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.

Words: our future, our legacy

Currently, I am listening to a pair of eleven year old boys enjoy each others company in the room next to me. They decided my suggestion of learning some new songs together on their guitars was a good one. They are being kind to one another. My son is taking his time to gently explain to his friend how to play the bass line of one of his favorite songs. The snow is falling lazily outside. It’s a snow day at home and the moment feels so pure.

Then I hear it. It’s a simple statement made by one of the boys that stole the innocence from the moment. “I’m not doing this to be popular, but learning music is going to make us so, so popular!”

The boys couldn’t have known it but we had moved both back and forward in time all in the same moment. That one statement, meant to be a positive one, made my heart sink. Instantly I was brought back to the earful I had received from both boys the night before about what they face in their social circles with the peers they meet at school.

It all started with a good old fashioned wrestling match between boys, you see. There was a bit of pushing back and forth between the boys and a lot of joyful laughter. I noticed they were getting a bit rougher with each other but had learned to expect this after having my share of boys my son’s age around on a regular basis. I warned them to go easy on each other but that is not what happened.

A few minutes later, the once-friendly wrestling match had turned ugly. Suddenly both boys were in tears and one of them was claiming to be injured. As it turned out, the wrestling between boys had escalated over a dropped phone and neither boy was happy with the other over the outcome.

I talked to both boys individually, then helped them through having conversation together about the aggression that had transpired between two kids who call each other friends. Ultimately, the boys agreed that they would rather let the incident go than to cancel their planned sleepover.

As the evening wore on, I continued to closely observe the interactions between the boys and any interactions they had with their school friends. Closer examination of the nature of the communication that goes on between children in the sixth grade truly opened my eyes. Or so I thought it did, at least. I was astonished at the way this group of “friends” talked to each other.

These kids weren’t talking about sleepovers or the most recent basketball game. (Which many of them have in common) They weren’t having easy-flowing conversations about the fun activities they were participating in this weekend or upcoming events they were looking forward to. This group of friends instead has instead learned to “relate” to each other by who can take the cruelest verbal “shot” at each other.

Now I’m not talking about kids joking around and maybe going a little overboard with it. What I saw were ten and eleven year olds caught up in a vicious cycle of one-upping each other in what they refer to as “burning” each other. For those who aren’t caught up in the lingo of today’s youth, “burning someone” thankfully has nothing to do with fire.

Burning someone refers to making a joke (no matter how deeply the content of that joke may cut) at the expense of someone else. That is, everyone is laughing about the joke except the person who is the victim of the joke. What I learned by observing this group of kids is that their version of “joking around” with each other was the only way they chose to interact publicly. Interested in how this worked, I did what I usually do when I don’t know the answer to a question. I ask someone with more experience in the field in question than I have. In this case, I asked not one, but two eleven year old kids.

When I say I asked them, it should be said that I was truly curious about the answer. As it turned out, genuine curiosity was just what the doctor ordered when it came to getting kids to invite you into their worlds for a while. Over dinner, I explained to them what I had observed both with their interactions with each other and how they spoke to their peers. I told them I was genuinely confused with the downright cruel language they used and wondered out loud if that’s what being a friend meant to them.

Of course that wasn’t what being a friend meant to them. I knew the answer to this because I am familiar with the love and support that surrounds these children every day within their families. Thankfully, they were able to explain the social system of sixth grade to me. Regrettably, I can now never un-learn what they told me.

My son’s friend explained to me right away (and my son chimed in often and agreed) that there is a hierarchy in place. Impressed with his use of such mature vocabulary, I wondered if he knew what the word actually meant. He did.

The sixth grade hierarchy essentially consists of who ever is at the very top of it this week, along with a few minions that serve as the top seat holders side kicks. The position of side kick is a coveted one, but it comes with a price that costs many. To be considered as a main side kick (and not a dreaded outsider) you have to “make the kid at the top of the hierarchy laugh a lot.” Apparently a good knock-knock joke is not acceptable comedy material. Instead, the goal on this comedy tour is to make the kids at the top laugh by using risky hate speech to hurt another kid. (Presumably, an outsider is the target)

Who is at the top of this hierarchy ebbs and flows from week to week. Sometimes they are at the top, but they spend a great deal of time and mental energy to get there. These kids days are consumed with either chasing the popularity dream or avoiding the doom of being labeled an outsider.

If you’re overwhelmed, in disbelief or just plain heartbroken by the often silent battles our kids face every day, so I was I. Still trying to process all they were so openly sharing with me, I began to freeze up in my responses to them. What could I say that would make this transition in their development any smoother for them?

Just then I realized that the conversation had moved to the living room. I was sitting on the couch and they had sat on the floor in front of me, as if joining me for story time. I looked down at these two boys, sitting indian-style in front of me. As if by time machine, I had two young boys, still full of wonder and innocence, staring back at me.

“Mommy, thanks so much for having this conversation with us. We are learning so much and this is a great conversation to be having,” my son said to me.

I looked at the two smiling boys in front of me and I realized that my words held more weight than I had given them credit for. Overwhelmed with the idea that hate speech is the way into the “in-crowd” at the place they go to learn, I had forgotten that words used in love can be just as powerful as those that mean harm.

I believe that at this age, kids instinctively know the difference between right and wrong. Children in the sixth grade know that words can and do, cause damage. The problem lies in what we as adults, (aka, the true top of the hierarchy) choose to allow to become “normal” in our children’s every day language. I chose to question hate speech I was hearing from the mouths of adolescents. In return, I gained insight and perspective on what our children face as they enter their teen years. Beyond that, I was able to plant the message that language matters in the minds of two kids that I believe were glad to be reminded.

Both the written and spoken word hold an incredible amount of weight in today’s society. At this age, the words our children hear and speak regularly will contribute to their social, emotional and intellectual development. As they advance in life, the power (or weakness) their words hold could be the difference between a successful life, or one riddled with struggle due to unnecessary communication problems.

Teaching our kids that their choice of vocabulary can have lasting effects for them and for whoever their words make it to is in my opinion, crucial to who they become later. We must always remember that in 2019, there are no words that are spoken or typed that do not leave a timeless impression. What messages are the words that you choose sending to your children? Is it a message you would want shared with the world?

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.