The Thousand Natural Shocks That Flesh Is Heir To...

Hamlet. To be, or not to be- that is the question: 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep- 
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 1755
That flesh is heir to. 

I had breakfast yesterday with a handsome young man--a 33-something former student who is in town to bury his father yet wanted to break bread with me, his old English teacher and now Facebook friend.  Imagine!  

The young man's name is Kyle.  He has a fraternal twin brother that I also had in school, and another older brother whom I don't know.  He asked to meet me at Bob Evans at 8:00 AM, the morning of his father's funeral visitation.  We arrived at the same time and greeted each other with a heartfelt hug in the parking lot.  I told him I was so very sorry about the circumstances of our meeting, and he expressed that he was, too.  Then we went in.

I always had a soft spot in my heart for Kyle.  He's an ambitious young'un--a do-er with a can-do attitude. Sometime just after graduation from Monrovia, he expressed interest in amateur radio and becoming a pilot.  I took him, with the help of a friend who worked there, on a tour of the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Indianapolis.  (This was before 2001.  When 9/11 happened, that sort of thing came to a roaring halt.)  He got a pilot's license and went on to sell radios, professionally.  I figured he could even become president some day!  I consider Kyle one of my educational success stories.  Thank God, we've always been able to talk frankly to each other.  He knows I am one of his cheerleaders, and I know he is a loyal "follower" of Ms. McNary.

Which brings me to our breakfast together.  Kyle's father's death (in Florida where the dad lived) was "sudden and unexpected". I only found out the night before, from Kyle, that his passing was a suicide.  An unpremeditated suicide.  He shot himself in the head, without fanfare, in front of his wife and paramedics who had just arrived to treat the father's visiting brother who was having a heart attack.  No one knows why.  There were no clues.  No hints.  Just a knee-jerk thing that leaves family and friends alike thinking they are living a nightmare that will be over if they can just wake up from it.  All that is left are questions.  

Kyle talked about it.  He wasn't emotional, although he certainly could have been.  I think he's just numb and terribly, terribly confused.  He was working on writing his father's eulogy that he will deliver today at the funeral.  I told him that I wouldn't be there for mobility reasons, and he understood.

We didn't just focus on his father.  We did catch up on other things...his brothers, his job, his life and mine.  As much as we could do in the 1 1/2 hours we soaked up space in the booth.  My heart left with him, but I--like the rest of his family--came home with sooo many questions about suicide.  We all have hard times and sometimes depression, but we don't all consider doing away with ourselves.  

1.  I think everyone can respect someone who takes his/her own life due to physical pain in a disease situation that isn't going to get better.  Choosing death on one's own terms is noble.  I could never fault the people who jumped from the towers on 9/11, for instance.  Or someone who was in horrible pain from cancer, or unable to exist without the hard work of other people due to paralysis or a degenerative disease.  I get that.  Kyle's father wasn't sick, that anyone knew of. The Medical Examiner has requested his medical records and is awaiting toxicology reports.  The dad was full of life and passion; loved his family; had just bought a new boat, etc.  

2.  A re-run Dr. Phil show that I saw after I heard about Kyle's dad featured a family whose father had killed himself due to illness and depression.  One of the daughters expressed the question, "Why wasn't I enough to make him want to live?"  Yes...there's that.  

3.  Kyle asked, "Why would he want to do this to his wife?  She is a mess.  We don't even know if she can come to the funeral."  (The wife is the boy's stepmother of 16 years.)  There's that, too.  No one knows WHY.

4.  The problem with an unexplained suicide is that no one gets answers.  The only person who can answer the questions is gone forever.  This particular death is labeled "uncharacteristic" by his family.  

5.  What's worse, people who forever threaten loved ones with suicide but never make an attempt, or those who do it without any warning whatsoever?  Either case makes us numb, but for different reasons.

6.  All of the loved ones left behind will spend the rest of their lives wondering "what if"?  It's not fair, but life isn't fair...so I guess we all need to suck it up.  Too many former students and too many of their parents have committed suicide to think it is all that uncommon.  I know of at least ten people who have deliberately done away with themselves.  That's too many!!

