Holly is hurting, but she has many sources of hugs. The networks she and Don built have produced incredible words and gifts of condolences from an international base of buddies.
Since she had Don cremated, she has much flexibility in when and where she'll hold his memorial service. The crematorium has a chapel, but I suggested even before he died, that the chapel and all the rest of the building would not be enough to hold the immense outpouring of friends and family wanting to help celebrate the life that Don shared with them.
Holly has worked as executive chef for the Georgia governor's mansion for over two decades. Her current boss has offered her the mansion as the place for her husband's memorial. Talk about being sent off in style!
Even by Atlanta standards this promises to be quite the event. Now, to the work of planning and preparing for the series of programs: transportation and lodging for people coming into town, service program, and after-party planning.
We've blocked a total of sixty hotel rooms in two separate hotels. I don't think that will be enough, but who knows how to gauge numbers for an event such as this? Don loved red beans and rice, so our meal menu started with that and we're now anticipating a full Cajun menu, but with no bottom feeders (catfish, crabs, or shrimp because Don didn't like them)and no "bugs" (Don's name for the raisins usually found in New Orleans-style bread pudding).
Don was New York Italian with all the zest for life that brings with it. I don't know how to say it in Italian, but in New Orleans we say, "Laissez les bon temps rouillez" (Let the good times roll.)
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
We All Must Mourn
My grandma used to ask me,
"Do you want to laugh or cry?"
She asked me this question
Without fully knowing why.
We all must mourn our losses
As we go about our days.
My friend is fond of saying
We all grieve in different ways.
Her husband made her promise
To celebrate his life,
Instead of having her focus
On their last days of strife.
My friend is the same;
She expects me to laugh.
The grief that I'm feeling
She doesn't need to know the half.
Her life's goal and her husband's:
Making people smile;
Leave your burdens at the door,
And rest your soul awhile.
She looks like her mama,
But she party's like her papa.
Neither sickness nor death
Is ever going to stop her.
She has surely lost the most;
He was part of her daily rhythm.
She deserves to be respected
In the way that she honors him.
"Do you want to laugh or cry?"
She asked me this question
Without fully knowing why.
We all must mourn our losses
As we go about our days.
My friend is fond of saying
We all grieve in different ways.
Her husband made her promise
To celebrate his life,
Instead of having her focus
On their last days of strife.
My friend is the same;
She expects me to laugh.
The grief that I'm feeling
She doesn't need to know the half.
Her life's goal and her husband's:
Making people smile;
Leave your burdens at the door,
And rest your soul awhile.
She looks like her mama,
But she party's like her papa.
Neither sickness nor death
Is ever going to stop her.
She has surely lost the most;
He was part of her daily rhythm.
She deserves to be respected
In the way that she honors him.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Pretty Damn Terrific Don
Don has died. Holly is now faced with being a widow. This is something we don't know how to do. When you lose a limb, there are programs for learning to live without that part of your person, but nobody seems to have a system for learning to live without your life's love.
I joined a grief group to get some professional answers, but it's not like there are prosthetic devices for our hearts and souls. The holes in our hearts simply have to scar over as we limp along through life. Our memories and those shared with others do help in the healing, and they certainly provide a salve for the pain.
We were privileged to have several days to "sit Shiva" with Don before he crossed to the next stage of his life. If one's good works live on after we depart this life, there's a lot of Don left living. We are still collecting stories of all the lives he entered and enriched. He was really larger than life; I know there's a great deal of his positive power left in all of us.
No matter what was going on in Don's life, his constant reply when asked how he was doing was "pretty damn terrific." I've got to figure that if he was terrific even when eaten up with cancer, he's certainly even better in his perfect Paradise.
I don't know if he's resting in peace; I suspect he's throwing parties in Paradise.I do know that Don is now permanently pretty damn terific.
