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We are all, I am sure, striving to find that perfect balance in life; family vs. work, money vs. time, new and exciting vs. old and comfy, art vs. science, right brain vs. left brain, the “me” I can live with vs. the lazy-ass “me” I face in the mirror in the morning.
Well maybe that last one is just us… or is it “me-plural”???
Because of this struggle perhaps, there are times in life where the “here and now”, even in a consequence-full life, take precedence over the “have you thought about the long-term?”. I hope all of us have those times… where we forget that we may be hurt and decide to love, where we forget that it is not forever and let someone in; where we take in an animal knowing we will become attached and knowing that it may not be forever.
And so last night I worked toward a perfect balance of tears out vs. wine in. For my left brain thinkers, I will say that the ratio was nearly one-to-one despite an alarming mass flow. For my right brain thinkers I will say that even the perfect balance…isn’t.
Having admitted my own failings as a human, as a one-at-a-time dog person, especially if that “one” is the beast, and made the decision to look for a forever home for Dash 2, I should have been prepared for the inevitable; that a home would be found.
I wasn’t ready.
Yesterday, I met with a pair of lovely women who have been on the hunt for a special boxer boy. Dash 2 met them and as soon as one of them took a seat he put his front paws on her lap and gave her a boxer hug. He happily took treats, gave kisses and cried at the fence when they left.
This morning we made introductions to the other dog in their household. Starting off with a walk, we moved to a fenced yard with leashes still on both dogs in case we needed to drag them apart, and finally saw them sniff and pull back, then sniff some more. Then they began play and bound around.
This afternoon Dash 2 went to their house to see how the family dynamic worked.
It worked fine.
Trust me, I looked for the fatal flaw. I inspected a thoroughly dog-friendly house. I eyed with envy the expanse of fenced yard, something I cannot provide. I watched the two women lovingly interact with “my boy”.
Dammit.
After talking with the rescue coordinator, who suggested that dragging a dog back and forth can be confusing, I said my goodbyes, drove home and wept.
I am still thinking that the decision that to let Dash 2 go was a good one. I am still thinking the folks recommended by the woman who rescued Dash 2 are wonderful.
I am still crying.
I will tell you that I am not really bothered by this first Mother’s Day since my mother’s death. I remain unaffected. It is, after-all, a Hallmark holiday, made up for the sole purpose of selling greeting cards. In the American way, over the years it has morphed into a gimmick to sell flowers and jewelry, as well.
(Seriously? Jewelry?)
Whatever it started out as and whatever it has morphed into makes no difference to me, especially since this year I am without obligation. I don’t even have to pretend that I don’t think this is the stupidest annual event ever.
What I do find myself pretending is that the 6 month anniversary of my mother’s death passed without notice earlier this week. I am pretending that my watery eyes are solely the product of seasonal allergies. I am telling myself that I like the silence in the house, and it is not sappy mommy stories and the continued sales pitches that drove me to nearly smashing the radio.
While I am putting on a brave front, I am telling myself I am not the most selfish person in the whole world and that I should not feel badly at all for deciding that I was not cut out to be part of a two dog household…at least not as long the beast is one of them.
What I cannot fool myself about is that, in my decision, I may very well be losing the best dog ever…
Ack.
As I visited young friends of mine recently, the animated feature film Monsters, Inc. was playing in the background.
I love this movie!
The whole movie is fabulously illustrated. The story lines carry the basic premises that we should not be afraid of something just because it is unfamiliar and that laughter is more powerful than fear. There are good lessons there.
In addition to good lessons there are some fabulous characters, including a little girl named “Boo” – not her real name, but in a movie about scaring children, when asked her name the little girl, in keeping with the theme, said “boo!”, and then giggled; refusing or forgetting to be scared. Boo has two jaunty pigtails on the top of her head. Occasionally, when I am behaving like the strange human that I am, the beast will look at me curiously and her ears will perk up then cock out to the sides. I tell her she has “boo-ears” when I get that look.
Even when I am behaving strangely, the beast, like Boo, refuses to be scared.
Which isn’t to say that there are not things that do scare her. She doesn’t like loud noises, or the toenail grinder, or the rustling of grocery bags or walking on pergo floors.
