A Day of Re-Membering

[This post originally appeared on my personal Facebook page, but as I finished it, realized it was the beginning of a return to my Blog. So it, and the post I wrote earlier today, have been re-posted here.]

I have been given so much to say today. I am trusting that each thing reaches those who need to see/hear/read it.

I just watched the 2018 version of A Wrinkle In Time. I tried to watch it when it first came to Disney+, but for whatever reason I couldn’t. The truth, as I understand it now, is I was not ready. Because I didn’t remember the first few minutes at all. If I had, I surely would not have picked today, of all days, to watch it.

As I texted Phil this morning, remember how Up kicked the shit out of our hearts while we were dealing with infertility? Well, A Wrinkle In Time “upped” its game by 100 and tore my heart out and stomped it on the floor before handing it back to me all band-aided up again.

It was, without question, what I needed to see/hear/know today, of all days. About the power of the frequency of love. About knowing and integrating my faults, my shadows, my “bad” parts. About loving others exactly where they are. Because, to paraphrase the Happy Medium: it’s okay to be afraid of the answers; we just can’t avoid them.

When I first visited Phil in Michigan in 2003, we went to Celebration Cinema and watched Love, Actually. Watching it together is something of a holiday tradition for us now. And one of our favorite lines has always been when Sam says to Daniel, “Let’s go get the sh*t kicked out of us by love.”

Here we are, 20 years later, back in the Midwest, starting over again. And I realized that this quote encompasses our entire journey together.

Learning how to love each other through our faults. Deciding we were ready to start a family. Struggling with infertility. The highs of pregnancy and birth. The lows of miscarriages and medically-fragile children. Holding each other through the storms of hospitalizations. Realizing Mira’s medical struggles were merely preparation for the bigger waves that could capsize us with Patrick. Doing our best, for ourselves and our family, through the roller-coaster of Patrick’s life and death. The 9 years since we have spent figuring out what it means to be broken; how to heal; how to move forward.

Watching as each of us, in our own time, in our own ways, begins to shine our light again. Begins to emerge from the shroud that has engulfed us for what feels like forever. As we find ourselves again. As we find ourselves anew. As we figure out who we are. Who we have become. And love each other because of and in spite of all of it.

That’s what wedding vows are: promises to ride the roller coaster of life together. You can see amazing views from the highest of heights and lose your lunch on some crazy turns and be terrified or even rendered unconscious by some of the lows coming out of those spirals. But being human—living this life to the fullest—is all about experiencing the ups and the downs and everything in between. Your soul’s incarnation was your agreement to get the shit kicked out of you by love. In all of its most beautiful, tragic, amazing, incomprehensible, sorrowful moments.

And, believe it or not, it’s always worth the ride. Why else would we fight so hard to be here; to stay here; to live longer? Because despite the pain and the hurt, the beauty and the love nourish us and keep us going. Love is always there. Even when you can’t feel it. Because—You. Are. Love. And—You. Are. Loved.

I am reminded of Katy Perry’s song “Hot and Cold”. I never realized how right she was, because she recognized the person was not hot OR cold, but hot AND cold:

'Cause you're hot then you're cold

You're yes then you're no

You're in then you're out

You're up then you're down

You're wrong when it's right

It's black and it's white

We fight, we break up

We kiss, we make up

You don't really want to stay, no

But you don't really want to go

You're hot then you're cold

You're yes then you're no

You're in then you're out

You're up then you're down

This weird miss mash of life. It’s not “or.” It’s “and.”

Earlier today, I wrote the following as a comment on a friend’s post. And I realized it’s a variation on this same theme:

We forget that life is a circle.

Difficult time raise Hard People. Hard People work to create Easy Times. Easy Times raise Soft People. Soft People create Difficult Times.

There is no cycle of creation that has no destruction. The question is whether the destruction is thoughtful, necessary, limited. Like in Michigan when they stopped natural forest fires and then began losing special trees because the seeds only broke open in the heat of the fires. The destruction is necessary for new life. But we can be targeted and intentional about it so that the new life comes without unnecessary loss of property and life.

But we forget life is a cycle. We only want the up. And it just doesn’t work that way. So instead of spending time figuring out how to turn the cycle into an upward spiral by harnessing the destructive part of the cycle, we pretend it doesn’t exist and lose all our progress when it shows up.

Image by Nik @helloimnik from UnSplash

We’re human. We forget. It’s our very nature. But when we remember? When we hang on? Those are the brilliant moments we take massive leaps forward. Jumps the size of which we never knew or believed were possible let alone that we were the ones capable of making.

