Monday Man

This morning, on my way to work, the train stopped and I saw this little man peering at me.  I had to snap his picture.  

Today was rough; it was one of those busy and frustrating days where you absolutely must accomplish everything on your list but can't because everything that can go wrong invariably does.  It was a day that could have easily put me in a mood, but every now and again, I thought of my little Monday Man and felt a smile spread across my face.

Hope you had your own Monday Man, and if not, I'll share mine :) 

For the Loyalists...

I hear you.  You want more.  Your wish is my command.  

Given the events of the past few months, my heart has been heavy and I've often felt like I couldn't write about anything other than the loss of my dad.  This is good, and natural; I need to write about what happened.  Writing is how I process life.  But luckily, life encompasses much more than loss.  There are so many other incredibly gratifying and deliciously satisfying moments upon which to dwell.  I want to write about it all.

The loss thing is HUGE, obviously.  The story of my dad's death is really a story about our family's strength and love.  It's about grace, and humor, and miracles.  It's about the tension between holding on and letting go.  It's an epic tale, really, and ultimately it's not post-worthy, but book worthy.  

I've known this for awhile, but just recently got the urge (and granted myself permission) to begin the process.  It's going to be a long, emotionally draining yet cathartic experience, and I feel as ready as I ever will be to embark on this journey. 

So what does this all mean for my blog?  It means that I feel freed up, in a sense, to return to the original intent of this space; to share life in my shoes.  For a few months now, every time I sat down to write (here), it felt like a burdensome chore, like I had to recount everything that had been happening in order to give context to what was currently happening.  No more!  You know what happened: my dad died.  I'm writing a book about it.  I hope some day you'll read it.  Let's move on.  

Now that I have a dedicated space for the dad stuff, I'd like to dedicate this space to the day-to-day goodness, hilarity, irony and all around wonder of everyday livin'.  Life is a trip, and it makes one hell of a good story.  Especially when you're renovating a house!  More on that in future posts...   


Thank you Loyalists (you know who you are) for reading my blog in its various forms over the past six or so years.  Without your gentle nudges of encouragement, I would have stopped writing.  I hope you'll keep reading, and walking with me...

Waves

It comes in waves, this grief thing.  One minute I'm fine and the next minute, I'm swimming (sometimes drowning) in an ocean of sadness.  Unlike real waves though, grief waves are invisible and unpredictable; there is no regular ebb and flow, just seemingly random tidal waves that knock you over in the midst of everyday life.   

Ah... but there are triggers, and part of the learning curve to the whole grief process is realizing what your triggers are, and learning how to appropriately interact with them.  Last night, Jay and I were out doing some Christmas shopping, trying really hard to feel "in the holiday spirit".  There's nothing jolly or festive about grief, even though it is coinciding with Christmas.  Grief just dims everything.  But there we were, out co-mingling with the masses in the madness of a shopping center.  I had tucked my grief away for the day; I folded it up and put it in my pocket.  I traded it in for my best "happy face" and went out in search of joy and holiday cheer, via consumerism.  I have to say, it kind of worked.  Not that I felt jolly by any means, but it was pretty fun to walk around and make fun of all the crap that people waste their money on.  And it was fun to join them and buy some crap for Christmas.  I do every other year, so I might as well this year, too.  It helps to feel normal, in any way you can, in the midst of upheaval. 

In between stores we stopped at a Five Guys for a quick burger.  It was delicious, and was really hittin' the spot... until it hit the spot: the grief spot.  You see, the last meal I shared with my Dad was Five Guys.  It was one week before his death, and in retrospect, it was the first day of his final decline.  There was a lot that he couldn't do that day, but when I asked him if he wanted a cheeseburger from Five Guys, he said (in a way that only my family can appreciate), "Yah", and so I went out and got us all burgers.  We sat around the kitchen table (dad in his wheelchair) and ate Five Guys Burgers and Fries.  That was the last meal I had with him...  And so there I was at Five Guys, during the holidays, amongst happy shoppers when all of a sudden a tidal wave came and knocked me over.  Tidal waves are dangerous enough as it is, but even more so when eating a cheeseburger.  Talk about a choking hazard. 

Then today, as I was cleaning up the huge pile of clothes that are permanently parked at the foot of my bed, I found the dress I wore to his funeral.  Ouch.  Another wave.  What am I supposed to do with this dress?  Do I hang it in the closet with all of my non-funeral clothes and pretend that it's just a regular dress?  Do I fold it up and put it in storage?  Do I burn it?  

