Pixie Stick Queen

Do This in Remembrance of Me

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 05:06:00 +0000

My father is dying. There – I said it.

I’ve been holding back writing anything to my friends about the happenings of the past couple of weeks because I was hoping that with some time and medical testing, we’d get better results than what the initial lab work suggested. But there is no escaping the reality of what is. He has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which has spread to his liver. I’ve learned in the past week and a half that pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly kinds of cancers that exist today, in large part because the patient has very few symptoms until it has spread to other organs.

A week and a half ago on Monday, we visited his oncologist and talked about fighting his diagnosis. His doctor offered us the hope of more time but not a cure, which is what Google searches had prepared us to hear. The best chance of living longer was a new chemotherapy treatment that has had promising results, but we were told that he would have to be found strong enough for the treatments. On Monday, Dad was walking. By Wednesday, he was in a wheelchair – too weak to walk into the doctor’s office and hear the news that we all feared. His liver was failing. He was no longer a candidate for chemo. By Thursday night, Dad was admitted to the hospital.

I still marvel at where we were a week and a half ago. It was a Sunday morning and I was lying in bed thinking about Dad’s diagnosis and whether or not he had a chance to live, debating whether I had the energy to go to church. A friend’s text woke me out of my fog. It said that she needed help. Her husband had hurt his back and could not help to serve Communion as he had volunteered to do. Could I fill in for him?

My spiritual mindset that morning was numb. I felt emotionally drained and self-absorbed with the reality that death and dying was invading my normal life. All I wanted to do that Sunday morning was sit like a hollow log in the pew and survive the sermon. I was doubtful that I had the nerve to do what I knew was right – to look beyond myself and my worries and help a friend in need. But I also found no reason besides my own selfish desire to sit invisibly in the church pew to tell her that I didn't feel like helping. So I texted my friend back, “Sure,” I would help and pulled myself from bed to participate in a church service that I expected from the get-go would be difficult.

It was difficult. I felt alone, empty and detached. A part of me knew to reach out to God for support, but the other part of me was afraid of the breakdown that might happen. Would I be angry and say things I would regret? Would my insides start to sob and embarrass myself? I had gone into a detached state where my emotions were like a distant echo, but so was my spirit. The outside was a poised and steeled resolve – a defense mechanism that I have nurtured my whole life.

I mumbled through the praise music and drifted mentally in and out through the service. And then two things happened to shift my mindset. The first was that the clouds parted, literally. It had been a blustery, grey morning that threatened afternoon rain. Just before the storm started, the clouds parted and sunbeams shone through the stained glass that lines the roof of my church’s sanctuary. Like a spotlight, the rays fell directly upon my lap. I looked to the left of me. I looked to the right. No one else had a rainbow of light cascading over them from top to bottom. It was me – only me. The spotlight was like God telling me to wake up, to listen, to hear what Bob, my pastor was saying, which was something about not shutting down, about being open to God’s presence and following his call wherever he might lead us.

The second shift in my mindset occurred during Communion. For my nonreligious friends, Communion in its most basic form is the opportunity for Christian believers to celebrate the Last Supper that Jesus ate with his closest disciples – bread and wine are blessed and eaten, signifying the body and blood that Christ shed for the forgiveness of sins for all mankind.

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19)

There are a variety of traditions between churches and Christian denominations when it comes to the way in which people serve Holy Communion, but in my church, the pastor blesses the elements and church members volunteer to serve Communion to the rest of the congregation. Those wishing to partake of the bread and wine will line up to eat a piece of bread while dipping it in the wine glass.

People in the congregation come forward toward the front of the church. Those volunteering to serve Communion tear off a piece of bread and hand it to them, and say, “The body of Christ, broken for you.” Before eating their morsel of bread, people dip it in a goblet full of grape juice, as the person holding the “wine” reminds them that it represents, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

I had never served Communion to anyone before, but I had taken Communion enough times to know the words and ritual involved. My role that Sunday was to hold the goblet of wine and speak the words, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.” I was to say this to each person who dipped his or her piece of bread in the goblet. They are simple words, “The blood of Christ, shed for you,” but as I found myself speaking them to each stranger who came to eat, I felt my throat constrict. With each repeat of “The blood of Christ, shed for you,” I was reminded of the truth of that event, of the sacrifice Christ gave, of the torture and the pain he went through to set us free and turn us toward God.

What started as a torture to serve others because I had been so involved with my own self-pity became an opportunity to see beyond myself. I could not speak those words, could not imagine the blood of Christ and stand numb feeling sorry for myself and my family. Those words can cut through any believer’s apathy, and they did me. I found myself looking into the eyes of strangers and seeing past myself and into them. I found myself speaking my line, “The blood of Christ, shed for you,” and wanting to offer them compassion. I saw that I was not the only person affected by pain, and I felt joy that I could give comfort to others. I saw that people needed healing as much as I did. There was pain behind the eyes of many people, and when I said, "The Blood of Christ, shed for you," I was really saying, "I see you. God loves you. God be with you." And this reminded me also, that he loved me too. It comforted me to know that I was not the only person who needed to rely on God to get through whatever pain we carry into the world.

I walked away from Sunday's service with the knowledge that God played a role in my life that day - that he comforted me. My friend could have texted any person to serve at the Lord's table with her, but something nudged her to contact me. I am forever grateful that she did. I was reminded of the power that God has to influence our hearts and lives, to comfort us in the midst of trials and despair.

Today, as I type this, my father is in the hospital, and I am sitting with him so that he will not feel afraid. His liver is failing and eventually the toxins will build up inside his body to the point where he will die. I know this. He knows this.

I have cried many times over the last week. Sometimes my face is so puffy from saltwater that I wonder whether my eyes will swell shut. But not once since that Sunday have I forgotten that God is with me in all of this, and it comforts me.

Two days ago, Dad took Communion from his hospital bed.

As a child, I grew up listening to my father's sermons. Every service ended with the same benediction, "May the LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." (Num. 6:24-26)

For those who have been praying for my family. I thank you. Your prayers lift us up and give us peace.

Someone is in the House - Dreams and Jesus Sightings

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:12:00 +0000

For many months I had a recurring nightmare. At the point where I would be drifting to sleep, my body would clench into a sudden panic. My eyes would bolt awake, and I would look over my left-shoulder and into the darkened living room to see a shadow of a person entering the house through the front door. As instantly as I saw the shifting figure, I understood not to be afraid. This “visitor” had been invited. But as I would reach for the light, feelings of deep panic would set in. I had forgot that he was coming. Thoughts of being “unprepared” raced through my mind. In a rush, I scrambled with the covers, sometimes would even get out of bed – once I even got my pants on before I realized the panic wasn’t real – the house was empty. Having been caught between sleep and the awakened world, I would calm myself and fall back in bed; this time to sleep peacefully.

I have read that dreams can be a window to our subconscious, and that recurring dreams are not necessarily about the details of the dream as they are our minds working through deep feelings. I started examining not what happened in the dream but what the dream made me feel. Somewhere in those feelings of panic nestled embarrassment, confusion, and a general sense of insecurity.

I came to expect the dream each night, so much so that it was a running joke in my mind. I stopped freaking out when the person showed up at the door. It was like my mind was saying, “Oh,” with little reaction, “it’s you again.” The most I would do might be turn on the bed lamp, jiggle my head a bit, remind myself I was dreaming, and go back to sleep.

What once began as something to be afraid of turned quickly into an annoyance. What did it mean? Why was my mind testing me by putting me in a situation where I would feel helpless and confused, irresponsible, and embarrassed? In the daylight hours, I began to ask, “What did I have to be insecure about? Where in my life was I feeling insecure, and where might I need to deal directly with a problem that I was ignoring?”

My rationale mind kept coming back to one thing: I was unsettled spiritually.

I am no stranger to Christian doctrine. My father is a Presbyterian minister, and I grew up with my fair share of Bible stories, Sunday School, weekly sermons, and scripture. As a child I was given simple interpretations, concrete answers to ideas like, “Where is heaven?” and “What does God look like?” But as I grew older and saw too much of the ambiguity of life beat back against a literal view of the Bible, I could not reconcile these differences, and for a time, I rejected the faith and God – going from one extreme to another. In those times of wandering, I learned to understand a deeper faith, a more personal faith, and returned to my beliefs a more mature Christian than when I left. I have since been a Christian for twenty years, and while I have met a great diversity of opinion about God and the role he plays in our lives, these variations no longer repel me from my belief in him.

I've come to understand that Christians come in all shapes, sizes, passions, and interpretations. Unfortunately, the poster of Christianity that is portrayed in the media is often too limiting and trivial – making it easy for those who are ignorant to mock our faith. The most vocal voices, those that garner the most attention in the press, are also sometimes the most emotional, radical believers who make sensational headlines. Sometimes these persons are ignorant about the history and complexity of their own faith, and to an outsider, can appear brainwashed and out-of-touch with reality. I regret that the breadth of Christian understanding does not get more attention.