It is a pretty short list, and I am grateful for that. I would not wish for her to live her life in fear. Still, I wish she was more afraid of moving vehicles or the bad mood of mine that comes from her eating my shoes. A little fear in life is healthy; lifesaving perhaps.
And fear is normal. I think we all have a few monsters hiding in our closets.
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day. She had just had one of those long and hard discussions with a loved one about health concerns. I’ve had those discussions, too, and I can empathize with how hard they can be and how much they reflect and rouse our own fears.
She confessed, as healthy as she is right now, that one of her biggest fears was that she could have a heart attack and die.
I confessed that my fear is that I won’t.
Different monster…but we all have them.
Having only met my own, I don’t know how to tame all of those monsters. It does occur to me, though, that there are a limited number of approaches available to us; turn and introduce ourselves to them face-to-face; decide not to deal with them and put them out of our minds; or turn every light on in the room, sit with our backs pressed against the headboard and stare at the closet door all night.
The approach you may take might depend on the monster.
For me, the fear of not having a massive heart attack is not something I can control, so, for most days, I simply put those thoughts out of my mind. For other things like my personal safety, I choose, like making introductions, to make myself aware of the crime in my area. Because I have familiarized myself with the risks where I live, I can take what I think are reasonable precautions. For other fears, like when the beast was throwing up blood, I chose to have her stay at the clinic overnight and have more testing. It was a tense and sleepless night spent watching the closet door, although, as it turns out, it was nothing.
Other folks might take different approaches to each of these potential monsters. More important than the approach we take, though, is not to let the monster choose for us, or at least to limit the number of monsters that are allowed to keep us up, standing vigil, all night.
Growing up I remember owning a poster that definitively declared:
“Salesmanship Begins When the Customers Says ‘No’ “
I have no idea why I had the poster. Unless you count my minimum wage job slinging fish at the local market, I’ve never been in sales. Never want to be in sales either. Not only would I hate it, I would also be bad at it.
Very bad.
The premise of the poster doesn’t quite sound right to me either. Disrespecting someone’s stated wishes for your own personal gain falls pretty far from the values I was raised with. For a product with some real value, maybe I can see pushing the boundaries a bit, but, in general, when I am being pushed into a sale, something within me innately pushes back.
I duck and run through retail outlets that staff their stores with pit bulls on commission. After a two-hour search for a new outfit one afternoon, I left the whole ensemble on the counter and walked out of the store when the saleswoman tried to push one more “accessory” on me. When someone is really pushing hard for a sale, my mind wonders, sometimes aloud, what is so wrong with a product that needs that amount of pressure applied to a sale.
Ridiculously, I spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to get myself off of mailing lists and email campaigns. I squint through the fine print on the junk email I get in order to unsubscribe to their incessant barrage. I don’t even want to just send the stuff to my spam folder. I want it to stop.
It doesn’t.
More discouraging is the knowledge that it never will.
When I retired from the Navy and came back to my hometown, I moved into the family home. When mom went into assisted living and I moved to my condo, I forwarded all the mail from the family address to my new residence. Two years later I moved again. Again I forwarded the mail. As a consequence, I still get mail for all of the previous residents of the house I grew up in.
Occasionally, I get mail for my brother. More commonly, I get mail for my sister.
Yesterday, I got an invitation to an open house at a new elder care facility. It was addressed to my mother. I am quite certain we won’t be going to that open house. I am also pretty sure that I would never recommend an elder care facility that doesn’t screen death notices.
In today’s mail came tickets to a seminar on estate planning, inviting my dad to enjoy an informative afternoon with a financial planning firm offering personalized service.
Just exactly how does a company that offers “personalized” service overlook that their potential client has been dead for nearly 14 years?
For the “salesmanship begins when the customer says ‘no’ ” crowd, I am sure there is no appropriate time to quit selling.
I for one, though, would like to see it end at least by the time the customer has died.
But maybe that is just me…
I was reminded in my week in the cadaver lab that I am particularly bad at remembering to duck; not very good at seeing the threat and preventing contact… or maybe I am simply too stupid to know what’s coming.
It happens outside of full-body contact research labs as well. It happens with grief, too. I was completely blind-sided.
