of the greatest and wealthiest entertainers in the history of entertainment. Was that enough?  Rumor has it he was obsessed with recovering his record-breaking status of the early 80’s and couldn’t accept that he had lost so much of his perceived relevance.  That he never overcame it.

Why is it that so many of us feel that all there is is what was back there?  That all that matters is we can’t get back that career and status we enjoyed before our lives changed? 

People do it in all areas of life.  How many times after a rocky relationship and breakup does that former partner become idolized and thrust upon a pedestal and emerges this glorified one that got away? 

We storytellers and re-writers of our histories conveniently forget that it wasn’t all perfect then.  Not our jobs and, often, not our relationships.  We didn’t bring home paychecks of gold (unless we were hedgefund managers) and, if we got divorced, obviously the actual relationship we shared (not the edited version) with our spouse was not all smoothe chocolate kisses, diamond sunsets, sultry tangos and soaring rainbows.

How long does ideal have to last?  How long is good enough, good enough?  Why, when so much can go wrong, are we so surprised when it does?

Could it have been enough for Michael Jackson simply to enjoy that he once did it better than anyone else on the planet? 

For 13 years I was a catering manager and a darned good one.  I enjoy rehashing the “glory days” with former colleagues and friends.   They are cherished memories.

But I am good with the fact that I did it once and I did it well.  I don’t have to do it again.  I don’t have to go back.  I don’t suffer one moment when I believe that that was all that defined me.  All that I was meant to do in my entire lifetime.  All that I could succeed in.  Or that my catering success was supposed to take me from A to Z instead of from C to F. 

Is any job?  Would it be different if I had been a critically acclaimed opera singer or a professional tennis player or a Congresswoman?

Our lifetimes are stories we write.  Our injuries demand, this economy demands, life itself demands that we  are able to close chapters and start new ones.  The only one thing we are throughout our lives, after all, is alive.

A dear friend of mine was a therapist and a social worker before she acquired breast cancer.  Now she’s a photographer, an art gallery owner, a breast cancer advocate and a painter.

I was a catering manager before my injury and now I’m a high school sports announcer, a dog sitter, an author, a blogger and a public speaker.

No book is one chapter. 

No life is, either.

I was walking tonight and listening to one of my favorite songs, “I’m Movin’ On” by Rascal Flatts.  I love the lyrics:

I’m movin’ on
At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me
And I know there’s no guarantees, but I’m not alone
There comes a time in everyone’s life
When all you can see are the years passing by
And I have made up my mind that those days are gone                

Nobody has to be one thing all their lives.  There isn’t one job that is the be-all and end-all in this world.  Happiness is found in constants and commitments that aren’t dressed up as titles.  Success and reward can be found in a thousand different places.

How do you explain the man who works as a sewer parts distributor making 23-5 a year and is happy as a clam?  Completely delighted with his life.  Or the woman who absolutely loves her life while scrubbing morgue floors on the midnight shift in nowheresville?

What is supposed to be the goal?  Surely recent headlines must prove that nothing secures the perfect life.  No amount of career touchdowns.  Not money.  Not titles.  Not millions of adoring fans.  Not corner offices or lifetime batting averages of over .300 or an armful of Oscars.

My goal and, too, my challenge to those like me…is to believe that we can write a fabulous next chapter.  That every old chapter can end and every new chapter can begin and that we are the ones who fill it.  We write it.  We choose what goes into it.

Everyone is a writer.  And, make no mistake about it, the book will end one day.  But the book doesn’t have to end after the third chapter because of injury or difficult childhoods or terrible parents or lost jobs or lousy marriages.  The rest of it doesn’t have to be blank pages. We have more power than that.

As authors of our books, of our lives, we write in the successes.  As much as we want and in whatever area we choose it.  We aren’t chained to anything.  It’s OUR book!  We put in the love.  We insert the laughter.  Wherever we want it!  We create the characters who triumph over adversity.  We choose the supporting characters who can turn the story this way or that.  We start and end the chapters when we want to and on what note. 

Nobody else writes our story and thank God for that.  There’s not just one way to write our story.  There’s not just one way to be happy.  No one job to feel successful.  No one path to find that equals right.