I joined a grief group to get some professional answers, but it's not like there are prosthetic devices for our hearts and souls. The holes in our hearts simply have to scar over as we limp along through life. Our memories and those shared with others do help in the healing, and they certainly provide a salve for the pain.
We were privileged to have several days to "sit Shiva" with Don before he crossed to the next stage of his life. If one's good works live on after we depart this life, there's a lot of Don left living. We are still collecting stories of all the lives he entered and enriched. He was really larger than life; I know there's a great deal of his positive power left in all of us.
No matter what was going on in Don's life, his constant reply when asked how he was doing was "pretty damn terrific." I've got to figure that if he was terrific even when eaten up with cancer, he's certainly even better in his perfect Paradise.
I don't know if he's resting in peace; I suspect he's throwing parties in Paradise.I do know that Don is now permanently pretty damn terific.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Dancing With Death
Her husband is doing his final dance;
There's nothing more that we can do.
We've laughed, cried, worked and prayed;
In their places waiting grew.
Waiting for him to breathe his last,
Waiting for all their folks to leave,
Waiting for the empty to descend,
Waiting for her pain to proceed.
My every moment is a misery,
Because I fear that what awaits
Is a deep dark night of her soul
When she can no longer touch her mate.
When she feels her blood is pumping
With only half of her heart,
And she will perhaps come to feel
That she is literally torn apart.
When her skin will sometimes seem too big,
And other times stretched to breaking.
The only thing worse than the love that is lost
Is the regret if it never was taken.
There's nothing more that we can do.
We've laughed, cried, worked and prayed;
In their places waiting grew.
Waiting for him to breathe his last,
Waiting for all their folks to leave,
Waiting for the empty to descend,
Waiting for her pain to proceed.
My every moment is a misery,
Because I fear that what awaits
Is a deep dark night of her soul
When she can no longer touch her mate.
When she feels her blood is pumping
With only half of her heart,
And she will perhaps come to feel
That she is literally torn apart.
When her skin will sometimes seem too big,
And other times stretched to breaking.
The only thing worse than the love that is lost
Is the regret if it never was taken.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Sitting Still
My nephew's wife has informed me that this is Special Education Week. Seeing as I come from a long line of people with ADD, I have a bit to say on that subject. Now, I want you to know, that in my day, ADD was spelled differently: BAD, and only boys were allowed to be bad.
The problem for people with ADD is that they can't do or think any one thing at a time. Talking with them is a lesson in scatter-shot conversing. I've taken to having sticky notes with me as I converse with any fellow scatter-shot speaker. Just as I learned to do in board meetings with a facilitator, I jot down what my friend, Mountaintop Mary, calls "bunny trails" and agree to table those discussions for later.
I once tutored for a second-grade literacy program. The little boy I was teaching just couldn't sit still without completely shutting down. It was only after I found a rocking chair and obtained permission for him to rock and read that he began to get with the program. He became a star student.I only wish I had known this trick when my children were students.
It seems that we spend most of a child's developing life punishing them for moving around, and the rest of their lives wondering why they're so out of shape. The fidgeting of other people makes us nervous, so we seek to stop it at all costs. The more I have to make myself sit at the computer, which is the only way I'll ever reach my publishing and writing goals, the more I realize all the things we do to burn off our nervous energy. Some of those things are obvious, like running, sports, and dancing. Others are not so obvious, and can be performed right at one's desk.
Smoking, eating and drinking used to be allowed in adult workplaces, but not in this day of air quality control and sensitive desktop electronics. We were broken of the gum-chewing habit by our grade school teachers. A lot of people try to control what my daughter refers to as "buzzing" with various drugs, both legal and otherwise. Many prefer alcohol.
The home-employed are not limited in what methods they employ, but there are only so many one can do while sitting. Food makes a body fat, alcohol makes a brain fuzzy, and what I know about medicating what our psychologist friend called "the wooglies" in his son seems to only work for so long before the doses have to be increased. This leaves movement.