My heart is with the Kaiser boys today.  They are bearing one of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to".  May God be with them.    

Glad I Didn't Say That

Awhile ago, the leader of my adult Sunday School class was humbled by something that she said that she thought might have offended someone, so in our opening prayer, she said. "Father, place one hand on my shoulder to guide me and the other hand over my mouth to shut me up!"  Oh boy, do I understand that!!

Just yesterday, I almost said something that would have proved me to be an idiot.  There was a gal just ahead of me in a grocery store check-out line.  She looked preggers, and I was feeling very maternal, so I helped her unload her cart, then came very close to asking her when she was due.  Something told me not to.  Imagine how embarrassed I would have been had I done that and she turned to tell me that she wasn't expecting!

In that same vein, I caught myself just in time the other day.  One of my Facebook friends is a former student of mine.  (I'll call her Susie.)  Susie is all grown up now, with a family of her own, in a same-sex marriage with the love of her life.  They are having their second child together, while Susie has two other children by previous relationship(s).  So this baby will be Child #4--a boy among three  sibling sisters.  Once she shared her news, I ALMOST said, "Now that you have a son on the way, maybe your family is complete and you can consider a tubal ligation?"  It was going to be written tongue-in-cheek.  As in joke...ha ha...but for the wrong reason!  First of all, they didn't need my grandmotherly advice, thankyouverymuch, but the worst part is that it didn't dawn on me at the moment that this is a same-sex marriage she is in.  As in no conception without outside help.  As in no need for contraception.  As in DUH!!!  I am SOOO happy that the little voice in my head stopped me from my effort to be witty.  It wouldn't have come across in print as witty at all.  It would have appeared totally ignorant.  As in stupid!!

There have been other times when I was glad that God put a hand on my shoulder and the other over my mouth.  He needs to be more vigilant about that before I make an absolute fool of myself!  It's coming!

Why I Don't Want a Pet

I don't think I have ever told the story of our pet rat, so here goes:

When I was in college and living in a dorm, spring break came along.  I was packing, waiting for my mom to arrive from the Chicago area to pick me up and take me home to Oak Park for the week.  As it happened, I was one of the last girls to leave that day, and the Dorm Director--a matronly lady-- came to my room to check on my departure schedule.  She was carrying a shoe box with holes in it. "Someone left this cute little hamster in the laundry room," she said.  "I don't know what to do with it."  The "cute little hamster" was trying to chew his way out of the box, quickly making his air holes into port holes of escape.  I told her that my mom and little brother were coming to get me, and since brother Doug had always had hamsters and guinea pigs and gerbils, I would take the "cute little hamster" home with us.  She was relieved and grateful.  After she left my room,  I peered into one of those holes.  The nose that greeted me was not the nose of a cute little hamster.  It was too pointy and too big.  It was a rat.  A lab rat, to be exact.  An albino lab rat...white with red eyes...and all too intent on getting out of that box.  Someone at ISU had unintentionally--or even deliberately--left behind a science department participant.  And the Covills gained a pet.

When Mom and Doug arrived, we loaded my stuff in the car.  Doug was in the back seat.  I handed him the box with holes and told him, not all that quietly, to keep the contents secret until we got out of town.  Of course, Mom was immediately suspicious.  "What is it??"  Never a good liar, I confessed.  Told her the story.  Know what?  She wasn't flapped at all!  The rat entertained my 8-year-old brother all the way back to Chicago, and all was well.  (Secretly, I knew my mother wouldn't mind.  We already had cages and water bottles, etc., at home.  The rat would just become the newest resident of one of them.  We always did take in stray critters...and even some stray people!)  That stupid rat went on to be a great pet.  He eventually developed a tumor in his abdomen and went the way of all pets over the Rainbow Bridge, but my brother loved him, as he did all animals.

