Please Don't Tell Me I Look Tired

Maybe you are trying to be kind. Maybe you are trying to be supportive. Maybe you are trying to validate the challenging experience of a friend who is a family caregiver.  But believe me, when you tell a caregiver that they look tired, you are doing none of those things.

In fact, it’s just the opposite.

You say something like, “Oh honey, you look tired.” Or, “Are you OK? You look a little tired.”

Not helpful.

Not a compliment

Not going to fix anything.

Think about it: What exactly are you saying when you tell a friend that they look tired?

It usually means one or more of the following: dark shadows under the eyes, red eyes, sallow skin, poor posture, saggy facial tone, slumped shoulders, bad or melting makeup, dirty hair, not smiling, low energy, tension in the face or shoulders.

Does any of those things signify attractiveness? No.

So what you are doing when you say, “You look tired” is to say to your friend, “You look unattractive today.”

Is that what you meant as helpful?

Now I get it: You run into your friend who is a family caregiver. You know she is having a hard time and maybe you even know that she’s been tired.

Wouldn’t it be more helpful to say, “You look wonderful today.” Or “I love that color on you.” Or the best: “How are you feeling today?”

And let her tell you the status of her energy.

Because what if—and this happens a lot—she’s having a day full of hope, and it’s one of her better days, and maybe she is feeling the best she has felt in weeks, and secretly hoping she looks good today.

And then there you are, full of well-intended (we hope) compassion, heartily jabbing your caring needle-- “Oh dear, you look tired” --in her balloon.

Don’t do that. There’s no need. There are so many other ways to be kind to a family caregiver.

Weddings and More Weddings

This year we have been so happy to be part of a number of friend's weddings. I think we have been to five weddings since January--each one lovely and special--each with a different style and feel. And each one celebrating the marriage of people we like so much. That is what makes a wedding really fun to attend.

And the dancing of course.

Saturday we were at the Pruyn House for Dan and Libby's wedding and the dancing --and the wedding--was wonderful. It was also a treat to be at the same place that we were married. It's a beautiful historic site in Latham, New York--with a historic house, antique barns, old schoolhouse and stunning gardens. We arrived before the wedding on Saturday so we could have a moment in the old school house where we were married.

Then we watched Dan and Libby be married and we loved watching their families--amazingly blended and reconfigured families that totally inspire belief in second and third acts--and then we danced.

I hope we are invited to lots more weddings just so I can keep dancing with John.

Who Has it Harder...

There’s a subtle competition in CancerLand. It happens with both patients and caregivers. It’s called “Who has it Harder?” and it goes like this:

What kind of cancer does he have? Colon cancer? What stage? Stage 3. Oh, that’s too bad. My brother had stage three, and he had a total bowel reconstruction. Oh wow. He had a resection, colostomy for six months, then another surgery. Yeah. It’s hard isn’t it? He didn’t miss a day of work. Oh, he missed a year. I had to take six months off. Quit my job. Retired early. And I had my own scare. Breast cancer two years ago. Me too. Mastectomy? No, lumpectomy but a year of chemo. No chemo but lymphedema forever. Yeah. I can’t do anything anymore. He has….

Maybe it’s because our worlds shrink so much? Maybe the chemo works on our lives just as it does on the tumors?

How do we fight that? How do we not engage in “Who has it harder? Maybe it’s CancerLand small talk? I feel so small I have to make cancer bigger? Or maybe it feels so bad and we feel like no one else understands so we keep the focus on the only thing we now feel expert about.

How to step out of the game? Get a life? Surrender to win?

Letting Go

There is so much letting go to practice. Cancer Land brings letting go of John, his health, his doctors, the outcomes--many little outcomes (tests, appointments, complaints)  and the big one--death. But there is so much more letting go I have to practice and so much of it is about other people.

I've read more than a dozen books about letting go and I can't count the hours and dollars of therapy. I don't discount any of that. It's helped and it's moved me forward and it's also made me more aware of how much more I need to let go. Melody Beatty is my favorite writer on this topic. She writes about addiction and recovery and codependency but "letting go" is the theme.