The greatest stories of all time all contain drama, sadness, heartbreak and struggle.  It’s what makes them worth reading. 

 It’s our great fabulous wonderful exciting opportunity to turn the page.  The screen is blank.  The cursor blinking.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with…

Till Death Us Do Part

This is admitedly a hard one to write.  One I’ve put off because the issue is so painful to so many.  It has so many edges and pointy elbows.  So many prickers.  I’ve seen it torture so many people and dismantle so many couples.  It hurts my heart.

What do you do when your spouse or partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, acquires a traumatic brain injury that significantly changes the dynamics of that person’s personality?  Their very essence… 

What happens when the injury takes the person you loved and chose, even married, and replaces him/her with someone you don’t want to be with any longer?  Someone you never would have chosen?  Someone you don’t even recognize beyond a familiar face?

Traumatic brain injury is a mean bugger, make no mistake.  It’s no surprise that the incidence of divorce after TBI is astronomical.  There are very few other conditions which similarly steal so quickly and dramatically the very characteristics which make a person that particular person.  The one you chose.

If you are blessed enough in this life to find someone who is your ideal…Someone with your version of great character, complementary goals, compatible habits and mutual interests, it is hard as hell to have that snapped away in an instant.  Cruel.

What do you do?  The love of your life who was once kind and warm, funny and selfless, helpful and romantic, even-keeled and emotionally balanced, all of a sudden is mean and hurtful, unpredictable and depressed, self-centered and bitter, rageful or even dangerous.

What do you do?

There is pressure to stay.  We take vows of “till death us do part” and “in sickness and in health”  Most of us take them seriously and should.  

There is guilt.  Fear.  The pressure of “what will people think?” if you leave someone who has been disabled and his/her whole life has been turned upside down.  How can you leave?  What does that say about you?

There is pressure from families and friends who, to be honest, want you to keep the brain injured person and not return him/her to their family to have to deal with.  What will become of the person if you leave?  How do you make that right in your mind?

It’s a lot.

I watched my father take care of my mother after massive strokes left her significantly damaged and unable to speak coherently or take care of herself.  I had the utmost respect and admiration for him but I could not have judged him had he decided to admit her to a care facility.  Nobody can judge something so personal and so intimate.

I have heard of far too many couples who have suffered a traumatic brain injury to their marriage.  Some on their honeymoon, of all things.  Some, even, just weeks before their marriage.  Or a month after their first child was born.  What an awful place to be.

It affects everything.  People are suddenly faced with a partner who isn’t what they counted on.  Depended on.  Maybe he or she cannot be trusted with the children, is no longer contributing to the finances of the household and can no longer be an equal partner in decision making.  Or the caregiving relationship becomes more parent/child than equal adult.  Because their personalities have changed and often for the worse, maybe they are no longer pleasant and there is no desire for intimacy.  You don’t even LIKE them any more.  You sure don’t want to have sex…

People have approached me so many times asking what should they do.  How can they stay and how can they leave?  How and when will they know?  When is enough, enough?

I believe that the decision to stay or leave must be one that you can live with either way.  One without regret.  You have to be able to feel you did everything you could to improve your situation and to make your relationship work, even if it is markedly different from the one you enjoyed before the injury.  Different doesn’t always mean worse, after all.

The first issue is always safety.  If you or your children are not safe because the survivor has created an unsafe environment, there is no waiting.  There is no question.  No hemming and no hawing.  If you are threatened either because of something they are doing or incapable of doing and your very life and well-being is in peril, you get out immediately.

If you are not in any physical danger and the situation is simply no longer desireable or bearable,  there is a series of steps I feel is a good guideline for making it or determining it unmakeable. 

You let the healing take place and you let the doctors do their thing.  You exhaust every possible rehabilitation that will afford you a pretty clear picture of what the problems are and what’s likely to remain.  I went through physical, occupational, speech, specialized balance, alternative vocational, driver’s and psychological  therapies before I had a clear understanding of what was unlikely to heal any further and what I needed to do for each particular problem.

It’s important to learn.  You learn about the injury and you learn about the myriad ripple effects of it.  You learn what specific and unique challenges your loved one now faces.  You learn how they feel about what has happened to them and how that affects their behavior and attitude and potential.  You learn about your own feelings and how they are affecting your behavior and attitude and potential.  You share the information with family and friends and keep them involved in the process.