With that as background, I have to say that I, too, love animals.  As mankind continues to dominate the planet, I abhor that critters suffer from habitat disruption, deliberate abuse, inadvertent neglect, and wanton massacre.  Yet, I'm not into PETA.  I'm still a carnivore.  I trust (perhaps errantly) that animals raised for food are slaughtered humanely.  I want wild animals to remain in the wild.  That cute little raccoon can tear up your house in mere minutes...seriously.  I don't mess with wild animals except to rescue the injured ones.  (More about that later.)  But animals that are bred to be pets need to be treated as pets.  In my home as a child and as a woman, the household pets were part of the family.  They had full reign of the house without restriction.  I always have considered the expenses incurred as collateral damage.  I think the expression is "Love me; love my dog."  Animal hair, potty mistakes, grooming expenses, vet expenses, food costs, flea control, furniture damage, etc., all translate into the risks of pet ownership.  I didn't always like it very much, but I rolled with it as part of having a "needy" family member, but I'm not whacko about it.

The pet loves of my life as a child and a young married woman were dogs.  We had a cocker spaniel when I was a kid.  She was largely ignored but was never a problem.  I have guilt feelings over Taffy because I was just a kid and didn't really understand that dogs weren't supposed to just lay there all day.  We fed her and let her out to do her business, but we really didn't do anything to entertain her.  Then, as a young woman in my 20s and on my own, my boyfriend-now-ex-husband gave me his Irish Setter, Ann.  With him, she was an outside dog.  In my home, she was an inside dog...and I loved her as I would have loved a child.  She came with pedigree papers but was not a beautiful setter.  She didn't have a long, silky coat and did have a boxy-looking face...and the brains had been bred out of her.  She wasn't very sharp.  But she was totally reliable after an adjustment period.  We could take her anywhere without a leash.  She would stay close to us, even with other dogs around.  She was my baby...and then she died a horrible death in a hot car on a warm day.  (I won't go into more detail in order to protect the feelings of the person responsible.)  After she died, I was sick to my stomach for weeks.  Then along came my daughter.

Funny how having a baby makes worrying about furry family a little less significant.  We lived in rental houses, most of which didn't allow pets....but, in time, my kid wanted a cat.  She LOVED cats. We took one in for awhile in Pontiac, IL, against our lease, but got rid of it when the landlord saw it in a window while driving by.  When we moved to Indiana in 1988, Meg was on a mission for a cat. We asked for, and got, permission from the landlord to have one.  I called a vet's office which put me in touch with a lady in Eminence, IN, who took in strays.  She fed a lot of felines, almost feral, in her back yard and in her house.  The one we got from her was the only one she could catch that day--a yellow tabby that we named Butterscotch.  Butterscotch raked the dickens out of my arm when we tried to put her in the carrier, and when we opened the carrier at home, she ran out and disappeared under the furniture, not to be seen again for awhile.

The very next day, a kitten came running at me out of the bushes in the back yard, meowing and needy.  It was dirty, but mostly hungry.  Immediately, Meg wanted to keep it.  I said no.  We didn't need two cats.  I sent her out in the neighborhood with it to ask neighbors if the kitten--probably about 4-months-old--was theirs.  She came back saying no one claimed it.  (I have absolutely no proof that she actually did as I asked, but it doesn't matter now.)  The kitten-cat, that we soon named Puddy Tat, ate and ate and ate...then slept forever.  And yes, it stayed with us.  What else was I to do with it?

Puddy Tat was largely responsible for bringing Butterscotch out of her shell.   We put strings down to play with the Puddy.  Butter, just out of reach under the couch, couldn't resist the temptation to grab at the strings, too.  Eventually, Butter began to come out and trust us, but she would always be our scaredy-cat, ready to run at the slightest noise or movement.  Puddy, however, became a cat thug of sorts.  We saw her terrorize visiting dogs ten times her size, and if she saw another cat outside the house in HER territory, her tail puffed up and she became loud and wildly aggressive--even bit my daughter once--until the threat of the other cat disappeared.  Still, she and Butterscotch were the best of friends. They licked each other endlessly and could often be found wrapped up in each others' arms, asleep.

Then the divorce happened.  People don't think of who will get custody of the critters in a divorce situation.  There was no doubt in our case.  My ex insisted that the cats would have to go with my daughter and I (which sounds unselfish but wasn't).  The problem was that Meg and I were moving into a rented duplex in another town with a lease that stipulated "no pets".  Drat!  We kept them with us for a short time until we could figure out how to re-home them, but it wasn't happening.  Meg finally expressed what I was already thinking:  we're going to get caught with the cats and will be kicked out of this place with nowhere else to go.