To be fair, not all Christians are ignorant. Not all Christians are judgmental. Not all Christians believe in the literal interpretations of the Bible.

With such diversity of followers, it’s no surprise that Biblical passages can be interpreted in multiple ways across the spectrum of believers. I have a good deal of respect for the ambiguity of scripture. The one thing I have found hardest to deal with as a Christian are those persons who preach in absolutes: black and white, right and wrong, without any of the nuances that I see. Not that there is anything wrong with literal interpretations. There is truth in absolutes too. But I tend to enjoy the analysis involved in unpacking scripture to find its multiple layers: literal, symbolic, metaphorical, and more. Comparing Greek to Hebrew and how the subtle shifting of one word’s interpretation can create a ripple of possibilities in others, these are the things that stir my soul and make me feel closest to God.

In the past year, my appreciation for the nuance and deeper insights into scripture were seen as threatening by some within my own church. A choice few, certainly NOT a majority, but a vocal few regardless. I was lead to feel that if I did not mirror a literalist mantra, that I was not a true Christian. Interventions were called in. So began the e-mail campaign to turn me toward a more literal point of view, and I was on the defensive – feeling uneasy and insecure, both closer to God and further away from him. Angry and hurt and confused. I shut down emotionally.

And so started the dream. Someone was in my house. Someone I had forgotten about. Someone I was unprepared for. Someone whom I should have remembered, but “What was I supposed to do?” Was it clean the house? Make a meal? Teach a lesson? Someone had come to evaluate me and I was not ready.

One night, many months ago, I broke down and prayed to God for answers. I wanted hard-truths about heaven and hell – that was at the root of the church dialogue of the past months, what had been troubling me, what had brought me to feel so insecure. “Give me answers! Help me understand!” my heart cried out.

Maybe that was all God needed? An invitation to come in the house. I don’t know. The difference was that this time, when I should have awakened with a fright, “Someone’s in the house!” I allowed the dream to go forward; I didn’t shy away. What followed was a dream that has changed my spirit.

Jesus/God and I sat at the end of my bed. And while I was aware of my bedroom, I was also aware that we were someplace else as well. A great light shone behind him, like the sun bursting past the horizon line creating a glare on everything in the room. The glare was bright and soft all at once, and I got the distinct feeling that while I was in my room, he was both with me and far away, as though wherever he was had been woven into my physical space, like the spiritual world was finding cracks to fit between the physical, like a fine gauze of heaven was laying on top of everything.

Jesus was both kind, gentle, and powerful…otherworldly. Not mean, not condescending, but not equal to my human experience either. He had knowledge and wisdom I could not understand, and he made sure I understood that this was as it should be.

If you were to ask me what he looked like, I could tell you that he had deep eyes, eyes that could see through me. I could not look at him for long before the awe of who he was humbled me. I had to turn away, for his majesty made me afraid. He was not entirely present, at least his body was not fully formed at all times. At times I could make out his chest or an arm, never his feet, and only parts of him. He wore what seemed like clothing, a robe perhaps, not exactly white, not cream either – a kind of rippling, hazy color that blended into the glaze of light behind him. His hair seemed dark but the reflection of the light made it look almost golden near his forehead.

We were walking and sitting, standing all at once. We were caught between a world I knew – that of the physical and all the constraints that come with being encumbered by atoms and gravity, and where he was, a place that did not need up and down, backward and forward.

“You are doing this for me?” I said, and he knew that what I meant was, “You are making yourself physical for me.” And he said yes, but I could tell that it was not comfortable for him, not a place he seemed to want to be.

And for what seemed to pass far too quickly, ten minutes perhaps, I asked him my questions. What seemed so pressing before sleep did not seem to matter anymore though. My demands for answers revealed themselves to be trivial, almost childlike and immature. He smiled, and answered my questions anyway. I felt a deep peace and surprise since his answers were not anything I had ever heard before, nor were they what I expected to hear. It would seem that neither I nor the opinions of those that had caused me so much insecurity were correct. The concepts that God tried to explain were beyond anything that my physical mind could grasp or hold onto. My own matter, what made up my substance appeared to be hindering my ability to understand him fully. But that was okay because two things became immediately clear:

God knew exactly what he was doing, and
I did not need to know what that was.

I just needed to trust in him, to turn to him, to let him do what he was going to do, and be at peace with what that would be.

3. The last thing that pressed on me was that heaven was very close, not some faraway place.

He told me that he needed to leave, and I sensed that he could not stay in the same plane as where I was, but I begged to see where he was going. “Can you show me?” I said. And that is when I saw his smile and the tilt of his head, as though he was amused. As though he had been trying to tell me something but that I would not accept it - that once again, I was asking all the wrong questions. He hesitated, “You won’t remember what I’ve told you,” he predicted. And I nodded because I didn't want him to think that I being disrespectful, but secretly in my mind I told myself, “Please don’t forget! Please don’t forget!” because what we had discussed was so wonderful, beyond anything I could ever imagine that I wanted to remember it forever.

I tried to create space in my mind to store all that he had told me, like I might have done when cramming for a huge final exam, but to store the most miraculous of things and interpretations that had befuddled me in an instant was difficult. What he had to teach me was something you lived and experienced, not something you understood with words and thoughts. “Can you show me?” I begged him again. And he smiled and drifted away. "Please!" I cried out and awoke. There were no goodbyes. He disappeared. I stared straight ahead - blinking, which is when I saw the air split, like the three-dimensions of the physical world flattened in on itself and the air peeled back, as though a knife were cutting through a movie screen. And in the slit that was created an orchestra of light spilled through, falling over itself like a waterfall. The colors were like nothing I can describe, so vibrant: like that of a rainbow, only more richer in hue: like every color of orange was represented, every red, every yellow, every green, red, blue, violet, and every other color between - colors I didn't even know existed.

I began to scream in my amazement, gasping at the sight, “My God! My God! My God!” Blinking my eyes hard, telling myself to wake up, wake up, wake up, my mind rejecting that it could be real. I told myself, “It’s just a hallucination.” But the window to heaven would not go away. “My God!” I repeated unable to emotionally handle what he was showing me, my mind begging for him to make it stop. And in an instant, the slit closed, the air returned to normal.

I was shaking, overwhelmed at all I had seen and heard. My screams had awakened my husband, who told me groggily, “You are okay. Go to sleep,” thinking that I had a nightmare.

“No,” I cried, “It’s not what you think.” Not a nightmare. How could I explain to him what I had just experienced? How could I help him understand that what I told myself had only been a dream felt more real to me than the mattress beneath me. I clung to those last words we had spoken, tried to hold on to the revelations he had given me. But as God promised, they could not live in this world, this physically limiting world.

For months I have not spoken of this dream. I told a few people about the dream: my husband, some friends of my church, and I did my best to always end my story with emphasizing that it was "just a dream." I never gave myself the freedom to sit back and analyze the details until now, never tried to bring back the memories. My defense mechanism was to tell myself that, "It was a dream." It would have been wonderful if it had been true, but to believe in that would be to question my sanity.

Oh sure, there are all kinds of stories of God coming to people in dreams. I’m sure it has happened, but it is hard to accept if it has happened to you. My rational mind wants to look for some other explanation. And yet, while other dreams I’ve had, even dreams that seemed real at the time of my waking, have long sense faded into the background becoming a distant memory or forgotten entirely, this dream will not fade. It is as real to me today as the night he came. And more importantly, the trust that I have in God is still with me, that too has not faded.

“I give it to you God,” I tell him daily. While my questions are just as much ambiguous as they were before, I am satisfied that for now at least, the answers are not for me to understand. It’s not for me to do his job for him. Heaven is closer than we give credit, as close as unzipping the atoms between us and letting the energy of his presence spill through to where we reside.

It has been many, many, many months since my talk with Jesus. Ironically, or perhaps not, the dream of someone coming to my house has stopped. I no longer wake up afraid. I suppose all I needed to do, was invite him in.

A followup to Yesterday

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:10:00 +0000

It occurred to me only after I wrote yesterday's blog post that I might have hurt people’s feelings – the feelings of those persons who loved someone but for whatever reason weren’t in the room to witness “dying” like I was describing. Maybe I should have anticipated that reaction – that people would feel guilty for not being there, but the idea seemed so absurd to me. Dying is so awful, why would anyone want to see it?

And while I did witness Mom’s last days, and while we formed a unique connection, I would have given it up if it meant she could have felt free to go on with her afterlife, and I could have gone on with mine. To be haunted by a spirit is debilitating. It didn’t make me feel closer to her or more loved, just broken.