I should have seen a relapse coming. I should have taken the return of nightmares as a warning sign. I should have been on full alert given my disrupted sleep, my new aches and pains, my hormonal near-meltdown, and near-panic over the beast being sick.
Instead, I saw those as part of my life’s normal ups and downs.
I blithely stumbled on; going through my “normal” daily routine late last week. My new “normal” has gotten away from settling in to watch tv at night. Instead, I have tried to read more, play more, and relax more in the evenings. If there is a program I feel like watching, I generally watch it online sometime during the following days.
Among the tv shows that routinely shows up in my online queue is Grey’s Anatomy. I used to be pretty well hooked. Lately, not so much, but I didn’t have anything better to do as I sat down to have some lunch last Friday. I clicked on the icon and launched last week’s episode. It was all going so well until I aspirated my soup…
The episode had a story line about whether a woman who had shown some symptoms of dementia would be admitted into a clinical study for a new treatment.
You would think I would be smart enough then to turn it off, fast-forward, something.
I wasn’t.
I found myself even heartened by the fact that there was a clinical Alzheimer’s trial going on….even knowing that the trial was fictional. I am not in agony over the fact that there is this disease out there. I am unperturbed, sometimes even cheered, by the medicine.
I am, however, deeply effected by those who continue to suffer…even if they are fictional.
The woman on the show was denied entry into the clinical trial, her symptoms not having progressed enough to qualify her. At this news, she celebrated; she didn’t have Alzheimer’s; she couldn’t have Alzheimer’s; she had other plans for her life, for her retirement….
I could empathize with her and her family. I was moved by her words….but then I was immobilized by the words that followed.
“I am so afraid,” she admitted.
I was afraid, too, as I sank to the floor with chest pain, unable to breathe, gasping and sobbing.
“What the f*@#??!!” I thought to myself.
It has been months. I have put some effort into letting myself heal. I have been open about my grief. I have talked with many folks about my mom and my grief, and had talked with others about their own family members. I’ve been back to the home where my mother lived and even begun volunteering there. I had been doing fine; was really on a high, in fact.
Only to get run over by the sled.
Never even saw it coming…
It sounds a bit like self-help tripe, but I am finding there is a useful reminder in the observation that “we teach people how to treat us”. Although not so succinctly put, this is something I have known for a long time.
I’ve known that if I don’t want to get turned down completely, I better show a little faith in myself. If I want to be viewed as strong, I need to stand up for myself. If I want loyalty, I need to learn to stand up for others. If I want others to listen and respond to me, I had better be prepared to do the same for them.
This is not rocket science.
Still, like most things in life, there are subtleties that get overlooked.
Also, like most things in life, it is way easier to see that subtle slight when you are the one who was slighted.
During my week in Alaska, in the middle of a long, quiet shift, conversation shifted to the death of a parent. Several of the folks in the room shared stories of loss or told of the challenges in managing aging parents. I had started to speak up a few times, but others seemed to have more urgent tales and greater familiarity with the group. I sat quietly. I was new to the group, after all. I was there to listen and learn…not about this mind you.
As hugs were exchanged among those taking part in the conversation and tears wiped up, one of the people in the group offered me an apology.
“I’m sure you didn’t need to hear any of that, as you are a long way away from having to deal with your parents getting older…”, she said. She meant it kindly. She had no idea that my whole trip to Alaska was born from the need to crawl out from under the loss of my mother.
Maybe I don’t quite look my age. Maybe even when you know that I am 48, most do not presume that I would have lost both of my parents already.
I get it.
Still, it might have been a conversation to which I had something to offer…
This very brief part of my Alaskan experience reminded me of a lunch I attended a while back. At this gathering few of the women at the table knew each other well. It was an opportunity, though, to get to know each other a little bit better; to network. As life stories were exchanged, the conversation seemed to skip me. When the oversight was noticed, but before I actually started to share a bit about myself, one of the women simply stated that I was “a baby”.
I was, indeed, the youngest in the group, but still I was insulted.
Among this group of women, I may very well have had more to gain by listening to their stories, than I had to offer by telling them my own.
I don’t know, though.
They don’t know either. After being declared an infant, you could not have pried one word about my life’s experiences from me.
Reflecting on those experiences now, though, I am wondering if I teach people to dismiss me as too young. Do I deny my own experience? Appear disinterested in theirs?
