Weak and Weepy

I've never been particularly good at admitting my weaknesses. The sorts that can be deprecatingly laughed about, like my lack of self-control when it comes to shoes or dark chocolate with raspberries, my obsession with the numbers on radio volume control, my tendency to twitch when I see apostrophes used for plurality...fine. Those are the sorts of weaknesses we fondly call "foibles," those little quirks of personality that transform us into special little snowflakes, possibly just a touch flakier than the next one over.

But real weaknesses? The sort that require trips to therapists, medication, incredible patience on the part of those who live with us?

Not so much.

I spent at least three years mired in high-functioning postpartum depression because I couldn't bring myself to ask for help. I was so good at hiding the despair poisoning my soul that most people made all sorts of admiring comments on how Together I was, what a SuperWoman I was...Ha. It didn't help that the one time I did tell The Ex that I thought I was depressed and in trouble, he told me to suck it up. I kept my mouth shut for another six months after that, and by then I had fallen so much further that I almost didn't make it back out.

I've come a long way since then, but I still struggle to admit that I'm, well, struggling. I have the few individuals who are "safe": DraftQueen, Heidi, Amy, and of course MTL. I don't fear judgment from them, in part because they have all Been There in one way or another, and because they love me for who I really am rather than who I would like people to think I am.

And...I just realized I'm doing a very good job of avoiding what I came here to say. You see what I mean?

Enough stalling.

I struggle with anxiety and depression. It's nothing like what I once experienced, especially the depression aspect, but I deal with anxiety on a daily basis. I'm even (gasp) medicated for it (shh, don't tell anyone) (because we all know that people who have to take medication for that mental crap are nutjobs and shouldn't be trusted), because panic attacks have a nasty way of interfering with one's ability to get through the day.

I have a feeling I always will. For one, it runs in my family, on both sides. For another, studies have shown that highly intelligent women are also highly prone to anxiety, because we overthink EVERYTHING. Mother Nature giveth and she taketh away with the other hand, the stingy bitch.

Oh, and I do kind of have a stressful life, despite the many delightful compensations.

I've been struggling this week. I've been a good girl and taken my little pill every morning, and I still find myself short of breath, my arms burning, my heart racing. I haven't had a full-fledged panic attack (thank you, pharmaceuticals), but I've come close. I keep telling myself and others that I don't really have a good reason for it, but I suspect I'm lying.

I've dealt fairly well with my grandfather's death. After all, he was old and in pain and he passed so peacefully. It's the way to go, you know? BUT. He was the first of my grandparents to die. And watching my grandmother face life without her beloved...I think that struck too close to home. I can't stop thinking about what it would be like to have to keep going without MTL.

I struggled with that reality last year, when something made me realize that I had allowed MTL to get closer than anyone else in my entire life. This meant that I also had opened myself up to incredible pain, because losing him would be like losing a part of myself. I remember weeping one night and finally confessing to him that I was terrified of letting him in that much, because it meant that one day he would die and I would have to deal with that pain.

He didn't tell me I was being silly (though he would have been fully justified in doing so), rather telling me that he understood my fear, but that we couldn't allow our fear of death and losing each other prevent us from living life and loving fully.

He was right.

So I'm not falling apart over the thought now, but that fear and anxiety are finding other ways to make themselves known. And let's face it, I'm not good at dealing with this.

What do you do about your anxiety? What works? Because I'm asking for help.

Au Revoir, Grandpere

To the seeing again...

That's the literal translation of the French farewell, and it is what I say to my grandfather. He passed away quietly, peacefully on Saturday evening, traveling from this world to the next between one breath and....

The day before, my father had purchased some summer sausage and cheddar cheese, two of my grandfather's favorite foods, long since forbidden due to dietary restrictions. But what of a diet so near the end? He had barely been able to swallow anything for days due to the edema. On Friday, he ate sausage and cheese for three meals, delighting in the rich tastes he loved. He woke Saturday and had his bowl of Cream of Wheat. After changing clothing, his last traces of energy drained away and he closed his eyes and began slipping away.