I set aside today as a day of remembering for me. But I got far more than I bargained for. I am re-membering myself. The quick flashes and glimpses I have seen these past few months of me coming back to myself. Skills and talents left dormant. Gardening. Singing. Baking. Dare I say, Writing.

It’s coming back. I’m tuned back in. I found the frequency again. I finally looking forward and excited to discover what’s next. I’ll do my best to post here and at my blog, so that if you want, you can come along, too.

Namaste.

Happy 10th Birthday, Patrick

[The following was originally posted as a post on my personal Facebook page.]

Struggling with words and feelings today. It’s Patrick’s 10th birthday. But do I say it is, it was, or it would have been? I mean, it is. We use present tense for the statement about dead people all the time. It’s so and so’s 100th or 200th birthday. But we generally understand with numbers that large that these are celebratory memorial birthdays. When you say it’s someone’s 10th birthday, the expectation is they are still alive for the celebration.

And then there’s the fact that it’s the big 1-0! This is a huge birthday milestone! Double digits! I remember always hearing those words prefaced or followed by “you made it!” But Patrick didn’t make it; not corporeally, anyway. And yet, at times I’ve felt ridiculously giddy and excited this past week knowing his 10th birthday was almost here.

Phil pointed out that we’ve survived 10 years, and I guess that’s part of it. But I’ve felt unsettled each time I recognized the feelings of joy, excitement, and anticipation for today. So I’m taking the day to sit with them. Feel them. Wish my sister a Happy Birthday because it was her day first, before life overshadowed that.

I think part of it is because I heard from Patrick this week. I was on a Zoom meeting and one of the other participants noticed some energy hanging around me. Afterward, she reached out through a mutual friend to ask if I was open to figuring it out. Long story short, it was Patrick and one of my grandfathers with messages for me.

I’ve had lots of mediums and spiritually sensitive people tell me Patrick’s never left me. One friend who did bodywork on me explained that he left a little footprint imprinted on my heart and that she’d never seen anything like it before. And I’ve said for a very long time that his outsized effect on the world meant he’s still here in many ways, even if I’m not raising him. So he’s not gone. Not really; only in the corporeal sense.

And I’ve found myself pondering the fact that his birthday is so close to Samhain and Halloween, when the veil between worlds is said to be thinner.

Anyway, one of the things the medium shared with me was that Patrick was sorry he had to go. I nearly laughed. I have considered myself blessed that we were able to give Patrick a good death and that we had no regrets about the choices we made. The only thing I have ever wondered about is whether he knew that and was okay with the choices. To have that question lifted. To know that he had to go, so the choice we made to spend two weeks together as a family really was the best choice for all of us. There are no words to describe what occurred—the breaking open of my heart and its simultaneous healing. Like it shattered into pieces but was instantaneously mended with gold energy, similar to the Japanese tradition of kintsugi.

So, it’s been a big week of feelings and knowings and learnings. And today, my forever baby boy would’ve turned 10. Turns 10. Is 10. I ponder the 10th anniversary of his birth. Whatever.

As a person who knows the values of words and spends so much time looking for the just right word, knowing that this moment isn’t about the words is weird. I write to process. To share. To educate. To inform. But some things just defy explanation. Language can’t really describe the comfort brought by the hug of a close friend, the softness of a baby’s hand on your cheek, or the scent of heaven wafting off the crown of their heads. A picture is worth a thousand words for a reason. Feelings can be, too.

So today is about feelings. Sitting with them and letting myself feel them and doing my best to keep my brain out of it; removing judgment or shoulds or need tos. Living in the tension.

Loving my son. Loving my sister. Loving the new friends Patrick has brought into my life who are having their own grief experiences. Loving my family. Grieving the life I expected. The one I thought I was going to have. Learning to love the life I do have and who I have become. Feeling Happiness and joy and loss and sadness.

Because they aren’t two ends of a line. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Happy tears. Downpours in the sun. Gone but still here. It’s all part of life; part of our souls having a human experience. We have to feel these things. It’s why we’re here. Every feeling, every experience stems from love. The warm, fuzzy ones are offshoots of its appearance or presence and the dark, prickly ones are offshoots of its removal or absence. Go back to the source. Find the love. Remember that. That’s what I’m doing today.

Happy birthday, Patrick. I love you.

Regarding Fergus

CW: Pet death, infant death, grief, PTSD

Yesterday nearly broke me. My beautiful, ginormous orange fluffball cat Fergus/aka “Bob”/aka the Big Orange Booger/aka the Patriarchy died suddenly and unexpectedly. Fergus was born almost exactly 6 years ago as a barn cat to some friends of ours.