So- now I know; Five Guys and that dress are triggers for me.  Maybe they won't always be, but for now, when everything is recent and feels so raw, they are.  Now the question is, what do I do about that?  Do I avoid that place and hide that dress?  Do I do the opposite and go to Five Guys weekly, and incorporate the dress into my regular winter wardrobe?  How do I interact with these tangible reminders that my dad actually died.  It feels wrong to ignore them, like ignoring them means that I'm ignoring the truth of what happened.  It's tempting; ignorance is bliss, after all.  But ignorance is still ignorance, and the truth is still the truth, and and no matter how much I want to fold up my grief and fold up my dress and eat a cheeseburger without thinking about death, I'm simply not there yet.  

The truth is that my dad died (even typing that hurts), and we ate cheeseburgers on his deathbed, and I wore a black nondescript dress to his funeral.  Sure, I can take away the things that remind me of the awful reality of his death, but taking them away will not bring him back.  Similarly, I can eat Five Guys while wearing that dress every single day and it won't change a thing.  If anything, I would have a heart-attack from too many cheeseburgers, and well, that's just sad.  

And as for tidal waves and triggers, they are messy at times and don't always present themselves at convenient times, but I'm learning that they are a necessary part of the grieving process.  So I think I'm going to embrace my triggers when they come -- not totally avoid them, nor immerse myself in them -- and let the waves wash over me.  Dad always taught me to respect the ocean and not to fight the waves but to go with them.  He also taught me that no matter how bad I got slammed by a wave, I should always get up and get back out there.  So that's what I'm gonna do... one day at a time. 

Living While Losing, Part I

I think it's funny (funny? maybe ironic... yes, ironic) how my last post was about my brother dying, and how at the time, I had no idea what was about to happen.  

Five days after I wrote that last blog post, it was a Friday, it was October 1, and I had just left work and was walking towards the train station.  I called my Dad's cell phone to find out the results of a fairly routine MRI (that's the thing about managing a chronic illness - MRIs become routine).  I'll never forget it, I was walking up 15th street, from Chestnut St. I was walking on the east side of the street, up towards where the sidewalk ends and you either have to cross the street on the right and head towards City Hall, or cross the street to the left and head towards Market St.  Right there, right as the sidewalk was ending, my Dad told me, in a very casual and calm manner, that the scan revealed an "explosion of metastases" in his brain.  A few minutes later, I was on the train, in the "quiet car", quietly sobbing.  

Three days later, on Monday, October 4, I was in Pittsburgh for a work thing.  What's most incredible about this is that I went to Pittsburgh for a work thing, even though my dad had "an explosion of metastases" in his brain, and all I really wanted to to was curl into the fetal position and hide under blankets and cry.  But I didn't.  I went to Pittsburgh to "train the trainers" about how to educate folks on Medicare fraud.  

I'll never forget it, we were at Kane Regional Center in Pittsburgh, and I stepped out of the training to answer a call from my brother.  I stepped out into a noisy hallway and all I heard was the panic and confusion in his voice; he said something about Mom crying.  I hung up with him and instantly dialed my parents.  There was a bad connection.  In retrospect, I appreciate the irony of this bad connection, because in 1997, when Dad called me in Philadelphia to tell me that Steve had died, we had a bad connection.  I now associate bad connections with bad news.  Anyway... we had a bad connection, so I stepped outside the building into the misty, cold rain and that solved the connection problem.  It did not, however, solve the cancer problem.  Dad went on to explain that they had met with his oncologist and the prognosis was grim: he had four weeks to live.

In a way, everything after the utterance of those words was a blur.  In another way, my senses were operating in a heightened and awakened state, albeit numbed, and I remember every detail of the ride home from Pittsburgh that afternoon.  It's like I have a series of still shots - the way sunshine splashed against the dark gray clouds, the cheesy classic rock radio station, the cheeseburger I wolfed down at Roy Rogers at the rest stop in bumblef*ck, PA while a parade of Amish people passed me by; the raindrops that seemed to be pregnant with more rain; the awful parallel park job I did once at home, and how Jay and I held each other and sobbed together once I walked in the door.  

48 days later, on November 21st, my Dad died.  Someday I will write a book about those 48 days, because they were some of the most joyous, heartbreaking and all-around surreal days of my life, and they deserve their own story.  I will write more about those days here, too, but I just know that at some point, this whole saga will be a book.  It has to be...

