death

If you came here for an uplifting “we’ll get through this together” post, I recommend that you leave now. We can all pretend that leaving a blog unread is like opening the conference room door, realizing that you’ve accidentally joined the wrong meeting and scuttling out, embarrassed but, at the same time, grateful that you didn’t sit down. If, on the other hand, you aren’t sure why you’re here, welcome; I’m not sure why I’m here either but we’ll be here together. Some days, that’s all we can ask for.

Over the course of my life, I’ve spent a lot more time in hospitals than the average healthy non-healthcare-employed person does. There’s a quiet rhythm to the experience. You figure out how long you’re allowed to be with the patient. You pick up on the hospital routines. You learn how things like food, testing, room temperature, and parking work. After a while, if you are there long enough, you get to know the hospital workers and sometimes they get to know you.

One time, in the midst of Ken’s illness, the lady working the register in the cafeteria looked at me and said, “You’ve been here a lot. Lunch is on us.” Since lunch was usually 2 or 3 hard-boiled eggs and an iced tea, it didn’t cost the hospital anything, really; but I remember the experience and the way it made me feel — a small “I see you” kindness. I made a similar connection this past week. In the hospital cafeteria, very late in the day, I asked the grill cook if I could have a bun to make a chicken tender sandwich. He looked at me and said, “Shh. I am making you a ‘burger’.” And then he proceeded to make me a chicken tender sammie with melted cheese, fresh lettuce, and tomato slices. Honest to dog, I nearly cried. I was so tired and so sad and there he was being gently kind. I told him how much it meant to me and he just smiled and said, “good.”

I readily admit that I am flailing blindly through my life, no self-burn intended. If life is a series of plans fulfilled, my life has been a series of, sometimes intricate but more often simple, plans made and then discarded because of … everything else.

More than half of March has been just that. First, I was knocked askew by some sort of non-COVID-19 respiratory illness. As I’ve mentioned before, I have moderate-to-severe asthma. I can go weeks without needing my emergency inhaler but a respiratory illness usually means a daily puff or two for me. With this recent illness, I used more than 50 doses in four days. It was as bad, if not worse, than epiglottitis. At least with that, my throat just closed entirely and I didn’t have to ask myself if I needed hospital care. (Okay, so, actually, even that time, I didn’t go to the hospital; I went to the urgent care facility. They panicked and called an ambulance … but that’s a whole ‘nother story of me being stupid.) The point is that, if I get COVID-19, I’ll be one of those people who takes up a hospital bed.

Shortly after I was back on my feet, someone very dear to me was hospitalized for a completely unrelated reason. I spent the next 11 days living by the hospital rhythm, dozing through the night on ridiculously uncomfortable chairs or curled, knees tucked, on “sofas” clearly designed for very short people. While all this was happening, the world was shutting down. New protocols were being implemented every day at the hospital. They limited visitors to one person at a time and I started to worry about being banned altogether.

Because I was spending so much time at the hospital, I didn’t do the usual shopping and had a bit of a list when I finally had the opportunity to visit my local Costco. The things we needed were readily available (please don’t tell my dogs that there were only 4 bags of dog food left at the store!) but I’ll confess to being surprised to see people pushing two carts, one with six or eight cases of water and the other with stacks of other shelf-stable things like bleach, vinegar, 25 pound bags of flour and rice, sugar, pasta. I knew about the pandemic but I did not expect the hoarding.

Over the years, we’ve had students from Nepal, Sri Lanka, The Maldives, and Bolivia stay with us and all of them have asked to see the glorious abundance of our grocery stores, something they’ve heard about but never experienced in their own countries. Yet, here we are: hoarding toilet paper and bottled water. I don’t understand hoarding generally but I’m especially puzzled by the bottled water. Are people expecting a complete breakdown of our infrastructure? Or are they panicking because they lack basic information about what to expect? I fear that it is the latter.

Since we’re distancing, we’ve started cooking more elaborate meals, with my daughter usually taking the chef role. Over the last several days, we’ve made meatballs and sauce, chicken pot pie, pork stew (heavy on the veggies), cottage pie, and pizza, homemade crust included. In addition, we were treated to a delicious roast, a gift from a friend.

We’re liking the family meals in the midst of all the crazy. We’ve always been close but as we hear people “joking” about how much they dislike their families, we feel so unable to relate. Tonight, during dinner, we played (and cheated) at cards with alacrity and a great deal of laughter. Earlier today, we gardened and played outside. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be home with them.

My son starts distance learning tomorrow. I think it will be a challenge to keep him engaged while I continue to work at my own job but I am reminded of my husband’s advice when our kids were little. He said that our role, as parents, is to create a love of learning. If we engage with our kids about the things that interest them, and we encourage them to explore those things, we create a world in which exploration is their reward. So, we’ll follow the distance learning requirements as best we can and then when we need a break, we’ll go outside and break geodes, dig in the dirt, watch bugs, and maybe take a walk or two.