He was the only ginger in the litter and I begged my spouse for another kitty because we were already at our limit of two. My hubby agreed, and we watched on FB as our kitten grew and became socialized and, in August 2016, while I was away at a congenital heart conference, Phil & Mira collected Fergus and brought him home, his jaunty clipped ear the only sign he had ever been a barn cat.

Hard to believe now, but Fergus was a tiny boy, fitting entirely into the palm of our hands when we first got him. Never in our wildest dreams did we anticipate what a behemoth he would turn out to be.

I’m helping!

When we moved from MI to NY, he disappeared on us in the new house. Four adults and two children searched everywhere in an essentially empty house for over an hour. We all assumed he must have wandered out the front door when it had been left open for a period of time. When we located him the next day, he came sauntering out of the laundry room, presumably having squeezed himself back behind the appliances. He never did set foot back into that room again (not that I blame him). Only last year, when we needed to clean the dryer vents, did we find the desiccated remains of the piece of pizza he had stolen and taken back there to eat in private. He was something else.

Give me the water, you plebe!

On occasion, you might be petting his fluffy self and find a weird wet spot. Often it was on the top of his head, but not always. This weirdness was finally explained when we discovered he loved hanging out under the faucet in the bath and sauntering around a freshly used shower. He hated water most of the time, but these were happy moments for him, and I feel sure he loved knowing we were going to be happily petting him until we hit a wet spot and just left wondering if we needed to go wash our hands.

He also loved to be where the action was. Oh, you’re working? Let me help by fwooping my 20lb body across your keyboard, or sticking my fluffy tail between you and the screen you are trying to see. He was a boy who loved to try and take (often successfully) the pages as they came out of the printer.

Fergus, King of the Printer

Fergus was curious and had no boundaries. You had to feed him first, or he would try to eat the dog’s food while you got his ready for him. He would insinuate himself onto your lap or into the crevice next to you and then spread out as much as he could in the hope that you would move. He would purr loudly, merp three octaves higher than you would expect, and grab your hand with his paws if you were not giving him the petting to which he believed he was entitled that very moment. If he stretched out to full length from the floor, he would likely be able to touch your shoulder if you were sitting. He was big, sweet, and dumb as a bag of hammers.

Yesterday, we headed out early for a long drive to get a medical evaluation for Mira. My sister has been visiting to help the household run since I just had spinal surgery. She called to let us know that Fergus’s back legs were not working well and he was not interested in food or water. She said she would keep an eye on him. I Googled the symptoms and determined that it was most likely a blood clot and that he was not coming back from this because even cats that survive the first clot often throw a second, so euthanasia was the kindest solution. Since he was not exhibiting any signs of pain, we decided to just let things be until we could get home. On our drive back several hours later, I called the vet and was able to get an appointment for 3:20 pm. We arrive home around 1:00 and found our buddy lying on the floor, kind of purring to himself in a self-soothing way. I couldn’t stand it. We wrapped him up in a blanket, and I had my sister hand him to me while I sat in the recliner.

Friends, when I tell you we were not prepared for the next few moments, I cannot emphasize it enough. Suddenly, I was back in September 2014, holding our 10-month-old son wrapped in a blanket at he breathed his last breaths. Patrick in a soft green blanket, Fergus is a soft blue, both breathing shallowly and difficultly. In that moment, I knew Fergus would not make it until his 3:20 appointment, so I talked softly to him and told him how much we loved him and would miss him, and asked him to go meet Patrick and play together until it was our turn to arrive. When Phil came in, leaned forward, and whispered in my ear that he was about to break, I knew the moment had caught him unawares in exactly the same way that it had caught me. We were watching our baby boy die all over again.

And what was worse? This time, Mira, now 11, totally gets the loss and finality of death in a way she did not at the age of 3 when Patrick passed. It was an excruciatingly beautiful and sad moment when she came and sat with me after Fergus had breathed his last breath and she began to pet his head. We all cried, but we also talked about what a little shit he could be and laughed at the antics that had brought us so much joy over the last six years.

