Mary Sunshine versus Gloomy Eeyore

In the same week my book club handed out our March read, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks---a story involving a woman who died of cervical cancer---one of my Gathering Girls pals announced that she has stage one cervical cancer. That announcement came within days of me reading, “Doctors examined her inside and out, pressing on her stomach, inserting new catheters into her bladder, fingers into her vagina and anus, needles into her veins.” How's that for dark-side serendipity? In my friend’s case her lady parts had been removed a month prior but at the time she was being vague about the reason for the hysterectomy and dumb me, cancer never entered my mind. It wasn’t until she’d had the first of six chemo infusions that she was ready to talk about the “C” word to anyone. She had to process the information herself first, she said. 

Other than my dad who died of lung cancer in 1999, I’ve never known a single person with cancer and over the seven months between his diagnosis and his death, Dad often doubted that he actually had it. He choose not to get any treatments and other than being on oxygen his life didn’t change much over those months except my brother and I set up a share-care schedule to give him a lot more oversight and help around his house. My friend’s son and daughter have also stepped up to the plate to give her the kind of support that anyone in that situation couldn’t help but be grateful for and proud to get. Or maybe mothers just expect that kind of pay-back as their due and why not. I’ve never been a mother but I’ve seen enough of them in action to know how much time and energy goes into raising good kids. 

All of my Gathering Girls pals have kids and all but one of them lost their husband’s when their kids were young and they never remarried. The ‘but one’ lost her second life-partner last year but he'd been living in a nursing home a long time. Sadly, I doubt our little social group will still be around in five years. One lady is diabetic and does dialysis at home, another has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, a third has been known to pass out for reasons the doctors can’t pin-point, one lives with chronic back pain and, of course, there’s our newly anointed cancer patient. I’m one of the two left, and neither of us has serious medical issues going on. But at our ages, we’re only a fall away from a broken hip and ending up in a nursing home like a woman I asked about recently who was absent from the monthly lecture series. (Her kids sold her condo so she can't go back and she was such an active, vibrant woman.) Egads, I'm doing it again! I'm borrowing trouble from the future, but I do wonder if I'm doomed to wander the earth looking for new friends like Eeyore looking for his lost tail. Am I going to be that person who hangs around the lobby of a senior-care facility with an invisible sign around my neck that reads: Will you be my friend?

On the other hand, I love how Winnie-the-Pooh tells Eeyore, “You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” It’s basically the same thing Ann Landers told me when I wrote to her advice column back in my twenties when I thought I’d never meet my forever-guy. I could probably find her letter to quote accurately if I bothered to look in my old diaries but as near as I can remember she said, “Get out and do things you enjoy doing and it will happen.” So I signed up for every leisure time class I could find and I joined a bowling league. The rest is history. And then a few years ago my forever-guy died and I was off again, looking for friends. This time down at the senior hall and the Gathering Girls group was born. Like Eeyore rebuilding his house in the forest that keeps getting knocked down, we have to keep rebuilding our social circles. It never stops. I wish I could see that in a sunshiny way but I can't.

Eeyore’s Poem (by A.A. Milne)

Christopher Robin is going.

At least I think he is.

Where?

Nobody knows.

But he is going –

I mean he goes

(To rhyme with “knows”)

Do we care?

(To rhyme with “where”)

We do

Very much.

Christopher Robin was presumably going off to school but the lesson in the story could apply to any loss of friendship or love. Back when I first set up this blog I found that lesson in the Winnie-the-Pooh quote that is at the top of this page: “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” Little Miss. Mary Sunshine couldn’t have said it any better. But today it’s raining in my Eeyore-like world. Processing the “C” word---even in others you care about---can do that to you. ©

Sitting in the Back of the Room

When I was in grammar and high school we were seated alphabetically and since my last name was near the end of the alphabet I sat near the back of all classrooms through my entire childhood and teens. That is except for one semester in the 3^rd or 4^th grade when a teacher put all the left-handed kids up front where she could smack us with a ruler every time we broke one of her penmanship rules. The lines on your paper need to go from left to right, not up and down. Keep your wrist straight, not curled around the pen. She even went so far as to tape our papers to our desks in her mission to rid the world of the sin of writing in a vertical direction. To this day whenever I see one of those “Golden Rule” rulers I think about that old bat. She always wore widow’s black and would send religious tracts home with me and the other so-called heathens in her class. She also gave me an E in penmanship causing my mother to go to the principal’s office and raise holy hell. I had beautiful penmanship when I could write on lines pointing straight out in front of me and I still write that way thanks to a principal who took one look at my writing and made the teacher move all us lefties to our rightful places in the alphabetical seating order.

I was reminded of all this recently when I went to the senior hall for a lecture and as I walked in I said to a woman I had met on several bus trips: “Why you’re easy to find. You’re always sitting in the front row.” She laughed and told me her maiden name began with an A “so I always figure that’s where I belong.” It’s funny how childhood routines can stick with you for so many decades. I realized that subconsciously I’d been doing the same thing, picking the back of rooms to sit in my entire adult life. That day I was tempted to sit next to the woman but the impulse to flee to the back was even stronger. I guess I still associate front rows with getting smacked with rulers…or with college co-eds accidentally showing off their panties. It’s too bad those two actions never got paired together---probably because no one was ever sure whether the co-eds should be smacking the professors for looking or if the professors should be smacking the girls showing. I see London, I see France. I see someone’s underpants. Oh, my!

Alphabetical seating aside, I don’t have a sense of belonging anymore. I’m like a fish out of water in the couple’s orientated world, the Caregiver Club is closed and so far the senior citizen hall---where most conversations center on grandchildren and church---is leaving childless and churchless me with few things to add to the discussions. And sometimes I feel like I might get stoned when I voice an opinion at a widow’s support site. Like a few days ago when 7-8 women in the chat room were complaining that their friends and family members weren’t calling them. They felt abandoned. Feelings were hurt. Anger was building up. Vows to break up friendships were made without the other parties even knowing the widows were mad. I was the lone voice of dissension when I said the phone lines run both directions, meaning we need to learn how to reach out when we need support. Others can’t read our minds like our spouses usually could. Sure, I’d like to get more calls and social invitations, too, but how can I blame my friends and family because I have a giant void to fill? They didn’t cause it and it’s not their responsibility to fill it.

I’ll admit I do believe most widows will lose a few friendships but it won’t be anyone’s fault or failing. Why do I say that? Because let’s face it, there is a difference between knowing Don-and-Jean the couple and knowing Jean the individual---or any other couple-turned-individual. I am different without Don at my side. The topics of conversation are different; the give-and-take of our dialoguing is different. Entertainment and restaurants choices change. And who plans parties with an odd number of guests? China sets come in sets of six or eight for a reason. Why would anyone think the world isn’t going to notice things like that? But then again, I went my entire adult life without connecting the dots on why I always sit in the back at movies, lectures and meetings. Jeez, I sure can be clueless! I need to remember that the next time I’m tempted to be the odd man out in a group of grieving widows. Tonight I will take out a sheet of paper, turn it so the lines point straight out in front of me and write one hundred times: From now keep your opinions to yourself. ©