We don’t weed that Garden

He would have been on my ass about missing this writing deadline. I was famous for lagging on write-ups and my big brother? Well, the truth is, he likely would have been sitting here, the morning of, writing his first and final draft. The procrastination gene ran deeply in the both of us. Fortunately, the getting shit done gene did, too.

Another truth bomb on this, the one year anniversary of my brother’s passing, is one that only a writer or a soul disturbed by a traumatic loss could grasp. We know that describing our feelings about a moment in time is best done; in that moment of time.

I write this on a morning that aches of the morning one year ago that we were told our beloved Chris Cousins, had died of a heart attack. The sky is blue, scattered with dreamy-white clouds. Blues-rock music plays in the background. I stop what I’m doing periodically, alternating between admiring the music and the flower gardens I was fussing over when I got the call.

I would imagine that no one ever forgets the phone call that informs them that their only sibling is gone. I certainly didn’t. I remember that call each time I step near the part of my garden I was standing in when I answered my phone. I remembered the call when I avoided the entire garden for the remainder of the season after my brother’s passing. I recalled it again when our first spring after losing Chris came, and it was time to look at that garden space again.

I poured as many seeds into that garden space as I could. I planted trailing vines, marigolds, cosmos; the most hardy flowers I could think of. I was determined, for some unconscious reason, to not be able to see the floor of this garden. I threw on a few more wild flower seeds, then a few more, for good measure. Then I walked away. I haven’t weeded that garden all summer.

Call it procrastination, call it laziness, but the rest of my gardens are fussed over at a near-obsessive level. This garden is different. This garden has seen a river of my tears. I’m convinced the soil can still hear the pleading screams that erupted out of me on this morning one year ago. My arms tremble straight through to my fingers as I recall them. A lump in my throat threatens to bring me to my knees; again.

No, we don’t weed that garden. It does not bring me to my knees to do so, as I fear I won’t be able to rise up as steadily as I did the first time. For now, I’ll admire the blooms it produced. So many blooms in fact, that I can not see the ground, the rocks; I once landed on. One day, I’ll step closer and inspect the damage. All I know right now is that a year is not long enough. We don’t weed that garden.

We miss you, Chris. Here is your soundtrack: https://youtu.be/Q5vBzECT7mc

When your blessings seem to mock you

My brother moved himself and his beloved family back to our home town a year ago today. It was his youngest son’s eighth birthday. I remember he felt a tremendous amount of guilt that Lucas’s day became a day of separation from the home both of his boys had known for years. The rest of us who loved us, his wife and the boys maybe didn’t give that stressor on my brother’s shoulders enough attention; we were just completely overjoyed to have them home. In our eyes, all of our worlds would now be complete. My brother had a way of filling the empty spaces in people’s lives.

The activities that happened during those two weeks seemed rather mundane at the time. He and his family were busy getting settled in and he was tired from the move. Still, he was anxious to catch up with everyone and welcomed visitors. I was anxious to show him how I had grown as a person in the years he had been away.

We chatted over coffee, we worked together on the gardens at his new house. We shopped for perennial flowers together. He picked out flowers in his wife’s favorite shade of purple, I picked out a flower for their anniversary. A beautiful pink lily. Friends that had become family to both of us over the years gathered around his in laws pool and shared food, drinks and laughter. Both of our lives had turned full-circle. The circle was complete.

Two short weeks later, the perfect circle we had all managed to build together was abruptly cut into jagged pieces when my brother passed away suddenly from a heart attack in the early morning hours of August 15th. To say that life hasn’t been the same since would be an understatement that would do no justice to the role my brother played in each life he touched.

I had known that the anniversary of Chris’s passing was coming soon. Beyond the day nearing on the calendar, I could feel the familiar ache in my soul that last August had brought, returning. I had thought that I was as prepared as I could be for that day, until it was brought to my attention that today was my brother’s homecoming.