Even if you are not in the same room with a dying person, you can still love them just the same. It doesn't cheapen or lessen your love for them. Me leaving the hospital room when my grandmother or grandpa died, didn’t change our relationship. It just made it easier to do what I was supposed to do after they were gone, to go on living. I didn’t need to wallow in their misery in order for them to feel like I loved them or for me to feel their love.

One more thing I should have said, leaving someone to die may be one of the most natural steps humans take. In the final day, even Sarah and I had to leave for Mom’s spirit to pass. Mom wasn’t going to die with us in the room. The Hospice caregivers even warned us about how common it was for someone to die while a loved one had momentarily stepped out of the room. There’s a mystery surrounding death. Sure – people have died with others in the room before, but surprisingly, most people do the last part alone. Me leaving, Sarah leaving, to get away even for a momentary respite was necessary in the end.

For a long time, I had not wanted to write about Mom’s death in a public way. I did a little here and there on my blog over the years, to process something, but for the most part I didn’t see the point. For many years I had wondered if it was time to say something, but I pulled back. I didn’t want to sound like I was stuck in grief because I’m not. I’ve long since come to terms with those last months. I always warn my students that if they are going to use a personal experience in their essays that their experience needs to connect to a message that is larger than themselves. It can’t just be for catharsis. Because then the reader is sitting there thinking, “So what?” Up until recently, I didn’t know if I had something to say from Mom’s dying other than, “God that was awful!” And what reader needs to read about my awful life?

I felt happy to keep quiet until the whole Steve Jobs death. Odd since I don’t follow Steve Jobs. He’s not a hero of mine. But for some reason, his death brought about a huge amount of reflection in the people around me. Online tributes, blog posts, newspaper columns. Everyone was confronting death, and they were using Jobs as their excuse. Everyone seemed to have a different interpretation. But some people I knew wanted to use it as an opportunity to speculate about what happens after you die.

The fact that Jobs was religiously private meant that to evangelical Christians at least, Jobs may not have gotten into heaven. A lot of my Christian friends struggled with this. According to their belief system, the guy had never publicly proclaimed Christ to be his savior, so…this guy was going to hell. Some online bloggers posted disparaging remarks, pointed out flaws in the man's character. I don't know if this was because they needed to see his flaws so that they could feel a little better about him maybe not getting into heaven or what.

And then one Sunday, not more than a few days after his funeral, our pastor stood up in church and denounced the man (based on a quote that was taken out of context). He used Jobs’ death as an opportunity to tell people about how great Jesus was. That Jobs may not have been able to conquer death, but Jesus could, and that we should be happy about our own salvation. That we should follow Jesus and not Jobs. “Poor deluded Jobs,” was the point. “We Christians know better.”

I suspect that some of this backlash is not entirely about Jobs but more about people feeling threatened by technology and science and how both seem to sometimes pit themselves against traditional religious doctrine. By Jobs being a symbol for science and technology and innovation, I think some people saw him as threatening. The average man respected him. They respected his opinions and interpretations, almost like a modern-day prophet, and many religious types felt he was leading the “lost” further away from Christ with his odd alternative medicine treatments, and quasi-zen lifestyle.

Even if I were to put aside the motives of those people who came out of the woodwork to tear down a guy who they didn’t know, I still got pissed off. In my mind Jobs hit the nail on the head when he stated rather obviously that all people will die. You’ve got to die to get to heaven. Save what happens after death for another conversation; dying is scary. It doesn’t always happen quickly or cleanly. It can smell and be miserable and downright scary. And faith isn’t going to stop it from happening. We spend a lot of time talking about what happens after death, but we don’t allow ourselves to confront or even learn much about dying. That was my point. And with the convenience of nursing homes and hospital beds, more and more would-be caregivers get to check out of the dying experience. We don’t witness the people we love die anymore. We don’t see the filthy, dirty mess that it is.

I’m not saying that we should witness death. If you do, fine. If you don’t, fine. Was it good for me? I grew up a hell of a lot because of it. But I also lost something of myself in the process. I used to take on the world – had nerves of steel. But once you’ve been broken like that, once you know you have a limit…let’s just say, I’ve never been able to throw myself into the fire like I did before. There’s more than one reason I can’t bring myself to enter a classroom again, and it’s not just because I want to be at home to take care of my family. I don’t know if I could handle the hours, the strain, the uncertainty, the commitment, the…stress of all of it. I was so unhappy teaching before, and now…I don’t want to do anything that would make me that unhappy again. It's not the unhappiness I fear, just that where unhappiness lies is also where my breaking point resides. I can't let myself break again.

I’ve given up good opportunities, chances to be really talented at something or admired. I turned down jobs and advancements – mainly because I want to feel safe. Above all things – safe. And I’m not convinced that safety is the best place for growth to occur. So I struggle with my nerves still. I take baby steps and pray for courage.

I've never wanted to worship God just so I could have eternal life. Hellfire and damnation sermons where people would threaten me to hell if I didn’t accept Christ, they never motivated me. If death meant, dying into blackness, then I guess I was okay with that. Before Mom's death, I was a Christian who could worship God and accept that he created this earth and rules all things, while still being willing to die into nothing if that is what death really led to. I told myself that if there wasn't a heaven, I'd be okay with that. I still believed in a higher power. I still believed in a God who loved me, and I worshiped him - guarantees or not. It was still up to him where my soul would end up. He made the last judgment call - not me.

Then Mom died, and I lived through her dying, and that experience did change my understandings of spirituality. I felt like I had been granted a window into the other side of things. I really do believe that Mom lived on after she died, her soul at least. She really did haunt me. So how is that possible if there isn’t something beyond the physical? Something follows this earthly existence; that I am sure of now. But what that is – “blackness”-- not for me to know yet. Though from what I've observed, she seemed happy - more content than elated, sometimes childlike but behind her eyes, she had the wisdom of an adult. I’ll find out when I get there. It doesn’t motivate me one way or the other, except that I am sometimes impatient with people who worry about it, or more accurately, impatient with people who think that I should worry about it. God wants me here for now. I feel like I’m here to live out this life, and when my death comes, I hope I’ve learned enough and risked enough that I can bravely face it like she did.

How to Die - My Mom and Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:49:00 +0000

One of the greatest lessons my mother ever taught me was how to die.

Dying isn't something people talk about much. Morbid. Conversation killer. I can hear the crickets echoing in an imaginary auditorium now.

But I wish that someone had spoken about dying (and what comes after the dying) before I had to face my mother's death. It would have made her end easier for me to handle.

I thought I knew how I would feel. I had grandparents die, had attended funerals before. Suffered from friends who had died suddenly from car accidents. I had felt grief before Mom's end.

But Mom dying - that was different. It was more intimate and life-changing than anything I had ever experienced.

Two things were different about Mom's death. First, everyone else I had known died from old age and in a hospital. Or, they had died suddenly - no warning - and thus, no build-up of anxiety about their impending demise. Second, Mom died at home, and I, along with my sister, Sarah, were her primary caregivers.

Death is bad all around. But when my loved ones died in a hospital, I was able to speak to grandma or grandpa, do what was socially expected for the situation, and then...leave. I got to escape what was going on behind the hospital doors. I didn't have to witness - dying.

And when friends died suddenly, I missed final goodbyes and the build-up that comes from a long farewell, but I also missed seeing them suffer.

Mom wanted to die at home. We knew she was dying - bone cancer. We knew that the chemo hadn't worked, that her rare form of cancer had only a 10% survival rate. We'd fought the good fight, even cut off a cancer-ridden leg, and lost. We knew that she would feel comfortable in her own home, that my sister and I could care for her in shifts: make her meals, clean her bedpan, change her sheets, administer medicine, console her fears, entertain her. Dying at home seemed not only emotionally but financially the best option.

Going into Hospice care, all three of us were, I hate to say it, quasi excited. We would take this journey together, a family - connected to the end. We set up a hospital bed in the front living room, a chair on each side of her. The first night we enjoyed each other's company and watched a movie together on television. It felt normal, like nights we had experienced in my younger adolescent years before I had fallen in love, left home and gotten married, and my sister had gone to college. In the early days of Hospice care, I brought my new baby over and we passed her around "cooing" and "gooing." My mother loved my newborn. I loved my mother loving my newborn.

The first month, friends came to visit. A good friend, Andee, brought her own stool and came regularly - once a week. She would enter the room, unfolded her chair, and commenced into bringing the outside world into our world that never changed. "Did you hear about this in the news? Did you know about that?" Andee was a pro. She knew how people needed to stay connected to a fast-paced world. If dying could be enjoyable, then the first month was.

Mom read books about dying. Mom wrote notes. She still opened mail and paid the house bills. She worried if she had given up the fight too soon. Another round of chemo, perhaps? But otherwise, dying was a slow process, easy.

And my sister and I were there. Everyday. Holding her hand. Waiting for something to strike.

