Vulnerable

April 26, 2016April 21, 2017 Sally8 Comments

“Fred” made the mistake of saying the words “crew cut” within hearing of the man with the clippers.

“Everybody has a bad haircut story,” I told him. “Now you have yours.”

What made the whole thing ironic is that “Fred” had just been to a conference from which he took away the importance of vulnerability.

“Failure is an event, not a person,” he told me, repeating a Zig Ziglar quote one of the speakers had used.

“Exactly,” I said, pointing to his head.

Every disaster, whether large or small, brings us to a crossroads. One path pretends the problem never happened and hides the challenge from all the other travelers. The other path is vulnerability and sharing the struggle.

My mother taught me the importance of vulnerability. I remember watching her after her breast cancer surgery. She had a full radical mastectomy back in the days when the plastic surgeons weren’t inserting inflatable boobs even before the radiation treatments.

Her prosthesis was external, a little mass of weighted jell that fit into her bra.

Which she got tired of and did without after some years.

My mother was not defined by her breasts.

Or her breast cancer.

She went to visit women who had had mastectomies before they left the hospital and faced the world.

“This does not define you,” she told them.

And she lived, a walking testament to life after breast cancer.

That open-ness, that vulnerability, helped me to start writing about her and her Alzheimer’s.

I think if she had fully understood, if her brain had not been fogged by dementia, she would freely given her blessing to the whole thing.

“Write about the incontinence,” she would have said. “Maybe it will help somebody else going through the same thing.”

She would laugh and say, “Write about that time when I tried to walk the two miles into town because no one would believe me that I needed to go to a meeting.” I walked with her, and Helen came to pick us up.

“Write about the funny things I said. And how you had to show me that underwear went on first, before the pants. Write about the marmalade.”

It’s not dishonoring to use tough situations so that others know they are not alone in what they are experiencing.

Quite the opposite.

It is most honoring.

I think she would be pleased.

Making the sandwich #1 — Mom and her marmalade

A to Z Blogging Challenge

Unsung and Under-appreciated

April 25, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally12 Comments

That morning, I had taken my father to a doctor’s appointment.

When we got back to the house, the answering machine was flashing. The message was from the nursing home. “Please call.”

My mother had had an incident. She was being taken to the emergency room.

In retrospect, that day was the beginning of the end.

After my mother passed away, my father wanted to unravel the incident. The information given us was vague. The diagnostician side of my father needed to categorize. The husband side needed to understand.

We walked down the long corridor to the nurses’ station on my mother’s unit. So many people offered their condolences. My mother would be missed.

The head nurse on the unit told us her story, but it was a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) who had been with my mother when it happened.

We tracked down the CNA.

CNAs are the unsung heroes of nursing homes. A good CNA is worth a thousand administrators. I was relieved to see that the CNA who had been caring for my mother that morning was one of the best.

I still remember the first time that I met her. I had come down to feed my mother while my father was away.

“Mom, you look really nice today,” I had commented. Her hair was brushed. Her shirt was a pretty one that fit well. Her glasses were around her neck on a chain.

“I got her dressed this morning,” chimed a voice from the other side of the dining room. A petite 50-ish woman was smiling at me, pleased that I had noticed.

“Thank you,” I told her.

Over the next several months, I recognized this CNA, not only when I ran into her in the dining area, but I could often tell when she had been the one to care for my mother. She always paid attention to the details.

This was the CNA who was with my mother when she had her “incident.”

“I had laid out her clothes for the day,” she told us, “the brown slacks and the flowered shirt.”

I knew the ones.

“I was rubbing lotion on her legs and feet. She always seemed to enjoy that,” she said.

Yes, I could picture the whole thing.

“Suddenly, she gasped and drew her arms up like this,” she said, demonstrating by clenching her fists and bringing them towards her chin.

“I summoned help immediately,” she said, “but your mom was unresponsive.”

“I’m so, so sorry for your loss,” she said multiple times.

And I know she meant it.

So many times I have looked back on that day and whispered a prayer of thanks that she was the one. My mother was in the best earthly hands while on her way into the best heavenly hands

Every time I hear about the proposed wage of $15/hour for fast food workers, I bristle inside.

CNAs don’t get paid that much.

And they don’t have time to lobby about it.

They are too busy taking care of our loved ones.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

Old

April 18, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally18 Comments

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me…

Jenny Joseph

Three “old” poems — one for my grandmother, one for my mother, and one for me.