When it came time, we took him to the vet and made plans for his cremation. I also elected to get a mold of his paw print. And then the vet dropped the bomb I had not been anticipating. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “When we heard the heart murmur last year and did the blood test, it showed that he didn’t have any risk at that time. Unfortunately, this is a classic case of what happens with cats who have a heart murmur—they throw blood clots and it lands at the saddle juncture…” When I tell you that my heart stopped, I am being literal. I have heart palpitations that I take medications for. And when the vet said “heart murmur,” my heart skipped a beat. Because I had forgotten. In that moment, I was taken back to last summer when we first received word that Fergus had a heart murmur and all of the anger and frustration I had felt. Why?! Was having two kids with congenital heart defects not enough? Did my cat have to have one, too? I was so mad. But then the blood test came back fine. And we had so many other fights to fight, and Fergus was fine. So I forgot. Completely. Nothing I had read on Google had triggered that moment from last summer.

Friends

Now here I was. Already suffering PTSD and back in the moment of my son’s death, grief at the loss of him and Fergus swirling together, ready to take me under, and the vet had just told me, essentially, that my cat had died from complications of a heart defect. I’ve had some time to think and sleep on this, and I still don’t know what to do with this information.

And yet, part of me knows that’s a lie. Part of me knows that it was my experience with Patrick that informed my actions with Fergus. I held him and made him feel comfortable and loved, and reminded him he was not alone in the last moments of his life. Moments that were quiet and peaceful, instead of being spent in a car rushing down the highway in an effort to get to an emergency vet that would charge me $1000 just to tell me there is nothing they can do but keep him comfortable.

Six years is not long enough with a cat. Ten months is not long enough with a son. Loss sucks. Grief sucks. Seeing the downward spiral coming for you and not being able to get out of the way sucks. It’s terrifying. The fear washes over me. How long, this time? How long until I can begin to dig my way out again? How long will the dig take? What if something ELSE happens in the meantime? Why us? Why now? Haven’t we been through ENOUGH? God dammit! I am already physically broken and trying to heal. How do I do this?

Logo is a registered trademark of Mended Hearts

There are no answers to my questions. But then I remember that tomorrow is Pentecost. The color is red. Red like a heart. Red like good, oxygenated blood. Red like the symbols for CHD. And it’s seen as the beginning of the church’s mission to the world. It’s a reminder of my mission. To share, honestly, with others about where I have been and where I am; about my struggles. To educate and give others space to feel, process, and share their own stories if they feel so moved.

It’s also a reminder that God can and does give us more than we as individuals can handle. But I am not alone. My sister is here. My spouse is here, and we are both supported and loved by the congregation he serves. My friends and family can reach out by phone or social media. I am here for Mira and Phil. Our other fur babies are here, cuddling up to us and giving us comfort. This moment sucks. It hurts. It’s awful in ways I simply never anticipated. But I am wrapped up in and held up by the love of others. Just as I held Patrick, Fergus, and Mira in moments they needed comfort, love, and care, so too do others now do the same for me. We are a community. It’s the only way this works. Thank you for being part of mine.

Broken

Dear friends, I am broken. I am tired and angry and frustrated, too. But the overwhelming thing I feel is broken. I have watched my country become something almost unrecognizable over the past four years, and it is becoming ever clearer that we may have another four years of this. And I cry. I cry for all the people who have been fighting this fight for longer than I have. I cry because I’m just not strong enough. Because I have reached my limit. And now I’m broken.

I have always wanted to know why people do what they do. I could not understand how people stood so firmly in their prejudices—against blacks, women, LGBTQ+, immigrants. How anyone could profess to love the values and foundations of this country while simultaneously denying others the freedoms and protections its governing documents guaranteed. And while some only passively permitted others to engage in such behaviors, others actively advocated for such things.

And I became fascinated with Germany and the Holocaust. In my naïveté, I believed that people must not have known what was happening. I believed that when we know better, we do better. I was wrong.

I recently listened to a talk given by the Holocaust survivor for whom my daughter was named. It was given a few years before I met her. I had a cassette tape of the speech that I was keeping for my daughter, so she could hear her namesake tell her story in her own words. I had already read the books she had written. I knew the things I was going to hear. The bittersweet sound of her voice, now that she has passed, put me on the verge of tears before she said more than “Thank you.” But hearing her relive her horror. Explain she couldn’t even give us a glimpse of 1/100th of the evil and horror she experienced in the 20 minutes she spoke. Impress upon us that the whole point of putting herself through the misery and emotional drain of retelling her story was to make sure people knew what happened so that in the future, those who remained after she was gone, could make sure it never happened again.

And yet, here we are. Kids in cages sleeping on cold cement without pillows or blankets; inadequate water and unsanitary conditions; denied education, medication, and air conditioning; being molested and sexually assaulted; some deported “home” without their families; dying from intentional neglect. Seeing people show complete disinterest in the suffering of these children or, worse, argue that they “asked for it.” My heart is shattered to see just how many mean people advocating for suffering and death there are—many of whom declare themselves to be “good Christians” and “Pro-life.” They either don’t see their hypocrisy or don’t care. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like someone. They do not deserve torture, neglect, abuse, or inhumane treatment. No one does. Full stop. No exceptions.