I called Brother Doug, the animal lover.  Doug was a grown-up man by now, living in an apartment in a western suburb of Chicago with a roommate and six cats of his own (against his lease).  Would he take our cats and find homes for them?  He assured me he would/could, so Meg and I drove up to the 'burbs to deliver our furry buddies, hoping they would find happy new homes.  Doug didn't incorporate them into his cat population.  He kept the two newcomers isolated in his bedroom.  (I can only imagine what life was like for them in there.  Puddy loved to wake me up early every morning by standing on the pillow just above my head and licking my hair.  Oh, boy!)

A few months later, I began to think about buying a house in Plainfield, IN, where we were living. The gal that owned the duplex we rented was also a real estate agent, so I called her and asked if she were willing to help me find someplace that I could afford and also allow me to break my lease. She was. She took us to see some little "national homes" in the neighborhood where I now live.  She guided me through the whole process of making an offer and getting a loan.  She said, "Peg, this is the only house you will ever need."  (She was right.  It has served me well for almost 25 years.)  A couple of days after we moved in, during spring break, I called my brother--seven months after taking my cats--to find that he still had them.  I told him we could take them back.  He replied that we needed to do it NOW because he was preparing for a visit from the Health Department.  Someone had turned him in for having too many cats.  Meg and I made the drive and came back with our long-lost buddies.

We wondered if the cats would remember us and what challenges the new surroundings would bring. Interestingly, none at all!   When we opened the carrier in the new place, the felines waltzed out and looked around as if to say, "What took you so long?"  They didn't act suspicious or scared in the least. We introduced them to the litter box and the food area, and that was all it took.  They were home.  We were all family again.  Back to business as usual.

Years passed.  First Butter went over the Rainbow Bridge...then Puddy a couple of years later.  (Puddy never really recovered from losing her cat buddy and her human buddy--who got married and moved out--all in the same week.)  But there was another critter that came into my life that overlapped Puddy's demise:  Frodo the Wonderdog.

Frodo was an adorable little female buff cocker spaniel puppy that my then-son-in-law just had to have.  They were barely ensconced in an apartment on the west side of Indy.  I begged them not to take on a puppy, but Nathan was adamant. The instant they got married, they got Frodo.  The pup was a hoot!  Cute as she could be!  But, because the kids lived in an area that had a lot of ducks and geese as outside residents, they didn't take her out to housebreak her because of all of the goose poop on the ground.  Shortly thereafter, they moved to the country to a house on a golf course and had babies. Housebreaking Frodo took even more of a back seat to raising children.  In time, it pained me to see my toddler-granddaughter learn to put a napkin or piece of paper towel over dog poop in the house so no one would step on it.  Ugh!  That dog loved me.  When I showed up to visit, she would run figure-eights all over the house in excitement.  Wow!

Then, inevitably, the family had to move on to a higher paying job to support the family.  Nathan took a job in Muncie, IN, but they were moving into a rental home that said--you guessed it--no pets. What to do with Frodo?   By now, the Fro-Dog was three years old, still largely unhousebroken, and neurotic.  She wouldn't eat dog food but was a shameless food whore.  She would take food off the table if your back was turned, and heaven help you if you had food in your hand without paying attention.  She got upset if the table was cleared without her being allowed to lick the plates.  If she got something she knew she wasn't supposed to have, she ran to a back room and would snarl horribly if you tried to take it away from her.  She also was a "fear biter".  In short, she had been treated like a princess and couldn't understand life in the real dog world.  I loved her but I didn't want her.  Still, guess where she went??  Grandma's house, of course.  I made Meg and Nate pay to get her up-to-date with shots and things that she would need with me....money they really couldn't afford (still ashamed of myself over that one)...and became the tentative owner of a granddog.

