I hate talking about death. I hate losing people. I guess I don’t fear it, I just am tired of talking about it.

I guess…

Fear is a funny word. I think I just let it become more if a nuisance than anything. And I change the subject. A lot.
I thought  about the last time I saw her mom. She looked frail and thin. She was so pretty.

I looked down at my phone and told her I had to run… I was going to be late.
For what, I don’t know… but I knew it would allow me to leave without feeling rude.

If I was rude, I didn’t notice. And I hoped she didn’t either.

Time is always the best excuse.
Another tear got trapped in my throat… waiting to see if it was free to flow out.
“NO.”
I made sure it heard me.
The picture of my mom on my phone came up when I checked the time. Her beautiful smile.
Her gorgeous eyes. I turned to leave. Tear in the throat number three…

Again, that tug. This time my right sleeve.

“How’s your mom, Jen?”
“Tell her I said Hi…”
There it was.  The dreaded request.

“I will. Thanks.”

Off I hurried…. to no where in particular.

I went out to my car and sat there. Wondering where I was going to go, I looked at my phone again. Her eyes told me a story.

This time, the tear found the corner of my eye.
I kept fighting.

After 18 minutes, I started driving.

To nowhere in particular, I was doing 68 in a 55.
I was on a mission.
To nowhere.
Maybe it was me being lost.
Maybe I just wanted everything to go back to “normal”…

Maybe I had a need to see or hear or touch her.

Maybe, it was just that I wasn’t sure where I was going and felt like I would figure it out if I drove faster….

Maybe I was just in denial.

Life continued to whiz by me,  tractor trailers and buses in the right lane beside me. I felt like I was standing still.

Tell her I said hi….

Part of me wanted to say, no…. YOU tell her. But instead, I just hurried off so as not to be late.

For something. Nothing. Anything.

I just wanted to get out of the grasp of the tug.

So much of the beginning stages of my understanding my mom’s disease was denial. It was the realization that at the age of 29 I was told my mom was going to die a slow death in front of my eyes and I couldn’t do anything but watch it happen.
I just wanted to get away from it all.
I ran, I drove, I kept my mouth closed for a couple years.
I cried choked up tears and silent sobs. I wanted to make it all go away.

I wanted to hurry up and be ok with the process.

I barely went to visit. I was scared of what it would look like.

I didn’t want to be the one to tell her anyone said hi, let alone me.

Then it hit me…

I can’t control the outcome…. but what I can control is my process through it.

I can control how I react to it and what I do to make it easier.
Driving home that night I took a detour.

I drove straight to my parents instead. I wanted to see her. I wanted to be there. I wanted her to know I didn’t really run away.
I just was “Busy.”
And when I had enough, I would leave because I was busy.
I have kept busy. I have hurried along from place to place.
But one thing that has changed in my growing process through all of it is my ability to just be there.

I am busier than ever and have seen my mom more lately than I have since she’s been sick.

I am comfortable where I am with the process.

And I tell her hi… every time I see her.
Usually at least 18 times.

I carried that worry and the constant need to know what and how into my adult life. It became an anchor I would soon identify as my very own. It was a part of my perfectionism. I needed it like Linus’s blanket, or more like a long fall from a short pier. I needed to realize quickly that I didn’t really need it at all. The letting go was like pulling a bottle away from an infant who hasn’t eaten in 5 days. I clung to it as if I wouldn’t breath if I somehow rid myself of it. Letting go is sometimes the hardest thing we ever do in life. Even if it’s letting go of the very thing that is building the wall in front of us.

I found that wall pop up again as recently as a few months ago. In a very dark and deeply saddened few weeks, I allowed myself to watch as despair, failure, desolation, worthlessness, and fear laid each brick, piling higher and higher right in front of me. I watched and didn’t say a word. I let it build. Almost as if I was cheering on those very bricks that would soon be my cell walls. I certainly didn’t stop it.

And then I was reminded in one moment by one voice, that I was stronger than that wall. I was reminded that I didn’t need to let the cell close me in. There were only three walls… I could certainly retreat and go back out the way I came in. BUT… I tried to argue with failure by reminding him that I came from that way and if I go back I MUST be doing it all wrong. I tried to reason with despair, telling her that if I could just one time get it right, I may feel ok about myself.