I'm almost sixty years old and female, and I still can't sit still. Many executive chairs come with rocking and rolling mechanisms, both ways to discretely fidget. I have one of these. I can freely rock, roll, drum my fingers, tap my feet, whistle, hum, go back and forth to email and Facebook, and take bathroom, snack, and beverage breaks. Yet we think that a bursting ball of energy like a six year old should be able to sit silently for hours on end. What's wrong with that picture?
Maybe some of our educational dollars should be spent on rocking chairs.
The problem for people with ADD is that they can't do or think any one thing at a time. Talking with them is a lesson in scatter-shot conversing. I've taken to having sticky notes with me as I converse with any fellow scatter-shot speaker. Just as I learned to do in board meetings with a facilitator, I jot down what my friend, Mountaintop Mary, calls "bunny trails" and agree to table those discussions for later.
I once tutored for a second-grade literacy program. The little boy I was teaching just couldn't sit still without completely shutting down. It was only after I found a rocking chair and obtained permission for him to rock and read that he began to get with the program. He became a star student.I only wish I had known this trick when my children were students.
It seems that we spend most of a child's developing life punishing them for moving around, and the rest of their lives wondering why they're so out of shape. The fidgeting of other people makes us nervous, so we seek to stop it at all costs. The more I have to make myself sit at the computer, which is the only way I'll ever reach my publishing and writing goals, the more I realize all the things we do to burn off our nervous energy. Some of those things are obvious, like running, sports, and dancing. Others are not so obvious, and can be performed right at one's desk.
Smoking, eating and drinking used to be allowed in adult workplaces, but not in this day of air quality control and sensitive desktop electronics. We were broken of the gum-chewing habit by our grade school teachers. A lot of people try to control what my daughter refers to as "buzzing" with various drugs, both legal and otherwise. Many prefer alcohol.
The home-employed are not limited in what methods they employ, but there are only so many one can do while sitting. Food makes a body fat, alcohol makes a brain fuzzy, and what I know about medicating what our psychologist friend called "the wooglies" in his son seems to only work for so long before the doses have to be increased. This leaves movement.
I'm almost sixty years old and female, and I still can't sit still. Many executive chairs come with rocking and rolling mechanisms, both ways to discretely fidget. I have one of these. I can freely rock, roll, drum my fingers, tap my feet, whistle, hum, go back and forth to email and Facebook, and take bathroom, snack, and beverage breaks. Yet we think that a bursting ball of energy like a six year old should be able to sit silently for hours on end. What's wrong with that picture?
Maybe some of our educational dollars should be spent on rocking chairs.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Party Your Way To Paradise
I really get on people’s nerves insisting on families facing death straight on, but I have a lot of experience with this issue. I never got over the fact that a family member that I dearly loved when I was nineteen was dying for six months and none of us ever got to tell her good-bye. We just kept pretending that she was going to get well again even though her brain was eaten up with cancer. Most of her family wouldn't even come to the hospital to see her because they just didn't know how to act. How horrible is that?
When we thought Richard was dying while he was in a ten-day coma, I got into all kinds of trouble with one of our physician friends by making jokes about him at his bedside. The way I figured it is that if we can hear while we're in a coma, we'd feel a lot less scared of our future if we heard our loved ones laughing than if they were all weeping over us.
After Richard woke up, we still knew he would die without a heart transplant, but he made me promise that I wouldn't get mushy (he called it maudlin) about it. Me maudlin? As controlled as I am emotionally? We spent the one-year plus waiting time getting his affairs in order.
Another friend of ours was recently facing a good chance of imminent death. She chose to laugh about the fact that her husband would no longer have to worry about how she'd handle their financial affairs if he predeceased her. Neither her husband nor her children could see the humor in her situation, but I was blessed to be the one she chose to share in this little laugh.
When one of my people is hurting, I'll cook for them, clean for them, cry with them. But it seems that the people who will help them party their way to Paradise are few and far between. It's a tough job, but if somebody's gotta do it, I'm glad it can be me.