Or how often do I do the same thing? Do I overlook the youngest in a group? Do I dismiss those who don’t look like they have experience as having nothing to offer as guidance? Am I so busy talking, I forget to listen?
I want very much to believe that I see the person leaning into the conversation and turn to welcome their input. I want to think that I hear the intake of breath that announces the next speaker. I want to believe that I take care not to talk over someone’s first tentative words.
But I’m not sure I always do.
Because this part of life isn’t rocket science. When we get it wrong, things don’t explode or go careening into alternate universes.
We just miss opportunities.
Life is short.
I’d prefer not to miss a lot of those.
I spent most of Saturday morning out of the house. I left mid-morning for a quick meeting with the other officers and board members for Veterans PetReach; a meeting sandwiched between obedience classes. Although I don’t volunteer for the morning classes, everyone else does so it was easiest for me to come in early rather than try to reassemble the group after many had begun to wander off.
What else was I going to do with a Saturday morning anyway?
For a year and a half, my Saturday mornings typically started here anyway. The beast and I, being slow learners, attended several rounds of obedience classes. Even now that the beast and I are done (???) with school, I have been coming in on Saturdays, as a volunteer, for the midday class for several weeks. By that late hour, though, the guests who frequently come down to watch the training and see the dogs have returned to their floors for lunch.
The noon class is just dogs, trainers and handlers.
The noon class, as you look around, could be the basement of nearly any building in the city. Attending the earlier classes was a reminder that this was basement of a nursing home; the nursing home where my mother had lived.
My early arrival re-exposed me to wheelchairs and grey hair, to frail bodies and decaying minds; familiar friends, although unpopular, sometimes forgotten. But I haven’t forgotten them. It was actually nice to have the same conversation I have had a thousand times with Z. once again. I discovered I had missed J.’s sweet smile.
It was nice also to chat once again with aides and volunteers; many of whom knew and cared for my mother.
And it was easy to have those conversations in the basement; where the dogs take center stage, where I am comfortably removed from memories of my mother.
Life doesn’t always stay easy, though.
The combination of the weather and school break meant that Saturday’s noon class was particularly small; small enough to manage a visit to one of the nursing home floors to see how these therapy-dogs-in-training might react to the sights and smells and sounds of a long-term care facility. It just so happens we landed on my mother’s floor; the place I had come nearly every day for nearly three years, where I had sat vigil for 9 days last Fall, where my mother had taken her last ragged breath.
Stepping off the elevator I had to remind myself to breath, too.
But there would be no tears.
This is a place where people die, which is no secret, but it is a place built for the living.
It is a place where aides stop lunch service for a second or two for a hug, where old patterns resume and I was told to grab a plate and have something to eat, and where even fragile minds lapse back into old patterns.
“Ah there’s my girl! Come sit with me,” I heard from the gentleman at mom’s old table.
There was no longer a spot for me at my usual table. The nameplate on my mother’s room is one I don’t recognize, and, while many of the faces were familiar, several more were new to me.
And so it is that life goes on; even the end of life continues…
It’s 34 degrees outside today and it feels like shirtsleeve weather.
Nope. I am not running a fever. I am not dehydrated or hypothermic, and suffering hallucinations as a result. It’s just a matter of perspective. Today is 30 degrees warmer than yesterday.
30 degrees is a lot.
But it is still barely above freezing and to me it feels balmy.
Six months ago, I would have declared a 34 degree-day apocalyptic. Today it is a pleasant change.
Six months ago, I didn’t know how much longer I could stand to watch my mother decline. Two months ago I wasn’t so sure how to withstand her passing. Yesterday I was grateful that it is starting not hurt.
How much of life is like that? How much of the world is barely getting by, yet grateful that they are? Or how many of us have found ourselves a bit shy of where we wanted to be, ready to bitch about it to anyone who will listen…only to find ourselves even worse off tomorrow? Or still bitching even after good fortune has smiled upon us?
All things are relative, I know. No matter where you are, you have the decision to rail at the gods, the government, the neighbors for letting things get so bad. Or to count your blessings that they are not worse.
In that is the optimist’s dilemma. Am I to be happy now that things are not worse, or, being forever convinced that they could be better, remain always dissatisfied?
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