And if you start to despair, jump on Twitter (who would have guessed I’d ever say that!) and visit Sam Neill (yes, the actor) for poetry, BroadwayWorld for living room concerts, Earyn McGee for “Find the Lizard,” the Urban Birder for bird trivia and pictures, Steve Martin (yes that Steve Martin) for Banjo balm, and so many more. The more you physically isolate, the more opportunity there is for social connections, even for introverts like me.

Stay safe. Stay home. Listen to the birds sing.

Before bed last night, my son and I talked about several dads who lost their lives yesterday in a terribly public and tragic way. We talked about grieving for multiple family members lost in one terrible moment. We talked about what the friends and families are facing now: their confusion, their sorrow, their regrets. And we talked about their grief continuing long after everyone else has moved on.

When I was 7, my family moved into a new housing development. My sister and I spent hours playing in the new construction sites: climbing through unfinished walls, scavenging nails and bits of discarded wood, and generally endangering our safety on the regular. We also spent many unsupervised hours playing in a nearby stream (until the housing development closed off access to the stream to our bitter disappointment).

Eventually, the first round of houses was finished and sold, mostly to families with young children. My mom, always looking for ways to get us out of her hair AND keep us out of trouble, enrolled us in a babysitting safety class at our local Y. We learned CPR and basic wound care, how to change diapers and carry babies safely, strategies to manage young children, etc.

I was 11 years old when we graduated and started a babysitting business. Our very creative mom helped us make flyers advertising our services ($0.75/hour!). Then, my sister and I went around the whole neighborhood, knocking on doors, introducing ourselves to the adults there and leaving copies of our flyers. We even talked to the families without children, reasoning that some of them might occasionally have visitors and need a sitter.

Over time, we developed a robust client list — Jimmy (aka James, as I discovered when I presented an interviewing skills program to his high school classroom years later), Brian, Stevie, Ryan, Ricky, Betsy, Sally, and many others. I remember years of Saturday nights on a sofa until 2AM waiting for parents to return home and pulling wagon-loads of kids around the neighborhood while they giggled and helping two-year olds brush their teeth before bed and making pasta (with butter because Stevie didn’t like sauce) or pb&j sammies. I remember Ricky P and his broken left arm — it was already broken when I got there but the parents had a party to go to. I remember tickle sessions with Ryan. I remember comforting Betsy who thought her dad didn’t love her. I remember driving Stevie and his brothers to egg hunts near Easter and listening to Stevie trying to read every word on every sign we passed along the way.

In my memory, those 40+ year olds are still wee children who loved popsicles and bike races. And my mom is still sitting quietly in our family room waiting for the headlights to shine through the front window and for the sound of my key inserted in the front door lock. All bundled in her robe and slippers, she’d meet me in the hallway to praise the wad of cash in my hand and listen to whatever story I had to tell.

When I was in grad school, Doug, one of my “kids,” was killed in a car accident, along with two or three of his friends. When he was little, folks in the neighborhood used to joke — a macabre foreshadowing — that he wouldn’t survive to adulthood. He was constantly getting into near-catastrophes — falling off ladders, electrocuting himself, getting lost, pretty much a field guide of ways to nearly die in your youth.

Among them, I can remember two with particular clarity. First, when he was 4, Dougie pedaled his Big Wheel into the street directly in front of an oncoming paneled station wagon whose quick-thinking driver swerved into the neighbor’s tree, while Dougie continued, completely unaware of his near-death experience, cluelessly pedaling down the road. I saw the whole thing in slow-motion horror from our front yard and my stomach still clenches when I think of it.

The second incident occurred when he was a young teenager. He was riding his 10-speed (that’s how OLD I am!) and, having learned NOTHING about safety in the intervening years, turned across the road in front of a car. My sister and I were, surprisingly, both home at the time. We heard the squealing tires and ran outside to see what had happened. I can remember, like a snapshot, that I was in my white dress shirt and black pants, about to leave for work at the local country club where I was a server.

My sister, who was a nursing student, ran to Dougie’s aid while I directed traffic. The worst part, for me, is the memory of his mom’s car coming down the road. She knew, before she could know in that pre-cell phone era, that it was him. I remember her abandoning her car in the middle of the road and running toward me. “He’s okay, Mrs Dougie,” I said (or words to that effect). “His leg is broken but he’s alive.” She started crying and grabbed my arm for a moment, then ran to him as the ambulance pulled up. To this day, I can’t remember what happened with her car, idling there on the street in front of our house. Did she drive it to the hospital or ride in the ambulance? Did I move it for her? I have absolutely no idea.

I only know about Dougie’s death because his family still lived next door when he was killed. I don’t think I’ll ever Google my other kids. It’s much better to remember them as imps in the sun.

Telling you to hug your family today is cliched. Hug your family — however you define that — every chance you get, people. You don’t really need a loss to remind you that the people who love you are precious and few.

Wishing you a February that is much less disappointing than this hideous January has been.

The New Normal

Cancer Is a We(e) Thing

Chicken Tender Sammies and Other Kindnesses

Mom Was [Sort Of] An Angel Investor