I got the call from my father during breakfast. MTL came home early from work and he drove me up to Saginaw, where we joined other family members gathering to say their au revoirs. We spent the day talking and laughing over memories, watching my alma mater Michigan State University trounce their rival University of Michigan for the fourth year in a row, and comforting one another. We held vigil in a sense, gathered together in mutual love for the once-hearty, now-frail man lying under blankets in his armchair, not quite in a coma but not fully with us either. We touched him, spoke to him, assured him of our love.

Finally, knowing he could linger for another hour or a couple more days, MTL and I took our leave. I kissed my grandfather one more time, told him that I loved him, and we drove away. As we left, one of my aunts was putting on some of his favorite music.

Fifteen minutes later my father called to tell me that Grandpa had passed.

When my time comes, I want a similar passing: peaceful, quiet, surrounded by the love and laughter of those I love most. I want my ashes scattered in a beautiful place where they may join the earth from which I was formed. And I'll see my grandfather again, along with my aunt and others who have gone before.

Au revoir, Grandpere. Je t'aime.

Until we meet again.

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

My paternal grandfather, who is 93, is in the last days of his life. We have no real idea how many days this may be, but his edema and congestive heart failure have transformed into a vicious cycle feeding each other, and the medication that was supposed to help the edema instead shut down his kidneys, so now he is on hospice care.

It's the long, dark tea-time of his life. Only less dark and more light, because if there's anything his decline proves, it's that he is wealthy beyond imagining in what matters: family and love.

His five surviving children have gathered from hither and yon, including my father, who flew back from West Africa on Sunday evening. I took the day off on Monday and drove him up to Saginaw, where he joined his siblings in caring for their parents. I spent several hours there as well, more so to comfort my grandmother, who is too frail to care for him physically but is still emotionally tied as ever to her beloved husband of seventy-one years.

I know it seems morbid, she confided, but even though I don't want him to go, at the same time I don't want it to last too long...

I understand. It's incredibly difficult to witness the painful decay in my grandfather, the more so because he has always been such a strong man. He is a fighter: he will not go gentle into that good night.

I come from sturdy farmer stock, German Mennonites on both sides who traveled from land to land fleeing persecution for their pacifist beliefs. All four of my grandparents are still alive, still independent, still in compos mentis, though age is taking its toll on them all. This grandfather is the oldest. Five years ago, at age eighty-eight, he re-sided their house and put in new windows. Up until a year ago, he could still be found in his basement workroom, crafting the gorgeous woodwork that graces all our houses. Picture frames, clocks, jewelry boxes, bookshelves, rocking horses, detailed classic automobile models...all his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren own beautiful pieces that will be handed down from generation to generation. That was his hobby, the work of his hands and heart at the end of his days working the land or overseeing factories and warehouses or doing Master electrical work. The delicate curves of the clock on my mantel, the enormous bookshelf against my wall, the jewelry box on my dresser, and the incredible wooden rocking horse in my children's room: they each declare all the love that my reticent grandfather struggled to put into words.

I'll admit that witnessing this final fight has struck me to the heart; even more so, witnessing my grandmother's grief and my grandfather's determination not to leave her side, this woman he has loved for longer than most people have been alive.

I don't even know how to put into words the fear that is triggered by this. I just found My True Love recently. I know the chance of getting seventy-one years with him is somewhat slim, since we met in our thirties rather than our teens, but I want as many years as I can get. And the reality is that my family is longer-lived than his. How horrible a person am I to want to go first, when my time comes? I don't want to be in my grandmother's place, facing the loss of her life companion, the one she loves best in the world.

I have hope and faith in a life hereafter, but I am a creature of this world. Each loss leaves it a dimmer place, caught in the shadows of sorrow and death.

Shadows

I'm at a point where I'm internalizing so much stress that I'm no longer trusting my reactions or judgment. I feel like a volcano bulging with pent-up magma, ready to explode at the slightest fracture. My neck and shoulders are bunched up, my throat aches, my head throbs, and acid burns down my esophagus. It would only take one wrong word for me to erupt in rage, tears, or both.