Mom was bed bound. The cancer had taken her leg above the knee and was eating away at her hips, her lungs, her spine (anyplace where cartilage and bone snuggled). A registered nurse came a few times a week to refill her pain medication. A nurse's aide came to help us change her bed sheets and give her a sponge bath. Bath times were painful.
Bathroom times were worse...Imagine trying to relieve yourself on a bedpan with broken hips. Physical pain. Emotional pain. For her. For us.

As the months advanced, dying stopped being easy. Reading and movies and music - the diversions of normal life stopped. Dying became a struggle, a marathon of breaths and empty hours filled with uncertainty.

Before she lost her ability to speak, she would ask, "What..." followed by a long pause, as she gathered the mental strength to compose her words, "will happen..." and her eyes would look at me pleading to find the last word.
"What will happen after?" I would fill in the blank.
And she would sigh in relief; I had guessed correctly.
I knew that "after" meant after she had died. God! My mind exclaimed. I could give her the scripted answer. I could tell her what she had been taught growing up. Heaven. Angels. Happy stuff.

But she and I both knew that she was wanting something deeper than Bible verses. What would death be like? On the most basic of human levels, we both feared that the end might be the end, that death was black and dark, and empty. That nothing existed beyond the physical.

In the end, I said what was most comforting, "I think you will go to heaven. I think you will look down on all of us, and watch over us, and look after my baby as she grows." It was what we both wanted to be true, even if our conscience had doubts.

Mom appeared tickled, "Oh, you," as if to say, "you kidder." But I could tell she liked that vision of the afterlife, even if letting go of her control in this world would be the ticket to ride that existence. She closed her eyes and rested her head back on her pillow. Comforted momentarily. We would have the same conversation again several more times as she inched closer to her final farewells.

Despite the doubts that surfaced about what "death" would be like, I never doubted her faith in God. She had always been a lifelong church goer - not because she felt it was the "right" thing to do or because it "looked" good but because God called her to be there. She had married a minister, played piano in the church choir, put strangers before herself, studied her faith and lived it as an example for others. None of this comforted me the way my religious friends expected it to. Dying is hard. Dying hurts. Dying tests your belief system and exposes your weaknesses. Dying drains both the person departing and the people who are clinging to them, lifting them up and sustaining their souls.

I think back to one afternoon, she suddenly began babbling in a singsong way. My father came into the room to see if she was okay and interrupted her reverie. She became very angry, "You made them stop!" she complained.
"Who stop?" my father asked.
"The angels were singing!" she cried.

Another time, she looked down at her legs in the bed. She stared at them with intensity. Later I learned she was watching her feet; to her, they looked as if they were drifting up off the bed, as though an outline of her shape was lifting out of her body, slowly drifting higher into the ceiling. Only her beating heart and her will to live pulled them back down again.

That my mother had a soul that could detach itself from her body became crystal clear and absolute truth in my mind. In her final days, we spoke less with words and more with our "energy." She could look at me, touch me, breath on me, and I intuitively understood her fears and needs. She knew my soul was entwined with hers, giving her strength, comfort, motivation to breath one more breath. My soul felt her soul inching closer to the precipice, where I could not follow. The line between life and death is precariously thin, and I secretly feared she might take my soul with hers.

By the time my mother was in the "active" stage of dying, friends and close acquaintances had disappeared. They had paid their last respects weeks earlier; there was nothing more to say or do, and so at the very end - dying was lonely. Aside from perhaps a nurse or a religious figure, most people probably face death either alone or in the company of their most intimate family, and such was the case with my mother and me.

In the weeks leading up to her dying, the world grew smaller, as though a camera had zoomed into our tiny living room/makeshift hospital - with tubes and oxygen machines, and dingy wall paper, and dim lamplight, and quiet, quiet, quiet noises. The world moved quickly outside our walls, changing and shifting, and marching forward. But time stopped at 309 Main Street. Only breaths mattered.

Alone. My sister and I held her cooling hands and waited, and waited, and waited. We waited as we hung onto her every inhale, watched her pupils distort and contract into squiggles - miniature strokes were choking her away bit by bit. We measured her urine output and its color - looking for changes. We waited for weeks. Counting down. Stopping and counting down again.

All the while she fought and struggled against living; she prayed for dying. Always, "When? How much longer?" rolling through our minds. In movies, dying happens quickly, within hours or a few days. Mom died slowly, agonizingly so. She had an old person's disease and a young person's heart that did not fail quickly.

Through it all, Mom was brave, stoic, polite, selfless, and forgiving. If the nurse hurt her when she rolled her over to change her sheets, Mom never blamed her or complained. She protected all of us, even my newborn baby from her pain, sending my daughter to another room if the pain would have made her uncomfortable. When my father disappeared into the study and played solitaire on the computer for hours on end, she forgave him for his escapes. And she prepared us for what we could expect after, "Your father will remarry. And soon." A wife knows what her husband needs to cope, and she loved him enough not to resent him for it.

She came to fear her medicine, but didn't give in to fear. Those tiny pain pills were as big as pickles in her mind.
"You can do this," we'd say.
"No more," she'd tell us.
"You have to swallow this. It will make the pain go away,"
"It's too big," she'd say. We would coax and plead, and after long minutes going round and round with tactical persuasion, she would screw up her face with resolve and persevered, even though each swallow could end in choking and body spasms and excruciating pain.

Time counted downward, spiraling into emptiness, until there was nothing. No speech, just labored breathing. 10 seconds. Breath. 15 seconds. Breath. 30 seconds. Breath. a minute, wait, wait, wait. "Was this the end?" Followed by, Breath. 20 seconds. Breath...Repeat. We held her hand and told her we loved her, that we'd "stay with her until the end." That I wouldn't let them take her body from us without checking her heartbeat and making sure she was truly gone. She sent me her love through her fingertips and squeezed my sister's hand slightly to let us know she still heard us.

The night she died, I had left Mom's house at midnight to visit my husband and daughter and my own bed. My sister had gone upstairs to sleep.

At 2:30 in the morning, my sister sat bolt upright in bed. Someone was on the stairs! Mom's footsteps. We'd heard them a thousand times before as children, a slow shuffle, thump, thump, thump as she climbed. "She's dead." Sarah knew before she ever raced down the stairs to confirm her absence.

When I got the call, all the preparations I had tried to give myself failed. All the anticipation in the world could not have prepared me for the hollow void that sucked on my insides like a vacuum. I broke that night, fighting back the emotional riptide that came from her departing.

Her death left me numb. What had happened to us? Life had kept going all around us while my mother died, and we...had stopped. How would we start back again?

A month after the funeral, Sarah and I escaped to St. Louis for a weekend. "To get away!" we said. Return to the world of the living. We tried to do normal touristy stuff: the botanical gardens, the zoo. I don't remember much of either. Walking and talking and being happy was exhausting.

We ended up tired from the bustle of looking at everything move so quickly, and stopped to regroup at a bench underneath the Gateway Arch, looking out on the Mississippi River. The sun was setting and the sky was turning pinks and purples.

"Have you talked to Mom lately?" my sister asked.
Without flinching, I answered, "I don't know. I haven't seen her lately." That's when it hit me that she was really gone. Both Sarah and I sat dumbfounded in our faux pas.
"I feel her with me all the time," Sarah admitted.
"So do I," was my response.

Neither of us could fully accept her death because she didn't feel gone. Instead, she felt like she had never left, like her presence was parked over my right shoulder, her energy warming my ear lobes. For weeks, I tried to shake her, to move on, only to pull her back to me - not ready to let her go.

I would drive home, and like having an automatic pilot at the wheel, I'd find myself turning down the street where she had lived, intending to stop and see how she was doing - only to have the memory of her death strike me anew.

I wanted to move on, wanted to be happy again. I confronted my grief head-on, convinced I could get past it quickly if I only suffered fully. The first year was a blur. I got reacquainted with my husband and baby girl. For her, I would wake, dress, and work for a better future for ourselves.

And yet, my mother's soul lingered with me, watching over me, haunting me. She would visit me in my dreams. Sometimes she would be alone. Others times she'd be with other family members who had passed. One dream she was sitting in an English rose garden with my grandpa. I thought it strange that she would be with him since they had never seemed close when alive, but they behaved as though they had been long lost friends - centuries old. She seemed happy.

Other times I would dream that she had not died at all, or that she had died but returned from the dead. I'd be sitting with her in her kitchen, like old-times. We'd be chatting away about nothing important, enjoying each other's company. The sunlight streaming in from the backdoor would shift, a cloud rolling over the sky would distort the room's lighting. I would see her face in full. Realization would hit. "You are sick," I would say.
And she would look at me, "Yes," resigned.
"You are dying again?" I said, more as a statement than a question.
"Yes," she would answer.
Panic. How much was I willing to trade for even a few more happy days with her? If I knew that we would end up right where we already were.