The moment I was reminded of this, I was overcome not first by the sensation of his absence, but by how I felt the day he was coming home. For a brief moment, I re-experienced the excitement of my brother sending me text messages, updating me on how the move was going. Finally, he alerted me that they were “on the road” home. Soon, they would arrive and we could help them unload the moving truck. Once that task was complete, they would truly be home.

He was excited. I recall my brother showing me around his new yard, telling me all about his plans for this season, and the next. On our walks, we saw butterfly cocoons, named the flowers in his new yard and he showed me where the fire pit would go. Later, we joined them all for a swim. I had missed my big brother. Never did it matter what we were doing together, it was the time spent that counted.

Today, I visited his beautiful wife and his beloved boys for his youngest son’s birthday. Admittedly, I’ve been a bit of a hermit in the past year. I don’t go out much, even on errands. I attend social engagements even less. I’ve grown into a bit of a homebody over the years, but today, as I walked through the old hopes of my brother, his family and my own, I realized their may be more to my tendency to keep to myself.

Not on all days, but today; each blessing of the day seemed to mock me and threaten to drown me in tears. The flowers my brother and I picked out together and planted last August are about to rebloom. There was no beautiful, shiny green cocoon to admire near the milkweed, but I certainly could picture my brother standing there that day, showing it to his son’s. Annual flowers I had gifted him and his wife last year had re-seeded themselves-as if to say that they too, are letting go of last summer hard.

I swam in the pool, something that felt foreign to me without my brother there, tossing our kids over his shoulders. Now they toss each other. It’s not as far, it’s not as high. He really was the strongest man in the world.

It’s not that we don’t laugh, or love or play as a family. If anything, we have all had to “step up” double to fill the many role’s that my brother played in everyone’s life. It’s that when we do “move forward,” it becomes immediately, glaringly obvious that my brother was a true genius at the craft of giving of himself. There is no handbook, no guide available that will help any of us love like Chris Cousins did.

I got home tonight and cried for the first time since the day mom passed. I cried for mom, I cried for my sweet brother, I cried for his beautiful friends and family that go on so bravely without him. I sobbed for how it hurts to go out into the world now-to be reminded at random turns in life how much it can rip at your core to miss someone, to need them. I cried even harder at what a relief it was to finally just let it…hurt for a while.

Tomorrow, I’ll do my best to live and love with a heart as big as his was. For today, I’ll let myself just miss him. God, I was so glad he was home.

Progress: the cure for all adversity?

I can’t remember a day in my life before mom’s passing that I wasn’t fighting with everything I had to bring pride back to my family. The race to reclaim my dignity started with my father when I was quite young. Wanting desperately to win his approval, I went to degrading lengths to hear the words, “I’m proud of you, kid.” It took an eighteen- month drug bender on my part and the recovery following that near-death chapter of my life, to finally hear those words before my father passed when I was twenty-eight years old.

After losing dad, my brother and I pressed forward. Even with broken hearts, we were determined to change the legacy of our family. For a decade, my brother thrived in his career and with his family. In that time, I continued to search for the path that was meant for me. (I’ve never been good with directions.) While I looked for a new goal to surpass that of maintaining sobriety, my brother and mother became my biggest source of validation. I wanted to emulate the best parts of who they were.

Nothing made what my brother had to offer this world more real and present than his sudden passing in August. In an instant, the future I had created in my mind of us raising healthy, happy families together, was erased. More than that, my guiding light for all major decisions in my life was gone. Who would I turn to for answers now?

For eight months following the devastating blow of losing my brother, it was just myself and mom. Not only was mom in end-stage liver failure, but she was rocked to the core from the loss of her son. Taking care of mom and pouring every ounce of my love into her for the time I had left with her became my new mission. My new sense of pride to hold onto, if you will.

There was nothing prideful about those final months with mom. Mom’s final weeks and the torturous pain she endured during her final days will stay with me for the rest of my life. Witnessing my mother choke for each breath, as she slowly drowned in her own fluids was the only thing that made it bearable to let her go home to God. I never would have told her this, but I was more terrified than I had ever been of anything to be left here alone without my family.

