The Emotional Preparation for Thanksgiving

This weekend we’ll be preparing for Thanksgiving. There is a lot of shopping and cooking to do --but there are also emotional preparations to be undertaken this week. Like many, you may be torn between the happy anticipation of a good meal and seeing family, but also the dread of family feuds that leave you wishing to hide in a corner of the living room.

Along with the usual  “issues” that each family faces around the turkey table—the in-laws, sibling rivalries, and adolescents with attitude—we can stir in some raw feelings about national politics and a debate on the economy. It’s Thanksgiving in the REAL America and nobody’s very happy.

So many of us so want it to be the other Thanksgiving, the one we imagine that other families have, but which really only happens in made-for-TV movies.  We think that Thanksgiving’s just not what it used to be-- But then again, it never was.

It seems that we can’t shake our romantic idea about that first one with the grateful Pilgrims and the wise Indians, but it’s safe to say that most of us wouldn’t have been comfortable at that dinner either. The truth is that the Pilgrims, with their cute buckled shoes, weren’t innocent refugees from persecution. Rather they were religious zealots and not exactly tolerant.

Here’s the history: After the Protestant Reformation and the split from Catholicism—creating the  Church of England--there were many who felt the church still needed to be “purified” of Rome’s influence. Those were the Puritans. Among the Puritans were some folks who were even more extreme and who wanted complete separation. These were the Separatists--we know them as the Pilgrims. These were not folks who believed in freedom of religion. What the Pilgrims believed was that the Church of England was corrupt; that Catholics were the Devil’s spawn and that they were superior in knowing God’s truth.

We still have some emotional resonance of those ancestors and their vibe is with us at Thanksgiving. So be prepared.

Part of the problem is that religion permeates this day directly or indirectly; someone or something is being thanked for the good in our lives, but there are political tripwires from the stuffing all the way through to dessert. Most of us will be sharing a meal with folks who not only mix their potatoes with their peas but who mix politics with their religion:  Every current event, everything in the headlines--war, terrorism, same-sex marriage, the war and the Middle East—touches religion in some way. And that intersection of religion and current affairs will cut right through the dining room table on Thursday.       

Even saying grace is tricky. When the blessing includes a prayer for peace someone at the table will be listening for what kind of peace? Do you mean Get-out-of-that country peace or the bomb them into submission kind?

Next Thursday we may be humming, “We gather together…” but in our heart of hearts we want to insist that OUR team should win, that OUR recipe for stuffing is the best, and that OUR candidate was right.

So if you find yourself dreading the doorbell, or if Uncle Harvey mentions the President when he says grace, you may want to retreat to the kid’s table or sit in the den to watch the game. But instead, give thanks that this holiday comes only once a year, and remember--- it’s all in the spirit of the day. 

Vacation Daze

We are home from Pittsburgh. The ‘Burgh is my home town and this was John’s first visit so I felt some pressure to have the City of Champions make a good first impression. And it did.

That’s the pleasure of going home as an adult and as a tourist—I know what I wanted to show off so we stayed on the waterfront downtown and visited the The Scaife Mellon Art Museum and the Carnegie History Museum (my refuge as a kid) and we ate very, very well. We took the incline for dinners up on Mount Washington and the trolley to breakfasts down in the Strip Yards. And the best part for both of us was watching the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Miami Marlins at PNC Park. Beat ‘em Bucs!

So many memories. Most of them good. But I also found myself narrating my caregiving history as we traveled around Pittsburgh: “This is the hospital where my mother was first admitted; this is where I brought her after her stroke; this is where she lived in her coma; this is the hospital where Larry was finally diagnosed; this is the hospital where I brought Larry every week; this is the hospital where he died.”

And there were other things that I did not say to John but that came back to me in such vivid memory: the route from the airport when I came every other weekend to take care of Sig and then Larry; the restaurant where he fell down and couldn’t get back up and my ache for him over his humiliation; where I shopped on what turned out to be the day of his last hospital admission; the hotel in Oakland where I stayed all those nights so that I could walk to the University Medical Center.

e.e. cummings say that our lives are measured in tea spoons but I measure mine in hospital visits and loved ones cared for.

