Category Archives: Life & Death

September 12, 2011 · 5:09 pm

Promise Me This

Ah, here again.  We know this place, you and I.

Murmuring heads leaning over a chart, talking about what’s next.  Phones and bells and monitors ringing and beeping.  Soft footfalls in the hall outside your door. The steady whir and click of the IV as it drips fluid and medication into your veins.

Another hospital.  Another time when the outside world disappears and everything in our lives narrows to this room, this bed, this time.

As our future unfolds before my eyes, I ask only one thing.

Will you promise me this?

If I am lying in that narrow bed, if I am dying before you, will you slip in with me, wrap your arms around me and hold me the way you do every morning before we get up?

It is a small act but it would give me the courage to go quietly into that dark good night.  If you are there, nesting with me, my back leaning on your chest, our heads together, your breath caressing my neck, I can reach out and hold on.

I will not be afraid.  I will be loved into the next world, soaring on your heartbeat and the touch of your hand on mine.  And when it’s over, when I am gone, lay your lips next to my ear and says these words – for you.  For me.  For us.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

And know that I am not gone, I am there, just beyond the horizon, waiting to take your hand in mine once again.

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September 10, 2011 · 6:51 am

Dismal Economic Picture Is All Our Fault

The dismal state of the economy is apparently our fault – all of us middle class, taxpaying citizens who have been laid off, fired and unable to get a job are part of the problem.

Who knew?

Gail Collins of the NYTimes, apparently.

We may be to blame for the current state of the economy but Collins offers some pretty solid advice for turning the economy around.

We should all stop looking for the bad news – like the applause from a Texas crowd when Presidential candidate Rick Perry mentioned the 234 people executed in the Lone Star state.  We really need to start looking for good news which Collins says is everywhere.

Collins belongs up on the Satirist Wall of Fame right beside Cervantes, Frank Zappa, Mark Twain, Juvenal — and all the other great chroniclers of their time whose wit and insight have helped all of us make it through yet another day in which we are cast as the reason the sky is falling in.

Wars we can’t afford, bailing out billionaire stock brokers and CEOs who don’t deserve a dime, denying climate change and speculating the cost of gasoline up to $4.00 a gallon have nothing to do with where we are now.  It’s you and me and our negative attitudes.

So toss off the shroud, read Gail Collins and go out there and find all that good news that is waiting to be shared!  Really!!  Really???

 

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September 9, 2011 · 8:35 am

How Money Can Shape Relationships – Part 2

Money talks…and sometimes it yells.

At least that’s what the decibel level in our house was like when we were growing up.  If the topic was money, we got out of the house, fast.  Dad was going to give Mom a verbal dressing down for how she spent it.

That was my early, late and constant introduction to how money was managed.  But this approach wasn’t really a problem as long as I was the one earning it and spending it.  All that changed when I got married, 27 years ago.  And the change was radical, painful and yes….loud.  There was a lot of yelling in the early years and, on my part, not a whole lot of insight as to why.

The first time my husband and I engaged in combat over cash was literally prompted by how much I tipped a waiter.  When I was flush (read gainfully employed) Pat and I used to love to eat out.  Since we both worked in Center City Philly, there were a thousand different ways we could spend our money on dinner.  And we did.

Pat usually paid the tab but one night, when the check came, he wasn’t at the table so I paid.  When he came back, he looked at the tip and the total and asked one simple and in hindsight I have to admit, innocent question – why did I always tip 20% then round up to the nearest $5?

I didn’t know why  And it didn’t seem like a big deal to me.  But he kept asking – as we walked out of the restaurant, walking down the sidewalk to the car and all the way home – he kept asking.  Pat was actually only asking why the tip had to be for an even dollar amount.

I thought he was questioning my right to spend our money on such a big tip.  And I lost it.  I think if he could have run, he would have.  The tip battle was round one of an almost 5 year fight over whose money it was and who had the right to decide how to spend it.

We never got to the point that one of the couples we knew did – separate bank accounts and splitting the bills.  But we did do some serious damage to each other and to our relationship.  In this entire 5 year fiasco, I must admit, I was the one who was wrong and I had my Mom and Dad to thank for it.

I never would have figured it out and I am guessing our almost 3 decade marriage would never have survived if I hadn’t asked my brother Bob (a plumber who was also an extraordinary poet) a casual question about his desk drawer full of paychecks.

When he explained that he earned money but didn’t like it, didn’t spend it (his wardrobe consisted of jeans, t-shirts with his business logo on them and cheap sneakers) and did NOT want to talk about it, I recognized a  link.  And Bob and I talked it through.