Tentative, you ask?  I had every intention of finding another home for Frodo.  I figured I'd keep her for a bit, spend the summer housebreaking her in an effort to make her a more adoptable pet.  (Part of that was teaching her how to ride in the car.  She hated it.  Insisted on being under the driver's feet, which is unsafe.  It took three or four trips of having to pull over to eject her from the front to the back, then holding my arm over her escape area to come back to the front.  She never did get used to it.  Finally learned to sleep on the floor of the back seat, but only after I picked her butt up to put her there.  Ugh!)  Her spoiled little furry brain thought she was human.  I was trying to teach her how to be a dog!

One day, my daughter and grandchildren came to visit me for my birthday and never went home.  (Long story.)  A divorce ensued.  The dog became a problem.  STILL not housebroken, Frodo sometimes would hit the puppy training pads that I had spread over the kitchen's indoor/outdoor carpeting.  Sometimes she wouldn't.  I couldn't keep the floor clean enough to raise young children. Little Ryan thought it was funny to get down on his hands and knees and follow Frodo around the house wherever she went.  She would come to hide under my legs, but he was relentless.  I was just waiting for her to turn and bite him in the face.  Then, too, she nipped Robin on the fingers more than once for reasons that Robin was too young to understand.  (It hurt enough to make her cry.)  I couldn't let the children go outside in the backyard without first doing "poop patrol" to pick up piles of dog feces.  Ryan got pretty astute at finding them...and it bothered me.  The dog had to be groomed about every three months.  Any less than that, and the hair around her rectum would catch feces and bring it into the house.  Her ears would get infected and stink.  No one really played with her...and I confess that I was busy trying to maintain my career, keep house, help my daughter stay in school with all her stresses, and provide for my grandchildren.  The poor dog--stubborn as she was--probably suffered, and so did I.  I gave up.

I could have given Frodo up to a shelter, but she would not have understood even a second of that. She also was not a candidate for immediate adoption due to the fact that she wasn't housebroken,  her fear biting, and her defensive attitude about toys and treats.  She would not have survived as an "outside" dog.  I talked to Meg, briefly, about the situation and found that she did not care for the dog at all, aside from the obvious.  I decided to have the Frodog euthanized.  I felt like an absolute murderer.  No one at the vet's office discouraged me.  I think they also felt that Frodo wasn't going to work in any other home.  And so it was.  My decision.  Frodo was eight when I sent her over the Rainbow Bridge.  I had loved her and provided for her and tried to train her for five years, but there came a time when I had to weigh the pros and cons of having her.  She lost, God bless her.  I will forever live with the understanding that I failed a pet.  Actually, she was failed before I got her, but all of my efforts to rehabilitate her didn't work.  For the first time in my life, I gave up on a critter.  It hurt.  Still, our lives were better for her not being with us anymore.  I'm sure the grandchildren have secret accusations in their hearts about my doing that to "their" dog...but when they are parents and have to think about their own children crawling around on floors that are soaked in urine and feces, they may understand.  I hope so.

I have been petless ever since.  Because I live alone and get lonely sometimes, people--especially my daughter--say "You need a pet."  Blah!  No, I don't!  I'm done being the Pet Mommy.  I've made my sacrifices at that altar.  Through many years of pet ownership, I have endured cat poop, dog poop, cat barf--hair balls and otherwise--animal hair all over the house, potty accidents, shredded wallpaper from bored cats, vet bills, figuring out who will care for them in my absence, costs for pet food, cat litter, pet grooming and pet toys, arranging the house to make sure food is protected, parasite control.  I'm done!  If I had a life partner that guaranteed another person in the house, I'd love to rescue a cat, for instance, but then I am immediately tethered to the critter when I want to go visit my daughter.  As it is, I'm free, and I intend to keep it that way.

I don't want a pet because I don't want to be limited to life's choices with one as a responsibility.  Pets are our retarded children, totally dependent yet unable to communicate above a certain level.  I can no longer afford to feed and vet one.  I don't have the resources to replace things they destroy.  I don't have the resources to provide needed grooming.  I can't exercise a dog.  I can't play with a cat. Bottom line, I don't need a single other life to be responsible for since I can barely be responsible for my own!  I guess at my age, alone and relatively infirm, interacting with a pet is like interacting with a grandchild:  love 'em and spoil 'em, then send them back to their owners!
    

PTSD

I've been reading, with interest, a Facebook conversation between two young women who are cancer survivors.  One of them posted an article that mentioned that 1 of 3 cancer survivors exhibit symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I believe it.