It’s so important to begin to separate the problems that are actual symptoms of the injury from those that are symptoms of the emotional aftermath of it.  For example, is he rageful because that part of the brain was damaged or because he is angry that this awful thing happened?  Is he acting recklessly because his brain can no longer keep him safe or because he’s depressed and simply doesn’t care any more?  Is she sitting on the couch doing nothing all day because of damage to her ability to initiate or is she feeling sorry for herself because she no longer has her former capabilities?

Each problem will dictate each solution.  Medication, relearning, compensatory techniques, adaptive equipment, emotional processing…There is help!  Problems can be resolved!  But it takes time and a lot of effort.  Problems need to be recognized and untangled and set apart and given appropriate treatment.  If the person’s brain has been damaged to the point where they cannot tie their shoes any longer, you don’t yell at them for not caring enough to tie their shoes.  You find out if they can relearn that skill or begin wearing slip-ons or velcro shoes.

One of the biggest steps in the series is getting both of you competent therapy.  The injury has happened to both of you, affects you differently, and you both likely need help in accepting it and adjusting to the screaming change that has been thrust upon you.  A good therapist can help the survivor accept the injury, let go of the life that has been forever altered, regain self esteem, and find a way to welcome this new life and head forward.  A good therapist can also help the “well” partner accept the injury, work through the grief of losing dreams and plans, the mourning of their lost loved one and how they used to be and the resentment that often comes from being partnered with someone who has so dramatically changed the relationship.  I cannot speak highly enough of how helpful a good therapist can be.

A lot CAN improve.  A lot CAN be figured out and fixed.  A lot CAN even be better than it was.  I’ve  heard several people tell me their marriages were “better than they’ve ever been” after injury.  Many times the injured person emerges a better person because of their injury experience and the perspective it gifts.  It may take some time to regain their footing and put the puzzle back together but I can’t count the people I know who are better for it and able to move beyond it.

But the injury does exist and it demands.  The “well” person has to nurture him or herself.  You need help.  You need to preserve and not disappear.  If you choose to stay, you need to enlist the help of your support circle to keep you from getting burned out. 

And, often times, your old support circle suddenly isn’t what it used to be.  You and your spouse used to go camping with other couples or to the casino or to each other’s homes to play cards.  When a couple changes, often times the people around you can’t or won’t accept that.  They want the old roles you played in their lives and they don’t want to change how you interact. 

If brain injury forever changes who you are, then likely it also changes who you are with.  At least in part.  People bond because of shared interest and common experience.  It may help you enormously to get involved with other people in the brain injury community who will understand what you’re going through.

There is no time limit for knowing.  Each survivor faces unique challenges and responds to them differently.  No course of treatment meets all the needs of each family.  Hopefully you will take the steps and afford yourself enough information and time and rest in order to make the decision you feel good about.

If you stay or go, it’s not going to be easy.  There is sadness and grief over a life you had thought was waiting for you.  Nobody wanted this.  Nobody asked for this.  Nobody prepared us for it.

And, although people are commended for staying and sticking and honoring their vows, sometimes determining the need to go is the best decision you can make for a relationship.  If you cannot accept the injury and forgive it…If you find that you cannot release the resentment and you are simply punishing the survivor day to day with your own bitterness and anger, then staying for staying’s sake isn’t helping anyone.  Survivors need to be surrounded with genuine support and positive, accepting people. 

Take your time.  Sleep on it.  Gather all the information.  Let as many professionals, medications, therapists and support people help as you can muster.  Even if you don’t stay, none of the steps will be in vain.  Both of you will be better for all the efforts.

I wish you all the very best in your decision.  I’m sorry you are in the situation you are in and I wish you both new paths of joy.

Macaroni and Soy Sauce

My brother and I were discussing the scuffling economy the other day.  We were recalling the other down periods during our lifetimes when, as a nation, we’ve struggled.  Those years when there were long lines at the gas station, so many people out of work, empty store shelves and families struggling just to put food on the table.

I remember when I was a kid and my Dad, so many nights, eating macaroni and soy sauce or macaroni and ketchup.  I thought he really really liked it.  I cry about that now.  I didn’t know.