Stress, worry, failed relationships and hurting friends and a difficult family situation is enough to set me on a path to become a professional brick layer. But that’s too easy. That’s where my belief could have led me. I could go down a path and built walls. Wondered what and how and when… and been happy on those so called “stressless days” and spent the rest of my time chasing my worries around the cul-de-sac of the next dead end road.

But belief won’t write my story. At least not the way I want it to read.

Faith is stepping out into the darkness and knowing, without question, that things will fall into place when you need them to the most. That the bricks will not know how to fasten to each other. The world ran out of mortar. And when the time comes to go over, around or through those walls, there is no question. We choose the roads without worry. We walk our path without fear. Despair fell after the last strong wind, and failure never even made it to the road the wall was on.

We choose our path.
We know life will give us one hell of a ride.
We have faith the ride doesn’t have to include a crash ending.

Faith is in the knowing.

And I don’t really have to explain it anymore…

I watched as a tear flowed down her cheek. And then another. “Mommy, why are you crying?” I whispered quietly, just loud enough for her to hear me, but not too loud to interupt the flute 6 feet away.
Her light blue eyes reached down to me, held me for a moment and then answered. “Because the music is so beautiful,” she whispered back with a gentleness that made me feel in that moment that I may cry too.
The music. The voice of the soloist was piercing. It was mom’s favorite Christmas song. And to this day when I hear it, I can’t often hold back the tears.

Mom always made sure she was in that front pew by 9:30 every Christmas Eve so she wouldn’t miss the music. I didn’t understand what was so special about it, I mean, it was only instruments and people singing, often in other languages. I couldn’t really understand what they were saying which made it harder for me to connect. But I sat there, quietly, listening. Watching as mom would cry every year. I would reach out and hold her hand, thinking that at least I could console her somehow. When I was 8, tears meant sadness. I needed to just hold her hand.

Mom and I had a ritual. When it came time for the sermon, I would lean over into her left arm and she would run her fingernails over my arms to tickle them while we listened to dad talk. It wasn’t odd for me to listen to dad talk, and often I wasn’t sure at 8 years old really what he was talking about so I just enjoyed the time mom would spend rubbing my arms. Dad’s words were often as powerful as the music and the voices. When I would see a tear on mom’s cheek, I knew it must have been a good one… whatever he was talking about. I would reach out and hold her hand. She would squeeze it back.
The second part of our ritual was after the sermon and the prayers and before communion. It was the Lord’s Prayer. That was our time. When I was really young and learning how to read, I would kneel in front of her and she would run my finger over the words in the prayer book so I could follow along. Some days my finger would almost burn from all the words we rubbed my finger across because we would do all the prayers that way. Other days it was just the Lord’s Prayer. After a while when I was older, she would reach out and hold my hand instead. For years, we held hands during the Lord’s Prayer. Even after I turned 30. No matter where I was in relation to her in the pew, or even in the pew behind her… she would turn and look for me and reach out her hand. That was our time. The connection I had with mom during the Lord’s Prayer is something that to this day I acknowledge. Tonight, I held my own hand. And just like after every time, we would squeeze each other’s hand and whisper “I love you” at the end. I hope somehow it was enough and maybe tonight she heard me. There has never been a time after saying the Lords Prayer that I don’t whisper to my mom.

I drove to Reading tonight to sit in the back pew and listen to Dad. I went early to make sure I was there for the music. I sat at the end of the pew. First seat. As the procession started to the classic first song on Christmas Eve, O Come all Ye Faithful, I stood and sang in the pew alone. As the cross and the choir passed, Dad would bring up the rear. As he got to where I was sitting, he reached out his hand to squeeze mine on his way by. I squeezed back. A tear flowed down my cheek as I whispered “I love you.”

I sat and listened to the music. I felt all of it. I listened to Dad’s sermon. The tears flowed. No arm rubs or hand squeezes. No pew so packed with family that we had to spill into the two behind us. No laughing so hard that the floor would shake. A totally different experience as life changes year by year. A quiet solitude that brought introspection and a deep love for all that I miss.