It was fun to be in Pittsburgh as a tourist and not a caregiver—to reclaim my hometown as an arts rich, sports fanatic metropolis. To perhaps balance the other memories by making summer vacation memories there with John.

The Easter Brother

I consider the following to be quite telling about my own personality: I never believed in Santa Claus. I never, even as a little kid, imagined or believed that a man would go house to house in a red suit and bring toys and stockings to boys and girls.

I did, however, believe, until I was ten or maybe even older, in the Easter Bunny.  In my own defense I have to explain that we lived near the woods and I saw all kinds of rabbits, little baby bunnies and distance-covering jack rabbits, all the time. But I also had two older brothers who, as only big brothers can, facilitated, my belief. Sig and Larry would talk just slightly out of my earshot about The Bunny. “Don’t let her see him”, and “Did you see the basket he left next door?” They also, to make it more convincing, put bite marks on the handles of our Easter baskets.

My brothers died when they were 42 and 48. Now I’m the oldest. At Easter I miss them. I miss having an Easter basket from Lar who –even as an adult—made me one that included the bunny’s teeth marks to remind me just how naïve I had been. And I miss our sibling tradition of finding the family “King Egg”.  As Easter approached we would each decorate our own hard-boiled egg, fortifying them with dye and crayon and competed (Sig and Lar were both went on to become engineers) by ramming our colored eggs together to see whose broke first.

I also miss dressing up for Easter services, complete with new dress and corsage. The three of us continued to go to church on Easter even when we had walked away from organized religion. We kept this holiday because we all liked the uplifting Easter hymns like “Up From the Grave He Arose”.

I kept going to church on Easter even as, and after, Sig and Larry were dying because those Easter hymns gave me a weird hope.  It was not a hope of miraculous recovery for  either brother,  or necessarily for a reunion in the “Great Beyond”, but  hope for  my  own  “arose” from the heartache of losing my  brothers,  my playmates,  co-conspirators and occasional torturers.

One of my final conversations with Sig was about my car. I was 40 years old but still easily defeated by my car worries.  Larry, who was then sick, was caring for Sig who was dying, and I called their house in tears to report the impending death of my car. Larry, who was on the phone with me, relayed the mechanic’s opinion to Sig who was lying in what would soon be his deathbed.

Lar said to me, “Sig wants to talk to you”. I was surprised because Sig’s speech had become painful and very difficult for him. I waited until Larry positioned the phone for Sig to talk.

“Here’s what you tell them….”, he began, and he proceeded to dictate a set of car repair instructions to convince any mechanic that I knew a nut from a bolt, and that this girl had a brother who would not see his sister taken for a ride.

At Easter I have the best memories of a girl with brothers—of a basket-carrying rabbit who was “just here a second ago” and of making faces to spoil the, “Come on; Say cheese” Brownie snapshots that Dad took of our Easter outfits.

Apart from any  theology, Easter lets me believe in the resurrection of my family, of my all too gullible girlhood self, and in a life that rises, falls, rises and dies over and over as we each cycle through layers of loss and gain.

Who Will You Care for? Who Will Care for You?

As a follow-up to the post on March 23rd which paints a picture of all the caregiving that is ahead of all of us here is something that every one of us over 40 needs to be asking ourselves:

Who is going to be my caregiver? And whose caregiver am I going to be?

Factor in the possibility that the person you think will be your caregiver may need a caregiver first--So who is your second choice? And do they know that's your expectation? It's hard stuff to talk about with family and friends but this is the stuff that makes life really crazy when that call comes that says "Mom fell" or "You need surgery" or  "The test results show ...."

Later we'll talk about how to say No.

Kids and Christmas and Thanks

How many people, for how many years, said "Give time time" when we talked about John's kids? And it was true. It has been hard for me to give them  their time and to give up my  resentment that they stayed away when he was so sick. I had so much fear for him--and for them--that they would miscalculate their anger and his diagnosis--and miss the last years of their father's life.

