About love

Soon after we met,

Ted asked me out to dinner.

I said “yes;”

he heard “no,”

and forever after he was convinced

that I was not interested in him romantically.

Maybe I wasn’t,

because we became just friends.

Good friends,

travelling companions,

confidants,

soulmates in a way,

but never lovers.

In some ways, I think he knew me better than I knew myself.

He would tell me that I was crushing on someone before I had any idea—

or was it rather that because he suggested a crush, I developed one? Hmm.

He was always generous in his gift-giving

(I remember the day, soon after moving into my new house,

arriving home from work and seeing

a gigantic Tiffany’s box on my patio).

Ted ate at fine restaurants, traveled first-class and generally lived large.

But he never forgot his working-class roots—

he claimed to be the first man in his family to wear a tie to work

(having been a lawyer before he opened his bookstore).

He supported numerous non-profits and schools, usually requesting anonymity.

“Don’t let your right hand…”

Ted was a fan of all things Hitchcock.

One time, we met up in San Francisco to recapture the scenes in Vertigo.

We visited all the sights and stayed at the hotel in the movie.

He thought because I am a Madeline,

I should pose for the Madeline shots

(like pretending I was going to jump into the water beneath the Golden Gate Bridge).

He would have been happy if I wore a blond wig for the picture,

but I drew the line.

He wanted me to move to southern Oregon

and work with him in his bookstore.

If that was a test, I failed.

Oregon?

Too far (three flights each way).

Still, we talked several times a week

until he got esophageal cancer,

and then we talked several times a day

until he had to get a trach

and talking was too difficult for him.

Then just I talked.

We only argued once in the thirty-two years I knew him.

Mostly, he made me laugh and helped me enjoy life.

He trusted me, and he loved me.

I loved him, too,

and I miss him every day.

I am on the case

Last week, I went to Lewes, Delaware, to help a friend settle into her new condo; she had moved from Newport News, Virginia, two weeks earlier.

“I’m on the case,” I said when she could not find her house keys.

I love solving mysteries. Where were her keys? She knew they were in the house but where could they be?

We retraced her steps, with no luck. We searched the garage and kitchen. She searched her bedroom. I asked if I could go through her coat closet, and she said yes. And there, inside the pocket of her white coat, were the keys. She hadn’t remembered that she had worn that coat earlier in the day. Mystery solved.

We had several other mysteries during my time with her—mostly moving related (“where did I put…?” “which box has…?”).

My younger brother also loves to solve mysteries, like tracking down the guys who broke into his garage and stole some equipment—he followed Craig’s List until he saw his equipment listed and then called the police, who set up a sting.

He attributes our doggedness in solving mysteries to the fact our dad was a cop; I attribute it to our mother’s insistence that we never give up when we were searching for something.

I remember a friend in college marveling at my persistence when she could not find something, and I was unwilling to let go until the mystery had been solved. She had been raised to let go and replace.

I love most everything associated with mysteries—novels, plays, movies and television shows.

The funny thing is, though, that despite the fact that I love to follow the clues and solve the mysteries in my everyday life, there are many other mysteries with which I am completely comfortable.

For example, mysteries of faith and miracles I can accept with complete confidence. Somehow, I can trust that there are some things we cannot solve or unravel; acceptance is the only solution.

In that way, I think I am contrary to most people—those who can let go when something is lost (and rush to replace it) and yet question faith and distrust miracles.

I think my comfort with mysteries of faith helps me be able to sit with people who are suffering and dying. I don’t ask why someone is ill or why there is suffering. I accept that suffering, illness and death happen. They are part of life. I appreciate that there is nothing to be done, no answers to be found and no clues to follow.

At times of sorrow and grief, I believe that acceptance is more helpful than questioning. Finding meaning in loss is more about being grateful for what has been and gathering the gems of good memories to cherish.

I am grateful for my approach to different kinds of mysteries because solvable mysteries, while they may take a great deal of time in the process, are solvable. Mysteries of faith are just that—mysteries.

Making room

My tears flowed freely, and this time

I did not stop them.

Loud wails rose from deep within,

and I did not stop them.

Each sob seemed to come from some deeper place,

breaking apart layers of scar tissue,

unblocking paths I hadn’t known were there.

Could I risk plunging in,

free-falling into the abyss,

letting myself go under, and

be completely submerged?

Could I risk feeling that kind of deep sorrow,

immersing myself in it and

letting it take me down

until I feel like I am drowning,

until I cannot catch my breath.

Is that the way through the pain?

Is that the way to move beyond

the grief I carry inside,

to empty myself and

make room to live and love again?

Holding on or letting go

A friend once reminded me to “hold on loosely.” At the time, I was facing a great loss and was conflicted about holding on to what I was losing or letting it go.

I wanted to be finished with the pain and sadness of the impending loss. At the same time, I wanted to hold onto what had once been.

My friend used his hands to demonstrate how to hold on loosely—palms facing up and open, fingers spread just a bit apart. A colander came to mind—something that can both hold on and let go.

That image of his open hands (and the colander) has come back to me at other times of loss, and it occurred to me the other day as I thought of the death of my mother and the end of my work career.