It's no one thing. It's everything. It's the buildup of all sorts of stress and fears and worries and hopes and aggravations. It's the fatigue of the year drawing to a close. It's the frustration of senioritis. It's the lack of sleep, the lingering effects of whatever respiratory plague attacked me last week, the sense of dread as wave after wave of bad news and potentially disastrous now-we-wait-and-see news rolls in about loved ones and politics and money and everything else in this seriously fucked-up world.

I don't always deal well with stress. Okay, fine, I rarely deal well with stress.

MTL thinks I need to take a mental health day. I hate to do that. I have few enough sick days left, and I tend to hoard those for truly necessary sick leave (mine or, more likely, kidlets'), as I know all too well the financial impact of unpaid sick leave when those days run out. I do have a couple of personal business days I haven't used that will vanish if they aren't used, but I have to request those at least three days in advance, and anything further out than Thursday just isn't possible. I have senior project presentations, junior speeches, senior exams, and then the rest of final exams filling every available slot.

I'm just so TIRED. Not just physically. Mentally. Emotionally. Spiritually. I can't even focus much on the wedding, because everything else takes up my attention. I can't look forward too much to the honeymoon, because a part of me dreads the possibility of having to cancel due to financial or other reasons. I don't want to have my heart too set on that in case it's pulled out of reach.

It's as if there's a threatening cloud looming over everything. I'm struggling to find the light through the shadows.

Thankful

One of my friends and coworkers, the one who met me last night out on the practice field along with a couple of hundred other people for Nate's candlelight vigil, said on her Facebook that students don't realize that impact is not just one way. It's not just us, as teachers, impacting our students' lives. They impact ours as well. Every day we come into contact with dozens of students, and they affect us just as we affect them. She's right. I am not the person I would have been without working with the hundreds of students I have seen in my eleven years of teaching, both as an intern and a certified teacher.

My students know that I struggle with names. My brain has a disconnect between name and face, so very often. There are some that are seared into memory, for good or evil, true, but even if I know a student very well, I often freeze up and completely forget his or her name. They're generally kind about my forgetfulness. In turn, I reassure them that it is nothing personal, and that I do know who they are.

I never forgot Nate's name. I don't know if I ever would have.

Last night I had the opportunity to speak briefly at the vigil, after we had lit our wind-threatened candles and people were able to share stories and memories about this boy who had touched all our lives. I said that his father had asked me which year Nate had been in my class, and I struggled to remember--not because I didn't remember him, but because it felt as though I had known him for much longer. Then some former students reminded me that I had him during his junior year, and it all came back to me.

The year I had Nate in class was most definitely not the easiest year of my life, I said, and laughter broke out around the huge circle from all the other former students who remembered. It hadn't been. That was the year my life had fallen apart, the facade of strength and happiness and a decent marriage crumbling as that marriage imploded and I literally disappeared from work for three weeks. I managed to hold things together once I got back to work, but barely.

Nate was one of the few people who could get me to smile, even on my worst days. He was no Pollyanna--he had a snarkiness and sarcasm that worked better anyway--but his smile lit up the room. He would bring me chocolate and food, because he knew that's what works with Ross. Just a few months ago he came in with a couple other former students to bring me lunch, because he knew I always forget my lunch. 

He was one of those people who make others feel better about themselves. He was one of the people who make the world a better place by being in it. I would have always remembered him, even without this tragedy. I will always remember him.

I'm glad I had the chance to share that with his parents, his friends, his Color Guard family.

Today has been a rough day, for various reasons. I'm here at work, and I'm getting things done, and I'm working with the students. But I'm not smiling. And in return, my students are being solicitous and cooperative. Several have checked to make sure I'm okay and not in the throes of deep depression--and I'm not, but I understand why they're wondering. A student who missed class because he slept in brought me donuts and a mocha and a tray of baklava as an apology (they know my weaknesses, these kids). One of the girls who always eats lunch in my room asked if I'd like her to bring in a slice of homemade chocolate cake tomorrow.

