The dark of the year

Monday, December 31, 2012

I am still feeling quite down.  Christmas isn't Christmas without Dad.  I feel like an orphan.

Inside, in the dark of my heart...   I don't understand the point of life.  I'm trying to work my way out of it, but it's not easy.  One breath at a time.

It's not something you talk about in polite company.  I shield it from everyone, because, really, what could they possibly do?  Shower me with platitudes?  Try, pointlessly, to cheer me up?  If I am helpless and powerless, how would everyone else feel?

I don't want to share these depths.  I don't want the reactions - the requisite pity, the worry.  What else would come of it?  I have no use for that attention.  I have no use for the inevitable added pressure, to fix it in order to make everyone else feel better.  I have enough on my plate.



It's funny the things that make me think of Dad.  Today, it was slicing a banana. 

He used to eat these giant bowls of cereal for breakfast.  He would always cut up a whole banana and put it on top, his bowl almost overflowing.  In recent years he switched to blueberries.  I swear he'd put a pint of blueberries on top and then smile and say (realizing that you might have observed how many he was eating) how good they were for you - antioxidants and all.

A stark contrast against Dad this past year, battling cancer.  My heart hurts thinking of the single crab rangoon he could barely choke down at the Chinese buffet.


I miss him.

Old writing, and ghosts in my head.

Monday, December 10, 2012

I just rediscovered some content which I'll post below.  It was written back on 12-31-2010 and tucked away in my Evernote files.  Before my Dad was diagnosed with cancer.  It represents what I knew to be real, at that time.

I've been feeling down lately.  I was looking for some content I'd written earlier today, about how every day is a new loss, losing my father.  About how our instinct is to grasp at the material things, at the familiar things... Only to realize much later (if at all) that these things are just that - separate and not 'of' the person.

Dad's 2nd wife, Han, decided to cancel the main phone line.  The number that I've known for 32 years is no more.  The recording of my Dad's voice, saying (and yes, he enunciated just this clearly) "You have reached # # # - # # # #; leave a message if you wish." is no more.

I called the number on the day I found out - wishing, hoping... just wanting to hear his voice.  Wanting to grasp.

Would the familiar voice on the machine answer?

Two rings.  Three.  Four.  Finally, it picked up.  One last time.

And so, I heard it for the last time.  Last.  Gone.


Every day.

I've been a bit down.  

So.

I needed this.  I hope it may bring a ray of sunshine, to me and to others.

Every day.


12-31-2010 

Gorgeous Moments:

• A tired dog curled up in your lap
• Beautiful birds on the bird feeder in winter
• The first snow of the season and the change of the seasons
• Excited dogs chasing birds, squirrels, etc. out of the yard
• Cool beer on a hot summer day on the front porch
• The feeling you get just after completing a good workout
• The love of good friends, great hugs, and laughter
• Realizing how much you have in common with someone
• The excitement of doing something new or learning how to do something
• Sharing something that is exciting and new with someone you love
• The light shining through the windows and glimmering off of things
• The smell of good incense
• Wind chimes
• Resonating singing bowls
• A bright blue sky and glowing sun
• Comfort food on a cold day
• A good nap

There is something about all of these moments that is the same - thinking of them puts you in a very specific time and place - it makes you aware of the moment.  This is when Buddhism comes forward as "true" for me, because the emphasis is on being aware, and on being "in" the moment that you are living.  It is so easy to float through life in a dream (this theme is referenced often in the spiritual books I've read, including things like The Four Agreements, etc.).  We sleepwalk through our lives and rarely just stop, observe, and appreciate exactly what is happening in the moment we are in.  We live our lives in the past ("I wish I would have done XX differently"), or in the future (I can't wait for XX"), constantly reliving and pre-living, rather than bothering to stop and live in the present.  I suppose that our ancestors were wired this way, learn from the past, plan for the future.  Living in the moment is a bit of a luxury, but I think it could also be a great survival mechanism - be where you are, be aware of your surroundings, exist in the moment, don't dwell on the past or fear for the future.  Something I come back to, from one of the books I read, is "chop wood, carry water" - what this means to me is just that... For that moment, chopping the wood or carrying the water is what matters.  All the rest is just the noise - the ghosts in your head.

Dale R. Schissler, 12/04/1937 - 11/21/2012

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Moments of denial and hope still find me,
and then the truth - that my father is gone - envelops me.

A brightness has been lost.
The world is muted and muffled.
I am inside a heavy blanket of grief.

My skin stings as if it has been cut a thousand times.

My heart is crushed.

The threads of my life have been cut.

The light he brought to my life has been taken from me.

Words are too small to convey the depth of my sadness.

Peace, my heart...

"Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way."

~Rabindranath Tagore

The secret language of the dying

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

I have a lot to say, and it can only come out with a lot of tears, and now is not the time and place for that...

But, I wanted to say that I get it now.

The sudden flashes of anger, the vast swings of mood...

He's experiencing them too.

Outside the lines

Monday, August 6, 2012

Our human tendency is to normalize everything.  We want to make it all fit within our expectations... to make it neat. 

We want to keep life "inside the lines."

Life refuses to conform.  We rationalize, explain away, continue to try to find a comfortable, familiar, acceptable path. 


Life stays messy.


Sometimes, finally, in the face of inescapable evidence, the sick feeling finally sinks into our belly (into our soul).  We resign ourselves to facing what is true, and painfully relinquish our grasping control. 