To be able to let go I have to be able to let go to something else or into something else. For me that something else is God, so I realize how much I need that relationship, and to have that relationship I need spiritual practices in my life.

I'm grateful that I have friends who I can talk to about God and faith and prayer and meditation. Last night I had one of those conversations with a good friend. We talked about our relationships, the ones with real live men and the ones we have with God. That's intimacy.

But this morning I come to letting go again. Maybe letting go of other people and what they think  is a spiritual practice. I can say the words. I can pray for help. But my behavior tells me where I really am.

50/50

Maybe like me you put off watching the 2011 comedy/drama 50/50. I didn’t watch it for a year. I assumed it was either a sappy, tearjerker about cancer, or a gross, expletive-deleted, Seth Rogan 20-somehting boy story. I didn’t know, and didn’t realize, it was both.

Watched it last night and we laughed and cried. Yeah, John too. I am glad I didn’t see this at the movies with friends though. Not because the cancer scenes cut so close to home but because there is one boy-to-boy discussion of girl friends and sex acts that made me blush. If I saw this movie on a first date I’d leave the theater in sunglasses and go right home.

But, we’re not dating, we’re married, and we've done that sex act many times, and I’m laughing as I type this, Ok it’s funny.

And yes, Seth Rogan is mostly a pig but, a pig with a heart for friendship and some insight into how guy pals talk and fight and love each other. Yeah, the movie is a love story and –spoiler alert—the love object is not Anna Kendrick.

I would put 50/50 in my top three cancer movies. Check it out. But not on a first date.

Hooray the Holidays are Over

Countdown to our annual "Hooray the Holidays are Over!" party. Guests in one hour. I love this party because we only invite people we like--no "have to" guests. And we make foods we like and people bring unexpected treats...no booze unless it goes home with the bringer--so a really nice time. But this hour before I am always nervous--the start of a party feels stressful--that pause before it really clicks and people talk to each other.

Each year we get better at doing this party--easier with each other, easier with expectations, easier with what happens. My favorite part is seeing strangers meet or discovering that they have or want a connection with each other.

A new year to be in love, wickedly sexy, full of health and at peace with God.

Caught in the Middle

76 million of us Baby Boomers. That means a lot of sandwich generation caregivers. We are taking care of parents, sometimes grandparents, children, grandchildren, step children and spouses. We live longer but the fine print that accompanies that good news says that we live longer with more illness and more—multiple—disabilities. (Of course we; do you can’t live longer without stuff happening to your body.)

So where is the good good news? It’s this: There are a lot of us and so we have colleagues and peers and can have companions if we seek them out. Our friends are caregivers too and we can support each other and trade information. We can take turns driving, shopping and listening. We can volunteer. We can commiserate.

We can’t change life and we can’t change death but we can help each other.

My Dead Friends by Marie Howe

I have begun,
when I'm weary and can't decide an answer to a bewildering question
to ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.
Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?
They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling-whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,
to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy's ashes were-
it's green in there, a green vase,
and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy's already gone through the frightening door,
whatever he says I'll do.

-- by Marie Howe

What Friends Don't Tell Each Other

Part of why it takes so long to learn how to make sex good is that we don’t talk about it enough. Now that may seem crazy if you think about the number of times sex is mentioned in movies, magazines and on TV. But really talk about it? Not so much.

Think about your closest gal pals and what you know about them and what they know about you. We’re told how hard it is to talk about money. Do you know how much your friends make? If they have family money? The amount of debt they have?

And what about your friend’s spiritual life: Do they believe in God? Do you know who prays and when and how?

Money and God is a lot of intimate info to know about a person. And then there is sex.

Now the odd thing is that you may know about some really personal stuff about your closest friends. You know about the difficult childhood and the deep wounds carried from parents or siblings. You may know about family illnesses: mental illness and addiction and alcoholism. You talk about the secret shames of the workplace, the tensions in marriages, the pain from breakups. You may even know about the secret surgeries---the eye job her husband doesn’t even know she had on your “girl’s weekend”. But do you know if she does Kegels?

Yeah Kegels. How could a close friend not talk to her closest women friends about Kegels? Do you do yours? Does she do hers? Have you talked about how much better sex is with a regular Kegels routine?