When mom took her last breath, finally released from her agony in this world, I sobbed over her until the coroner came to get her. It was not until I left that building, and a new day began, that I realized how profoundly my life had changed.

I haven’t cried a single tear since I walked out of mom’s facility that day. That fact allows for no accuracy on measurement of the depth of my loss. I lose count pretty early-on in the day of how many times I feel the urge to pick up the phone and dial the phone numbers of my late family members. Sometimes I want to tell them about something interesting that happened in my day. Other times, I just want to hear them laugh again. On Memorial Day weekend, I was near-tears, just wanting to have a simple burger with my brother.

When that inner-longing that never seems to let go subsides some, I try to see what the best version of me looks like today. She’s often exhausted, achy all over and a touch jittery. What I have learned about me is that this ache I experience inside can often be relieved by progress. Working towards my degree, gardening and caring for my animals are all examples of ways that I can make myself proud; even when I feel like there is no one watching like there was before.

My progress in the face of so much adversity may look like that of some kind of recovery warrior from the outside looking in. For me, it’s about leaving each situation, and eventually, this world, in a way I can live with myself for in the end. The way I see it, we only really answer to two people in our lives: ourselves and God. Who do you aim to inspire pride in?

You have to understand: we are on a mission from GOATS

I can’t imagine what my choices in the days immediately following my mother’s passing looked like to other people. It’s a wonder what people in my life were thinking of my “grief process,” and I certainly didn’t devote much thought to their opinions. I was doing a heavier amount of processing than I had ever tried to take on before. I was on a mission. I felt the weight of that mission more deeply than I can adequately describe here. That mission becomes even more difficult to convey to other’s when I add that I was on a mission from Goats. Yeah, you read that correctly.

Pictured from Left to Right: Thelma, Martin and Louise

Our decision to dive (well, it wasn’t nearly that graceful) into goat ownership had been solidified in the months leading up to my mother’s decline. As mom’s health worsened, Spring time also finally came; bringing us a real-life lesson in the circle of life. As we put the plans to bring goats to our homestead into action, the leaves on the trees began to sprout and the first flowers of the season bloomed. Migrant birds from the south visited our feeders in flocks of hundreds. I’m sure it would have been a glorious show to sip coffee by and observe, but I wasn’t there to take it all in.

I haven’t been “there” in a very long time. By “there,” I mean that I have not been completely present for anything I have taken part in. When I began pursuing my college degree two years ago, I never would have imagined how deeply the lessons I learned during that time would effect the course of my life moving forward. I think many people that start college envision a graduation day at the end of their journey-a day filled with family, memories and celebration. My mother and brother would be so proud, watching me fulfill a long standing dream.

The sometimes harsh circle of life dashed those visions first by taking my brother in August, then by taking my mother in early-May. I had not had a chance to absorb the loss of my only sibling when mom started to decline rapidly. From August through May, my time was divided not-so-evenly between full-time college, full-time motherhood and having some facet of my mother’s care on my mind; full time. I was barely clinging to any vision of a happy ending at all by April.

Though I didn’t want to admit it, mostly to myself, I had nearly lost myself completely. Every aspect of my life began to show the effects of long-term grief and the fear of the unknown with my mother. My school work suffered as I folded into myself and surrendered to a pain that I knew was pointless to try to battle against any longer. My stress level began to attack my immune system and I was sick with one “winter-illness” or another for three months straight. I still do not know how I managed to keep my head above water for long enough to avoid drowning.

Just then, life did its best to push my head under water. Mom’s final week came and with it, all I had been dreading since she became sick nearly two decades ago. The fact that it seemed that I had so long to prepare for this moment did nothing to ease the blow of watching my mother fight for every last breath for five days straight. The thing with witnessing someone suffer and struggle to breathe is, eventually you start to pray for God to release them from it. After a particularly long and terrifying night with mom, God did take her. I could not remember the last time I had seen my mother look so healthy and at peace. She was beautiful, like an angel.