I learned how much he was affected by Mom and Dad’s constant bickering and monthly brawls.  And suddenly, I realized just how much they had affected me, too.  I could also see very clearly how my parents relationship was affecting my relationship with my husband.

I went home.  I apologized.  I explained.  And Pat and I began to heal the wounds that battling over money caused.

Was it fast?  No.  Even today, when a check is not written into the register or there is a question about an expenditure, I feel the wings of my meat-eating, money monster start to unfurl.  Even today, I have to remind myself to breath, to relax and to work with my husband to get the answers he wants and needs.

I have to agree with the man behind the Retrospective Entrepreneur – money breaks up more marriages than infidelity.  Think about that the next time you are putting on the gloves for yet another round in the ring about the cash.

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September 7, 2011 · 9:33 am

How Money Can Shape Relationships

It used to be (back in the dark ages of the 1950’s) that kids learned about relationships from their parents and maybe from the parents of their best friends.  In my house, we learned that Dad was the boss and everything, and I mean everything, revolved around his schedule, his likes and dislikes, his sense of right and wrong and his money.

That’s right.  My parents were NOT equal and the money was all Dad’s.

Our family was the definition of old-fashioned.  Dad went to work every day; Mom stayed home with the five kids, the laundry, the housework, the cooking, mending and shopping.  The biggest argument my parents had was held at the end of each month when it was time for Dad to look at the “books.”

Arguing wasn’t really what happened during those sessions as the only voice we ever heard was Dad’s.  Inquisition is a more apt description.  It was not a pretty sight and even if you couldn’t see it, you could not miss the frequent and loud outbursts that emanated from Dad’s mouth.

My Mom was in a losing position before one word was spoken.  The reason was simple math.

At the height of his career, Dad earned $24,000 a year before taxes.  Out of that money, my mom had to feed, clothe and keep in “necessities” five children, a foster teenager, her mother-in-law, herself and Dad, keep the house and car running and tithe to the church.  That was no mean feat and often there was little or nothing left at the end of the month.

Dad’s question was always the same — where did my money go?  The real answer – spent on the family – was never good enough.  And the war raged on around us.  Little did we know how very much we were learning about how money shaped relationships.

My brother Mike controlled the cash in his house, just like Dad.  His wife and children answered to him for every nickel and dime that went missing. Bob refused to talk about money or manage it.   He put his paychecks in a drawer and only deposited them when his wife was telling him, at the top of her lungs, that their checking account was running on fumes.

I made money, lots of it.  And I spent it, paid for my college education, raised a daughter on it and managed it for more than 20 years.  I felt total control when it came to money…until I married Pat.   Only then did I begin to understand how my parent’s monthly battle over money would affect my relationship to my husband.  And what I discovered was that ugly behavior can be learned.

More on the battle over money in the next post.

 

 

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September 2, 2011 · 8:51 am

Does Your Silverware Talk?

Open your silverware drawer.

Go ahead, open it.  Is your silverware telling tales about you?

Okay, before you think I finally fell and hit my head….I just have to say that what people buy and use for silverware speaks volumes about them.  It also tells a tale to anyone who opens the drawer and really listens.

We have two silverware drawers.  That should tell you something right away but here’s a little hint.

In one drawer, all the silverware matches!  Knives, forks, soup spoons, salad forks and teaspoons.  All have the same pattern and there are 12 of each.  Each piece is nested in its respective slice of the silverware tray.  All handles at the bottom; all working bits at the top.  This is my husband’s drawer.

In the other drawer, very little matches.  There are 3 sterling silver knives, 3 matching sterling silver forks (dubbed clubs by the owner of the other drawer), one sterling silver fork from the Hotel Dupont (don’t ask) and about 15 other, mismatched forks tumbling across the tray.

The teaspoons are even more fun.  There are bigger, rounder ones, smaller, sugar spoons, and a spoon I found in a parking lot, all mixed in with one that looks like a shovel and one that weighs so much you’re tired by the time you’re done drinking your tea.  My drawer.

So, what does each drawer tell you about its respective owner?

One of us (the same one who insisted we buy a full set of bone china and sterling silver) likes the world to be ordered and organized.  The “pattern” found in the silverware draw repeats itself in the owner’s closet – shirts in one row, pants in another, ties on a hanging tie rack and belts on a rack attached to the back wall of the closet.  His world has to conform to certain rules and principles.  Change has to be broached carefully, discussed quietly, discussed with butter knives at 20 paces then discussed one more time before a decision can be made.

The other person, the one with the eclectic silverware and “favorite” spoons likes a bit of excitement in her life.  I actually like chaos – it makes me feel creative.  This woman of the wacky silverware drawer likes noise, revels in movement and surrounds herself with music including the songs of nature.  Change is what happens just seconds after an idea – smart or stupid – pops into my head.