Every day, I am reminded of both losses, and I try to be present to my grief when those reminders pop up.

My usual way of dealing with difficult emotions, though, is to stuff down my feelings and deny or delay the pain and sadness, even though I know it is healthier to allow the feelings of sadness and desolation to surface in their own time and to process them as they appear. Old habits are difficult to change, though, and this one is an ongoing challenge for me.

With every loss, we choose what we want to hold on to and what we want to let go. I am reminded of one of the gates of grief: Everything we love we will lose. Remembering this truth helps me hold onto the gift of what has been and let go of what falls through my open fingers.

The best is yet to come

My life has been turned a bit upside down recently by my mother’s death and my leaving the job I have had for the past seven years. Two big losses at the same time and lots of empty space in front of me.

No more dinners with my mother or shopping for her or calling or stopping by to check in.

And no more work emails or office to go to or meetings to attend.

I have to admit that it is a bit scary to stand in front of this vast empty canvas without the commitments that have structured my life for the past years. And yet…

I have decided to view the coming year as a sabbatical, a time to pause after thirty-five years of working in nonprofit management, to reflect on and say goodbye to what has been, and to prepare for what is to come.

Almost as soon as I made that decision, two retreat opportunities presented themselves—one is focused on discernment for people in transition and the other is for writers. I had not been looking for either one, but both seem opportune, and I signed up for them. One is virtual, and the other is in Texas—my first flight since the pandemic lockdown in March 2020.

As a child, I had no idea what I might be when I grew up—no passionate hopes or dreams to be this or that. As an adult, I tended to fall into jobs more than selecting them with a goal in mind.

So here I am in the third third of my life, still deciding what I want to be when I grow up. Only now, I have lots of experience and a pretty good idea of my gifts and talents.

And that knowledge and awareness energizes me—standing on the precipice of the next chapter in my life is thrilling.

My friend Jim used to say, “The best is yet to come.” I am in total agreement, and I am looking forward to what the next chapter of my life holds.

Hope

Let go,

forgive.

Grasping or clutching

cannot freeze a moment or

stop the inevitable flow.

When it is time,

flowers drop their petals and

trees their leaves.

Rain washes the world clean,

as do my tears.

And then, like trees and flowers

in spring,

I begin again.

Love and loss

A few weeks ago, I told my dog’s veterinarian that my dog, Detroit, was not eating and she refused to take her medicine.

I had always bragged that Detroit thought her daily pills were crunchy treats, and she usually gobbled them down as she did any other treat. But she had stopped eating most everything except chicken. She would not even eat her favorite treats.

One day, we sat on the back porch and watched a cat walk across our yard. Detroit did not even flinch—she made no move to chase the cat.

Detroit lived to chase squirrels and cats. She loved to let the world know that our yard belonged to her and only she could grant permission for visitors. But twice in one week, I had seen her allow a cat free access.

I knew something was seriously wrong. Not gobbling down her food, no treats and not chasing a cat in her yard!

Blood tests revealed Detroit had liver disease. The vet prescribed some medicine, but after a week, Detroit’s liver levels had gone even higher; the medicine was not working. And then Detroit stopped eating chicken.

I inherited Detroit from my friend Jim who died from brain cancer eight years ago. She was the love of his life, and his one wish for her was that she not have surgery—ever. He hated his time in the hospital for two surgeries connected to the cancer. He did not want to live or die in the hospital, and that is what he wanted for his dog, too.

After a third visit to the vet, it was clear that Detroit was not going to get better. The vet said surgery was a possibility but there was no guarantee it would help. I said “no” to surgery and then took a few days to process the fact that Detroit was dying. Last Saturday I took her to the vet one last time.

I believe that Detroit has been reunited with Jim, and although I miss her terribly, I am happy for them. I imagine Detroit jumping into his arms and licking his face—an image that makes me smile.

Jim and Detroit, 2010

She was a wonderful companion to me through many changes and losses over the past eight years—and especially during this time of isolation. I feel so blessed to have had her in my life.

Gratitude mixes with grief.

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What I learned from unexpected events

This week, Christians celebrate that God became human in the form of an infant child. The story is full of unexpected twists and turns—Mary becomes pregnant even though she is a virgin; Joseph stays true to his commitment to marry her because an angel appears to him in a dream; and Mary and Joseph trek to his hometown for a census, only to find no room for them at the inn.

It is easy to imagine the people in this story saying, “I didn’t expect that” or “I didn’t see that coming.”

“How was the past decade for you?” someone asked on a radio show this week.

My first reaction was “Ugh!” The past decade was a tough one for me—full of unexpected twists and turns. Many times, I said, “I didn’t expect that” or “I didn’t see that coming.”

If someone had asked me at the end of 2009 to predict what the next decade would bring, I would not have been able to guess most of what happened over the past ten years.

It started in December 2009, when my cousin died from pancreatic cancer. Her death rocked my world on several levels. She was near my age (too young to die) and she lived away from family (as did I). She was unwilling to talk about her illness and seemed to be in denial that she was about to die.