After a week of watching her fight and just as long of crying more tears than can be counted, I said my final goodbyes to mom. Walking away from the assisted living home for the last time was painful, but I knew right then that I would not be returning for a very long time. I had given mom everything I had in me. With that realization, peace began to come to me, too.

The following day, my fiance and I were up bright and early, laying out plans for the goat shelter. I put my phone on silent, I invited those closest to me to come spend time at the goat farm in progress. I spent the daylight hours of the next several days working outside until my body ached and I finally submitted to the most restful sleep I had experienced in as long as I could remember. The following day, I would wake up rested and we would work until dark again.

My fiance and my son, building a Goat Shelter

After a few days of back-breaking, yet soul-healing work, it was time to bring our new goats home. From time to time, I would recall how excited mom was about her “Grand-goats.” Her face would light up when she saw pictures of them and she would share pictures of her Grand-Goats with all of her friends at the home. Sometimes I would think of my brother, who had a special fondness for goats and how much he would have loved visiting ours.

The days following their arrival reminded me repeatedly what we had all worked so hard for. Though our mission may have seemed off-focus for others, we somehow instinctively knew that these animals were a path to healing. None of us were prepared for the rapid healing they would provide for us.

I had not cried any tears since the day of my mother’s passing. As I processed the loss quietly and in my own unique way, those who were present were kind enough to allow me to just-be. Once we had the goats settled and I watched how they interacted with each of our aching souls, I finally understood myself why we had pushed so hard to get them here when we were “supposed to be grieving.”

My son and Martin the goat. Martin giving hugs after a tough day at school for Evan.

Spending time getting to know these gentle, quirky and emphatic creatures was exactly what each of us needed. Thelma, Louise and Martin have made quick work out of teaching our family some important life lessons about healing. They know when it’s time to be still in the sunshine and catch a quick, revitalizing nap. They know that light-hearted playtime is a staple in every day and that you don’t need a special occasion to celebrate life for. Our goats know that sometimes, a good snuggle is the perfect remedy for what hurts your heart.

Before now, I thought that healing or recovering from grief had to be a dark, grueling tunnel that you just had to walk through to get to the other side. My future now looks much different than the one I had planned years ago. Sometimes I grieve the loss of future memories that will never happen. There won’t be a graduation day with my parents beaming with pride or with my big brother taking pictures.

What there will be are countless moments filled with blooming flowers, silky soft goat ears to stroke and many more goals to set and conquer. That, is a vision from the future that I can handle.

Surrender to defeat (but rise up swinging)

man defeated by his shadow boxing

https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/defeat?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=defeat

I hope you are all enjoying part three of The House with the Red Door. Getting to work on part three of this series was a challenge, to say the least. Even the author of Up off the Mat has to pick herself up from a hard knock out delivered by life from time to time.

Admittedly, I could have taken my defeat with a bit more grace. It was the end of August, when I lost my brother, that I was technically knocked out. Not ready to accept the loss or the much-needed recovery time, I pushed forward.

To the outside world, my initial steps forward may have looked to the like a vallant comeback of sorts. I returned to college the week after my only siblings funeral. People suggested that a break may be in order, an idea I quickly dismissed. Much like someone who had suffered a blow-to-the-head in the most literal sense, I was far from at my cognitive best.

The truth is, I barely remember my entire fall semester. Somehow between supressed grief, the daily stresses of life and my mother going onto hospice care in December; I managed to complete twelve credits of my batchelors degree on the Deans List. That miracle was lost on me as the combined coldness of the winter months and my recent loss began to work it’s way into my soul.

The shock of the hard knocks of my life had begun to dissolve and the emotions that crept in to replace them were unwelcome. I was in pain. My head ached as each wound exposed itself in the form of once-fond memories that now taunted me. My heart, which had felt hollow for months, now flooded with what-ifs and could-be’s that would never be.