They're gentle.

They care.

As I sit here, not eating lunch because I have no appetite, but sipping on a cafe mocha from Tim Hortons, I feel a wave of thankfulness washing over me, pricking my eyes with tears.

They're my kids. They're the reason I stick with this job despite all the thanklessness and political bullshit.

And I hope that they will leave this school with memories of a teacher who made a difference in their lives, just as they made a difference in mine.

Tears

I'm angry and I'm crying and the only reason I'm still here at work is that if I go home I'll have nothing to keep me busy and occupied. Laundry and cleaning don't count because there's too much time for thinking.

This last weekend one of my former students was in a terrible car accident in West Virginia, on his way to an audition that would hopefully continue to move him along in his amazing gifts for music and dance. He suffered horrendous head trauma and has been in a coma all week.

This morning he died.

It's not right. It's never right, but it seems so particularly horrible when it's a bright, brilliant nineteen-year-old like Nate. He was one of the memorable ones. I can't remember a day when he didn't have a smile or funny comment to brighten up the day--and not in an annoying Pollyanna way. He made people feel better about themselves. He had a sweet confidence and joyful soul like few people I've met.

Just a few months ago he came into school with a couple of other former students to bring me lunch, because I always forget lunch, and because gifts of food are always welcome. He was full of hope and laughter over what he was doing in college, where he was going in life.

And now he's gone. And his mother will be facing her first Mother's Day without her son.

I hate this part of my job. It's always tragic when people die, but even more so when they are young and all that life and hope and potential is snuffed out long before time. This isn't the first time it's happened, but it is one of the hardest.

Rest in peace, Nate. You will never be forgotten. Thank you for making all of our lives just that much brighter during the all-too-brief time you were here.

Sunset

I wrote this one after driving west into a sunset too beautiful for words. But I tried anyway. This is the last of the nature posts from that assignment. Maybe next time I'll try to get out in nature itself a little more. You know, like in spring.

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The sky is orange tonight--such an insufficient word for that blazing color, "orange." So pedestrian and ugly, reminiscent of Halloween and pumpkins. This is no autumnal orange of squash and spice and spectral eyes. This is a blaze of color that sweeps across the west, vivid and breathtaking against the deep leaden grey of what is not touched by sun. It shades to a pink that once again surpasses the childishness of the word, and finally edges into a reddened purple that blazes one final moment. And then grey. All is grey and shades of grey, swirled across a sky that speaks of coming snow.

Gone in a moment, dipped too far below the edge of the world for light to reach the visible sky.

We speak of the sun dying on the horizon, traces of long-ago belief that the sun died each night, only to be reborn each dawn. Eaten by wolves, birthed by goddesses. Death in glory, birth in triumph.

Such beauty, this dying. The sun's death is painted by a Master hand, shapes and pigments no human agency could imitate. This is not the glory of violence, going down in a blaze of glory in some cliche rock n roll sense, but the blaze of a life well lived, beauty spread and love given and warmth shared, until the reflection of this life is as glorious as the one who lived.

I hear of such deaths. I think perhaps my aunt's was such a one, as hard and painful and horrific as it was from one point of view. But the reflection of her life--and even of her death, the going of it and her hope and faith amidst pain and knowledge that nothing more could be done, the leaving of her husband and young children--the reflection shone on all who knew her.

Painted by a Master's hand.

Death And A New Beginning

The end-of-year holidays are always a bit hard, really, what with all the chaos and extended family and children running around getting underfoot and underskin and more extended family and build up of HOLIDAY HOLIDAY HOLIDAY and then it's all over and everything's just a bit flattish.

Plus there's my birthday shoved in there, just wedged in anywhere it might fit, and here's the thing that sucks about having a Christmas birthday (it's not the present thing, because on the whole my people are quite good about realizing that if everyone else gets different presents for Christmas vs. birthday, then it's only fair that I do too, unless it's something Really Big that counts for both by the sheer Bigness of it all): even when people do acknowledge your birthday and even want to celebrate it, there's no point at all in celebrating it on the day itself, and what with all the exhaustion and business and familyness of the season, it's entirely too difficult to get your favorite people together to celebrate at all.