We never wanted for anything, my brothers and me.  We enjoyed a hot breakfast every morning and a hot meal together every night.  We ate meat at every meal.  Salad.  Homemade baked bread.  My dad ate macaroni and soy sauce while I complained about having to eat the roast beef with carrots and potatoes again.

I didn’t know.

Sure I saw coverage of the long lines at the gas stations on TV back then.  I heard unemployment figures and inflation numbers.  I didn’t appreciate them.  Didn’t know to apply them.  I didn’t understand when my dad would ask the neighborhood pharmacist to, “hold a check until next Tuesday”.  I didn’t pay notice when he wore the same two pairs of winged tips for fifteen years, taking care to shine them at the bottom of the stairs.

They let us get the new shoes.  They let us get the new school clothes and go to the sports camps and out with our friends.  They let us get the baseball gloves and guitars and roller skates and hockey sticks.  They struggled together in silence so that we wouldn’t have to.  So that we wouldn’t know.  So that we wouldn’t suffer or stress or struggle.  We used to joke that all our mom seemed to eat was bread and all our dad seemed to eat was macaroni with soy sauce.

I weep for that tonight.  I didn’t know.

Seems all kids, at some point, consider their parents to be embarrassing nerds.  They are mortified that their parents wear what they consider to be outdated clothes with outdated hairstyles and tired shoes.  Most kids don’t realize it’s because they get the new hair cut and highlights before prom.  Mom has four inches of new growth and faded highlights from 13 months ago.  They get the new shoes for the first day of school and the next sports season.  Dad shines his old winged tips at the bottom of the stairs…

I used to think it was kind of lame that the biggest thing we do for our moms and dads on Mother’s and Father’s Day is to treat them to dinner.  Now I realize that a good steak dinner or shrimp or whatever they wanted that day meant a lot more than I ever imagined.

I guess I just want to say thank you to all you parents out there who, like mine, struggled through the worst of the 70s and 80s in order to afford us such a wealthy childhood.  A childhood rich with games and giggles.  Carefree summers of pool hopping and baseball games.  Exciting nights in tents in the backyard.  Chasing the ice cream truck and Red Rover on the front lawn.  Daydreams of infinite possibilities.

In today’s recession, for today’s moms in bad hair with dark roots and bedraggled bathrobes and three-year-old mascara and bras that have no elastic anymore, bless your huge, generous hearts. 

And thank you to all you fathers out there eating macaroni and soy sauce today.  Shining your shoes.  Covering that thin, stretched-out tee shirt with a snarky old dress shirt and a limping tie.  Thank you for letting your boys chase toads and eat dirt and dream of playing major league baseball and trade baseball cards and sharpen popsicle sticks on the cement.  Thank you for allowing your girls to sing into a hair brush and wobble in her mom’s shoes and name her stuffed animals and knock tennis balls against the house, believing she’s going to one day win Wimbledon.

You’re heroes to me, you are.   Every precious one of you.

Happy Father’s Day.

Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet

I cried a little for GM today.  It wasn’t because I believe GM, or Ford or Chrysler for that matter, to be the innocent victim of some unforeseen catastrophe.  I don’t.  And it wasn’t because I don’t believe they can emerge from this painful low and again stake their place in a competitive auto industry.  I do.

No, I cried a little for GM today because it’s all we’ve known.  Growing up in Warren, MI, just outside of Detroit, most of our neighbors and friends and classmates were from auto industry families.  They worked the lines and drove the brands and there was a real sense of pride hailing from the Motor City.  It was drilled into our heads from the time we were little, “If you get in with the Big Three, you’re set for life.”  And for all my life that has been true.

It’s not true any longer. 

It’s hard to lose all that you’ve known of something.  Painful and disorienting to lose the comfort, familiarity and security of that constant.  It’s hard to lose an identity.

I cried a little for GM today because I know what it’s like to suffer that moment when you realize nothing will ever be the same.  I’m sure each of the decision makers and board members and VIPs and employees from GM had their one moment when it became apparant that they weren’t going to resolve this problem and hold on to all they’d built and all they’d known.

It’s a tough moment.