As I drove home, I listened to Christmas music. I looked at all the Christmas lights I passed and the beautiful luminaries that some streets had lit. And then, when I was five miles away, it came on the radio. That song. Mom’s favorite Christmas song. One of my favorite renditions of course. Josh Groban singing O, Holy Night. I sang with him. And through the tears i could see mom’s eyes looking back at me. And for a moment I felt peace.
Because the music is so beautiful.

I get it now.
“I love you.”

Merry Christmas.

I have had plenty of friends. Close ones, deep ones, friends that knew when to smack me upside the head, and those that let me just be me. I have known there were some who just don’t get me. That’s always been ok. There are days I just don’t get me either. To say we all understand ourselves with never a question would be a rarity. And that, too, is always ok.

I believe it is in the learning process that we truly become what our definition of ourselves is. That changes, yes. But we define it in ways sometimes we don’t understand either. And yes…. that also is ok.
That definition often becomes skewed when we rely on others to validate it. In fact, how can it not? It is OUR definition first and last, and to allow others the power to create words around our very soul just seems… well, wrong.

Why can I say that? I have done it. Often, before I knew better, before I was older and wiser, hell, just yesterday.
I found my way back to the center of my world. I wasn’t drifting for long… I renegotiated with my WHY. I fought it at times, but I won. This time. The only time that counts.

I have a tattoo around the Apollo Butterfly on my left arm…. the words read “Be the Change.” It comes from one of my favorite Gandhi quotes, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” I thought for a long time that meant that I should be the things that I feel are right, and ethical and true, the things I expect to see in others.
While that may be true, I found myself wondering more about what the “world” is that I am looking to change. The globe seems pretty big. And we all know the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

So I picked up the trunk first… Ok, maybe not the visual I am going for here, but I took my first bite. I wanted to give to others. Not the first time, and certainly not a hard thing to do. I created a food drive to help fill the shelves at the Coatesville Community  Food Co-op. Gloria saved my number in her phone. I just may be on speed-dial now. I brought truckloads of food to her warehouse and still have food to deliver. I found that audacity isn’t really that hard when you declare and proclaim what you are going to do. So I did. That’s one little world that I helped create change in.

As I look around me to find what else I wish to see change in, I couldn’t help but walk past my mirror with my eyes fixated on something else. I dodge my glances. I think maybe there are others who need help. I pick up the phone instead. There is a friend who needs to talk. I take care of some work. I have a feeling my dogs needs to go outside.
And then I see it…. the eyes that look back from the glass as I shut the cabinet door. I am fixated for a minute. I am lost. And for the first time in a while I see something I haven’t seen. I am allowing those eyes to speak. To let go of the things they have held so dear.

I walked to my laptop and began to type. My audacity today has allowed me to be quiet. I wasn’t really talkative all day. Barely saying anything to anyone. And that, in this moment, seems ok too.
I realize the silence is my process. I am changing. With that comes a cathartic experience I can’t really put into words. You can ask those eyes I saw in the mirror… That center of my world. Me.
I don’t choose to stay in this moment.
Through the deepest pain and the deepest joy, I accept that my fate is to feel things. And that… has to be ok.
I will change the world, small bites, then big bites, internally and externally…
And for all of those who scoff at my audacity to want to do so I say this…

I will. Check my mirror.

The Great Depression was a time and place I have only read about in an 8th grade history class and maybe heard a few stories once or twice from my grandmother, harping on how bad things were when they were younger. There seemed always to be something to harp on…how they stood in line for bread or how when times were really rough, they put cardboard box tops in their shoes to make them last longer when they would wear out. I think I have heard my mother tell that same story. Or how I was out late the night before and made sure my mom knew what time I came in, or the fact that my elbows were on the table at some point last week. Oh nana, God bless you…may you rest in peace.

Bing Crosby sang a song written in 1931 during the depression. You may have heard of it… “Brother can you spare a dime”
It goes like this:

“They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?”