My dreams often turned to nightmares such as these. I'd wake up screaming. At its core, my mind was telling me what I did not want to accept. I couldn't go back to those awful days. I couldn't suffer through losing her again.

This torture went on for months. Me trying to connect with her in the after world. She trying to communicate in her own way. And neither one of us was moving forward.

One day I couldn't take the futility of it anymore. I was sitting in a parked car in the Battlefield Mall parking lot in Springfield, Missouri. My daughter was sleeping in her infant car seat.

"Mom," I said. "I love you..." and that's when the tears started to flow, because I knew what words I would speak next. "But...you have to leave." That's when the sobs started. "I can't...I can't go on like this. Holding onto you." And then the worst words of all, "You have to leave, and please...please don't come back." The most frightening words I ever spoke, but also the words that released me from living in a world of death. "I know that I will change my mind. I know that I will want you to come back, but no matter what I say, you have to stay away. You have to go now. We both have to go on with our lives."

And like that...she left. I worry that I hurt her feelings, but both she and I knew it was time for her to go - to move on to whatever God had in store for her. And it was time for me to live without her.

It's been ten years since my mother died. I've long since moved on and been happy again. My life is full. Mom is doing what she needs to be wherever she is, and I expect that we will meet again when my time comes, but her death and days of dying and the grief I had thereafter is not something I spend a lot of time reliving. I am happiest when I can let her be where she is without worrying or missing her. There will be an eternity to catch up later on.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple computers and creator of ipods, ipads, iphones, and many other technical devices died recently. And since his passing, I have heard ministers and other religious persons speculate on the destination of his soul, whether he was "saved" or believed in Jesus or God as his savior.

His sister, Mona Simpson wrote of Jobs' last days...those final moments with family, and I could relate on more levels than I thought possible. In the end, I suppose all people die in a similar way.

Simpson wrote about how his "breathing changed." How it became "severe, deliberate, purposeful." She wrote how his breaths would stop, and his wife Laurene would jerk up, alert, only to realize that he would continue taking more breaths. That his time was still climbing toward death.

I related to this too. To the breathing, the sudden fear that the last had been exhaled, only to be jerked back into dying again when the next inhale came.

But mostly, I related to Steve Jobs' last words. His sister quoted him as saying, "Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them."

I understood what was over their shoulder, what was past them. My mother had seen it; she had exclaimed her awe. Jobs' final words to those present were hardly any different than my mother's, "Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow."

Jobs has been quoted as saying, "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it."

A lot of evangelical Christians latched onto this quote and used it to denounce Jobs in their Sunday sermons because according to Christians, there is a way to escape death - accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, repent, and ask for forgiveness for your sins, and wallah - when you physically die, you will be spiritually saved.

To say that I was bothered by humanity speculating on the final resting place of Jobs' soul, based on a quote snipped out of a speech he gave to a group of future entrepreneurs while speaking at Stanford University is an understatement! I don't worry about Jobs' soul. That's between Jobs and God. I understand what he was talking about when he referred to "death being a destination we all share." My mother is no doubt in some kind of heaven, but she still had to die to get there.

"Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow," makes perfect sense to me. Just like my mother seeing her legs rise up out of her body makes sense, like angels coming to her room to sing to her makes sense, like her soul speaking to my soul, and her spirit lingering to protect my spirit, makes sense. On the logical level, the pragmatic level, it shouldn't make sense - but because I lived through it, I know that it does.

To those people who are alone in a room with a dying loved one (when everyone else who is speculating about your loved one's soul has left the room) I am praying for you tonight and tomorrow night and the next. For Jobs' family. For all those families who are swimming in the depression of the darker side of dying. I'm praying for strength, and courage, and perseverance, and faith, and that one day when your loved one has moved beyond this sphere, that you can rest peacefully outside of the world of death and dying.

Osama Bin Laden is Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Nearly ten years ago, my husband called me on the telephone, "Are you watching TV?" he asked.

"No," I told him.
I gathered up my baby girl, and switched on cable news. CNN broadcast the indelible images of the twin towers collapsing. I clutched my stomach and on weakened knee prayed for thousands of lost souls crying out to a clear September sky. My daughter crawled at my feet.

Tonight, I received a different phone call. My mother-in-law rang at just past ten o'clock - odd since she rarely calls near the bedtime hour. I feared a death in the family, but instead, it was a death of a different kind.

"Are you watching TV?" she asked me.
"Oh, God," came my response. "What happened?"
"Turn on the news. The president is going to speak to the nation. They've killed Osama Bin Laden."

Maybe it was the relief of knowing that all my family were well and healthy tonight. Maybe it was the surge of remembered sorrow from that fateful day in September ten years ago. Maybe it was the release of a deep seated vengeance in my gut that had finally reached its catharsis. Whatever the reason, I felt my knees buckle, my shoulders shake, my breathe catch, and my tears flow.

My daughter walked into the living room swishing her pajama pants and shuffling her slippers, "What is it?" she asked.

I remembered the day she had crawled at my feet. "Nothing," I told her. She would not understand the significance of my heart. I have relief at knowing that the world is a slightly safer place for my girl because of the loss of one figurehead. Not having to explain to her that she is safer tonight than she was last night brings me momentary peace.

I know that Al Qaeda is still just as active tonight as it was before, and is just as determined if not more so now to retaliate against the West, but I claim tonight's victory for my daughter regardless of these obstacles. Where the impossible once seemed unachievable, I have hope again.

God bless the brave men and women who have fought and continue to fight for our country and our freedoms.

Grant is my Prince

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 05:25:00 +0000

This afternoon I went searching for my three-year-old son. He was camped in front of the television watching one of Morgan's old DVD's - Barbie's The Princess and the Pauper - an exciting adventure filled with lots of pink and bows, kittens and puppies, singing and dancing. There's an evil villain, two damsels in distress, a common man with ambition, a prince in disguise; and they are all grappling with life dramas, such as the prince saving his princess from death's grasp, while they escape from an abandoned mine, and save the kingdom from a crazed, power hungry usurper. It's very dramatic. Grant's eyes soaked in every titillation.

I just turned and walked out of the room. What could I say? The boy likes drama. He imagines himself in the middle of all that action - sword drawn, fighting off evildoers, and discovering long lost treasure in dark caves. I just hope he doesn't imagine himself doing it in tights.

As the sun was setting this evening, I stumbled upon Grant outside. He had gotten his cozy coupe out of winter storage and was enjoying today's 60 degree weather and sunshine.

"Bye, Mom," he told me.
"Where are you going?"
"I going to the office," and he climbed into his Little Tikes red car with the yellow hood and scuttled his way down the driveway.
Then briefly, he stopped. Turned his head over his shoulder and whispered to an imaginary person he had been playing with before I had arrived, "Bye Princess." He waved to his "Barbie" and then turned back to me and smiled a coy grin. In a quiet voice he said with a tickle, "That's the princess." His eyes grinned at a piece of air that suddenly looked a lot pinker to me in the evening light.

"Oh, yes," I said, playing along.

Grant turned back to the task at hand, "I going to the office. It's far away. I going to work at the office." And like Grant has seen his father do on so many mornings, he drove his car off into the distance.

"Grant?" I stopped him.
"What?"
"Is mommy Daddy's princess?"
Grant laughed and pedaled away.

I'll never know if Grant thinks I am Daddy's princess, but Grant is definitely my little prince.

Morgan is Green

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:24:00 +0000

In Kindergarten, Morgan came home and insisted we begin recycling. And we did because we love our daughter and her passions, and since recycling was a good thing for the world, we started collecting plastic and aluminum and paper - sorting it and taking it to the local recycling center.

So you might think that Morgan is green because she recycles.

But no.

You might think Morgan is green because she just started attending a brand spanking new school that calls itself a "green" school due to all the fancy environmentally friendly building decisions, but - no on that score too.

You might even think that Morgan is green...with envy, and while I can't be sure about her current state of jealousy, I did not title my post "Morgan is Green" because of that foul emotion either.

No, I titled this post "Morgan is Green" because of a test that both Gary and I took a few years back. The test was a personality profile, and based on one's answers a person could fall into one of four categories: red, yellow, blue or green.

To summarize:
Reds are the feeling people, the harmonizers, those who act with heart over mind.
Yellows are the artistic, creative types who are independent and often follow a road less traveled.
Blues are analytical, data crunchers who make decisions based on data and less upon feelings.

And then, we have Greens.

Greens are the power brokers. They like facts. They like order and structure and control. They often wind up in management and get a high off of leading and making decisions. A great gift for a green is a day planner. Give a green a rule to follow, and he or she will follow it indefinitely - even if the rule does not always apply to all given situations. Teach a green to write in five paragraph essays, and that green will write in five paragraph essays for every writing situation no matter what the purpose.

And that is my girl - Morgan. She loves order and rules, structure, and control. Give her a method to follow in order to create structure, and she will adopt it gleefully.