My moment came not long after I was injured.  I didn’t tell anyone but I knew.  Until then I had denied the looks I had caught between family, friends and co-workers.  Between therapists and doctors.  I had denied the voices taunting  in my head between pledges of hope and untired determination.  Denied the mounting evidence. 

I didn’t speak those words.  Wasn’t ready yet.  I kept quiet even when my eyes were screaming in the mirror.   My heart breaking with disappointment.  Even when I continued to tell myself, prod myself… if I try harder, wait longer, believe more strongly…

And then one night when no one was around, it came.  My moment.  Lonely in the middle of the night.  Like the first frost.  Things were dead then.  I knew my life was turning fast to winter and there was no more denying that the sun wasn’t staying as long or burning as brightly anymore.

It’s a tough moment when you realize that the only life you’ve ever known has already died.  It’s already gone.  You just didn’t want to say good bye.

When a door locks behind us and we no longer have the key, it takes a little while before we stop pounding and jimmying the knob and kicking it and cursing.  We simply don’t want it be closed for good.

But if we are blessed enough to see a day that holds only what we are no longer, then we are equally blessed with the opportunity to use that day to start becoming what we wish one day to be.

Like GM, those of us who suffer life-altering events will keep those bittersweet memories of easier times and top-of-the-mountain moments when the choices we made and the paths we walked brought success, reward and satisfaction.

But there is much work ahead if we are going to become more than simply what used to be.  If we are going to revamp and retool and redesign our present into a future we can again stand proudly aside, then what is lost is best left to the ruins. 

The time comes in all of our lives when we must finally toss out that favorite old coat, now full of holes and moths and smelling of disappointment.   

The time comes to all of us when we have to determine a second chance to be all that we need.  To re-evaluate and to see if the dreams we once clung so tightly to even make our hearts swoon anymore. 

Sometimes we believe something simply because we have always believed it.   Because our parents told us to.  Or because our friends did.  We eat something cooked a certain way because we have always eaten it that way.  We don’t even wonder if maybe something else could be better.  Or we don’t even pay attention to whether it even tastes good anymore.

I once heard a story of a man who had always dreamed of owning his own boat.  He had dreamed of it and pictured it and planned it and told everyone over the years.  He would buy that boat when he retired and sail around the world.  It was the dream he lived by.  The dream he was known for.

But over the years he had been in the Navy when his ship was bombed severely in WW2.  He had almost drowned on a family vacation in the ocean.  His knees were horribly warped and painful from arthritis. 

So when he retired, he bought that boat.  But the memories of those bombings and his fear of the water after almost drowning and his limited mobility from the angry knees made it impossible for him to fit into that old dream.  He never even sailed it before he died.

If tomorrow is simply another  yesterday, they wouldn’t call it tomorrow.  If tomorrow were only yesterday, we’d be going backwards.  But we’re not. 

We’re going forwards.

New dreams that haven’t been realized yet are better than old dreams that no longer can be.   Tomorrow is better than yesterday because we can still change tomorrow.  We can still shape our dreams to fit our actual desires, abilities and needs. 

It’s OK to cry a little bit when the first frost comes and the future feels horribly cold and dark and the soft warm light of summer has long faded.  But in a moment comes Spring and that is worth every wait. 

Let’s get going now.  Our lives have been patiently waiting.

Before It Even Happens

When I was injured and it quickly became apparent that there were too few rehab appointments approved by my insurance and too many weeks and months between those approvals, I devised many of my own “home remedies” to stoke my recovery.

I tried everything from massage to Reiki to needles in my head and warm rice on my feet.  I sang and I did word puzzles.  I read books and did exercises.  I imagined and meditated and prayed and painted by numbers and colored and tried every kind of food, herbal tea and homeopathic scent ever even rumored at being helpful in restoring cognitive ability.

What I’ve come to believe since is that, as much as we need to continue the conversation about what to do for the survivors of traumatic brain injury AFTER they are injured, perhaps we need to broaden the dialogue of how to help improve recovery way way way before the injury even occurs.

I’m not talking about prevention.  I’m all for seatbelts and helmets and deciding not to drive after you’ve drunk yourself blotto or while texting your “BFF”, sure.  But I’m thinking before that even.  Way before that.