PTSD used to be called "battle fatigue" and "shell shock", and was usually used in reference to soldiers in war who came home never to be the same again.  MOST people survive intact, in time, but many do not.  Jewish victims of the Holocaust had to have been PTSD sufferers.  Some wanted to talk about their experiences so that society would never forget; others pushed off the memories hoping they would go away so they could live again.  Much depends on when and how they were raised.  My father went through WWII and the Korean Conflict, but he chose to protect his family from the awfulness in favor of the amusing.  He was one of the happy survivors who made it home with his family intact and waiting for him with open arms.  He was almost retired when the Vietnam vets returned.  He called them "crybabies" because they seemingly whined about mistreatment.  It was a different time and a different war, but the results were the same.

PTSD is defined as something that happens to the mind--a mental condition--that occurs after experiencing or witnessing a situation that threatens one's sense of security.  (Translate: ability to live.)  The people who lived through 9/11 surely saw things or felt things that most human beings should not have to see or feel.  Their very ability to live through it was in jeopardy, but they did...yet they are challenged by the things that haunt them from the experience.  Thus, I define PTSD as what one sees when he/she closes his/her eyes to sleep at night, and how long those visions last.

A number of years ago, I went through Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) training with The Salvation Army.  This is a course that qualifies a person to assist first responders in disasters to debrief.  There are several levels of training for this, and it was an honor to be included in this level of training.  It is, however, like CPR training in that it expires after awhile.  I would no longer be officially qualified to help, but it did give me a feel for what needs to happen for people to avoid PTSD in disaster situations.  It's a skill...a feeling...an intuition.  I'm happy to have been a part of that.  I think it helps me to be sensitive to others who are challenged by their experiences.

One of the cancer survivors--Ashley by name--is a young mother.  She is a Facebook friend of mine because she was one of my students.  Diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, she was treated and free of the disease...then it came back.  She then went through a bone marrow transplant that almost killed her.  Two years later, she is now free of the disease again, but she lives every day with the notion that it could come back.  It's a potential hammer hanging over her head, and living with that kind of fear is as much a part of PTSD as imagining that a stalker is coming to kill her.  It takes away a sense of security and function.  And it doesn't just happen with her.

A few years ago, I experienced a life-wrenching experience that plunged me into a horrible depression without benefit of medical help.  I don't pretend that my situation in any way matches the life-threatening situations that would normally cause PTSD, but the results were the same.   I was despondent, devoid of hope.  I KNEW I was in trouble and looked to places for help, but there were none.  Nowhere that I called could offer me counseling.  There are simply no counseling groups for old people to deal with the issues of old age and family problems.  Case in point:  my sister needs emotional support in caring for her husband with dementia.  Everywhere, there is advice about what to expect, but nowhere is there a place to go to know what to do, unless you can pay for it.  Even then, it doesn't always work.

Thus, it is no surprise to me that people with mental illnesses go untreated, then go on to kill others.  Mental illness, whether caused by PTSD or genetics, brain chemicals or injury, goes largely undetected and untreated in this country.  But treating mental illness is sometimes only a tweak in thinking.  Sometimes, just having someone to talk to and hold hands with works wonders.  Human beings gain strength in knowing that they aren't alone and unprotected in life.  We can't always change our experiences, but we can find healthier ways to deal with them, long term.  It's time for America to change its approach to mental illness, which includes PTSD.

Truth be known, mental illness is not at all rare.  I believe that every person experiences it at least once in life through experiences or fears.  Some people are able to work through it on their own, in time, but many don't.  Post Traumatic Stress is the very thing that causes us to remember exactly where we were and what we were doing the minute we witnessed or heard about life-altering events such as the assassination of a president or airplanes deliberately guided to crash into buildings.  In that sense, we all have PTS.  It becomes PTSDisorder when it won't go away...when our minds can't let it go...when we continue to live in fear in spite of our safety when the immediate danger is gone.