The negative of being someone who loves order and structure and control is that the world is a very unorderly place. To a young green, my daughter sees danger everywhere, and worries when other people (reds, yellows, and blues) don't follow the rules that she holds in such high esteem. It can be hard to sleep at night when your mind is sorting through all the chaos it perceives.

So, I sat down with my daughter the other day, and I read to her a book from the American Girl book series about her "feelings." I took a hunch (something yellows do a LOT) and figured if Morgan could get some sense of control over her feelings, she might be able to handle them better.

Hunch wins! We had just finished reading a chapter about how making lists when you cannot sleep can help you fall asleep.

The other morning I was going through her room, and I found a bunch of post-it notes, neatly arranged on a pillow - SO GREEN.

On these post-its, she had written out her "plan" for the upcoming morning, with multiple versions (some with lists, some with diagrams). They go something like this:

List #1
8:00 - Get Ready
9:00 - Eat Breakfast
10:00 - Read
11:00 - Watch a little TV
12:00 or 12:30 - Go Roller Skating with Grace

She liked organizing her day by time, and chose to break each activity down into smaller parts:

List #2
Get Ready
1. Take Bath
2. Brush Teeth
3. Put on Clothes
4. Put on Makeup

List #3
Watch TV
Watch 4 Sponge Bobs - 1 hour (hilarious to me that she needs to itemize the show she is going to watch - so cute!)

List #4
Read
1. Find a book
2. Make sure it is a chapter book
3. Find quiet place
4. Read at least an hour

The last list is my favorite (probably because it is the most anti-list of them all)

It is a diagram, like this:

To be fair to my daughter she has all the characteristics of a Red, Yellow, and a Blue - we all do. And I suppose the ideal is for all of us to strive to be a beautiful rainbow of colors, but every time my little girl begins ordering us all around my husband and I turn to one another and say, "She is soooooo Green."

Cruise in Review - Video

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:44:00 +0000

Cox South ER - Not a fun place to visit

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:50:00 +0000

Cox South broke ground today on a brand new ER, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that they need the extra room.

I spent all of this morning and afternoon visiting the current ER.

Grant busted his bottom lip today doing stroller gymnastics while I was trying on swimwear for our upcoming Caribbean cruise in the Kohl's department store dressing room.

In a flash, while I was snapping spandex, my nimble 18-month-old had mounted his Baby Jogger, and before I could consider outcomes for his fate, I saw the whole cart tumble backward. His head hit the deep, brown door first, richoceting backward.

"Oh Grant!" I exclaimed, while a woman in a nearby stall, hearing the commotion and the resulting screams from Grant, called over the door, "Is everything okay?"

At first I thought everything was okay, and I spoke over the door loud enough to be heard over Grants wails, "Yes, I think so." A bad fall, but no more than what would amount to a bump on the head. I scooped up my monkey and shushed him, and hushed. That's about the moment I noticed my shoulder was dripping with blood. I took a closer look and saw that Grant's bottom lip and the inside of his mouth were pouring red.

"Oh God!" came my next comment. "Oh, God!" I looked for the source and depth of his cut.

This is where the woman on the other side of the door became my angel. She called for help. "Help!" she said. "We need help in here!"

This woman had absolutely no reservations about shouting or demanding attention, which was good because I was preoccupied with trying to assess the damage to my son. She ran out of the dressing room and before long had returned with a clerk.

I will spare you the horrible details of the inefficiency of Kohl's department store and how they cared more for protecting themselves from being sued than from helping me.

I signed "Please don't sue us" paperwork so fast that I've probably signed away my next of kin and any right to sue a major department store for building incredibly thick dressing room doors. Anything to get me out of there and to the ER.

Problem was - I was no where near my car. It was being serviced at the dealership up the road. I had walked with Grant to the clothing store in his stroller. I celled Gary and told him I was running back to the dealership. Maybe they could give me a courtesy shuttle to the ER. Gary said he would meet me there.

This is the point where I am really glad to have started running. Adrenaline got me to a shuttle and to the ER in less time than it took Gary to arrive from work.

When we arrived at Cox South, there were two people in the waiting room - both looking very much like they were in line for a Swine Flu culture.

The admit nurse, looked at Grant, saw that all he needed was stitches and put him at the bottom of the priority list.

That was at 10:30 a.m.

In the five hours that passed thereafter, more people with suspicious respiratory diseases showed up, addicts to drugs, stroke patients, heart attacks, car accidents, angry relatives of said car accident victims - they all came and sat and then got called back into the back room ahead of little Grant, who may have looked bad but was mostly hungry and bored.

Let me tell you, the ER waiting room was a sad place to visit. By 4:30, over five hours of waiting for a room - wrestling him away from dirty toys, the floor, walking him up and down the hallways and sidewalk - religiously washing his hands with Purex - we had finally made it back to see the doc. He took good care of our little man - numbed his wound, and stitched him right up.

The whole procedure took no more than a few minutes, but Grant screamed for the most of it out of fear and hunger, but mostly fear - until his little emotional core couldn't take it anymore and he, to quote the ER nurse, "went to his happy place." Grant passed out and didn't wake up for over an hour.

I held him in my arms and listened while he took shallow shuddering hiccupy breathes, in and out, in and out, hiccup, in and out, in and out, hiccup. His eyes squeezed shut.

Gary was positively yellow. Hearing your son scream and not being able to do anything to prevent it will make any parent weak-kneed.

We're all safe at home now, but I can testify that Cox definitely needs new ER digs. The place was overcrowded.

They kept taking patients back to check vitals and then making them return to their chairs because they didn't have enough beds to treat everyone. The new facility will have three times the capacity as the current one. August 2010 can't come fast enough. If not for my benefit (my fingers are crossed that I will never need to use the ER again) then at least for the Springfield metro area; it needs the extra space.

Epiphanies in the Dark

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 03:24:00 +0000

Events piled up tonight to create the perfect storm - both literally and figuratively.

Morgan had swim class, which followed with a shower at home.

Lately, she has taken to locking the bathroom door, "I need my privacy, Mom."

Fine, fine. I get it. She's self-conscious. It's a good thing.

But tonight she took a shower in my bathroom, and locked my bedroom door.

Ten minutes into her shower, a shower of another sort started outside. And then it quickly turned into hail and lightning and a bunch of other things that made my inner neurotic think, "My kid should NOT be in the shower when there's cloud to ground lightning and freaky 'Night of the Twisters' action going on outside."

I started banging on the door to get her attention, yelling her name so she could hear me over the shower noise.

That's when the lights started flickering.

So picture this from Grant's point-of-view: Mama is yelling and banging and smacking the bedroom door and then the lights start going on and off like real bad pyrotechnics, and then suddenly - everything goes completely BLACK and Morgan is now screaming with soap in her eyes, and she's naked and dripping wet, and on the other side of the door crying because she can't unlock the door in the dark, and Grant is now crying because he's standing alone in the darkened living room without his Mama or his pacifier or his big sister, and, and, and...It was too much for any baby to take.

The poor kid lost his marbles.

We spent the better part of fifteen minutes fumbling in the dark, searching for a flashlight that wasn't burnt out so we could find matches to light candles. Morgan was still dripping wet holding onto one arm while Grant had a vice like grip of my waste with his thighs.

The cool thing was, once I had him in my arms, Grant stopped crying. Instantly. It was complete trust. So long as I didn't try to put him down, he was fine.

So what was very "scary" and actually to replay it now, pretty comical - all ended up being a pretty decent evening. I snuggled the kids next to the gas fireplace, and Grant tucked his legs up under himself and burrowed his head against my chest. He sighed and fell asleep.

Morgan and I read stories by candlelight, listened to the weather radio, and then she drifted off just about the time the lights came back on.

I can't say that I love being without power. Losing touch with electricity for even an hour made me feel insecure. But I was able to discover one thing: I was able to see the depth to which my children rely on me for their power, for their security, and that was a nice epiphany.

Hamsters Escaping

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:14:00 +0000

Many, many months ago, Morgan begged us for a Hamster.

Many, many months later, Morgan had earned enough good, gold star points that to delay her reward any longer would have been child torture.

Our little hamster, Matt, came home to a glittered, pink cage that looked great in the box, but has failed miserably at keeping the little Hamtaro in his place.

When Matt escapes, it makes for great fun for the family cat, Sarafina.

Since Sarafina has proven she knows how to kill - birds, rodents, small crickets - we do our best to secure Matt's cage and shut the door to his bathroom at night.

Alas, last night, Matt exerted his biceps and escaped, and we had left all the doors that might have prevented a full housebreak open.

I was dragged from bed this morning by an anxious family chowing down toaster breakfast waffles while crawling on all fours, looking in dark corners for a cowering rodent.