When I am old, I shall buy a piano
And rest my fingers lightly on the keys, curved just so.
I’ll retrain them to move the way they did when I was a girl,
The time I accompanied my brother, Nichol,
While he played his violin for Calvin Coolidge.
I’ll play hymns on the upright
And sing along
With the nobody in the room.
And I will drink dessert wine
Even though I am a Baptist
One glass every night before bed
Because my doctor said I could.

When I am old, I shall plant a garden
Not of practical vegetables like green beans and carrots,
But a banquet for the eyes.
Flowers,
A sumptuous spread of colors
That changes from week to week,
Crocuses, daffodils, bachelor buttons, and poppies.
I shall plant it close to the road
For the passers-by to feast upon
If they but take their time.
But to those who drive too fast,
I will shake my fist
And shout –
“Slow down!
You’re missing the best part of life!”

When I am old, I will pump iron.
I’ll pull my kettle bells out of the closet
And swing them.
I’ll do squats and lunges,
Deadlifts, presses,
Russian twists,
And Turkish get-ups.
My body may wear the softness of a slowed metabolism
But underneath I will be strong –
Strong enough to arm-wrestle with my children
And laugh at the absurdity of the thing
But still occasionally win.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Faith · family

Community

April 4, 2016March 20, 2017 Sally5 Comments

John 5 begins with the story of Jesus at the Bethesda pool where lay “a multitude of invalids.” The belief was that after an angel troubled the waters, the first one in was healed. Jesus spoke with a man who had been there for thirty-eight years.

“Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asked him.

“Sir, I have no one,” the man replied. No one to put him into the pool when the water is stirred. A multitude of invalids, but each concerned for himself.

To have no one.

In contrast —

C is for Community.

My father and mother enjoyed traveling after my father retired, but as my mother’s dementia grew worse, traveling became more difficult. One night in New York City, my father awoke to hear the heavy hotel door click shut and realized that my mother was no longer in the room. He found her in the hallway. Another time she got away from him at the airport, and still another time she wandered off in Greece.

On that trip to Greece, their last big trip, the other ladies in the tour group saw the need and began watching out for my mother. What began as a group of strangers ended as a caring group.

My mother and father on their trip to Greece

Strangers at the start, friends by the end

“Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community.” Anthony J. D’Angelo

Community doesn’t have to be intimate to be functional. Even a small thing, like holding the door open for someone struggling with mobility, can be an act of community. It says, “I am willing to help you, even if it inconveniences me a little.”

Sometimes community is very intimate. I was horrified to see that my mother had had an incidence with incontinence while visiting an old friend of my father. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” I had said when my mother stood to go. “Let me get something to clean that!”

“No, no,” the woman had said. “Your job is to take care of your parents. I can clean this up.”

Community.

Looking out for one another.

Circling the wagons in Greece, in Florida, in Cooperstown.

We can be community to those we encounter. We just need to be willing.

Faith

Coracle Moon

July 22, 2014May 21, 2017 Sally4 Comments

The moon was a luminous coracle adrift in a cloudy sea.

Gosh, it was pretty. Early in the morning, the waning moon drifting in and out of clouds. Dawn broke, soft and pink, full of clouds that were fluffy like cotton candy, but I was still pondering the pre-dawn moon.

Recently I heard the story of Columba, a 6th century saint, about how he was banished from Ireland, set adrift in the North Irish Sea in a round boat known as a coracle. The story was meant as a way of explaining liminal space, that place where we are unsure of everything, where we are “unmoored.” Part of the legend of Columba was that in this round boat he had no means by which to steer and that his fate seemed hopeless.

I wish the speaker had told the rest of the story — how Columba had landed his coracle on the Isle of Iona, how from there he worked spread the news of Christ to the people of Scotland, and how his “unmooring” actually advanced the church.

In C. S. Lewis’ book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Reepicheep the mouse sailed off in a coracle. Strangely, he did not feel unmoored. While he didn’t know his final outcome, his sole purpose was to pursue Aslan’s country.

“My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”

~~ Reepicheep the Mouse

My coracle moon, drifting in and out of the clouds that morning, seemed unmoored. Yet I knew that it was held in its orbit with the earth by that invisible magic we call gravity.

And the earth is held in its orbit with the sun by that same unseen tether.

When I feel unmoored, like a coracle tossed on the sea, I know that, despite what I feel, I am being guided by a mighty unseen Hand.

Like Columba, like Reepicheep, I can rest in God’s great plan.