Sometimes I go to the kitchen, slide open both drawers and smile about the story our silverware tells.  Me and my drawer make it possible for my husband to make a change.  My husband and his drawer make sure that the my body, our house and the world where we live are safe for us to share.

No matter whose silverware we are wielding, together, we’re unstoppable.

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August 29, 2011 · 6:47 am

What Are We Really Fighting About?

My husband and I have the distinction of probably being the only couple in America ever to have a knock-down, drag out argument about how people remove nose hairs.

I will pause here to let that sink in.

We had an argument over nose hairs.

We were deadly earnest about it, too.   We took our stands – plucking versus trimming – and neither of us would back down.

On the face of it, arguing about nose hairs is ridiculous.  But this argument is symptomatic of a larger issue that frequently pops up between two people swimming along in a relationship — any two people.

We argue with co-workers.  We argue with strangers.  But most of us argue most fiercely at home.  Mom and Dad, sister and brother, husband and wife – these arguments are a constant in most of our worlds.

Who squeezed the toothpaste from the middle?

Who left the dirty dishes in the sink?

Who left the toilet seat up?

Any one of these questions can lead to a thundering verbal battle.  Accusations fly faster than bullets, striking our opponent (who just 10 seconds ago was our loved one), wounding before our very eyes.  We argue with a ferocity that is frightening.  We argue without really thinking about why.

Back to the nose hairs.  My husband and I were deep into this topic, arguing loudly, vigorously, intensely.  Then, suddenly, one of us asked the other a telling question.  What would Martians say if they could lift the corner of our roof and listen in?

Not only did the argument end, we burst into laughter, holding our sides and wondering how we could have gotten so deeply angry over such a stupid topic.

We got a good laugh out of our ridiculous argument; we also got an insight that has saved us countless hours of bickering, backbiting and verbal abuse.  We learned why we were fighting.

Control.

We were arguing over control.  Who’s in charge here – me or you?  Who gets to rule the roost? Run the house?  Make the decisions?

We also learned that we share control; both of us are in charge.  We make decisions.  Now, when we are vergeof yet another stupid argument, we just ask one question – What would the Martians say?

Then we settle in with a cup of coffee and talk our way to the answer

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August 23, 2011 · 6:20 am

Where Is Your Music?

I spent years wondering why it was possible for Ludwig Von Beethoven and Bederic Smetanau to write some of the most moving music in the world when they were both deaf – no sound penetrating their worlds.

I think I figured it out.

Beethoven could hear nothing when he wrote his magnificent choral symphony, the 9th and final symphony of his life.  Listen to The 4th movement of the Choral Symphony.  Smetanau wrote his incredible, lyric ode to his home land from which he was exiled Ma Vlast, in complete silence.   Only 11 minutes long, the Moldau shows Smetanau\’s love for his homeland.

How could they create such beautiful sound without being able to hear?

Perhaps that is the very reason they could create music that moves men and women to tears even today, hundreds of years after they composed it.

Unlike the vast majority of people living in this world, these men were not distracted by the everyday sounds of their lives.  No incessant chattering, no hoof beats in the streets below, no vendors hawking wares.  All they could hear was their inner music, the rhythm, beat, melody and lyrics that coursed through their very blood and poured onto page after page of parchment as notes.

I believe every person has music inside them – their own special sound.  Sometimes, if you look quickly enough, you can see it flash in their eyes.  Or you’ll hear fingertips drumming on a table, maybe see someone sketching the echo of their own soul on a notepad, in yet another meeting.  So, where does our music go?  Why does it only slip out when we aren’t watching or we think no one else is?

We drown it out with a torrent of sound.  Television always on.  Radio playing in the background.  iPod plugged in and ripping through song after song.  Texting.  Chatting.  Reading magazines, the newspaper, billboards, even labels.  Every day, all day, we are all assaulted by noise.

Who could possibly hear the thread of their inner symphony?

Ten years ago, this month, I embarked on an experiment to try to reconnect with myself, find my creativity, begin to hear my music, my voice again.  I took my journey with Julia Cameron – well-known author of The Artist’s Way.  A twelve week, self-study course, The Artist’s Way makes it possible for anyone reading it and doing the exercises to find their way home to themselves.

One of the toughest assignments for me – a bona fide noise junkie – was the week of when I was not allowed to read books, newspapers, magazines, even boxes or bottles.  I wasn’t supposed to watch television or DVDs, go online or listen to the radio or my iPod.  At the beginning of the week, I was terrified by this idea.  At the end of the week, I was astonished by what I learned.

