To Life

Often in my blog, I write because I am moved by something.  This year I have been moved by the beauty of life, the struggle of raising children, the joy of births, the sadness and sometimes celebration of deaths after a life well-lived and day to day living.  I write because I observe something but usually it is because I am wrought with emotion about what I have observed.  This post exemplifies that process.

Today, I attended another funeral, or as they are generally known, a Celebration of Life.  But this funeral was not for an elderly relative who lived fully and saw generations come up behind him or her.  Rather, this was the funeral of a co-worker who succumbed to a brave and ferocious battle with cancer.  She was only 46 years old; just four years older than I am now.  And while I am moved by her life and the person that she was, I am completely and utterly angry about her death.  I know that there is a plan and universe has its reasons for plucking someone from us at such an early time but it is hard for me to celebrate a life cut short. 

She was an amazing person, loved by many, never an unkind word and while I appreciated knowing her the little that I did at work, I was even more amazed by her courageous battle she raged for the last three years.  And yet, I am left with a pit of sorrow because she should have won that battle.  She did everything she could, everything she should; she followed all the instructions.  She had a positive attitude and used humor as well as all the medical treatments.  She really gave her all.  And all is what the cancer took from her. 

Not fair!!!  Not fair that her teenage son is without her, not fair that her husband who loves her so much is now a widower, not fair that her parents outlived their child.  I’m not celebrating that.  I’m incited over it.  As I was listening to the pastor telling us to turn to God, I have to admit I took comfort in the reminder that we are small in the scheme of the universe.  But as I was leaving, my sadness over the loss turned towards anger.  I celebrate the woman, but I’m not happy about losing such a soul. 

Death is such a scary and dark place to think about; when will it all end, how will it end, will it hurt, is there a heaven?  And so in the face of death, I will turn to life.  I vowed in my sad anger that I will love more fully and be more present.  I will put my iPhone down more often and listen more to my kids and husband.  I will DVR less and dance in the living room a little more.  I will take more vacation days and give myself a break about the house not being clean.  So even though I am angry that Deb was taken too young, I learned some things from her death. 

1. Take pictures of yourself with your loved ones and friends; I am often trying to not be in front of the camera because of my battles with my weight but no more  - I want people to be able to see my laughter after I’m gone
2. Live in the moment; I think anyone who is taken from us after a battle with an illness knows that life is fleeting.  We need to be present and act today; not with reckless abandon – but definitely standard-issue abandon. 
3.  Love openly and feel deeply – don’t leave room for doubt or distance.  Don’t let your loved ones question how you felt – make it known. 
4.  Be brave; in the face of life, be brave, bold and dare to dream your best dream.

After leaving the funeral, I called my husband and asked him to bring the kids for a lunch with me.  I needed to see them.  My sadness and anger about the death of this young soul was lingering over me and I needed to turn to my life and start to make the changes I just mentioned.  What I got was so much better than I had hoped for – my children ran to me with genuine happiness to see me; my husband gave me a giant smooch and told me he missed me all day.  I mean, honestly, just when I am mad at the Universe – I get a dose of love big enough to fill any void.  How can one be mad after that?

So as you can see I have run the gamut of emotion today; I wept over the loss of a truly wonderful person, I got angry at the Universe and beings higher than myself for taking a mother from her son, a wife from her husband and a daughter from her parents; I felt happiness when I gazed onto my adoring and adored family as they met me for a much needed family lunch after the funeral.  But these emotions I have felt do not make me feel tired or empty but rather I feel full of life, however fleeting, I feel full of LIFE.  Now you, my dear reader, go LIVE….

Celebrating a Life

                This week, I attended the Celebration of Life for my Great-Aunt Gerri.  As with all funerals, there is the normal sadness that the person is no longer with us, this was no exception.  We talked about how she loved to wear hats on special occasions and at church, in fact the ladies in her large family were wearing all 17 of her hats; three daughters, eight grand-daughters or grand-daughters in-law and six great-grand-daughters.  The minister talked about her great love of family and God, talked about her devotion to her community, her entrepreneurial spirit and her general love of life.  She was 90-years-old, so we truly celebrated a life well lived.  But the most touching, the most poignant, the most tear-jerking story was listening to the long descriptions of the love she and my Great-Uncle Walker shared.  They were married 70 years, until 13 months ago, when he passed away at the age of 90 as well.

                As my husband and I sat and listened to Aunt Gerri’s eulogies, we were both struck by the love story that was unveiled before us.  Through the words of Gerri and Walker’s daughters and grand-daughters, we heard about their love for each other.  Married at the ages of 17 and 19, surviving service in WW2, raising and loving three daughters, camping, fishing, helping the church, starting businesses, selling homes, retiring, helping with grandchildren and great grandchildren (including triplets!), travelling and finally, taking care of each other in their senior years, finally losing a battle with Alzheimer’s.  Then we watched the movie made out of old pictures; pictures of high school sweethearts, newlyweds, young family, all the way through their 80’s.  As we watched the pictures, we saw the love on their faces; we watched this beautiful life they had lived. 