I'm thinking seriously of having my birthday celebration in June instead.

I've been anxious and on edge and horrifically tearful this last week. I did not cry on Christmas, thank God, because I've had too many Christmases spent in tears and I'm quite done with that, thankyouverymuch, but I have cried more in the last few days than I have over the entire last year. I'm not a very tearful person, really. I might get anxious or angry or melancholy or even suspiciously moist about the optical orbs, but actually tearful? Wet cheeks and reddened eyes? Crying into my pillow or a tissue? Not so much.

MTL has been patient and loving and comforting and rather alarmed. After all, when one climbs into bed at the end of a long day and wraps one's arms about one's beloved and then realizes that she's starting to gasp and shake with unexpected sobs, one does tend to become a little concerned. Well, at least he does. Rather than angry and shouty, like some people might be. He did remind me gently that I don't have to try to be strong all the time just because he's going through stressful times too--his shoulders are broad, after all.

It's what I'm here for, he said, and so I cried on those shoulders for a while, and then he made me laugh and I was finally able to fall asleep.

This time of year is a muddle of beginnings and endings, births and deaths. The last two years have been such a muddle of the same for me. And although I love so much of where life has brought me, the strain of the journey has taken its toll. There are new stresses in this new life as well: new family, new extended family, changing relationships, changing perspectives.

I think the bulk of my pain and rage (because those tears have been as much in anger as sorrow) lies in grieving the death of certain hopes and dreams that I've clung to for three long decades. Hopes that I would someday receive certain intangible things from extended family that, I now realize, I will never get. Dreams of a kind of acceptance and approval and pride that would, in reality, require the sacrifice of who I am, this person I've taken so long to be able to love.

A beloved cousin, one of my fellow Black Sheep, recently said to me that he knew from childhood that I would never fully fit into the parameters of expectation and acceptance in our Family. To do so would mean a rejection of who I actually am.

He's right. But facing that requires setting aside a lingering hope that somehow, someday, my Family (that huge, insane, ridiculously respected, secretly dysfunctional, looming, impossible Family) would actually be proud of me for exactly who and what I am, without a checklist of what must change for that to happen.

And realistically? That doesn't exist for anyone. It's not the human way.

Still...it's a death. So I'm grieving.

Apparently I'm currently stuck in the Anger stage.

But with each death comes a new beginning. Just like the passing of the old year gives birth to the new one.

Last night DMB helped the kids make pita pizzas while My True Love took me out for a steak dinner, just the two of us. Then we came home and played silly Wii games and watched a silly movie and ate chips n dip and drank sparkling juice and stayed up just long enough to watch the ball drop before crawling into bed like the old farts we are.

Today, we're all lazing about watching MTL rock Super Mario Bros on the Wii.

Just us. Just me and my family.

I Has a Bucket

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Apparently the thing to do these days is to have a Bucket List. You know, the things you want to do/accomplish before you kick the bucket. Shuffle off the mortal coil. Run down the curtain. Sleep with the fishes. Pay Charon's fare. Buy the farm. Check out. Dance the last dance. Give up the ghost. DIE.

(You want some other euphemisms? Check out this list. Boy, we'll do just about anything not to say the actual word, won't we?)

I haven't thought about my Bucket List much. I mean, I've said there are things I want to do "someday," but my comment about riding a motorcycle a while back? That's the first time I can remember specifically thinking about doing something before I /whisper/ die.

It's just not the way I generally think. But I'm getting older, yo, and what with my bones creaking and popping and my body acting in general as though it's a goodish bit older than I actually am, I've started thinking about the kinds of things I'd like to do before Death gets in the way. Or even, really, General Physical Infirmity, because that may come sooner than I'd like. Let's be realistic, peoples.

And it turns out a slew of my students already have Bucket Lists, which makes me wonder if it's just the influence of media or if by some miracle more of them have a concept of mortality than generally is the case. Mind you, some of the items on their lists might make mortality more of a reality than a concept, but it's a step.