For Christmas they were with us. It took teensy baby steps and lots of counsel from people smarter than me in these matters but the day came. Time took time. That's the hardest part of it, isn't it? And much harder when you feel there may never be enough time.  In Cancer Land time is our hope as well as our enemy.

The best help came from someone much younger--a good friend whose parents have both been remarried twice. She had many years being "the kid".  Her wise counsel to me was this, "Never say we." She was right. She told me, "I always found it easier to meet my mother/father's boy/girl friends as people rather than as future step parents...when you talk to them pretend John is not even in the room.--and never say 'we'." Her wisdom came from painful experience and we are the beneficiaries.

It's my hope that this blog can benefit you too--that our experiences and our pain can be transformed to some good.

Good Friday

I have an Easter memory from years ago. I was living in Washington, DC, and that year was a low point in my life. My older sister had recently died and both of my brothers were seriously ill; my best friend was leaving town, and on top of that I was questioning my work.

In my journal that April I wrote, “Am I depressed?” When I read those pages now I laugh and shake my head. “Depressed?” That I even had to ask. In that long year I thought I’d never laugh again, just as I thought I’d never again feel love, the joy of easy friendship, or the satisfaction of good work.

I went to church that Easter out of both habit and desperation. I had grown up in a church going family. It was what we did. And so to honor the family that I was losing I went. I chose a big downtown church for Easter services—one with hundreds in the congregation--not daring to visit a smaller church where I might have to speak to people or be embarrassed by my own tears. I wanted the paradoxical safety and anonymity of being in a crowd.

The minister that Easter Sunday said many things that I don’t remember but one sentence has stayed with me all these years. He said, “We live in a Good Friday world…” That I understood. A Good Friday world is a world full of suffering, questioning, unfairness, trouble, mistakes, hurts, losses and grief. That was certainly confirmation of my life that day. “But”, he continued, “We are Easter people.” Those words stopped me cold. I was stunned to be reminded that painful morning that there was something other than what I was feeling.

My life was not instantly transformed; his words did not change the course of my brothers’ illness; nor give me answers to my questions. But the idea of being “Easter people” gave me a pause in my grief and the teeniest hope that there really did exist something other than pain.

Today all of the things that hurt so much back then have changed. As my brothers died friends came forward to help. I began to write and publish. Months later I fell in love and moved to upstate New York where a new life began with new friends, new work and yes, of course, new problems.

What strikes me now is that this believing in “Easter” in the midst of “Good Friday” is as much about being an American as it is about being Christian. Americans are, by character, a people of reinvention. There is an extra layer of intention that we bring to “new life” that isn’t true even in other predominately Christian cultures. As Americans we are future oriented, we look forward not back, and we are, for the most part, a culture of optimistic, hopeful people.

The gift from that Easter service many years ago was the reminder that we are, by religion or culture, a people who believe in possibility. When our hearts are shattered we are sometimes shocked to discover that there is joy as well as pain inside. Out of the ashes of our mistakes, from our defeats and even our despair, we rise again in better lives.

It's Not About Me...but then maybe it is

Caregivers always apologize when they talk about their stress or their tiredness or their troubles. It’s almost a guarantee that if a caregiver dares to cop to feeling bad, mad or sad—or God forbid resentful—they will immediately say, “But I know this isn’t about me.” Or “But I’m not the one who is ill.”

But then again, maybe you are.

Here is more from Professor David Karp (“The Burden of Sympathy”): “All illnesses are potentially contagious in the sense that the stories of sick people become deeply woven into the biographies of those who feel commitment to them.”

The High Cost of Not Dying

It may be too hard to read if you have cancer but if you have a loved one with cancer you must read the Annals of Medicine article by Atul Gawande in the August 2 2010 issue of the New Yorker magazine.

With compelling stories and plenty of grey in a black and white world Gawande invites us to consider what it means to be dying—especially of cancer—when there is no end of treatments and procedures that can be tried, applied and administered.

Most interesting is his challenge to us about how death itself has changed because we no longer stop and let a person experience it.

This excellent essay walks us through the very high cost of cancer in both dollars and healthcare system costs and the cost to us as people when we treat cancer as a problem to be fixed. We lose not just dollars but part of our humanity—and for those of us who care for or have cared for someone with cancer—we lose an essential piece of being a loved one in the truest sense of that term.

