It's OK to Remember; It's OK to Continue to Mourn

It's not that I go around each day focused on my life that used to be. 

I don't "live in the past" and I truly have few regrets.

For me, it's a few triggers of sight or sound that bring to the surface feelings and near tears, even, after almost four years for my husband and almost one year for my Mom.

Please don’t let well meaning friends or relatives tell you to “move on” or to shake their heads and remind you HOW LONG it’s been and you’re still here and so on and so on.

As with so much of life, it’s in the actual day to day living where we understand what the walk of life we’re taking actually is. Anyone who believes they know “best” or at least “better” always walks away, remember that!

Yesterday I went to a mall; with our financial situation, that’s a rarity. I had business to do. Work to do. And a short window of time when I thought I’d just walk through a local department store that’s been an anchor of the center for decades.

The competition and changes are everywhere. The day after Black Friday and the store didn’t look like it had been “picked over” but more like it had been “looked over” – meaning people chose to go and spend elsewhere.

Interesting to remember when we had a small business and our landlord put a direct competitor in one of our primary retail sales areas into the same center claiming “competition is healthy”. 

Actually, as can be seen throughout the retail sales chain today, there are various levels of competition and some levels actually undermine and cause the demise of long standing businesses. So appears to be the case for the retailer I visited yesterday.

Some effect could have been the last few day’s of protesting brought into our local area Malls by demonstrators from Ferguson. 

This Mall and many others are far removed from Ferguson but many people from the area shop beyond the community as Malls in their direct area closed many years ago due to merchants having challenges with declining sales and rising incidents not positive for their business. So, they moved elsewhere.

What tugged at my heart was walking past a department where last year I looked for an outfit for Mom. 

It was a particular maker that made clothing for the more “mature” figure. Elasticized pants that had become totally necessary as pulling up and closing a zipper, buttoning a small button and a waistband that didn’t “give” with the challenges of standing and sitting, were too uncomfortable and too difficult for her and unwanted by staff who assisted Mom in so many daily needs.

It was the realization there would be no Christmas shared with Mom this year; no scrimping and saving and looking for a bargain as we had for so many years to continue to ensure she, at least, had a little “joy of the season”.

Daughter and I couldn’t afford to buy anything for one another; day to day, struggling to bring in money to make the mortgage payment and utilities, put gas in the car (the car we were given as a gift by my younger son; older and many miles but still moving and keeping us able to work), and food on the table. 

We’d stopped “celebrating” holidays and birthdays for ourselves except to wish one another a happy day and make the best of whatever we had since husband’s medical challenges and family needs took us to this level. But we always found ways to ensure their needs were met and beyond their needs, too.

We could give up the house; my last ability to have something to fall back on when my day comes to “go forth” and out into that dreaded life of living in a “home”. 

As with my Mom, don’t want, really prefer to “go” before that happens but facing through living the realities, how possible this time is and how important it is to have something to “buy your way into” a facility. Otherwise, you’re really at the mercy of availability and get the lowest possible living arrangements because you’re, as Mom used to put it, “on welfare”.

Not the best choice. Even with recent challenges. We move forward and we move onward. Daughter and I support one another; some see this as “unnatural” yet these same people are the first ones to tell us how it “should be” and, of course, walk away.

Mourning. Living. Coping. Surviving. Sometimes we’re fortunate to have someone come alongside. Sometimes we struggle alone. It’s life in all its complexities, like Mourning.

Mourning/morning. Words that sound alike and are alike in many ways. Both represent beginnings after endings – life and a day. Both bring changes and Seasons. Each provides a place to start, a time to go through – a transition.

Life is a journey. Remember it’s your journey. 

Honor others but listen to your heart, to advice from those who care and to those who truly care about YOU as those will be your best guidelines and guideposts as you move forward.

October: Beginning of Days/End of Days

Today I feel cold and yet the temperature outside is in the sixties and it's a gorgeous sunshine filled day highlighting the rapidly changing trees giving them an amazing luminosity.

It's knowing another wedding anniversary is quickly approaching.

Oh how we planned from that March 15 when he finally proposed --  today that date seems to have been almost an omen, The Ides of March, of what was to come.  We set the date for mid October. I would graduate college in May; he had graduated the year before in January. We'd been through a separation of hundreds of miles as he began his career in Michigan and I continued school in Missouri. Yes, our love endured that separation. It's enduring this one.