And masturbation. We believe that we are free, open minded and liberal but have you ever told a woman friend that you had a great time—alone—after a stressful week at work? Do you know if she prefers erotica and what kinds?

Imagine your best friend in the world and the parts of her life you don’t know about. And start talking. Everyone will be happier.

Chicago

I’m home now from Chicago. A wonderful vacation in a new city with an old friend. I met my friend Brigid in Chicago and we had art, culture, shopping, and endless talking about our lives. Brigid and I know each other 30 years but we haven’t lived in the same city for the last 15. Earlier this year it seemed that the friendship would break from the distance and changes in our lives. We were young, single women together in Baltimore and shared passions for art and food and self-improvement.

In Chicago we went to museums, the symphony in the park and walked Michigan Avenue until our feet burned. Then we went to the Nordstrom shoe department for relief. And we talked nonstop about how our inner lives had improved and the parts that still resisted change. We swapped names of therapists, gurus and self help books.

It also felt good to go away alone—to have all that quiet time in travel---the good news of long waits in airports is that it gives me a huge amount of quiet and solitude and that really feeds my writer/creator self. I was delighted to find that Chicago’s Midway Airport has a Chapel and Spiritual Center in the airport. I went there to pray and meditate and be still.

You Look Great and Other Lies

Click below to read a great article from today's New York Times on how to be a good friend to someone who has a serious illness:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/fashion/what-to-say-to-someone-whos-sick-this-life.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

The Swan

On Saturday I’ll read this poem at the memorial service for our friend Will. I did not know the poem before his wife asked me to read it. And now I am in love with this image of ungainly, ungraceful swan that lumbers and is awkward. That’s not what we picture when we think, “Swan.” But the one in the water, the one we see gliding, regal. And now Rilke says that is like us and I think, “Yeah, this is why I like poets—they can put words to this feeling and this fear of my own bumbling, rope tied, tripping over to-do lists life.



"This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done,
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on
and cling to every day,
is like the swan,
when he nervously lets himself down into the water,
which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave, while the swan,
unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on."



The Swan, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

Reconnecting Reawakening Reunion

This weekend I was at my graduate school reunion. Three days with writers and artists--people who use their creative energies daily in their work. People I have not seen for ten years. People who are ten years older than they were the last time I saw them. People who mirror back to me who I was and who I am now. We talked about the kinds of work we are doing. We compared that to the work we thought we’d do when we got our graduate degrees ten years ago. After several meals and after several layers wore off we also talked about marriages that failed, marriages that struggled but stuck, children doing well, children struggling and children that died. We talked about relationships that took odd turns: the friends-to-the-end friend we made at school that no one has heard from in years, and the unexpected friendship that clicked after we all left Vermont, and the friendship that became a love affair and the ones that began to bloom this weekend.

I found that some people remembered me married and some did not, some knew of John from this blog and others got the full blow by blow of love in the time of cancer. What was surprising and comforting and made me believe in myself and others again was the kindness and caring of old friends and strangers.

Girlfriends

The saving grace yesterday was girlfriends. The women with whom I can be completely honest and who I can safely show my scared heart and messy mind are treasures in my life. I talked to one friend on the phone and had dinner with another. We laughed at our fears and fantasies and helped each other to exaggerate the scenes but then also counseled each other off the ledge.

“We are only as sick as our secrets” we say in AA and a grief shared in halved while a joy shared is doubled. I saw that come true yesterday moaning, whining, laughing and saying, “…there’s one more thing…” and telling all.

How lucky am I to have friends like this?

Friends in the Time of Love and Cancer

Oh, if I could only remember to get a reality check before my imagination kills me first.

Twice this weekend a conversation with a gal pal saved me.

My friend Aletha is in a similar relationship. She and her beau are both in the process of separation legalities but moving ahead with their lives. After a night of torment I finally ask her, “Does the limbo bother you?” and it pours out. We end by laughing and speculating on when and how to wear our scarlet letters. I chose one of red chenille (an athlete’s letter) but am saving up for something bejeweled. Hester Prynne was a Puritan. I am not.