I grew up in a house where denial was a way of life. Years of therapy have helped me learn a different way, but my cousin’s death made me wonder if I would revert to the fallback position of denial if something catastrophic happened to me. I began to ask myself how I would react if I was diagnosed with cancer or another terminal illness.

Of course, we only know what we will do when we are faced with the situation, but my cousin’s death made me face my own mortality.

Over the next six years, five friends died from cancer and one (who was only twenty-six) died from a heart attack.

Plus, I moved back to my home state to be near my family.  

It was a decade of change and loss, and I am happy to put it behind me.

At the same time, I learned a lot during this decade.

I am not the same person I was ten years ago and much of that change happened because of the challenges I had to face.

I learned that I really would step up in a crisis, take someone into my home and help him to have the kind of death he wanted.

I learned to be more honest and realistic, to let go of unmet expectations and accept reality.

I learned to spend more time and energy on what really matters and give little time or energy to petty problems or contrived dramas. “Is it brain cancer?” I ask.

Unexpected events happen; how we respond to them is what makes the difference.  

Heartbroken

A local chamber music concert included both old and new music. The last piece on the program was called “Pieta” and was introduced as a new piece. The program listed the performers as a mezzo-soprano and pianist. A man and a woman entered the room and the woman gave us the background for this premier performance.

She told us that her son had been a musician—like his mother and grandmother. He had studied music at a university in Chicago, and she was clearly proud of his accomplishment. Not long after graduation, though, he came down with mononucleosis, and then a complication caused his sudden and unexpected death on a winter day almost three years ago. She had been devastated.

She told us she did not remember writing the words we were about to hear, but her friend (the pianist) had set them to music, the piece we were about to hear.

And then he began to play the piano and she began to sing.

She sang of her love for her son and his delightful personality; he was the light in her life. She sang of her sorrow, and she promised that she would never forget him. She sang the love letter she had written to him.

I was mesmerized by her singing, her story and her passion. It was operatic in that sense of being an event that could happen to anyone and yet was bigger than all of us. The depth of her sorrow and grief poured out through her singing.

Every parent who has experienced the death of a child needs to hear this, I thought. Her sorrow is their sorrow.

The title was not lost on me either, and I recalled standing before the Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome—a grieving mother holding her dead child, Mary and Jesus. This performance brought that statue to life.

How brave this woman was to sing of her deep sadness, to give voice to the sorrow that comes from the loss of a child. She held nothing back.

I love opera—the music and singing, costumes and sets. Opera presents ordinary events with all the underlying feelings and emotions. It invites us to experience hope, joy and sorrow.

As I listened to this mezzo-soprano, I imagined the story line of an opera—the young man, growing up in a house where music was valued, going off to college with all his hopes for a bright future as a musician. I could see the ordinariness of his college days and then his becoming ill with something common to college students. Then the unexpected, dramatic death, and its aftermath—confusion, anxiety, sorrow, grief.

All that promise gone. All that potential vanished.

What remains is the pouring out of a mother’s feelings of love and loss in this beautiful song.

My heart was touched by this performance and opened by the emotions shared by this grief-stricken mother. I was deeply grateful that she shared so honestly. What a gift.

Starting over

The winter that Jim had cancer, our friends gave us their New Jersey shore house to use whenever we could. That gift was a huge sacrifice for them because they rented the shore house all summer and usually used it themselves on weekends in the winter; it was their winter escape. But that winter, the shore house was ours.

We went to the shore in between Jim’s cancer treatments and spent the better part of November, December and January there. It was a great gift.

Each time we arrived, I thought of our friends’ generosity and cried tears of gratitude. Their selflessness amazed me.

I wanted to do something to thank them and so I started knitting a blanket.

Many people associate the shore with summer heat, but in the winter, when our friends would be using the house, the shore can be quite cold, so I thought a blanket an appropriate expression of my gratitude.

The problem was that I found it difficult to concentrate on the pattern, and I kept making mistakes. Time and again, I had to rip out what I had knitted and start over. After casting on for the umpteenth time, I realized that I needed to be knitting for the process of knitting, rather than focusing on the finished product.

Knitting can be a meditative activity. Like other repetitive practices, I can lose myself in the gentle sound of clacking needles and the movement of yarn slipping through my fingers. I have often used knitting to help me focus, and during those months at the shore, knitting helped me focus on Jim and what we were going through. It helped me to let go of my fears and move to feeling blessed and grateful.

I didn’t finish the blanket before Jim died, and then it took me a long time before I could pick it again because it had become a symbol of my grief; each time I tried to knit that blanket, I cried tears of sorrow.

Enough time has passed, and I am again knitting the blanket. Each stitch reminds me of those days at the shore, our friends’ generosity and the importance of being present to the process instead of being overly focused on the finished product.

I think that life can be like that. I can have many false starts before I find the best path to travel. But each false start offers me a lesson, something that helps me see a little more clearly.

I remember reading somewhere that the stories we tell over and over are offering us lessons that we still need to learn. We keep retelling those stories because something is unresolved or not fully understood.

As I retell the story of knitting this blanket, I am again filled with gratitude for what was—and with hope for what is yet to be. I am grateful for the many opportunities to start over.

What stories do you tell and retell? What lessons are they offering you?