Our Wedding Day. It was an absolutely beautiful October Fall day complete with majestic colors on the trees with leaves scattered on the ground. I dressed in the little house next to the Church for that special walk down a very long aisle into the church I'd attended rarely -- having been away at college.

My husband and I met across a ping pong table; I won. Or maybe he let me win? Anyway, it was October .... another October.

We met at The Newman Center on campus. He was one of three young men who came into my life at the same time. Funny now; challenging then. Just simple dates, really, and having one of those three become my husband wasn't even in my mind.

I was a Freshman and wasn't there to find a husband; it was a long journey to get there and difficult to stay. Working whenever I could and a very, very small scholarship (kids today would laugh at the amount; of course, they'd laugh at what a year of college and books cost back then, too) were what kept me going.

My father's death provided VA benefits, but they were also a very small amount. But, Dad, in your own way, despite your life challenges, you helped give me that gift of education. You had many challenges, Dad, but I remember one thing you always told me, "An Education is something no one can ever take away from you." I value that to this day.

That handsome young man, four years older than I was, who had left college and went to work, went into the Air Force and then the Reserves, returned to college just in time . . . 

We had our first date in October -- the next night after the chance (?) meeting. There was a movie on campus and I think it was Hiroshima, Mon Amour -- not exactly the type of film for a first date but we didn't know anything about it and it was, after all, just a date.

Fall and Spring. Meeting and Engagement. Marriage. Then comes Winter and the dreaded long, cold and sometimes emptiness -- and death.

We'd loved all the seasons, even Winter, actually, as we went through the years together; sports, trips to ski, the boys playing ice hockey when the small pond behind our house froze enough. Building snowmen, hot chocolate, rare school holidays when the snow was over a foot deep.

Yes, Winter wasn't always memorable for the sorrow... so I choose to remember the joy.

Three family members moving from this life onward:  Father, Husband and Mother. And all within days of the other. Can't remember the date of my father's death but my mother passed on the third anniversary of my husband's burial. I felt she would be fortunate to get through December and the holidays when I saw the changes that were very evident in her health and rapidly decreasing physical abilities.

And when we were told the facility believed she was in her last time with us, it was just a few days until that fatal anniversary.

Even though they said she would pass three days before, I knew in my heart it would be that day. It would be as it had been before. When we would be with her as we were with him and telling her as we did him, it's all right, we'll be all right, you can go.

Daughter and I and a call returned to second son who was with us on the telephone when she took her last breath. Meant to be. We three looked after her, cared for her and walked with her on her last long journey on this earth.

No real regrets. I was able to give my mother a life filled with joy and great opportunity after a life filled with great challenges and many sorrows.

My husband and I? Well, we had our own challenges in life and our story together was a long one considering he almost died when he was a small child and had appendicitis. Ironically, we learned when we were dating that he and my mother were both in the hospital, although different hospitals, at about the same time, both with life threatening appendicitis and both had their lives saved by being given a new, miracle drug called Penicillin.

So, fate or a higher being, however you want to believe, gave them both longer lives to come together and to be a family and I, who wasn't in Mom's life at the time, would come into this world and the three of us would live together for many wonderful years along with the additional family my husband and I would bring into this world.

Regrets?  A few. But not about what we chose to do that now give me comfort knowing we did not wait, did not say we'd have time another day or year. We rode the merry-go-round of life and reached for the golden ring and sometimes we grabbed it. Life was anything but easy and challenges that came were often more than we thought we could bear. But we did.

It was, after all, our life. Together. And that was, when all is said and done, what really made the difference.

 Shifting the topic but not the focus -----

While continuing my search for a job that will give us what we need to do more than survive, I found a website I'd like to share with you. It's a Not For Profit organization dedicated to creating weddings and renewal of vows for couples where one or even both have terminal illnesses.

Imagine my oldest son would see that as "wasteful" and "unnecessary". He told me when we were going through times right after my husband's death I should stop "taking charity".

He had helped with expenses we could not provide for the funeral of his father as had his brother. I thought of it as tribute, not charity. If he was referring to some other short term assistance we received, well, all during his father's illness and his grandmother's we were left to forage for ourselves and the help we did receive was usually given with great reluctance.

I'm grateful to those who were able to help and grateful for all the times we were able to help so many others in their times of need.

I'm glad daughter and I didn't see our time and all the money we spent on husband/father and mother/grandmother as "charity" -- although there are those who see charity as love and not as an undeserved handout.