Anywho, I figured I might as well do my own Bucket List. So here you go--the list of things I'd like to do before I push up daisies*:

1. Ride a real motorcycle. Possibly even drive it. Because I'm a Total Badass like that.
2. Visit Australia and New Zealand. Lauren, I still have an open invitation to crash with you, right?
3. Tour the ancient monuments and places from mythology in Greece. I've only been obsessed since I was seven.
4. Publish some of my writing. And no, blogging doesn't count. Any agents out there?
5. Learn how to do some real ballroom dancing. This may need to be sooner rather than later, as I have a feeling artificial joints, walkers, and/or wheelchairs might make things difficult.
6. Win a teaching award. Because I'm modest like that, yo.
7. .....

Ack. This is where my mind goes blank. I mean, there are things I'd LIKE to do. Travel around Europe more. Visit all fifty states. Learn how to make a chocolate souffle. But they're not the sorts of things that make me feel like my life will have been incomplete if I die before they're accomplished, you know?

Does this mean I'm insufficiently ambitious? Does this mean I'm a loser?

Does this mean my bucket is undersized?!?

Cuz I hear that sometimes size DOES matter.

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What about you? What's on YOUR bucket list?

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*Except I've decided to be cremated instead** and have my ashes scattered because the idea of my preserved remains sticking around in a lead-lined box is just creepy, people, and I don't feel like going through the rigamarole of arranging for a burial au naturel, a la pine box. Plus apparently the level of preservatives present in our food is rendering postmortem preservation pretty much unnecessary these days, and that's even more icky. Just sayin'.

**And yes, I totally get the irony of my not having a Bucket List but knowing what I want done with my body after death. I also know which hymns*** and scripture verses**** I want read at my memorial. I said I'm a planner, people!!!

***"It Is Well With My Soul" and "Amazing Grace". And no, I don't care if that's totally predictable and cliche. They're still my favorites and the lyrics mean a lot to me. So there.

****Psalm 23 (King James Version) and Psalm 51 (New Living Translation). What I said.

Clearing the Air

MTL's uncle died this last weekend. He had terminal lung cancer, the result of a lifetime of smoking, and he died in his sister's arms, coughing up blood as his lungs hemorrhaged and his life drained away.

I can't get the image my imagination has created out of my head.

Michigan went Smoke Free this last Saturday, ironically enough the same day MTL's uncle passed away. This means that (most) public buildings; including restaurants, hotels, and bars; are now entirely smoke free. No more smoking section, no more clouds of carcinogens floating through the supposedly non-smoking section, no more eyes burning nose dripping lungs aching foulness driving me out of establishments in search of fresh air.

I couldn't have been happier when I saw a hand-drawn sign saying "Now Smoke Free" on the door of the restaurant where I ate Saturday night.

I'll admit to having smoked occasionally in college. It was rare, it was always in social situations, and I'm not sure I ever finished an entire cigarette. Finally, when I realized that hey, I don't LIKE smoking and doing so just because someone else is smoking is, well, STUPID, I stopped doing even that much.

As for those who say the law takes away their personal rights? Well, what about my personal right not to breathe in the smoke they've chosen to inhale? Just because they're THEIR cigarettes doesn't mean the smoke magically knows not to enter MY lungs.

I have friends who smoke. I love my friends. I hate those cigarettes. I hate the smell. I hate the secondhand smoke. And while I have always been one of those annoying (to smokers) people who make snarky comments about cigarettes being bad for your health, now I'm not just snarky.

I'm angry.

I understand the addiction aspect. I do. But now I know, much more up close and personally, with enough of the graphic reality to make me shudder, what may very well lie in store for my loved ones who smoke.

And when I think that every time they light up one of those cancer sticks, they are willingly running the risk of one day lying on a bed, spewing life from their mouths and noses every time their shredded lungs convulse, leaving the nightmare memory of agony and blood and helplessness behind for those who loved them...

Yeah. I'm angry.

Because it's suicide. Slow suicide, but suicide nonetheless.