                I’ve pondered their story ever since, I want to know their secret sauce, the recipe for making such a beautiful life.  I think the messages are in the story itself; in the description of how they struggled together, laughed together, worked side-by-side and really cherished each other as friends and as husband and wife.  Today, their story would be tragic.  A 17 year old marrying a 19 year old?  That sounds absurd!  But in 1941, not so tragic; and right away, they  persevered.  My uncle was drafted for WW2 and served three years in the war.  By 1943, they had their first child; no easy task to raise a baby while your husband is off at war.  The stories that were told about how they had little money and had to be creative to make ends meet remind me of how we each have to start out together, scratching our way through those first formative years of marriage.  No matter the challenge, you have to rise to meet it together.  My Aunt Gerri was a strong woman, she really ‘wore the pants’ in the family in some respects.  That reminds me a lot of the descriptions I hear about myself; so I really loved the touching parts about how, when my Uncle Walker was in thick of his Alzheimer’s, long after he had been able to reciprocate their deep love for each other on the outside, Aunt Gerri made sure that he had a good meal, maintained his dignity and woke up next to her in the morning. 

                When I held my husband’s hand as we walked out of the funeral, we both had the same thoughts that we shared with each other.  When our time is done, our hope is that the descriptions that were shared at my Aunt’s funeral, are similar to those that are shared about us.  How do you build a great love story?  One day at a time; loving, laughing, crying, enduring, appreciating, hugging and bonding; being constant, being all that you can be for each other.  What a mighty goal for each of us!  I believe we’re on our way.

For Ron

It is funny how one’s interpretation of love changes over time.  When I was a teenager, love was all consuming, my entire being absorbed in being “in love” with my boyfriend.  If he should forget to call, or not say he loved me or failed to mention my socks, I would fall apart into tears of despair and abandonment.  This would be followed by the highs of him brushing a wisp of hair away from my face and telling me my eyes were pretty or leaving a flower for me on my car after high school.  I would float away on Cloud 9, feeling all of my bi-polar happiness. 

As a 20-something, I was interested in a slightly more esoteric, mature feeling of love; something of substance, a coffee house experience – smoky and slightly Hemingway-esqe, but still a romantic; wanting to be at least a little swept off my feet.  I thought that I had wanted the romance Prince Charming mixed with intelligence of Albert Einstein.  However, when I met my husband, I was still not sure what true, enduring love, felt like.  At 28, I had had all these relationships that had been more of a sprint in the race for love – leaving me winded and out-paced in the marathon that love turns out to be. 

As it turns out, love and it’s endurance now fascinates me.  When I married my husband some 11 plus years ago, I had thought marriage and our love would be a lengthy honeymoon and as my kids like to say, “Nothing but cakes and cuddles”.  Reality would prove me very wrong.  Our first year of marriage was a rude slap in the face.  We had to combine money, share house work and basically live with the other person’s annoyances.  What we found in the midst of our nesting period and all the petty arguments of who should take out the garbage and/or do laundry was that at the base of it, we have a deep and abiding respect and friendship for each other.  We really like each other as people; I have found that to be enormously important years later. 

When I reflect on this love that I have for my husband, I think about falling in love with him the first time.  I thought I could do without him, the independent woman that I was, until we decided that we should take some time away from our budding romance for reasons that seemed reasonable at the time.  When he left my house after we talked about backing off for awhile, I thought I’d go to the gym but instead I collapsed in a heap on my couch after I thought about what we had just decided (I think it was my idea, mind you) and cried until I fell asleep.  I had never done that.  I woke up early the next morning and cried some more before heading off to work.  I didn’t even know why I was crying but I knew then that I was falling in love.  That was only the first leg of the race. 

And now, many years later, I have fallen in love with him so many other times since then that I really can’t recall every time.  This feeling of falling for my husband is usually after a cycle of wondering what I was smoking when I married him and I’m sure of him wondering what had possessed him to ask such a harpy for her hand.  But after such a cycle, I reflect on what makes our marriage endure and at the heart of it is the truest love that I have ever felt for another person other than my children and my parents.  It is the glue that keeps us together, binds us as no legal document ever could.  When we were married, this Shakespearean sonnet was read and I think it speaks volumes of the type of love that lasts:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

I knew that we were in for the long haul but now with our first decade under our belt and safely onward to the next one, I realize that I am now a cross-country runner in the marathon of love; well seasoned to the long miles we must run together, side by side.  I’m as happy as I could ever be with my husband, my best friend, my mate.  And now I feel our poem is like this one from Elizabeth Jennings:

Tell me where you go
When you look faraway.
I find I am too slow

To catch your mood. I hear
The slow and far-off sea
And waves that beat a shore

That could be trying to
Call us toward our end,
make us hurry through

This little space of dark.
Yet love can stretch it wide.
Each life means so much work

You are my wealth, my pride.
The good side of me, see
That you stay by my side

Two roots of one great tree.

We are two roots of one great tree, we are the pair in a three legged race, holding on to each other for support as we run our marathon together, picking up memories along the way, falling in love with each other over and over.