Cancer survivors don't always live with that feeling of safety.  They exist through treatment one day or week at a time.  Then a month passes.  They can breathe a mini-sigh of relief.  A cancer-free year later, the relief is more palpable.  The next milestone is five years.  After the 5-year mark, they are considered "in remission".  That doesn't mean "cured", although it could.  They just don't know for sure.  Thus, they live with the notion that whatever life-threatening risks they once had could return. Which causes PTSD.

I am not suggesting that the so-called normal life events that we all suffer from come close to what the cancer sufferer endures, but I am suggesting that there, by the grace of God, go we all.  We are all in this world together.  Time to be there for each other.        

Goodbye Again

Yesterday, I posted the story of the family in Monrovia, Indiana, that was forced to consider pulling the plug on their youngest daughter after a serious car accident that left her unable to recover.  Last night, her father announced on Facebook that his daughter was "with God now".  Her organs were donated to who knows how many lucky recipients who were praying for a miracle.  Parts of Meredith live on.

I was, unluckily, present in an ICU hospital room for just this sort of thing when I was sent there for an aneurysm brain bleed.  I was in a double room.  Another woman was on the other side of the curtain, on a ventilator.  The male nurse asked me if I wanted to watch TV.  I said I would but didn't want to disturb the other patient.  He said, "I wish you could disturb her.  She had what you have, but she's not doing so well."  That was his tactful way of saying that the woman was brain dead.  She was being kept alive for organ donation...something I figured out for myself when I overheard one of her children weeping over her, "You've always had such pretty eyes, and now someone else is going to see through them."  I realized in that moment that I should not be there.  These were private moments within a family.  I had no business intruding on their privacy, even though a curtain separated us, and it wasn't my fault.  And then, late one night, the transplant team came to usurp the room, doing whatever they do to prepare for organ harvest.  Meanwhile, the hospital was desperately trying to find a private room to get me out of there. My surgery was over.  I was no longer critical.  Fortunately, it happened the very next morning.

I am a little surprised at how very sad I feel for Meredith's family today.  Yeah, yeah, yeah....people die every day.  Grandparents and mothers and fathers get old and die.  People in the drug culture die every day.  Soldiers get killed.  People get drunk and do stupid stuff and die.  People get cancer for seemingly no reason at all, or drop dead of heart attacks.  (Like my very own stepson and brother, respectively.)  But...but...it doesn't happen to US.  Those nasty things happen to others.  But a child? A beautiful, intelligent, talented, athletic kid with her whole life ahead of her?  I internalized this one. I know the family.  I had her sister in class.  I get it.  All I can really tell you is that if something like this happened to my daughter, her husband, or my grandchildren, you will be able to visit me at the psychiatric ward in a hospital somewhere.  I would not survive intact.  There would be no further reason for me to live.

The older I get, the more these things affect me.  I try to offer support by way of my own experiences with grief but am not always sure if it hits the mark.  I don't get into the "so sorry for your loss" stuff...or worse..."she/he's in a better place".  Yet, I wonder why we are so shocked when these things happen.  Wake up!  You are not promised tomorrow...and neither am I!!

Having spent most of my adult career as an English teacher, I sometimes turn to literature for answers, and today my mind goes to this from John Donne's "Meditation 17":

No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less As well as if a promontory were, As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. These famous words by John Donne were not originally written as a poem - the passage is taken from the 1624 Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and is prose.

Saying Goodbye

We humans are such a trusting lot.  When we go to bed at night, we believe that the sun will come up in the morning.  We assume that we have a tomorrow.  We play out our lives not willing to believe that things can change in an instant, never to be the same again.  The play Our Town portrays this when a young woman dies and is given the chance to go back to her family for one more day as if she were still living, only to realize that they aren't focusing on what is really important in life.  She is dead.  She gets it.  They aren't, so they don't.  And so it is.

A family of my acquaintance in the school district where I once taught is learning this lesson the hard way.  The last of their five daughters just graduated from high school last May--beautiful, bright, athletically talented, and full of future promise.  Then she was in a terrible car accident.  She was put in a drug-induced coma to try to control brain swelling, but then developed Acute Pulmonary Distress Syndrome as a result of her injuries.  She was already on a ventilator.  The doctors did everything they knew how to do to help her lungs heal, but nothing was working, which prompted doctors to tell the family that there was nothing more they could do for their daughter.  There is no happy ending here.  The parents are now charged with the notion of "pulling the plug" on their baby.  They have determined that Meredith's organs will be donated because she is young and strong and would have wanted it.  It's a way of saying goodbye without actually having to sever the string that binds her to the world.  (God bless the family!  I had one of her sisters in class.)

