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?

My Mother’s True Heart

“You should have seen her back in the day,” I’d utter weakly as the nurses worked through their medical routine with my mother. Mom was having a bad day and the nurses had call bells screaming for them. Mom’s medical team hardly had the time to get her settled in, let alone reminisce about who she used to be before she got so sick. Each time as the nurses rushed off to their next task, I was left in the dust of those memories; as well as the reality of the now.

Mom on her wedding day (to my father)
So young, so beautiful

Mom was in pain for the last twenty years of her life. In her last year, she suffered so greatly that I feel ill-equipped to try to do her pain justice in writing. The decline was swift and unforgiving. The results of her declining health were revealed to me, I know now, in doses as she felt I could handle them.

To what lengths my mother was willing to go to shield me from the worst of her suffering would not become clear to me until just two Sundays ago. Mom had been “holding her own” medically for several weeks in spite of being in both end stage liver failure and in the final stages of COPD. One day she called me on the phone, begging me to come see her. She said she was not feeling well, that she was having bad nausea. Sensing there was more to it, I went down to see her.

Once we were together to talk, Mom explained to me that she had been feeling quite sick during the overnight and that none of the comfort medications seemed to be helping her. When I asked her what she thought may be going on, she told me that she thought that “this was the end.”

After she allowed me a moment to recover from the reality she had just hit me with, she continued. Mom told me that she was tired, that she did not want to fight anymore and that she was sorry. As if reciting a list she had rehearsed, she then told me that it was okay to be sad. A single tear rolled down her cheek. One tear told me everything I needed to know about how serious she was about what she had said. That one tear was all mom had left. She truly was tired. Mom was a kind of tired that few of us will ever understand.

People who met Mom later in life truly missed out on the ride of a lifetime with my mother. The folks who met mom in her final years saw a woman who had been battling serious illness since her late thirties. She was sick enough to be deemed completely disabled by her early forties. Mom had really been through the ringer with medical professionals and with life in general by the time she was in her late 50’s. She was tired, she was irritable and most of all, Mom was sick of everyone’s shit. Every ones.

The medical teams in Mom’s life never could have known the true horrors mom had suffered at the hands of those who were disguised as helpers and lovers in her life. They definitely didn’t know that what came off as my mother being demanding and critical was actually my mother finding her voice and using it for the first time in much, much too long. They couldn’t have known that while I may have told mom to “be nice” out loud, I was silently cheering my heart out for her newfound emotional strength. Her body became terribly weak in her final year of life. My mother’s heart was as brave and fierce as it ever was. She was ready to show the world what her heart was stitched together with.

Mom passed away five days after she told my son and I that she would soon be leaving us. In those final five days, memories that she, my brother and I had shared together floated in and out of my mind in a dream-like haze. Dance recitals, school proms, holidays. On the fifth day, mom left these memories safe with me and joined my brother and my father, in heaven.

About a week after mom passed away, I opened mom’s journal for the first time. I had gifted mom this journal shortly after my brother’s passing in August. I hoped that writing would help her process and cope with the loss of her son. The journal was titled, “A love letter to my daughter.” The leather books contents consist of pages upon pages of her thoughts of love and concern for each person in her life. My mother wrote about me in nearly every passage.

I was humbled to the core at the notion that someone, anyone, would hold me in that kind of regard in their lives. With all of mom’s health problems, the pain she endured every day, while facing the end of her life; all mom could think about was her love and concern for those who had loved her. Suddenly, I wished desperately that the world, especially those who had seen mom at her worst, could see mom as I did in that moment. I knew right away that it was too late for them. As for me, I’ll keep telling everyone who will listen. Love has been described in countless ways. In songs, in letters, on banners in the sky. If you truly want to know what love in the purest form feels like, a mom-hug is the closest thing.

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.

Mama never mentioned days like this

“I like dogs better than people,” he was known for saying. People on the outside of our immediate family would laugh this common statement off. The deep affection my father held for his four-legged friends was legendary. My mother, my brother and I would laugh too: but through clenched teeth while in mixed company. We knew that in private, my father truly did prefer to make friends with even the worst dog over his favorite human.

Growing up, there was never a time we didn’t have at least one dog. Much to my mother’s dismay, it wasn’t uncommon for my father to return home from a road trip or a work site with a puppy or a stray dog. Looking back now, the approval of one of our most memorable rescue mutts, “Muttley” (that lacked hair on his tail-end and smelled awful even after a grooming from a life-long skin condition) meant at least as much to my dad, anyways.

After “the Muttley experience,” we learned not to question the many dogs that followed. Our family mourned when we lost Bandit, my parent’s black lab-cross of seventeen years. We celebrated when Dad returned home from a road trip up North with Dustin the Beagle. Dustin and I bonded over flea-picking sessions while I wondered silently when my father would look at me with the same sparkle in his eye he got when he looked at any of our dogs.

I may have secretly resented my father’s affection towards those dogs but it was during these grooming sessions in my back yard with them growing up that I started to understand. These dogs listened to me intently, with a complete absence of judgement. They understood me without words, they loved me without condition.

I’ve heard people say that everyone gets one special dog in their life that they never forget. For our family, we were lucky enough to have a pair of them. Rosie, who will never be remembered for her smarts and Charlie, the rock-diving black lab bring many fond memories for our family. One memory with this comical duo changed my life in a matter of minutes.

It was the dead of winter and my dad had packed up his two best friends Charlie and Rosie, some tennis balls and a racket for a trip to the ocean. For hours, he slammed those tennis balls our into the crashing waves, our family dogs tirelessly chasing them. I don’t recall being bothered by the cold Maine air that February day. Neither dog seemed concerned either, as they retrieved ball after ball. They paid no mind to the icicles forming on their chests.

Rosie, the younger of the two, was famous for fetching the ball and not returning it. She preferred to drop the sandy, slobber-covered ball on the beach, bark at it relentlessly and roll all over it. This caused me to laugh hysterically at her foolishness. When I looked over at my dad, he was laughing, too. On this day, for the first time, I started to understand how my dad could have the reservations he did about people.

On this day, my dad was as happy and free as I had ever seen him. Sometimes if I close my eyes, I can still picture it. His teeth were showing when he looked over and shared a smile with me. I can feel the vulnerability I saw in his eyes as I realized that after nineteen very long years, both our joy and our pain came from the same place. I did not express this truth to him with any more than a look that day. Thankfully, I was able to tell him before he passed away only a few short years later:

“You don’t need to worry about me or the baby, dad. You really did teach me everything I need to know to go forward.”