When we thought Richard was dying while he was in a ten-day coma, I got into all kinds of trouble with one of our physician friends by making jokes about him at his bedside. The way I figured it is that if we can hear while we're in a coma, we'd feel a lot less scared of our future if we heard our loved ones laughing than if they were all weeping over us.
After Richard woke up, we still knew he would die without a heart transplant, but he made me promise that I wouldn't get mushy (he called it maudlin) about it. Me maudlin? As controlled as I am emotionally? We spent the one-year plus waiting time getting his affairs in order.
Another friend of ours was recently facing a good chance of imminent death. She chose to laugh about the fact that her husband would no longer have to worry about how she'd handle their financial affairs if he predeceased her. Neither her husband nor her children could see the humor in her situation, but I was blessed to be the one she chose to share in this little laugh.
When one of my people is hurting, I'll cook for them, clean for them, cry with them. But it seems that the people who will help them party their way to Paradise are few and far between. It's a tough job, but if somebody's gotta do it, I'm glad it can be me.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Dearly Departing
Our friend is dying. Of course, we’re all dying from the moment of our conception, but this friend has been handed a time frame in which he'll reach the end of his time on earth. We've been anticipating this day for over a year; actually, more like five years, since he had his first heart attack which left him in congestive heart failure.
After that, he had to have a kidney removed because of cancer. Once he recuperated from that, cancer was discovered in his liver. He had surgery to remove the tumor, but the cancer came back. We just got word that there's nothing more that medicine can do for him. He said a year ago that he's ready to go, but he's continued to be so vibrant that it's hard to believe his time is so close.
This friend became part of us by the back door. His wife is one of my best friends, like a sister to me and an aunt to my children. I was dead set against her marrying him and even threatened him with bodily harm (while dancing with him at their wedding) if he hurt my friend. Over twenty-five years, his love for my friend made her so happy that I couldn't help but learn to love him. Now, he's leaving us.
When we began this last year's journey through the killing cancer, I thanked him for proving me wrong about his marriage to one of my best buddies. I agreed to write a eulogy for him. I kept that promise, writing my thoughts on him as soon as we returned home from his house.
Yesterday, he, not she, called me with the fatal facts from his doctor. We laughed about what everyone would say about him after he's gone. I teased him that I was glad I hadn't sent his eulogy to him a year ago; that I wouldn't want him to hear any of the nice things I might say about him in case he lives longer than the doctors expect. I'd hate for him to have that to hold over my head.
Then, I got to thinking how nice it would be if we all knew what people would say about us after we're gone, so I sent it to him. There are some things that are worth the chances you take.
After that, he had to have a kidney removed because of cancer. Once he recuperated from that, cancer was discovered in his liver. He had surgery to remove the tumor, but the cancer came back. We just got word that there's nothing more that medicine can do for him. He said a year ago that he's ready to go, but he's continued to be so vibrant that it's hard to believe his time is so close.
This friend became part of us by the back door. His wife is one of my best friends, like a sister to me and an aunt to my children. I was dead set against her marrying him and even threatened him with bodily harm (while dancing with him at their wedding) if he hurt my friend. Over twenty-five years, his love for my friend made her so happy that I couldn't help but learn to love him. Now, he's leaving us.
When we began this last year's journey through the killing cancer, I thanked him for proving me wrong about his marriage to one of my best buddies. I agreed to write a eulogy for him. I kept that promise, writing my thoughts on him as soon as we returned home from his house.
Yesterday, he, not she, called me with the fatal facts from his doctor. We laughed about what everyone would say about him after he's gone. I teased him that I was glad I hadn't sent his eulogy to him a year ago; that I wouldn't want him to hear any of the nice things I might say about him in case he lives longer than the doctors expect. I'd hate for him to have that to hold over my head.
Then, I got to thinking how nice it would be if we all knew what people would say about us after we're gone, so I sent it to him. There are some things that are worth the chances you take.
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