Grant was especially cute as he imitated everything Gary did. Gary looked up. Grant parroted his head up. Gary looked down. Grant dropped his head to the floor and peaked in all directions. I'm not sure Grant understood the nature of the game, but it sure made for a different morning routine - all fun for our little baby.

Most days, we find Matt hiding behind a toilet, but this morning - nothing.

Gary drove Morgan to school like a madman and left me to continue the search.

I cordoned off the house into sections and began searching room by room, watching the eyes of the cat, whose ears twitched - listening for the sounds of pittering and pattering that my own sorry eardrums cannot.

Sarafina paced Morgan's room, then the living room, cowering in a box ready to pounce at the slightest movements. But it was all for show; Sarafina had as much clue about where to look as I did, and she collapsed on her favorite chair, disgruntled and salivating.

I started my search with Morgan's closet, which is now much more organized - however, no hamster resided there.

I moved on into Morgan's room, putting away some towels in the hall bathroom.

Grant, who had been dutifully searching high and low (mostly low) alongside me, followed behind me inspecting everything I did twice.

Grant became interested in the wonderland of towels in the bathroom. Until this morning, I don't think he realized that the doors to bathroom cabinet opened.

I returned to Morgan's room to begin the task of disassembling her bed when Grant insisted I return to the bathroom. He pointed to the corner of the cabinet, into the dark recesses, behind the mattress pads and beach towels.

I saw nothing and was set to turn away again when Grant insisted I look again. "Dare. Dare," he said and pointed once more to the corner of the cabinet.

"I wonder?" I wondered.

I slid out the little drawer that holds Morgan's washcloths. My suspiciouns peaked. What did I see? Hamster droppings.

I lifted the washcloths with hope, expecting to see the dark, little black bear cuddled underneath: no hamster. But underneath the drawer, hidden in the corner of the cabinet was little Matt - just where Grant said he would be.

I heaped tons of praise on our little 17-month-old. He was very proud.

Unfortunately, our little lover of animals is quickly losing all of his gold stars. He now has most of the acquarium's lid off and is terrorizing the poor goldfish. Gotta go!

Catharsis

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:23:00 +0000

About once every two or three years, I get into this "funk." I feel like all I want to do is cry, and I have absolutely no idea where the feeling comes from.

The need to cry will follow me wherever I go, pushed into the back of my thoughts. I wish I could be like a normal person and have a good cry and be done with it, but I'm not much of a crier. I've tried to expel the tears by force. I can sit in meditative state and concentrate on giving the ducts a free pass, but nothing comes up.

And then when I can ignore the sadness for no longer, the "We need to talk" conversation comes.

Since I have absolutely no idea where the feelings come from, Gary serves as a listening ear to help me sort it all out.

Last night was one of those nights. And then before you know it, I'm crying, and I have no idea where the tears are coming from, but they are coming, and coming, and somewhere in the mix is stress and anxiety, and loneliness from being a single-mom while Gary is away working, and I'm feeling like I have to be strong and keep us going, and be a good mother, and a good sister, and a good friend, and keep the house clean, and a good listener, and interesting, and strong when others need strength, and suffer through the tedium and boredom, and laundry, and never be weak, and keep it all together, and try to be the supportive one because I measure Gary's stress to be so much more stressful than my stress, which to be fair it really is, and fear that I can't show Gary my hurts because if I do then it will only add to more stress that he is feeling, and what I'm really scared about is that I'm really the weak one who in the end is dependent and needs him more than he needs me, and all I want is to be respected and admired, and not feel bad if I feel selfish for wanting him to go to the mall with me even though I know it is the place he hates the most, but I feel like I've done so many little sacrifices that have gone unnoticed and later unappreciated, that when I'm ignored or passed over, I feel sad...and sadder...and saddest, until I want to cry. But I don't know why.

So I cried last night. I had a catharsis, and it felt good. And now I don't feel sad anymore because when I add up all my stress, I still love my life. I love that I have a husband who cared enough to listen and held me while the tears welled up, understanding that it wasn't his fault or my fault, just living's fault, a husband who refused to denegrate my need to have a release from all the little things that added up to a big, hurtful something.

And that's all I'm going to say about that - for another two years.

Missouri Advances to Elite 8

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:26:00 +0000

I may have graduated from Missouri State, but my entire family has always had its heartstrings laced at Mizzou.

Grandma and Grandpa both were professors there.

Mom and Dad met there, dated, and married in a Columbia church.

I grew up watching Mizzou football and basketball, and taking tours of the campus every time we visited the grandparents.

Two of my older brothers attended the family university, and I would have gone too if it hadn't been for some serious competition that Missouri State was bringing.

Still, for all my love of Missouri State, I've got a weak spot for the black and gold.

I jitter and fidget when watching my two teams play. And if the heat is really on, I can't stay in my seat. So was the story last night. I was up and down, pacing. I got so bad that I had to pull out my hammer and nail gun and reset interior doors.

So there I am, shimming a closet door and sneaking peaks at Missouri as they start to pull away and dominate Memphis, when I look up for the last second desperation shot before halftime.

It looked like this:

Upon viewing the above, all the nervous anxiety, tension, welled-uped hopes barreled forth, and a domino effect resulted in our living room: I screamed; Morgan (concentrating on Pokemon and oblivious to March madness) screamed because I screamed; and Grant screamed because Morgan and Mommy screamed; Gary stood with his shoulders squared, holding a spatula like a sword and prepared for an ensuing attack.

"Mama," Morgan reprimanded, "Don't do that!"

Normally, I would agree. But when replayed, even Gary had to dance with me in the living room.

Mizzou advances to the elite 8, and I got a crooked closet door fixed. We're all happy, albeit a bit tone deaf.

New Years Staring Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:43:00 +0000

In January, I stared the New Year in the eye and dared it to flinch first.

I've never been much of a person for New Year resolutions. They last about as long as a week; at which point I realize I was deluding myself about any chance of success and probably drinking when I made the promise to "keep a clean house" or "lose 10 pounds" or "landscape the front yard" or "you fill in the _____________."

That was until I stared the New Year down and also listened to the advice of a good friend, Megan, who told me, "This year I'm only going to commit to something I want to do."

That got me to thinking, "What do I want to do?"

I've always had a hankering for running a marathon.

I know, I know, sounds like your typical New Year's resolution snake pit.

So I decided not to run a marathon.

Actually, I researched how long a marathon actually is. Then I got in my car and used the mileage meter to trace 26.2 miles. Across town, back again, and one more time to make it stick, and I realized that I am in no shape mentally or physically to run to the airport from home and back.

Not even a half marathon seems conceivable.

I started to look for Web sites that gave advice for couch potatoes who wanted to be runners, and not many were helpful. Most of the Web sites I found gave advice for people who already could run at least 30 minutes straight.

And then I stumbled upon Runner's World. It gave me a great morale boost. Their Web site posts an 8 week beginner's running program. At the end of 8 weeks, you're running 30 minutes four to five days a week.

Here's a link: http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-380-381--9397-2-1X5-3,00.html

Like most times when I embark on something new, I don't want to say too much at first for fear I will chicken out, and I don't want to hear people ask me, "So how's the running going?" when I've already fallen off my pledge. That also means I tend to clam up on my blog. Thus, no blogs since November.

But I did tell a few friends of my goal: run for 8 weeks. That's a resolution I knew I could keep. If I hated it after 8 weeks, I could quit. That was also my promise to myself. I've basically been looking at this 8 week resolution as really a deadline for quitting.

I did great at first. Who wouldn't? In week 1, the plan calls for you to run for 1 minute and walk for 2, alternating this routine until you reach 30 minutes.

Of course, somewhere around week 5 I got sick. And then Morgan and Grant and Gary got sick. So there were about 2 weeks where I had to repeat weeks 5 and 6 because family took precedence.

This is where in the past I would have flinched, and the New Year would have collected his due.

But see, I only had four more weeks until I could quit, and I was already up to running constantly for 15 minutes with 1 minute breaks in between.

I pulled my ass off the couch and got back to my original plan.

Odd thing is: I've lost track of what week I'm on. I know 8 weeks has passed because I'm already past mid-semester.

And what's better. I do not want to quit (which was what I was hoping would happen all along). I've got new running shoes, and a new goal: run in a 5k.

Gary has been supportive of my goals. He sent me a link to a charity fun run at the end of April, http://www.caretolearnfund.com/run.htm

I'm up to running 30 minutes straight now, and so all I want to do is improve my time so that I can eventually run a 5k in 30 minutes or less.

New goal. New date to quit, April 25th.

Zombies Explained in Plain English

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:51:00 +0000

Lawmakers voting more than once

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:09:00 +0000

Get a load of this:

Lawmakers in the Texas capital vote more than once on bills while their colleagues are out of the room. Who's to say that republicans or democrats can't steal votes while their deskmate isn't looking? And everyone is all in an uproar about ACORN! Geesh!