Never easily.  Never voluntarily.  Only when all the other choices are so far-fetched that the reality must be the one we have been trying to avoid.




I want my house to be secure.  I want it not to have been broken into.  But it was.
I want my housekeeper to be trustworthy.  I want her to not to have stolen from me.  But she did.

In the middle of the night, in the dark, holding my breath under the covers...












I want my father to be the same vibrant, alive man I've called "Daddy" for 42 years.  I want him not to be dying.  But he is.






It is easier to look away.  To deny.  To pretend that it is OK. 






But it's not.

There is no answer

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

I read a lot of things that people might call "self-help."  I look constantly for answers, for solutions, for the fix that I know must exist, I just haven't found it yet.  I want to fix it.  I am a "fixer".  "Restorative." I want to fix myself.  I want to fix my Dad.  I want to fix the world.  If I just do more, do better, work faster, be smarter, be nicer, give more... I know it is right *there*.  If only I could be... enough.

My Dad is dying.  He was dying yesterday, last week, a year ago, ten years ago.  He was dying the day that I came into this world.  Today his death feels imminent.  Today, we learned that his multiple myeloma has evolved into a much rarer and much more aggressive form.  There is, and will be, no "prognosis;" just things for them to try.  More, newer, and different drugs.  The cancer is so unusual that statistics do not exist.  In the end "statistics" are nothing more than a fallacy; a straw to clutch.  A delusion of control. 

I am afraid of losing him.  I am losing him.

Since my company is in the same town that he is, I am torn with conflict.  I could live in San Antonio and continue to be employed by my current employer.  I have more choices than I wish I did.  Choice is both a blessing and a burden.

Do I move in with him to care for him, to encourage him?  He seems to feed off me, to try harder, be more pliable, give more with my encouragement.  The second I withdraw the push, he reclines to the point of seeming to concede to death.  Do I give all of my energy to him, to try to bring his energy up?  In the end, would it make a difference?  Would he be happier as a result, or would he gradually begrudge my efforts, as he does others who are more near at hand (Han, his wife, and Julie, my sister)?  Could I survive the drain of giving, without a price of slowly turning into something terrible and bitter?  I have given my energy for his for just a few short weeks, and felt my soul dying in the process.

I want him to be as healthy and happy as he can be.  Should I be giving my young, relatively unattached life to what remains of his?  Would it be for a month?  Three months?  A year?  Three years?  Would my family, home in Virginia, survive the strain?  Would they support me, or become another thing that falls apart in the process?

There is no answer.  There is no "right choice" that will let me sleep at night at the end of this journey.

Let me hold, and uphold, each fragile day in grace.  Let me bring peace and love to my father, to my sister, and to myself.  Let me become a place of calm amidst this fearful, deadly storm called life.  If only I can do this.  Please.
Amen.

Multiple Myeloma

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

On the plane, a tall, angular black woman makes her way down the aisle. Her knobbed elbows form a sharp bracket around her body. Two hats are stacked atop her dreadlocked hair, and small thick-framed glasses perch above a small gold nose ring. A loose scarf is wrapped around her shoulders. I imagine her to be a voodoo woman, and myself falling to my knees to beg her to help my father. She arrives at my aisle and asks if the seat next to me is hers ("is that 5A?") of course, it is. She removes the hats and the magic is gone, we are just strangers flying toward our separate futures.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Dad is sitting up in his chair and out of it. He got a "level 4" dose of morphine this morning for the pain. He looks out the window at the clouds and sees a dragon. I'm not sure whether to be glad or not, when I see it too (I am).


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Up the hall a high sound comes... "Oh, the insane laughter again," Dad says, "at least, I hope it's laughter...". But I've registered the sound; someone is sobbing, their voice carrying a broken heart out to the world in progressively louder and more violent high-pitched sobs. The 8th floor is full of pain, sorrow, and death. Oncology, floor 8.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"It's amazing how life gets broken down into little pieces sometimes." "How so?" "Oh, you know, here I am in my chair, looking out the window, worried about my back pain and all the little things, things that nobody else gives a damn about."


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


My father's bed faces a large window, but the view from the bed is back toward the other parts of the hospital. Looking out you see the center part of the building that has the big "Methodist Hospital" sign. It is the window without a view. Each day we move him to the recliner, where he can look out and see the sky. I worked late tonight, and arrive at the hospital at just before 7. Dad is so tired, his eyes blink closed every few minutes, and I can see that it's been another long, hard day. I ask Han (his wife) if he's done all of his shoulder work, the exercises prescribed by the physical therapist to happen three times a day. "Two times," she says. He has to do one more round, five types of exercises. He does the first three types and rests, drifting out. A few minutes go by and I convince him we must do the hardest ones - a movement where I support his arm and raise it up. This is the most painful, and the more he tries to use his muscles the more it hurts - he is supposed to relax his arm completely. It is a challenge; he always wants to be in control and is terrified we will let his arm drop and cause excruciating pain. This time he is so tired, his arm is heavy but I can still feel his muscles competing to carry the weight. I remind him again to relax: "Move your head from side to side, relax your neck." "Let your shoulders drop." He does a bit.

I see the pain etched on his face, so I try to distract him. "The clouds were amazing today. They were the big puffy rain clouds, you know the kind? The edges were so sharp they looked like they had been drawn up in the sky. It was so beautiful - the tops were lit up from the sun, the bottoms gray and heavy with rain, and in between it was this incredible peach color." My heart breaks as his eyes flutter open and he lifts his head, looking out to try to see them through the window without a view.