Dwelling on his inability to handle life's challenges is not the focus today.

Sharing a website and hoping in some small way this might bring more joy in times of such great pain means more. I have those wonderful memories, after all.

It is in the giving that we receive is a saying I've tried to live my life by.

Please visit http://wishuponawedding.org  And, if you have a little extra to share, create a memory that will live long after the "I Do's" and the "until death do we part" vows are spoken.

And/or, pass it along to others who might want to "throw a little rice" on a couple so in love for whatever time they have together.

Take a moment in life today. Stop and look around you. If there is beauty and if there is joy, hold it close. Someday you'll pull that memory out, for as long as you're able, and hold it close again.  Beginning of Days/End of Days.

Three Deaths; Three Restarts; A Family Unit Survives Outside Challenges

When my husband passed, I felt like I was living in a form of gelatin. The world around me seemed to be there but it seemed to be varying in consistency and moving ever so slightly in varying directions over which I had no control.
 


I felt like I was functioning at the time. I moved forward but I always felt like I was leaning backwards in time and space or at least living on a slant. To all appearances, I was "moving on"; making decisions, taking actions and even showing some "progress" into a new life forever changed through circumstances beyond all of our controls.




Grief, I believe, isn't definable by someone's deciding there are stages or types and everyone goes through them. For me, grief has been a constant battle as it was so many times in my life to survive, thrive and manage odds and situations beyond my control. Times on my journey I would not choose and did not want but also could not avoid.


Personally, I didn't want to join or attend a group dedicated to grief understanding and/or recovery. Not for me. Also not interested in a group for survivors of anything including the death of a spouse.


Possibly because I had support and gave support living each day with a family member who walked the same path, lived the same journey and understood enough to be both supportive and needing support. We reached out but not to join others in the same circumstances.


Instead, we reached out to find out, to be there for those who remained and those who needed us and who we also needed.


Right or wrong, we've travelled the distance. Surviving outside influences and actions that could have destroyed who we were, believed we could be and wanted to be.


Looking back -- always easier than looking forward -- what we chose to do, what I chose to do, may not have been agreeable to others and they might have seen our choices as unrealistic and even pushing us farther down in life.


Not so. We chose to keep our home despite it taking every penny we could find through making choices to sell items we felt would provide for that need. Oldest son isn't speaking to me and has withdrawn all contact with his family including his children. That's his choice. He's always had challenges and in my opinion finds faults, real and adjusted viewpoints, to mask his challenge of dealing with his own life decisions and actions.


Our home gives me solace. Even with its mounting challenges in making mortgage payments and holding life together. I've been able to get jobs and so has my daughter. We've taken whatever we could to hold our life together. And, that is the focus for the two of us -- our life together. We make the decisions, together.


Many cannot understand this choice. Many her age are torn apart by the media who call them "boomerang kids" -- those who return "to the nest" to live with their parents.


We just never stopped living together in our family unit that once included her grandmother, her father, her mother and her.


I had a conversation recently with a young man where I work who's chosen to return to live with his parents for another personal family reason. He has a job; he could make it on his own; instead, he chose to provide support when it was needed by his presence and abilities greatly needed by his family.


In my mind, that's a sign of personal courage and integrity not to turn away and go on with your life but to see the need in others lives; a definition of family in the past and for the future.


That was what my Mom did all her life and even though she never really talked about all she did for family members well before I was born, I saw through her actions and heard in her words during our trying life times how important our family unit and her family remained to her.


A legacy my mother gave me: 
                 Look outside yourself and live and give to others.


Death chose how to redefine our living arrangements; it was not a choice we would have made. A family of four (plus one amazing family pet, our cat) now down to simply two. I have faith, though, this change will continue and as time moves forward we will regrow through a new addition of a like minded person who will add greatly to daughter's life and my own.


Decades of making choices including others best interests while allowing them to come and go, leave or stay and always freedom within the unit of the family others seem to have difficulty understanding. That's the basis of many "Gen X'ers" lives we seem not to want to see. These are the nonselfcentered, nonselfserving young men and women of a new generation.


Get real, media!  See the positive effects of a society that has an inner strength in supporting the family unit in ways those who travelled life's difficult roads have done. Families come in all shapes, sizes and types as we're told.


Start accepting the differences in lifestyles chosen by those who "return to the nest" and give them the support and positive recognition they deserve!