I have written endlessly about my family's nomadic life in the Navy before I was 10-years-old.  In that year, we went back to civilian life as my father was put on inactive duty.  My brother was only 4 at the time, so he spent his entire school career in one school district and in one house.  My sister was a Senior in high school.  She got the worst of it, having to say goodbye to friends over and over again as we moved wherever the Navy sent us.  I, however, was on the cusp.  When we were stationed in Danville, IL, we were there for four years.  Unheard of!  It was long enough for me to make a neighborhood friend.  Susan Kochell and I were inseparable buddies, in the same class at the local school.  We'd been friends since second grade...only lived a block away from each other.  BFFs!  And then, at the end of my 4th grade year, Dad was sent to Japan, and we with him.

The day we left town to go to California to meet the ship that would take us to the Orient, we stopped at Susie's house to say goodbye.  The car was packed to the gills for our cross-country trip.  No one even got out of the car.  Susie's family met us at the curb for our final farewells, and as it came time to depart, all I could do was sob in deep anguish, "I don't want to leave!"   I think it broke my mother's heart, but my own heart was broken.  After we were a few miles down the road, I understood that we were on a great adventure and there would be no turning back.  I carried on.  I had no other choice.

Through all of my military youth, I learned not to look back.  Saying goodbye in those days meant "I will never be here again or see you again."  That is such a heavy thought.  So final.  Thus, it becomes difficult for me to do justice to endings.

The last time I saw my beloved grandmother alive, I had the sense that it would be the last time.  She showed me her grangrenous black foot when prompted to do so by my mother.  Baba's eyes were hollow and distant.  She knew she was dying, and so did I.  (It had already been decided not to put her through amputation surgery since her prognosis was already dire.)  In the moments before I left her that day, I kissed her as I usually did and told her that I loved her as I usually did and then said, "See you later."  It wasn't exactly the kind of deathbed sendoff that I would have wanted.  She looked so very alone in that bed, surrounded by several family members who loved her dearly...and it hit me that dying is the loneliest thing we do.  No one can come with us.  I didn't say the kind of goodbye that maybe I wanted...but what is the best thing to say?  I wasn't in charge.  Her children--mostly my mother--were in charge.  I put my faith in my relationship with that grand old woman to believe that she knew how I felt about her.  Never alone.  Never, never alone!

When my own mother passed away, none of us were with her.  It was a sudden and unexpected departure.  Mom was my best friend and confidante.  I wasn't there with her...and it bothered me...but I also comprehended that I probably would not have handled the end well.  I am 100% certain that my mother's last conscious thought was about who would care for my dad in her absence.  I'm happy to say that we all stepped up to do just that.  We "closed ranks" as my military uncle--her brother--suggested, and I have no regrets about my relationship with Mom.  Still, saying goodbye was plenty tough.  I remember putting my head on the shoulder of the funeral director as I was entering the funeral home saying, "I don't think I can do this."  He said, "Yes, you can."  It was such "Mom" thing to say!  It was all I needed to bring strength from my toenails to get through the day.

Still, I have problems with goodbyes.  Who wants to say, "In case I never see you again, here's how I feel?"  No one.  We plan for tomorrow, sometimes without planning for the hiccups that can happen between now and then.  When I started living alone, I tried  to cover some bases about things should I become disabled, etc.  And you'd better bet that the last thing on my mind and on my lips as I slip into oblivion will be love for my children and family.  I have done my dead-level best to live a good and honest life.  No one can ever accuse me of not working hard enough to do so!

The bottom line for me is this:  Life is short and fleeting.  If I leave you or you leave me before we've had a chance to finalize our relationship, it's okay.  Eternity is forever.  I gave you the best I had.  I can only assume that you did the same for me.

I think the Hawaiians say it best:  We don't say goodbye.  We just say Aloha.  I'm good with that.