It was all too much. Instead of surrendering to the grief-response that my soul was begging me for, I told myself to continue to fight. The pep-talk to myself worked for a while. I registered for the Spring semester and finally started writing again. I told myself that being “okay” looked like making progress. As long as I kept motoring forward, neither the numbness or the what-ifs that made me suffer, could knock me down.

December was also the start of three major winter illnesses for me. I first became sick with the flu. Just as I was struggling to my feet from the flu, a respiratory illness took residence in my lungs. For weeks, and then months, I struggled with my health, often bed-ridden.

I could not figure out why I could not get “Up off the Mat.” (It’s been said that I can be a bit hard-headed.) Eventually it occurred to me that I might be a bit on the depressed side. Knowing what our emotional state can do to our physical state, (whether we choose to acknowledge it or not) I began to consider that it was the feelings I had first experienced following shock and numbness that had scared me into rapid progress.

I didn’t want to experience what it felt to recall memories from my immediate family that I would soon be the only one here to tell about. Most of all, I did not want to look ahead to all of the memories yet to be created that my family will not share with me. (Yes, writing that truth was painful.)

At some point a few weeks back, I started to take longer looks at how things in my life were…progressing. An honest self-assessment brought me to the realization that the outward appearance of “okay” had become a full-time job. Furthermore, I wasn’t fooling anyone.

My tenancy to isolate had returned during a cold-winter night when I had my guard down. Soon, I stopped attending classes at the college and started delay-viewing all of them at home. I let my phone-calls go to voicemail, often keeping my ringer off completely. Day-naps became necessity and eating became a chore. Any trip out of the house (known as “people-ing’ around here) was a source of dread.

Man, was I angry at myself. I felt I was losing a battle that I should have been strong enough to conquer. Not even sure who the true enemy that dealing me these damaging blows to the soul was, I silently began to beat myself up for not having the stamina to defend myself. Why couldn’t I just be happy? Why couldn’t I continue to evolve into the true-me that I know I am capable of? Why couldn’t I GET UP?

I decided to nap on those questions. (Hey, I was sick and tired.) Even as I write, I remember clearly a statement my brother made to me as I struggled with the reality of surrendering to my brain surgery (and the long recovery) only three years ago:

“Kid, you have got to stop viewing your brain tumor as something you are DOING to those you love. Stop apologizing for it.”

My brother sure did have a way of pushing me into a place of perspective real-quick-like. As I remembered this Big Brother advice, I made the connection I needed in order to move forward in a more meaningful way.

I admit to being guilty of pride. Many of us are prone to the tendency to want to project a certain image of ourselves to the world. It’s natural to want to be viewed by others as strong, brave, or even unbreakable. In my life, I have been blessed with the tenacity to overcome multiple obstacles and even a few traumas.

Recently, it has come into my awareness that I have developed a sort of craving or addiction to what it feels like to come out on top when life knocks me down. When darkness finds me, I long for what I felt like on my first day back to work four weeks after a craniotomy. Just weeks before, I had been on a hospital gurney with parts of my skull on a tray beside me. Now I was grooming dogs. I felt like super woman that day. What a rush.

Life is not all fluffy puppies with cute haircuts though. It’s not all being honored as a Deans List Student, gardens full of happy flowers or long days by the pool with the best big-brother ever. Those moments are the true blessings but they are not where we do our best evolving as people.

If we do our best growing through struggling, I was in a great place to begin. Maybe my grief wasn’t something I was imposing on those I loved, either. Keeping my brothers wise words in mind, I tried his theory out on my combination of grief and winter-blues.

Not only did I stop apologizing for straying from my previous-self, I started to open up about who I was now. I had honest conversations with my college-family about where I was both physically and mentally. I shared my darkest thoughts with my parter and even a few close friends. I started to write what was on my heart again, sans apology to the world.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but people were prepared to accept the “messy-me,” too. (I have some seriously awesome souls in my life, for sure.) My college-family rallied around me, giving me slack where I needed it and a good push, too. My family and friends made their presence and support known to me by perfecting the art of giving space and offering comfort. With this, I allowed myself the fall that was needed following an impressive knock out.