I learned that I loved silence; I craved it.  And the lesson stuck with me.  I don’t play the radio in the car anymore.  There is no television on during the day, no iPod unless I am meditating and need to listen to Jeff Strong’s One Tribe to help me reach center.  I don’t subscribe to the newspaper anymore.  I cut magazine subscriptions down from ten to two – Countryside and Oprah.

I write now.  I draw like I used to as a young girl.  I grow fruit and vegetables and flowers.  I create, sew and wear beautiful clothes.  And everyday, I actually take the time to tune into the small sounds of the quiet and gentle world living all around me – crickets, birds, the wind in the pines – my own personal symphony of life.

Have you found your music yet?

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August 8, 2011 · 7:07 am

What Makes The Best GIft

I’ve been thinking about gifts, lately.  My anniversary probably triggered it.

What makes the best gift?  An intriguing question because the answer is as different as every person reading this post.

I was a high-flying executive for years.  I got expensive jewelry, trips to Napa, Lacque de chine pens, vacations in Bermuda and dinners at 5 star restaurants.  I enjoyed every one of these gifts but I bet no one will believe what my favorite gifts were — the ones that made cry and laugh, sometimes, simultaneously.

The first was an old oak rocking chair that my husband and my father-in-law found in the bin, refinished, recovered, put a bow on and slid next to the Christmas tree.  They worked for hours on this chair, lovingly bringing its wood back to life and recovering the seat.  A gift from their hands and hearts, this rocking chair still has pride of place in my living room, 20 years after I first saw it and started to cry.

Then there was the gift that made me laugh out loud, jump up and down and hug my husband until he couldn’t breath.  He hid it in the garage and led me out there one Christmas morning.  Taking off the blind fold, turning on the garage light, he uncovered it.

NOT a shiny new car….not for me.  A shiny new John Deere rototiller.  I could not believe my eyes.  I danced around it.  I danced around him.  I read the manual and longed for the snow to melt, the ground to soften, for the right day, the right time to fire up “Tillie”.

Then there was this year’s anniversary gift.  The box was small.  I thought it was another necklace or bracelet destined to join last year’s jade pendant and the gold, silver, diamond, sapphire and lapis lazuli ornaments stuffed in my jewelry stand, worn on special occasions only.  Stalling, shaking it, trying to put on my game face, I gently began to unwrap the gift.

Pulling paper off the bottom of the box, fanning it out on either side and turning the package over.  I gasped.  Something more precious than gold or jewels fell into my hand,

Secateurs.  He gave me secateurs.  I could not believe it.

Right now you’re probably asking, “What the heck are secateurs?”  To a gardener, they are a precious metal, a jewel without comparison.  And I was holding the top of the line — Felco secateurs.  In every day language, secateurs are pruners but that is way too simple a description for these jewels.  Felco says they will change your life.  They will be passed down from generation to generation — family heirlooms,

They are a work of art.  When I try pruning bushes, vines or even small trees with loppers, I often whack off a limb you didn’t mean to.  And I have to use brute  force — something in low supply in my 63-year-old body!  With the secateurs, it’s a bit like slicing butter – soft butter at that.  So this was a gift of extraordinary value to me.

My man knows me by heart.  His gifts show that.  He’s had to figure out that a rocking chair, a rototiller and a pair of pruners would have me singing about the best gifts I ever got.

Which gift made you laugh out loud?  Which one made you cry.  What makes the best gift for you?

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August 4, 2011 · 9:23 am

A Magic Marriage

My husband and I have been married for 27 years.  We still hold hands.  We still surprise each other with small presents on days that are only special because we make them so.  I cook his favorite dishes; he fixes everything from broken earrings to my John Deere rototiller.  We love each other more today than we did all those years ago when we said, “I do.”

So, how did we know our marriage would last, would be magical?  We didn’t.

My motto in 1983 was, “I could spend my own money and make myself miserable; why would I need a man?”

There was no place in my life for someone to love other than my daughter.  So Pat was a complete surprise.  I met him in October but thought he was coming to the television station to visit his girlfriend.  I didn’t really notice that he spent a lot of time in the newsroom, talking with me.

When he asked me out in early November, he says I said “No” and kept on typing. He was so surprised that he asked me why.  I told him I didn’t date other women’s boyfriends.  He made the hapless woman come into the news room and tell me they were not dating.

Since I had made a complete fool out of myself, I agreed to date him but decided I was going to show him the full me – no fencing or ploys – all of who I was right down to what I liked and didn’t like.