This seems relatable in these times. Things are hard for some people. Money is hard to come by. Jobs are few. Extra is not normal.
I think though, it is so much more about what we choose to do with the money we have. What we choose to spend our dimes on. What we choose to spend our time on. It’s all a choice. Obviously, when you have it to make choices about. We also choose what we can spare, what we feel we can give out into the universe on any given day. The “dime” doesn’t have to be money. It can be your heart… your words of inspiration, your gift of love to someone who needs it today.
So I am wondering… What’s in your pockets? And can you spare any of it? Is it holding you down? Is it what you need to survive tomorrow? Can you give it away? Or is it even what you WANT? OR… are they empty? Maybe tomorrow, you will try replacing the emptiness with a picture of your baby while you are at work to remind you of your WHY. Maybe you will make a to do list and carry it with you so you can make sure you get to everything you need to. Maybe you can find a way to make a healthy grocery list instead of just walking in and buying whatever jumps off the shelf at you when you are hungry. OR, perhaps you will write down the FTR creed and carry that with you too. So you can find new inspirations during the day to be audacious, to see yourself and others…. to be a nexus, to follow the Kaizen path. To change the world. One piece of lint, one paperclip, one penny, one moment at a time. It’s all we have. It’s our choice. What you put in your pockets is what you carry with you every day. You get to choose that.
Choose wisely.
So I will ask you again… what’s in YOUR pockets, Brother? And can you spare a dime?

Last week I was driving to pick up a client from school for our afternoon together and passed by an older gentleman on the side of the road. He was sitting on the curb with a cardboard sign. So often I see this and want so badly to help with more than a couple bucks. I have heard people question whether it’s true or if people who hold signs on the street for money then go home after a days work and get a hot shower and have a meal while watching the game. I just don’t think that way. If someone asks for help, I want to help.

I had to get to the school by a certain time, so I pulled in and parked, still thinking about the old man on the side of the road.
When I got her, we drove off to our usual pizza spot to chat, knowing I would pass that spot where he was sitting on the way.
When I got close, I told her about the man I saw and that I wanted to see if he was still there. I pulled over the hill and sure enough, he was sitting on the curb. As I was pulling over, my eleven year old client reached down into her bag to take out a dollar to share with the old man. I knew I had a twenty in my wallet, so I took that out and together we gave him our $21 dollars. I asked if he was ok. He smiled and said that he just started receiving food stamps within the past week, “even though you can’t tell” as he pointed to his bony body. He was trying to find a place to stay for the night because the rain was coming. He usually stayed with a friend when he could afford it, but his friend was charging him $20 a night to stay there. He smiled and said that he was thankful to us that he would have a place to stay that night. He also excitedly told us that he just started working at a pizza shop so that will help him afford food and a roof over his head. He thanked us again, and then said “God Bless you.”

His sign read “Homeless. Hungry. I need help.”
I thought about it as I drove off. We talked about it and it became a great life lesson moment for us to discuss.
We went on about our day, but something about that man stuck in my head.
The simple sign, asking for help written in faded black marker on a tattered cardboard flap.

“I need help” is a courageous phrase, not only to say, but to write down in marker.

I drove home in silence still thinking about the man and the sign. Thinking about his courage and his smile.
Wishing sometimes that I had a faded black marker and a tattered cardboard flap. Maybe not to write those same words, but to ask for help, to ask for understanding and love. To ask for forgiveness from family and friends. To just handwrite it, whatever it is, so it wouldn’t be perfect.

We so often take for granted the things in our lives that have been there, the people who have supported us, the fact that we will be able to make it right tomorrow if we just don’t feel like it today. Sometimes we need to hold up our cardboard sign and hope the people around us can or are willing to read it. Maybe one of my biggest faults is that I have gone through life asking how I can help others more often than how they may be able to help me.
Maybe I didn’t give them enough of a chance to be that in my life.

I still can see the cardboard. I wonder if it made it through the last rain, or if the writing smudged.

The irony of a permanent marker may just be too much.

So my goal when I started writing these blogs was to write 60. I would then have my goal accomplished to create a book from what I have written. Since I was a little girl, one of my life’s goals has been to publish a book, something that could share my thoughts on life with others. Hopefully, once I can, I will publish it and feel one of my life long goals in my hands.