Until then, cherish each moment with your loved ones, because as cliché as it sounds, the only guarantee we have is this this moment.  We have no idea what will happen in between this blog post and the next...

The Cursor, The Dance, the Hole: The Day

Whenever summer begins its slow yield to autumn, I know the day is near.  It pops up on my mental radar screen towards the end of August, blinking and flashing in my mind like a cursor on a blank computer screen.  I try to think of a million other things in an attempt to dim the thought; I try to fill the screen with letters and words to distract me from the starkness of the blinking black bar against a blank white screen.  It sounds like a methodical process, like some choreographed dance that I do with and around the day, but it's not; it's just some subconscious process that I go through each year.  And each year it works, until it doesn't.  The day always finds its way and demands my attention, rightfully so.  

This year is no different.  I felt the day's approach back in late-August, and then was reminded of its nearness recently when I got my new calender book.  I opened the book to September, and there it was, September 27th, somehow blinking, italicized, bolded, highlighted, underlined and seemingly jumping off the page, lodging itself in my throat.  "It's just a day", I reminded myself, engaging in the annual dance.  I put it out of mind, and carried on with the happenings of September 2010 rather than wallowing in the memories of September 1997.  Lord knows, there's a LOT going on, plenty to keep my mind occupied, distracted.

But it's funny, our minds.  Powerful devices.  Sometimes when we block the front door entrance, our mind finds the back door and weasels its way in.  Or maybe it's our heart, via our mind -- who knows.  Either way, we can't hide from the things that our mind and/or heart deem significant; these things will always arrive on our personal doorstep, whether we invite them or not.  This is something I know to be true.

And so it was today, this year, on the eve of September 27.  But it started two or three weeks ago, when I went to the library and took out four books.  On a conscious level, I read them in no particular order.  First the book on midwifery and natural child-birth, then the mediocre book about April & Oliver, and then today, without realizing how close we are to the day, I read The Crying Tree.  First of all, this was an excellent book; maybe the best book I've read all year.  It was a book about a 15 year-old boy who was murdered in his home, and the family's long journey through grief.  While reading it, I made no connection; I was deep in the dance and did not notice the subtle parallels between the characters in the book and my own family, nor the date.  I was totally absorbed in their story.  

The book portrayed grief so accurately, and I should have seen it coming sooner, but I didn't.  As I read the last page, one lone tear fell down my cheek.  That one tear was followed by many more as I closed the back cover and attempted to recount the story to Jay.  My words came out scattered and I knew I was butchering the story.  But it didn't matter; trying to explain a story like this, a story of grief,  is like trying to explain what it feels like to fall in love.  Words just fail, no matter how eloquent you try to be.  

Still not connecting the story to the current calender context, I sat and savored the novel, the characters, the ending.  I had successfully and subconsciously filled my screen with a rich story, thereby hiding the blinking cursor.  I had danced around the cursor.  I made it.

Yeah... not so much.  About an hour after finishing the book, I had the urge to email my mom and recommend the book.  I gave a brief synopsis of the plot, and then it hit me.  "Oh my God", I thought.  The book was all about a mother's unimaginable grief over losing her son, and here I was, in full avoidance mode, dancing the month away, sharing with my mom how much this book affected me, on the eve of the day.  In one email, I had danced my way from full-avoidance into the cursor, my eyes blinking in sync with it.  As I hit "send", one lone tear fell from my eye.  This time, it was for our own story; the story of Steve, the mountain, the fall, the call, the shock, the devastation, the permanent hole in Scott, my parents, Katie, me, and the whole world. 

I didn't plan on reading about a book about a family's long walk through the multiple stages of grief on the eve of the anniversary of my brother's sudden death.  In fact, I planned on avoiding it -- the day -- as much as possible.  But like I said earlier, even though I may not have chosen it and I didn't want to look directly at it,  it demanded my attention, my respect.  It found a way to make me honor it, indirectly, via the back door.  And now that it's here, and I'm here, I have to acknowledge it. 

My brother Steve hiked Mt. Washington 13 years ago.  He fell.  He died.  My family has a hole in it.  But we're okay.  We're surviving.  We've absorbed and are continually adapting to the hole; sometimes we dance around it, sometimes we stare at it, and sometimes we fall in it.  But the most important word in that sentence is "we";  we are still "we".  

So, on the eve of the day, I honor my brother, the memory of him and the unending love we all feel for him, and each other.   I also feel deeply for the families, both fictitious and real, who have lost their son, their brother, or any other member who has died and left a hole. 