We went to dinner. It was December 3rd, 1983.  I remember that we talked the entire time we were in the restaurant.  We talked and walked along the Delaware River afterward then went back to my condo to talk some more.  After he left, I knew I was in trouble.  I could love him but didn’t want to.

We went out on two more dates then started spending every waking and sleeping moment that we could, together.  In February, he called the television station and asked me to marry him. I said yes.  We were married on 8/4/84 – just 8 months after our first date.

Were we crazy?  Yes. Was it a leap of faith?  Yes.   Has it been easy?  No.  In fact, the first year was so tough both of us had second thoughts.

Like all couples, we were and are two, totally different people with totally different baggage, interests and drives.  I love the country, write in my spare time, have a horse, garden for food and raise chickens. He is a city boy at heart, likes to watch sports TV to excess and only has one outside interest – cars.

So how have we made it this far?

There are two elements that I think have helped us to live and love through 27 years together.  The first is the fact that our values are the same.  Way down at the core of our beings, we believe in the same things and will fight for those beliefs.

The second is that we made a commitment to each other and have honored it.  We are honest with each other to a fault – sometimes causing arguments but also clearing the air and once again, settling us into the same place with the same drives and desires.  We never forget to say please and thank you.  That sounds small but it reinforces the respect that must underpin any relationship.

Our marriage has been tested by the fires of illness and come through stronger than ever.  My husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2001.  For the last decade, we both lived through more than 30 hospitalizations for surgeries, emergencies, and infections.

Weeks and months of our lives were wrapped around hospital rooms and prescriptions and one blow after another relative to his health.  Every time he would start to recover, bang – right back into the hospital with a new twist or turn ranging from another tumor to a blocked coronary artery.

This proud Italian man has paid a hefty price physically and emotionally.  He is alternately sad and angry and he tends to take both out on me because I am the only place he feels safe.  I have been left with no faith that he will live long enough for us to retire.  On bad days, I am tired and scared and sad.

I have seen other marriages crumble over far less than 10 years of fear and sorrow but not ours.  We treasure each and every day together.  We still enjoy each other’s company; we still love each other.  We have a deep and abiding love but like all love stories, ours is punctuated by extremes.  So there are those days when things have gone a bit wonky and like changes to a bit of dislike for each other.

But we work at marriage, every day.  We are bound together by joy and genuine caring.  We are facing our future, whatever that is, together.  On the good days, in the present moment that we try to live in, we are happy, content and enjoying ourselves.

And that’s why our marriage is magic.

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June 10, 2011 · 10:05 am

Remembering My Big Brother

As you get older, months take on different significance.  Months that used to be filled with birthdays, anniversaries and graduations now harbor dates where someone you love learned he was dying and months where father, brother, mother, died.

June is one of those months for me.  My brother Mike learned he would die of a brain tumor in June.  I think he suspected that he was dying but the doctors confirmed it on June 11th, 2007.  I spent the next 2 weeks living in Virginia, fighting for tests, for hope, because my sister-in-law could not.  She was in shock; she was  losing her husband of 43 years.  But there was to be no reprieve.

Every weekend for 8 weeks, my husband and I drove to Roanoke on Thursday evening or Friday morning and stayed with Mike and his wife.  We brought wine, and steaks, pies, homemade chocolates and our love.   Days and nights were spent holding his hand, talking, laughing, watching his favorite movies, listening to his favorite music, his only music — classical.

Poignant moments came at odd times like when he stood in his hall, looking at his CD collection and said, “No one will want my music when I die.”  Or the time he looked up and me and said, “Why my words?  Why is this tumor taking away my words?”

How do you answer questions like that?  I answered by taking his hand, holding it, telling him I loved him and slowly, slowly moving him back toward living and away from the edge of his own death.

During those last weeks, he and I completed his last project together – putting the rails on the stairs to his front deck.  Sounds like a simple job but it wasn’t.

Mike couldn’t calculate anymore.  My genius, electrical engineer, computer programming wunderkind brother could no longer do math.  I never could.  But for 8 hours, on a Wednesday, he and I struggled to space the spindles on the last remaining stairwell on the deck.  And we did it exactly correctly.

Oh I tried to do it easy – just aligning them with the spindles on the other side but Mike had lost his math skills, not his personal power.  So, slowly, carefully, dividing to a 13th of an inch, he and I put those spindles in place.  And when we were done, we sat on his glider, on his newly finished deck, poured the last of his 21-year-old Scotch and drank to each other, to the deck and to the day.

Michael died on August 8th, just 9 weeks after he received his death sentence – malignant astrocytoma – brain tumor.  But he lives on, those days and weeks live on, memories, celebrations to a life well and truly lived.

It is June and I celebrate you Mike.

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