I still do not know about the “what-ifs.” What I do know is that the hollow feeling the shock of grief created for me made way for emotions I was meant to feel. Once I allowed myself to be still enough, the pain washed over me in an uncomfortable, yet cleansing way. I did not drown, it did not last forever.

Pain, grief, anxiety and anger are emotions our bodies are meant to experience. We need not run from them, fight them or attempt to hide them. Let them wash over you, acknowledge the lessons that come from them and never apologize for your story on this earth. This is how genuine progress happens.

Dear Big Brother: Words matter, I get it

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A little-known secret about me: my writing editor was a real hard-ass. He had a fancy job at the Bangor Daily News as a political reporter and he’s one of the only people I know who got paid to attend Harvard for a year. He knew the ins and outs of writing better than anyone I knew, so I stuck with him when it came to my own writing. But as much as he was known for his talent as a word-slinging reporter, he was known for not mincing his words.

I thought Chris Cousins cut-to-the-chase communication style may have had to do with the fact that he was my older brother, but I learned differently at his funeral in August. His boss Robert offered a hilarious account of Chris’s no-nonsense expectations for writing pieces with a fine example.

My brother was a humble guy, but he had no problem giving his boss hell when it came to what he considered to be lazy word choice in headlines. He was not shy about it, especially when it came to the word get. “Don’t ever, ever use the word get in one of my headlines,” Robert said he was known for saying repeatedly.

We all laughed, knowing how passionate my brother could be when he truly believed in something. I laughed, recalling editing sessions with him on Google Docs that may have stung my ego but served me well as a writer. For those who aren’t familiar, Google Docs has an editing program that allows more than one user to be in a document at the same time. I adored watching him in action. He would transform what I considered to be an “okay” piece into something worth publishing, in mere minutes.

These editing sessions with my brother were not for the faint of heart. My brother expected the best from me, as he knew I did from myself. In this situation, there was no time for leading questions such as, “is there a stronger word you can use here in this sentence?” He preferred the more direct approach, “change this, passive verbs piss me off!” I suppose you’d have to know him but that was the ultimate expression of love from Chris Cousins. Furthermore, the lessons resonated with me.

I would often send my brother writings with no title. I would tell him I just hadn’t thought of one yet but that wasn’t the case. I had long-since dubbed my brother “the headline king,” and nothing pleased me more than to get my writing piece back with a title suggestion from him. Never did the title he provided have the word “get” in it. Ever.

Yesterday I posted a blog. Clearly still delirious from narrowly surviving a two-week bout with the flu, I thought I had a snappy title with “Getting comfortable with the cringe-worthy.” (Hey, all of the teenagers are using the word “cringe” these days, right?)

Then it hit me. It hit me harder than any comment from my brother on Google docs had ever had. I had committed the Chris Cousins cardinal sin of headlines. Robert had the good grace to refrain from mentioning my lame, cringe-worthy title when he saw and re-posted my blog. Upon my horrifying realization that I had disappointed my brother and he was giving me the much-dreaded look of shame from above, I knew I had to act swiftly. (That disappointment is rough guys, even from the beyond)

This morning, I did something I have never done and changed the title of an already published blog. Now called Sounding off on the cringe-worthy, I can rest knowing I’ll never make that writing mistake again. Six months after his passing, we all have much to learn from Chris Cousins about life and writing. Most of us have a tendency to get lazy or impatient regarding the things we claim are important in our lives.

The truth my brother never seemed to forget is that every effort worth making at all, is worth taking your best shot at. This is true when it comes to pursuing our relationships, our passions and even those things we don’t want to do; but must. Every step we take, every word we choose to speak or write, matters more than we realize. Our every choice leaves an impression on those around us while we are living: and a legacy for those we leave behind. What choices are you making today that affect people’s lives and your legacy? Choose wisely, Big Brother is watching.