I’m talking about the innocent acceptance that children display before they are taught to hate, to scoff, to mock, and to heap unflattering, unfair and even dangerous connotations onto different. 

Whenever I see young people being cruel-hating for hate’s sake. .. Anything and everything that is different from them…I get so irritated at my generation.  These are OUR kids.  I can’t believe that, in this day and age, people my age have taught their kids to hate.  Still.  When I imagine we should know so much better by now, too many have chosen to pass it down and to continue the ugly cycle of people who cannot tolerate those who are simply different from themselves.  Their skin color, their politics, their social status, their physical or cognitive ability, their looks, their beliefs, their God, their definitions of family.

I know I’ve mentioned before how blessed I am to have kids in my life who have been raised to respect and welcome the whole bucket of bolts they know as their aunt.  I am so warmed by the hope and belief that they will live their lives accepting of their own potential struggles and the struggles of people they meet.

So much of successful recovery from traumatic brain injury has to do with the undoing of lifelong lessons that cause significant damage to our recovery efforts.  Somewhere along the way, much of Society failed to make room and acknowledge the very real and growing class of the different. 

When we are facing recovery from TBI, we are imprisoned in a body that no longer takes commands as it once did.  We are no longer the kings and queens of our castles when all of the once-dutiful servants of our commands are now running willy nilly all over the kingdom, maniacally making their own decisions.

That’s hard enough.

But more than that and equally as challenging becomes the need to quiet voices too long championed in feverish pitches.  Choruses of tallies from faceless votes-

You’re different now.  No longer a part of the group.  No longer as good.  No longer as valuable.  No longer as welcome.

And that we can do something about. 

I hear too often now, after injury, so many people unwilling to try new things because they fear they won’t do them well.  They fear they won’t be as good as they used to be at them.  They fear they will fail.  And, often, they just won’t try them because they aren’t the kinds of things they’re used to. 

Where did they learn all these things?

Brain injury demands that we are willing to be different, to accept differing versions of our selves and our lives.  To discover happiness in new places, new passions, new ideas and new jobs.  To again seize the opportunity to fill an empty slate.

I started playing the piano about six months ago and I have not once been accused of being any good at it.  But I’m having a ball!  Now granted, I may not be able to learn in traditional ways and I may not be able to completely memorize all the notes and keys like most.  But I am often reminded at how sad it would be and how poorer my life if I was unwilling to try.  Unwilling to be lousy for the sake of wonderful and rejuvenating and fun. 

If we have not learned to be malleable…If we have not learned that often the reward is in the doing and not just in the doing great…If we have not learned that we must seek happiness within ourselves instead of in the approval of others, then how can we heal?  How can we successfully and happily be different if we’re chided and scorned and ridiculed for it?

For as many of the cognitive symptoms that simply will not retreat no matter how many rounds of therapies and rehab stints are waged,  there is a whole side of recovery that can be installed and implemented right now, before anyone else gets hurt.

We can teach our kids how to welcome different.  In themselves and in those around them.  We can cheer their innocent acceptance of those who are not like them.  We can teach them that there are a lot more places than first.  We can remove the pressures that are heaped onto young people imploring them to be only first.  To be only best.  To be only the keepers of what is cool and trendy and approved by magazine covers and movie stars.

We can teach them to be real.

I struggled with my self esteem after my injury.  Everything that had told me I was successful was lost.  Every definition that I had learned of what it meant to be “valuable” in Society was gone.  The ability to make money, to keep my house, to pay my bills, to drive a car, to buy nice clothes, to behave “normally”…

I was ridiculed for how I walked and how I talked.  I am ridiculed still.   And, while I’m thankful that I am incredibly strong now in my unshakable belief of what it means to be valuable, there are too many in my community, and in like subsets of different, who are struggling to survive the judgements.  And they are found every single day at the end of ropes, at the bottom of bottles and on the bathroom floors of too many homes.

This part we can change.

Traumatic brain injury is never going to end.  Babies will still be shaken by sleep deprived parents who “lose it”.  Kids will still fall off bikes and get tackled by bigger linebackers.  People will still drive too fast and blow through red lights and slip on the ice and suffer clots and bleeds and blows and a hundred different disasters that strip the sense from life.