This August 2 issue is on newsstands or at your local library. Check it out. Make copies to share with friends. Talk about it now.

The Easter Brother

I consider the following to be quite telling about my own personality: I never believed in Santa Claus. I never, even as a little kid, imagined or believed that a man would go house to house in a red suit and bring toys and stockings to boys and girls.

I did, however, believe, until I was ten or maybe even older, in the Easter Bunny. In my own defense I have to explain that we lived near the woods and I saw all kinds of rabbits, little baby bunnies and distance-covering jack rabbits, all the time. But I also had two older brothers who, as only big brothers can, facilitated, my belief. Sig and Larry would talk just slightly out of my earshot about The Bunny. “Don’t let her see him”, and “Did you see the basket he left next door?” They also, to make it more convincing, put bite marks on the handles of our Easter baskets.

My brothers died when they were 42 and 48. Now I’m the oldest. At Easter I miss them. I miss having an Easter basket from Lar who –even as an adult—made me one that included the bunny’s teeth marks to remind me just how naïve I had been. And I miss our sibling tradition of finding the family “King Egg”. As Easter approached we would each decorate our own hard-boiled egg, fortifying them with dye and crayon and competed (Sig and Lar were both went on to become engineers) by ramming our colored eggs together to see whose broke first.

I also miss dressing up for Easter services, complete with new dress and corsage. The three of us continued to go to church on Easter even when we had walked away from organized religion. We kept this holiday because we all liked the uplifting Easter hymns like “Up From the Grave He Arose”.

I kept going to church on Easter even as, and after, Sig and Larry were dying because those Easter hymns gave me a weird hope. It was not a hope of miraculous recovery for either brother, or necessarily for a reunion in the “Great Beyond”, but hope for my own “arose” from the heartache of losing my brothers, my playmates, co-conspirators and occasional torturers.

One of my final conversations with Sig was about my car. I was 40 years old but still easily defeated by my car worries. Larry, who was then sick, was caring for Sig who was dying, and I called their house in tears to report the impending death of my car. Larry, who was on the phone with me, relayed the mechanic’s opinion to Sig who was lying in what would soon be his deathbed.

Lar said to me, “Sig wants to talk to you”. I was surprised because Sig’s speech had become painful and very difficult for him. I waited until Larry positioned the phone for Sig to talk.

“Here’s what you tell them….”, he began, and he proceeded to dictate a set of car repair instructions to convince any mechanic that I knew a nut from a bolt, and that this girl had a brother who would not see his sister taken for a ride.

At Easter I have the best memories of a girl with brothers—of a basket-carrying rabbit who was “just here a second ago” and of making faces to spoil the, “Come on; Say cheese” Brownie snapshots that Dad took of our Easter outfits.

Apart from any theology, Easter lets me believe in the resurrection of my family, of my all too gullible girlhood self, and in a life that rises, falls, rises and dies over and over as we each cycle through layers of loss and gain.

Don't Go to the Hardware Store for Milk

"Don’t Go to the Hardware Store to Buy Milk." This slogan is not original with me but one I have borrowed from Al-anon. In that context we talk about accepting that we cannot get love or understanding from people who are unable to give it, and it reminds us to stop trying. Often in families with addiction it takes repeated trips to the “hardware store” before we realize that they don't sell milk there.

Today I talked to John’s family. They are concerned about him but when I talk about this being hard they say, “He’s fine; there is no problem.” I find myself wanting to say, “but I know some things and I am worried." Each time the subject is changed and I am told firmly, “It's all going to be fine.”

Today I realized this is what they have to believe. Unfortunately for me this means they can’t support me, they can’t allow themselves to accept that this may be hard for him or for me so therefore they cannot accept that our life is anything but normal except for a few extra doctor’s appointments.

When I got off the phone I was mad and sad. I want someone to see what I see. But then I remembered: “Don’t go to the hardware store for milk.” I can’t ask these people to be who they are not. But I can go to my friends and those who have been where I am. I don’t have to go without just don’t go where it’s not.