Saturday John became very dizzy at dinner. We cancelled the Netflix and crashed on the couch. As I sat there I imagined brain tumor, brain cancer, aneurysm or stroke. I saw my life slip away along with his. Fear, frustration, panic. The next day I talked to my pal Leslie and she tells me she was dizzy for two days—an inner ear infection—we all had the same cold.

I am saved by my friends and saved by talking.

Social Life

Last night we had dinner at the home of a woman I’ve known a long time. We are writing friends and fashion friends and ships-passing-in-the-much-too-busy-lives friends. I was expecting to be part of a large gathering but it turned out to be three couples. The other couples were married 10, 20 and 37 years. I worried about the “and you guys…?” question. But it never came. We speak of our experiences apart and together. ‘Have you been to London?” We both say yes. But we were not there together. That part of our life builds more slowly. We talk about movies and plays and other vacations and the yes means yes, together. Our social life grows and we become a couple. Then we drive home and dissect the evening. That is the real fun of being a couple.

The Scarlet Letter

This morning I ran into my friend T. who is in a similar relationship situation: married, married man, separated, cohabiting. They are like us in everything but the cancer. She does have two small children and was once in The Perfect Marriage so she gets extra points for stigma and logistics.

We talk fast and in a kind of shorthand. We talk about the days that we don’t give a dam what people think. We talk about the days when we care too much and the shame is overwhelming. We talk about the husbands and the wives and being The Other Woman.

We talk about the day to day, the legal and the financial, the social and the psycho-social. Collectively –because of our relationships--we have lost spouses, children, in-laws, parents, friends, colleagues. So many people have judgments and opinions. On a good day I know I am a mirror, on a bad day I think I am dammed.

T. and I agree we need our Scarlet Letters. We need to buy and wear beautiful, embroidered, sequined, gleaming, seductive Big Red A’s.

Fighting With a Friend

Maybe this is one of the hardest things about being a friend.
A long time woman friend told me that she feels sorry for my ex—poor guy-- I left him. It took a couple of hours for the anger to really hit me. Yes, I left but this woman was there the whole time, she was my confidant, she knew what he did and what he didn’t do. She knows my faults and my gross imperfections—it’s a long, long list. But “poor Him”?
It makes me feel crazy. And under the crazy and the anger is just a well of hurt.

Maxine has a Tumor

A friend named Maxine has a tumor in her chest. The good news is that it has not metastasized into the chest wall or into her lungs. It is contained. Surgery will remove it and there is no expectation for chemo or radiation. The bad news is that they will break all of her ribs to get at the tumor in surgery. Recovery from the broken ribs and the operation will be very painful.

I worry for her and I dread her pain. Her husband and daughter are afraid. The complication is that she is the wife of my husband’s best friend. They have supported him through the pain of this year. I have kept my contact minimal—knowing they love me and knowing they are wise enough to know that no one is bad in all this. But still. I have wanted to leave them to him and him to them.

Now Maxine has a tumor.

I call. I leave messages. I send a note. I email. It is all good and well received. But here it is again. Another kind of love—Agape not Eros—in the time of cancer.

What Stands Behind Me

I’m getting ready to leave the Cape and head home. Looking forward to seeing John and to being warm—it was cold here last night and a propane heater doesn’t quite cut it below 50 degrees. I went to the 6:30 am AA meeting today and gave hugs and got phone numbers. I see the gift of the AA community anywhere in the world. I am part of a community and there is this legacy of recovery behind me and millions of people who are willing to help another recovering person. I felt it today.

I have a community here to return to no matter what happens to John or between me and John. I’m touched by so many of these people that I have known only on vacation. Amy laughing about seeing Madonna in Boston last week. James, a chef, sober one week, and I got to hear him every morning of his first week and hear about using yogurt to marinate lamb (the enzymes in yogurt break down the tough fibers and make the lamb extra tender). Doug and Jay who share 22 years with me.

I lost so many people in my life and I especially miss my brothers. But look what I have even here at the Cape: James and Jay and Doug. Sober brothers and a huge recovery family standing behind me. All I need to do is ask.