We have to teach our kids that there is room for them no matter what becomes of them.  If we teach them that they are only acceptable when they are making straight A’s, when they are heading off to law school and medical school, when they are winning and beautiful and smart and successful and making gobs of money, what do we tell them after they are in a wheelchair and unable to speak and incapable of any of the things we told them meant special and valuable and worthy?

Let’s cure a million brain injuries twenty years before they happen.  Let’s hand these kids the tools before anything needs fixing.  Make a warm and safe place for them to land before they fall. 

Different is stared at.  Laughed at.  Whispered behind.  Run from.  Sent away.  Gossiped about.  Passed by.  Pushed aside.  And it’s costing us more lives than we can afford to lose. 

This, thankfully, we CAN cure.

Mother’s Day Is Always Christmas

It was always around this time.  Some years maybe a little earlier; some years, perhaps, a little later.  But around now our Mom would pop out of her bedroom smiling and hand one of us a K Mart bag, proclaiming that she had found that Christmas present she had lost in December.  Fond memory. Smiling here.

In July she’ll have been gone for eleven years and that date always hurts.  No way around that.  But it is always around this time when I think of her so much.

I long imagined  it was because of Mother’s Day week and how much I miss her being gone.  Often I feel so lonely on Mother’s Day when mine is gone and I have no children.  Today, when I was tearing up about her being gone,  something made me realize how much she is still here.

It’s Springtime in Michigan.  Today was one of the most glorious days.  Those flat-out, God it’s great to be alive! days.  Wonderful sunshine.  66 degrees.  Soft breeze boasting of backyard grills fired up and freshly-cut lawns.  And the flowers…

My Mom’s backyard is positively dancing!  Soft sweet petals swirling and twirling in the sunshine!  Without any help from me (I have absolutely no talent in gardening), her apple and cherry blossom trees are singing with color, decorated with robins and cardinals and blue jays.  Her yellow tulips have returned again, just as they have every year since she planted them almost fifty years ago.  Her favorite lilac bush, now stretched taller than the house, literally glows in the dark.  And for a few beautiful mornings this time each year, its lovely fragrance invites neighbors to open kitchen windows, basking.

We’ve all gotten our mothers flowers for Mother’s Day.  Today I realized that my Mom sends them to us every year at this time, reminding us of how much life and love remains after death.  How much beauty and joy come to gently touch our shoulders after heartbreak and loss.  A parent’s love is so strong that not even Death itself can break it.

I never had children that didn’t have fur.  As I’ve gotten older and welcomed my friends’ kids and my brother and sister-in-law’s son and daughter, I have realized and witnessed the kind of absolute love, devotion and sacrifice that maybe I didn’t have the perspective to appreciate enough in my own Mom when I was younger.   And still she sends me flowers…

That’s a Mom.  You can vomit in their hair, carve in the new kitchen table, break a window with a fastball, get caught drinking at the high school dance, cut Valentines out of the lace curtains and a thousand other transgressions and still they are willing to gift you their entire lives.   And even after they’re gone.

We take so much from our mothers.  The best of their recipes, advice, sayings and traditions.  And even in what we bump up against, we take from them what not to take from them.  There is no other relationship like it.

It’s awfully hard when they go…

I wept for my Mom today.  Went right into the ugly cry sitting there in the Kroger’s parking lot.  This weekend I’ll bring her a bunch of her favorite lilacs, clean her headstone and lay them just below her name.  Where I’ve imagined her heart is.  And then I’ll come home and look at that backyard, like a beautiful bowl of delicious fruit, all gloriously colored and intoxicating, and I’ll remind myself that here is where her heart is.  Here.  In all the best that I am.  In all the beauty she has left for me.   And gifts me still.

And I’ll pray that all of you who are mothers and fathers will know how deep and lasting your imprint.  Even when those kids of yours might line your face, empty your pockets, steal your sleep and gray your hair…

Just as you breathed life into them, you will live in them long after you go.  They’ll see your expressions in the mirror.  Feel your voice in their hearts.  Hear your advice when they give it to their own kids.  Cherish and pass down your traditions.

All that you offer them, hope for and give them…won’t be lost.  Won’t be for naught.  They’ll learn, one sweet day, that parents make Christmas in May.   That parents make Christmas every day. 

Happy Mother’s Day.