And with that, I end this year's dance, curtsy, and take a bow.  Until next year...

Rest in Peace, my sweet brother. 

Paper, Light, Purpose: Life Changing Stuff

I have obtained three things in the past week that have changed my life.

1. A planner / calender book.  Ever since school ended, I stopped using a planner.  In retrospect, this was a necessary move.  I needed a break from the scheduled and organized life I was leading; I needed to have no plans and no organized pattern for a good chunk of time.  It was wonderful to have a break, but I am a hardcore list-maker and such a visual person that I need a book of full of paper and calenders to help me feel normal.  I found a great planner that has an ample paper supply for excessive list-making, along with monthly and weekly calender space.  I feel like a new woman.  Let's make plans, people!

2. A book-light.  If you're a book-lover, this one's a no-brainer.  I love to read, but could never read in bed because Jay goes to bed before me and I never want to turn the lights on and disturb his sleep.  I always felt deprived of this small joy and slightly jealous of those who routinely read in bed.  Finally, I wised up and purchased a book-light!  It only took me a few years.  This genius little device clips onto my book and casts a perfect LED spotlight on the pages without waking Jay.  Perfection!  Now I can wind down with a few chapters in bed, and it makes all the difference; I've gone from a midnight bedtime to a 10:30 bedtime.  Bedtime has never felt so good!


3. A new job.  Employment is a wonderful thing.  Unemployment is a wonderful temporary thing, but I gotta say, getting a job feels really great.  I had the summer of my dreams; I had little-to-no responsibility, got to travel, reconnected with friends, spent time with family, chilled on the beach, read lots of books, reconnected with sleep and generally just enjoyed myself in every way, every day.  But with the change in seasons comes a change in what I need.  In the summer, I needed nothingness.  Now, I need purpose and activity and challenge.  And so, this new job comes at the perfect time.  


The best part?  All three things -- the planner, book-light and job -- all go hand-in-hand.  I need a planner to stay organized at my new job, the book-light makes me go to bed earlier so that I can wake up feeling refreshed and ready for work, and I can make lists of books I want to read in my planner, while I'm on the train on the way to work.  Such simple ingredients, such a big impact!  Who knew that a little paper, some light and a daily dose of purpose could be so... just what I needed.


Happy Autumnal Equinox! 

Scenes from the Front Deck, vol. 1

I'm sitting on the front deck of my new, albeit temporary home.  We're on the second floor of a little beach bungalow that is 3rd from the beach, and has ocean views from every room.  It is the quintessential beach house; it is old, small, has two decks and lots of windows (read: lots of sun and ocean breezes)

So I'm sitting here on the deck, enjoying the quiet solitude of nighttime.  The stars are out in full force, and all I hear is the ocean -- rising, cresting, and falling onto the shore a few steps away.  It is so peaceful here, and even though we're only an hour and a half away from home, I feel like we're on the moon, or somewhere equally exotic and peaceful.  But really, we're in Jersey!  Just goes to show that once you throw an ocean into the mix, it really doesn't matter where you are.  Put an ocean in a dumpster and it becomes paradise.  No offense, Jersey. 

Anyway, being here is so restorative, and not just in a cliche vacation kind of way.  I can't tell you how many summers I've spent here on this same beach; how many warm summer nights, just like tonight, I've spent listening to this ocean while pondering the beauty of this big, wide world.  And although Jay and I day-trip here often, it's been years since I've been here at night and experienced the stars and the quiet and the all-encompassing headiness of the beach at night.  So it feels quite restorative being here because, well, it just is, but also because so much of myself is here; so many memories and experiences and lessons learned unfolded right here, and the recognition of that fills my cup in a way that just feels really really good.  

Anyway, I better sign off and get some shut-eye, because one of the best parts of the "beach at night" experience is watching the night give way to day.  Regardless of how many sunrises I've seen, especially on this beach, it never gets old, and is always worth the early alarm.  So with that, I'll say goodbye and wish you each a peaceful night and a beautiful day ahead.  xo

8 for 8

We just celebrated our eight year wedding anniversary, and to celebrate (for real), we're treating ourselves to a week at the beach on LBI.  We figured eight years of marriage deserves eight days on the beach -- one day for each year together :)  Unlike other types of vacations, beach trips are really dependent on the weather.  Sure, a cool, rainy day or two at the beach is nice, but nobody goes there hoping for rain.  So now that our trip is within the "10-day forecast" range, I've been checking like a hawk, and this is what I see:

Nothing but sweet sun icons as far as the eye can see!  I couldn't fit all the days, but you get the point -- it's just more of the same... sun, warmth, no rain, blah blah blah... 

