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. ©

Failing Memories, Cancer and the Farmers Market

The Farmers Market parking lot was jammed and I was stuck in a line of ten cars waiting for shoppers to leave to free up parking spaces. It’s always that way if you get there before 11:00 which I usually try to avoid doing...but not this week. The early morning air at the market was crisp with a high of 65 degrees predicted but that didn’t stop people from walking around wearing short-shorts with sweatshirts and quilted jackets. In a few years when I lose the filter in my brain that keeps old people from saying exactly what we think, I’ll be shouting out the car window, “Go home and put on some pants!” I’ve seen shorts-clad people when there’s nine inches of snow on the ground and the temperature is below zero. I don’t get that. I really don’t! In some mountainous places on earth, where the sun burns the snow off by noon and the landscape warms up, short-shorts might make sense but here in Michigan, snow and below freezing temperatures are usually here for the duration of winter. 

I can’t believe it’s September and I’m writing about winter already. But the not-so-subtle clues that fall has arrived hit me hard at the market: 1) I saw my first flock of birds headed south; 2) Steam rose from my fresh-ground cup of coffee; and 3) the nuns who sell baked goods to help the women's’ shelter were wearing drab sweaters over their heavy habits. I stocked up on root vegetables and squash and lusted over the famous Cheese Lady’s products. The cold air brought the dog lovers out in force. There were at least fifteen dogs there. Two vendors cater to them---one sells canine cookies and the other sells favored bones. Many vendors at the market give out samples---cookies, cheese, jerky, melon, jams, candy, bread---and one time my wheelchair bound husband rolled up to the dog cookie samples and popped one in his mouth before anyone could tell him they were canine treats. Don didn’t seem to know the difference so those of us who saw what happened traded broad smiles above his head. The market is full of widow’s memories. He loved the Farmers Market and the first summer after he passed away, I couldn’t bear to be there. Now, those memories are like warm friends who come to visit. 

Sometimes I wonder if having Alzheimer’s doesn’t just sent us off to the Land of Good Memories and you like it so much you don’t want to come back. I know that’s not true, judging by how scary it is for people experiencing the early symptoms. But maybe if I tell myself that often enough, when the times comes for me---if it comes---I can avoid the scary entrance to A-Land and go directly to the middle of that timeless, zone-out existence. 

My older brother called last week to tell me he’s got prostate cancer and to ask me what kind of treatments our father had for his prostate cancer. I couldn’t even remember him having prostate cancer and when I told my brother that he said, “You took him for his treatments. You don’t remember that?” I answered back, “Two hours from now I’ll remember” and that prediction came true. My time lapse in memory recall triggered two related memories---one of Don’s mother and one of my mother. Both had been asked a question by a doctor and several hours later they both answered those questions. It took that long for their brains to process the question and to answer them, and they both did that as if nothing in between the asking and the answering had happened. I still remember what I did in between my brother’s Q and A. Hallmark should make a card for that. Congratulations, your brain is functioning on four out of six cylinders!

We take so much in life for granted like fall always comes after summer. Like I’ll always have an older brother. Prostate cancer is one of the more curable cancers so I won’t let my mind go in any other direction than him living with a cure. I took it for granted my entire life that I’ll always be strong-minded and sharp enough to take care of myself and---for now---I won’t let my mind go in any other direction than to fixate on trying to keep my brain from turning to mush. With any luck, the parking lot to get into Alzheimer’s Land will be as jammed up as the early morning Farmers Market lot and I’ll have to keep circling until they find a cure with a success rate as high as that for prostate cancer. ©

A Widow’s Holiday Secrets and Confessions

“We can all find reasons to be thankful,” I was told when I was lamenting the fact that I wasn’t looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with strangers. Ya, sure we can. After all, isn’t thankfulness ‘mindset' #12' in the Handbook for Better Living, a book I’ve been preaching from my entire life? Thankfulness is a cornerstone of philosophic thought all over the world and I know the Thanksgiving Day drill: “Dear Lord, I’m thankful for central heat, clean water, indoor plumbing and the fact that my address isn’t ‘the center refrigerator box underneath the Main Street viaduct.’ I’m thankful that farmer Jack’s cows come home every night for milking, that I have Ben and Jerry’s Death by Chocolate ice cream in my freezer, and that we’re not living in a nuclear winter.” But here’s where I get a little testy. We humans are multi-taskers so why is it so hard to understand if a thankful widow---anticipating a Thanksgiving dinner with strangers---can visualize herself standing up on her chair and proclaiming she’s got a whole cup of crazy going on in her head? “But I am thankful you invited me here,” she’d continue, “and I thank you for asking me to lead us in prayer.” Of course, you know I’m not going to do that at dinner on Thursday, even though I am stressing out over the very real possibility they’ll ask me to lead a pray, me the person these super-sized Christians don’t realize is an agnostic.

You’ve got to admit there’s a difference between having a good time and pretending you are so you’ll get invited back by the hostess of whatever affair you’re attending. You want her to know her kind gesture of including you is sincerely appreciated. And isn’t that what a good guest is supposed to do? We bring a little wine, maybe a box of bonbons or flashy flowers and smile in all the right places. We help where ever we can and feed their dog under that table. We are good little guests who try hard not to let on that we feel out of place, like a fish swimming in olive oil. I am woman, master of multitasking and I can be as two-faced as the next person. “Thank you very much for inviting me and my ghost for dinner," but did you have to let your uncle Harry sit on his lap?

Last year, my holiday season and the invitations that came with it was all about concentrating on not bursting into tears. This year my mission statement for the holidays is to “dam the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” I am a woman at war, a woman determined to stand on her own two feet. A widow who can move on with the best of them. But I’ll tell you a few secrets I’ve learned over the past year. Moving on doesn’t mean you forget. It doesn’t mean you can’t be both thankful and regretful at the same time and still be a perfectly balanced, sane person who knows how to keep her cup of crazy from spilling over. And the piece of résistance of all secrets is this: in the second year of widowhood a woman must learn to carry her losses forward (minus the pain) to live in harmony with the joy that she’s adding back into her life one baby step at a time. It’s hard work. It’s worthy widow’s work to let go of the pain that came tethered to our losses. And, yes, I am thankful I learned these secrets in a timely manner and I didn’t scratch anyone’s eyes out in the process. I am woman and I’ve roared enough for today. ©