I haven’t written for over two weeks. I have been waiting… wanting it to be perfect… number 60. I wanted to make it really special. Then I was driving today and started thinking about the fact that the more I wait to write it, the less perfect it becomes and the more stress I have to make it so. I have been thinking for months about what this last one should be. What five words could bring it all home. Then I thought about mom, as always… and thought about something she used to say all the time. I found those notes from her that I have saved. The ones she would leave for me in the morning before I left to go to school. They were usually in my cereal bowl she put on the kitchen table for breakfast. She always had a way of reminding me of the little things. But now I know they were the most important things. Like taking the garbage out. I look at that now and I realize how symbolic perhaps that was. Often, it would be followed up with “do it now… if you do, you won’t forget.” That used to make me laugh. I wouldn’t dare forget or I would hear about it for a long time. But now, I find solace in those words. Taking the garbage out is right where I am in my life. I get it mom.

Often her notes were short but seem to have such meaning now. It’s like watching a children’s movie as an adult. It’s a new movie. One note said a few different things but included her “do it good” saying then ended with Love, Mom. I have carried that with me. So simple, but something she used to say all the time. “Do it good.” No matter what it was, she always wanted to remind me there was really only one way to do anything.

And it was about whatever I needed to do that day, or today, or on April 13th or any day I can think of, that was important. I should give with everything I have, and not do things with less. Mom was always good about reminding me of that. I want that
to be my motto for my life. Mom was also a grammatist and always corrected us when we used the wrong words or parts of speech. But she insisted on using “Do it good” as her way of reminding me that I had a choice of how to expend myself and my energy. There was no point in doing something if I wasn’t going to give all of me. I have lived that. And I honor my mother every time I
do.

I turned 38 a few days ago and it was one of the toughest birthdays thus far. I can’t really explain why, except that I don’t feel like I
have done it as “good” as I could have. My life story has had as many crescendos and decrescendos as anyone’s and I have certainly created, torn down, started over, built back up, almost every aspect of my life to date. More than once. My life has been anything but boring.

Birthdays always come around so quickly. I find myself wondering where the year went and what I could have done to maybe stop the passage of time a little bit. I have not yet mastered that feat, and quite honestly know I never will. It’s a nice pipe dream to have when 40 seems just around the corner. Ok, maybe not seems, but IS. The reality of that sinks deeper as I sit here listening to the crickets making sweet music outside my front door.

Do it good. I have made a decision as a matter of fact to not allow less from myself. Even though I feel I often give it much by mistake, or inability to maybe pull my life together at times. I do what I can with what I have. My choice is to do that good. Regardless. When I screw it all up and have to start again, I even screw it all up good… At least there was effort involved. I
feel like life may never make sense otherwise. I think that’s what Mom meant when she said “do it good.”

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 was melancholy for us all. A day we will never forget. Ten years that have changed us to the core of who we are and what we find and maybe do not find important anymore. Our beliefs, our morals, all tested. Who we want to be and the legacy we want to leave are so much more important today than maybe they have ever been. We are a country still mourning, ten years later. We are still rebuilding, still asking if we will ever find forgiveness. In that ability to at some point find the forgiveness to heal, I find comfort in knowing that we will never forget. I believe in our ability to heal and to fill in the holes, not with new faces to replace the old, but new faces to honor and add value to those who left this earth way too soon, and with no choice of their own.

I spent time last Sunday reading through the names on that list. All of them. A few I knew personally. The youngest was a 2-year-old on the flight from Boston. 2,819 people lost their lives that day. The estimated number of children who lost a parent in the tragedy is over 3,000. I thank God that my nephew wasn’t one of them. The love we give our neighbors, our families, our friends and even those strangers we hold the door for heals this country faster. I think Mom would be proud that I want to give that love to anyone who crosses my path. Honestly and truly. There is no excuse not to. And I want to do it good.

I feel a higher intensity when I yearn to give freely, love abundantly, and feel wholly. I am excited about the possibilities.
I am 38 now. I can’t stop time. And writing this tonight, I don’t want to. I am not going to worry about it right now. I am not going to worry about if this is worthy of being blog number 60. Sometimes, things are just as they are and the beauty in that imperfection is it’s perfection.

Right now what I have is a full heart, a strong will and an open mind. And whatever I do with all of that, it will be good. Always.