So, Happy Anniversary to my sunshine, my best friend and my beloved, Jason Michael Stewart.  Here's to our eight years of marriage, to our eight days of sun, and to eighty more years of love, laughter and life together! 

Labor of Love

Okay, I'll admit it -- I'm just a little obsessed with all things baby right now, so please allow me to indulge my obsession, at least for today.  

I am currently so fascinated by birth, and by the enduring legacy of the billions of women who have carried and delivered babies since the beginning of time.  Talk about a sisterhood!  I feel overwhelmed by the collective strength of all of these women who -- whether in a hospital or at home, with meds or without -- have labored and birthed their babies.  

I imagine going through labor is one of the most intense experiences a woman can have, and I love hearing about and seeing the various methods women use to help them cope with the pain.  After seeing The Business of Being Born, I realized that not every woman wants the pain to be numbed; rather, some women see the pain as part of the whole experience and don't want to be numb to any part of the process.  Having never gone through labor, I cannot comment on the pain nor what I would do in that situation, but for those women who have chosen to walk through the pain, I am in awe of the ways in which they cope.


I've been watching youtube clips of home and water births, and just cannot believe the strength of these women.  It's like they tap into and draw from the Divine, and from the strength of the generations of women who came before them.  One clip that I find so moving is of a woman singing through her contractions.  It is so beautiful.  She is clearly a spiritual woman and is deeply connected to the Divine in this clip, despite having two strong contractions.  She almost makes me want to have contractions.  Almost :)

Baby? Maybe!

It's no big surprise that Jay and I want a baby.  We've been trying to conceive on and off now for a couple of years without any luck (sorry if that's TMI, but it's our reality and I think it's important to talk about these things).  We've tried a variety of methods, from charting cycles to using ovulation strips to meeting with fertility docs, but nothing has worked.  During all of this, I was going to school full-time, so in all fairness, school was my priority and trying to conceive always landed on the back burner.  But still, it's been incredibly frustrating, especially when everyone around us was either getting pregnant or having babies.  

But now, I'm done with school and we're ready to really pursue this again, for real this time -- no distractions, no school stress, no excuses.  Earlier this summer, I had lunch with friends who are the proud parents of a new baby boy.  We got to talking, and they shared their lengthy and frustrating journey to parenthood, which, like ours thus far, had been full of disappointment and heartache.  Our stories had so many parallels, including cycle irregularity, the books we'd read, the charting we'd done, the fertility doc procedures, etc.  "Finally", I thought, "someone who really understands".  

Obviously, the sheer existence of their precious baby boy means that somewhere along the way, our paths stopped being so similar.  They conceived and we did not... yet.  Whereas our path branched off and was more about finishing school, their path led them to the discovery of a little device called the Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor.  Never heard of it?  I hadn't either, until they told me how they finally achieved pregnancy.

Friends of theirs, who also struggled to get pregnant, used it and swore by it, so my friends decided to give it a whirl and try it out.  After two months, they were preggers.  Incredible.  Unlike ovulation test strips that so many of us are familiar with, this fertility monitor detects both LH and estrogen hormones, and therefore helps to target ovulation.  For women like myself who have irregular cycles, ovulation is unpredictable, so having a device that does the charting for you and tells you when it's peak fertility time, well folks, that's a miracle.  Well no, babies are miracles, but you get the point.  

After my friends told me about the fertility monitor, I went online to read reviews and to see if others got the same result.  I can't tell you how many couples, especially couples who struggle with this, have gotten pregnant with the monitor.  Story upon story, women everywhere are getting pregnant with this thing.  Just go onto Amazon's page and read through the reviews for yourself.  It's pricey, and most couples use it as a last resort before thinking about In Vitro Fertilization or continuing to meet with fertility specialists, so the stories of couples trying to conceive for years prior to using it are so touching.  So many stories of couples on the cusp of losing hope, and then BAM, baby-on-board.  I was in tears just reading through the reviews on Amazon, mostly because I could relate to and empathize with these women, but also for the hope their stories provide. 

So, I ordered it and it should arrive today.  We are hopeful, yet realistic, as nothing is guaranteed.  But, we are hopeful.  We know that whatever is meant for us will unfold for us, and we are grateful.

Here's hoping for the expansion of StewMody, Inc. in 2011 :)