I get that others disagree with me. And that’s okay. I have never needed someone to agree with me in order to be their friend. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber. I will boisterously assert the rightness of my opinion, have it challenged, sit with my thoughts later, adopt the contrary position wholeheartedly, and admit I was wrong. That’s how we learn; how we discover if our positions remain valid or need reconsideration. What I adored about my diverse friends was our ability to love and support one another even though we didn’t agree.

Sadly, over the last four years, it feels as though every single aspect of our lives has become political. We can’t even agree to be kind and listen to one another. And although I have worked very hard to maintain my relationships with friends who think differently than I, they have not returned the favor. Only a few have unfriended me, but it has become abundantly clear that I have been hidden or muted or whatever. Direct private messages about things not even remotely political went unread and unanswered. I took time to check out their feeds and see how they were doing, commenting on pictures and memes as appropriate, but they never wrote a single thing on anything I posted.

So the time has come for me to stop. I cannot keep pouring energy into relationships that are not nourishing me. Life is hard. COVID has made it harder. I need to protect my limited resources. But I want to be clear. Disagreement doesn’t wear me out. Debate and policy discussions don’t suck me dry of energy. Ignorance, hate, and indifference, however, they leave me sick. Exhausted. Broken-hearted. Worse, I know these people personally. Have seen the love and humanity in their hearts. Shared some of my hardest and lowest moments with them. Been held up by them. And I will forever be connected to them. And I will always love them. But the time has come to say goodbye. They have shown me that they don’t need my energy; that they don’t want it. So I’m going to stop throwing it away and, instead, use it places that will feed my soul. And one of those places is going to be continuing the word of my daughter’s namesake—making sure people know and remember the Holocaust. It must never, never happen again, and we are far too close for comfort.

Black Lives Matter.

Immigrant Lives Matter.

Trans Lives Matter.

Jewish Lives Matter.

Peaceful Protester Lives Matter.

Accepting That Patrick is Gone

I want to share something with you from my counseling session today. An unexpected blessing that has left me in a beautifully painful but freeing space. I am on the precipice of real change. Real healing. It’s scary, but exciting. My mind is racing a thousand miles an hour on the outside around a calm, quiet center. A hurricane of emotion.

I was talking with her about how ever since I saw the Memorial Day pictures in my memories, I had felt sad and anxious. I said that I was “dreading the emotional slog to September. I know what’s coming, and I can’t stop it.” I talked about having done the 31 Days of Patrick and how that had kept me from reliving his life day-to-day this year, but it hadn’t stopped this part of my grief cycle. She said something to me then that, after the shock of the hit wore off, I realized she had told me last year, and it was one of the reasons for doing the 31 Days of Patrick to begin with: Nothing is coming. It already happened. Patrick’s already gone. He’s gone.

Friends, I can’t tell you how heavy a hit that was. I mean, logically, he had to be gone for me to know it was coming, but for me to be dreading it, it had to be something that could happen—and he couldn’t die again. So that made no sense. She then went further and said, “You can’t lose him any more than you already have. You won’t lose the memories, or the feeling when you hear ‘Happy.’ He’ll always be with you.” And I suddenly realized that that had been my real fear each year. That I would somehow lose him more. That I would lose what I have left.

Just since our talk this morning, I am already feeling less sad today than I have for several days now. Patrick’s not leaving me in September. It’s just an anniversary. He’ll be with me as much then as he is today and tomorrow and every other day. This seems so simple a truth. And yet, accepting it means putting behind every piece of emotional denial I had. It means having to feel every feeling that has been stuffed away. It’s one of those moments when what is in your head suddenly slams down into your heart, and there is no turning back. You can’t unsee it. You can’t unknow it. “Patrick is already gone. He. Is. Gone.” It’s an excruciatingly painful realization. And yet. Simultaneously, there is this huge unburdening. A lightening. A letting go. “I can’t lose him again. It’s not possible. I get to keep everything I have.” There is nothing to fear from any of his anniversaries.

So I find myself in a strange new space. Having all the feels. But it also feels like an amazing breakthrough. And since we don’t hear much good news right now, I just wanted to share it with all of you.

P.S. For those who missed the 31 Days of Patrick, I recreated them as a Shutterfly book for Mother’s Day which you can view here.