I have taken out the garbage.
I have loved “good.”
I have discovered a profound meaning in the little things.
I have learned that in the middle of my deepest pain, or my hardest fall, I have a voice inside my heart that whispers as loud and as long as I need it to.
The good I have learned about on a small torn square piece of scrap paper from January of 1991 will be the good that I will hold forever.
I may have, for the first time twenty years later, fully understood what she meant.
I thank you for your patience, mom.
I got it.

Love, Jen.

I watched some of the women’s world cup games and was a fan just like the rest of the country, of our US women’s team. They fought hard. They took a grueling sport to come back from when you are down, and made it look like something you would see out of a movie. They won, they fought hard, and they lost. And in the end, they lost that last game with grace and dignity. They were simply outplayed. There is no shame in that. Sometimes we come up empty. Holding the bag when the bottom falls out. Still, holding the empty bag. They did just that. But they acknowledged the journey. That it was more than the score at the end of the game. They won in intangibles. And while many athletes and coaches may read this right now and cringe, (because what competitor loves to lose the outcome?) The intangibles build a stronger human being in the end.

I just finished up two weeks of summer camp last Thursday. The first week, we were at Avon Grove LL fields, the second at Limerick Community Park. The kids both weeks were great. Something stuck out to me particularly the first week. With no prodding, they cheered each other on during our Softball Olympics day. They were split into two teams and they started to cheer for each other. Even on different teams. I was taken aback at first, wondering what was going on. I listened carefully as they applauded the other team’s efforts, telling each other that they did a good job at that event and even if they didn’t win it, they congratulated the person who did. WOW. This was fun to watch. It was very competitive. The Olympic day always is. However, we encourage spirit points. They came dressed in crazy outfits and capes to show their team unity. The second week, they did the same thing.

I started to wonder what this “sportsmanship” thing was all about. How you could honestly be happy for the other team when they won? I watched them have fun, and keep reminding each other that the fun is why there were there. That it’s not just about winning. Then I remembered sharing the word “Compete” with them. Compete comes from the Latin competere …”To strive WITH or Together.” I explained that most of us think that it is about playing AGAINST the other team, not WITH them. In this case, win or lose, they did it gracefully and with respect and love for the game. And at the end of the day, win or lose, I know they were building stronger human beings throughout the process.

As with most of my blogs, I can’t help but think of my mom here as well. There isn’t much she isn’t losing. Her ability to communicate is almost completely gone. She can get out a word here or there, but for the most part we are left with assuming we know what she is trying to tell us with her actions, her eyes and her smile. She makes noises, and most of the time we can tell if she is unhappy. She is very much aware it seems, just can’t let us know that. It’s a journey for sure, one that I wouldn’t jump on if I didn’t have to. Yet through it all, it is teaching me so much. Grace is one of those lessons.

My dad told me last week that when he went to feed her dinner the evening that I was there at lunch time, he asked who came to visit her that day. She said matter-of-factly, “JEN”… of course, that brought tears to my eyes, as it did to my father as he told me the story. While we are losing pieces of her as time goes by, her grace and dignity are still there in my eyes. When I look at her, with her nails done and her pretty outfits on, she is as beautiful as always. She has lost a lot. We all have, watching this disease continue to take her away from us, but she does it gracefully, every day… with love and a sparkle that will never leave her eyes while she is on this earth.

I spent some time alone with her yesterday. I told her about my 4.0 in my master’s program and how I have my final paper due this weekend for my “capstone” project and then I will be finished and graduate a part of the International Honour Society. Her eyes lit up and she smiled. She understood. I asked her if she was proud of me and she told me yes with her eyes and partial head nod, her noise of approval. I told her I loved her and she said “I” and moaned the rest. I know exactly what she meant.  I answered with “I know you love me too.”

Grace is a way of life. When we do things we don’t often like to do or want to do, we find ways to do them with grace, to preserve our dignity, to persevere with heart. We say I’m sorry when we hurt someone, we admit when we are wrong. We are graceful in how we approach sensitive topics. We win, we lose. We do it with class.

It’s an art. And sometimes a lost one at that.
I am acknowledging the journey and looking for the stronger human being in the end.
…And praying for grace in the process.