Grant Swimming

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:26:00 +0000

Whirlwind Summer

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:35:00 +0000

Summer was just what I needed. Lots of activity. No time to think or sleep. Between work and play, we had no time to spare. My children grow so big, and I am only sad that they do it so quickly. Grant drools, crawls, and pulls himself up now. He eats table food like a toddler - loves bread and veggies. Not a fan of sweets or apples.

Morgan started 2nd grade this fall - loved the Olympics and has a goal now of being an Olympic swimmer and also wants to compete on the trampoline. I tell her she can do it if she wants: both events if that is her wish. Reality and practicality will set in all too quickly, but even for 2nd grade she still retains her innocence and wonder. I hope we can hold onto that for a few more years.

Here is Grant crawling:

I like the range of emotion he goes through - curiosity, frustration, back to curiosity.

What We've Been Up To...

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:17:00 +0000

Partners

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:07:00 +0000

Fifteen years ago, Gary and I snuggled on his parents' living room couch; lights dimmed, we fought curfew with conversation and body heat.

We had not been dating long - a summer and a few short fall months, but both he and I knew that this was no longer a fling. Our relationship had potential, and though we were young, Gary took the lead when he asked me, "What do you think of accounting?" It was his major in college.

I didn't know anything about accounting - other than it involved numbers and taxes.

Gary knew just as much - that and the little he had learned in a high school business class.

"James wanted to be an accountant," Gary eye's looked into the past and remembered the tragedy of his friend's car accident. His far away look suddenly returned to the present and my quiet gaze. "I chose accounting because of him. Wanted to live out the dream he couldn't."

That is Gary - loyal, honorable.

Rarely does Gary ever initiate conversation. Anyone who knows the two of us knows that I'm the talker in the relationship - he the silent observer, amused at my verbal trippings. So when Gary speaks, I know to listen.

"Do you think you can see yourself with an accountant?" Gary asked again - more to the point this time.

"I don't know anything about accounting," I hedged, the lesser commited of the two of us. We were young, and I was stupid not to see that a man like Gary comes but rarely.

"I think I would be able to provide for us. I could be a good husband and father." It wasn't a proposal, but it was proof enough that the man that held me in his university sweater was serious about a future with me. "Accountants can make good money and still be home by 5 o'clock," he said.

It was all very much too much for me. I was barely nineteen at the time, and highly immature at that. I had never thought of my future in terms of where the money might come from, nor whether or not there would large sums of it.

The pursuit of money had never occurred to me. The pursuit of a home, kids, school clothes, and new appliances was foreign as well. "You think about money when you are trying to decide about your career?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered dubious. "I think most people do."

But I had only ever thought about what I might be creating or performing or playing from one moment to the next.

I had ambitions to be sure. I wanted to teach, to influence my students, to raise them up to a higher understanding of themselves and the world. It was all very idealistic and had nothing to do with money or white picket fences. I felt confident that if I were to have but a hovel, I would be very happy - if only I had a passion for my occupation.

I quizzed Gary on his passions. Writing and science? History perhaps?

But the final score was this: he wanted a family.

"Do men really dream about that?" I asked.

"Why wouldn't they?" he replied, incredulous that the dream of home and family seemed to be owned solely by women.

I think some kissing followed.

A year or so later the proposal came - this time the real one.

A couple years after that, a graduation and a wedding, a job offer, and Gary and I plunged into a partnership. We would finally discover all that accounting had to offer.

It has offered more than we ever bargained that late night in the fall of 1993. The dream of a husband who comes home by five o'clock fell by the wayside long ago. Being a CPA has demanded far more of his time than most men would willingly give to their careers. Through it all, he reminds me that it was his family and our future that motivated him.

"Are you happy?" he will sometimes ask me as we lie in bed at night.

"Yes," I will reply. It is true. Gary will snuggle his head near my shoulder, burrowing his forehead near my ear. He is a quiet man, but I can tell when he is pleased. "I couldn't do it without your support," he will say.

Some kissing usually follows.

The work hours have been far more than either of us were prepared for. On average, the normal worker works 2080 hours a year. That would be a typical 40 hour work week.

Gary's time report often exceeds 2700 hours per year. Essentially this adds an additional 15 - 16 weeks to his normal work schedule. 8 to 5 hours are nonexistent. Coming home by 7 is considered an early day.

Staying up late to keep the communication flowing is a requirement.

The truth is: Gary's career has always had the potential that mine did not. I would never be able to support our family the way that he had dreamed so long ago on a teacher's salary.

When it came time to start a family and the juggling of two careers became too difficult, I stepped back. It became clear to me and he that if we didn't make a change, the one part of our lives that we wanted to care for the most - our relationship - would suffer for the sake of housework, diaper changes, and career.

I gave up some dreams so that I could keep the dream that mattered to me the most - Gary and Morgan and now Grant. He never made me do it, and I never begrudge him for it. I am so much happier doing what I do now.

But because I gave up some of my own potential for the sake of our partnership, I have always felt that the role I played at home was just as important to his success in the office. Call it living vicariously through him, but whenever he has gotten promoted from staff, to senior, to supervisor, to manager, to senior manager, I felt as much as though the promotions were for me also.

Last week Gary sat next to me on our own living room couch - not very much unlike the one we sat on 15 years prior. I held our new son in my arms, nuzzling him to my breast. Gary smiled, looking on at the sight, and I knew he loved me. My silent look in his direction, then back at the baby we had created told Gary I returned his affection.

It was at that moment that Gary told me his news. After twelve long years, Gary has been offered a partnership in his office, a top ten U.S. accounting firm. He will be a partner beginning June 1st, and with that promotion a much greater future than either of us had ever dreamed possible 15 years ago will come with it.

I am proud of him but also of us. I look back on this time: the sacrifices, the late nights, the disappointments and successes, and I feel like I own this promotion as much as he.

The title may have come only recently, but the feeling has been there all along. We have been partners for a long time now, and I love the partnership we are in.

Atonement

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:03:00 +0000

I finally got the chance to sit down and watch the film Atonement.

As masterful as this film was in weaving a complicated plot into the confines of two hours, I just couldn't seem to get myself to care very much for the heroes or heroines in the film.

I watched in numb objectivity as the scenes of war, tragedy, lies, and yearning played out on my LCD screen.

What was wrong with me? Clearly this was Hollywood cinema at the equivalent of its literary best.

I couldn't seem to shake the feeling though that the point of the film had nothing to do with the young lovers. The end result that this epic story wanted to convey wasn't about just a love story, and so I didn't try to love them.

I also didn't try to hate them.

More was happening in the film than plot though, and this much I admired about the movie.

As is often the case when I've watched a well-crafted piece of art, it takes me some time to digest my reaction. And as is often the case when I watch a well-crafted piece of art, I am not able to sleep until I do digest it fully - consider it mental indigestion.

Gary is my Maalox.

Usually, it goes something like this: He works on his computer (because its Busy Season at work and late night computeridge is what he does). I sit in the tub and talk it out, finding my point as I digress through plot twists. Gary nods. "Uh huhs," at the right moments. And generally acts as a sounding board, until the obscure becomes obvious to me.

My mind kept going back to the older woman at the end of the film, Briony, who is dying and confessing her sins in the book. The woman so moved me - that was where my heart had lurched - where the sudden welling-up of all my feelings came forth.

What was it about the old woman? The message of the film was hidden in her speech, her looks. Moreover, I wanted to understand why I could have watched an entire film feeling numb and indifferent to the characters only to suddenly find myself very much conflicted and emotional at the end of the film.

Like Briony, the older woman, I wanted to cry, to explode - so overcome with emotion as she was.

Why my sudden reaction? Who knows?

I suddenly found myself caught up in the meat of the matter.

It wasn't her despair, or even her confession at the end of the film that the autobiographical book (that she initially swore was the truth in its entirety) was actually embellished for the sake of the readers' desire to see the lovers together.

No, my reaction came more from the fact that the point of the film - that honesty and truth and perspective are always tainted by the lens of the observer. That for all Briony's attempts to make sense out of what she saw in the world, she was fatally flawed to wish it easier to understand, easier to interpret, easier than the complexity that living life actually brings.

No black and whites - just glorious gray.

And this poor woman, who had lived her whole life trying to atone for her failings and lies and misinterpretations and cowardice - still - after all that time couldn't see that to save the lovers was to betray them yet again for the sake of her own need to cling to her internal need for uniformity, order, control, and the sense that to reward the public with what they want and expect is better than the truth itself.

I don't know why the moral bothers me. I resist it though - as much as Briony resisted ambiguity. Perhaps there is a bit of Briony in all of us, but I wish not.

Super Duper Pirouette

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:45:00 +0000

Grant "Speaks"

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:31:00 +0000

Mama making Grant Laugh

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:24:00 +0000