cue the jazz hands

I recently read an interesting blog about people who experience cancer personally.  It was something I hadn't really thought about.  The basic premise of the article is that cancer has a secret that we don't talk about- people leave you.

The author, Kerri K. Morris, states in her blog titled "Cancer's dirty little secret: people turn their backs on you" that "As I get to know more and more people in the cancer community, one of the most common stories I hear from them is abandonment. It;s our dirty little secret, the one we keep from you."(March 18,2016)

It transcends cancer....catastrophe in all it's forms sends people running from you.  Whether its "oh this makes me sad" or this person may be needy or an indignant "well, I'm busy and  I have problems, too" there is a nearly  universal flee to the closest exit from grief, illness, flood, fire, mental  or financial difficulties.

Theres the if there's anything I can do friends....followed by nothing. Ever. Except maybe a followup...Let me know if there's...Cue the jazz hands! These ones make me smile. Its a wry smile because in my heart, I know they have no intention. They are done in the saying or they would be there, doing. Most have never spent a second near you that they didn't have to and don't plan on starting now.

The veiled eyes friends...Just. Don't. Make. Eye. Contact.  Stares at phone!!! Such interesting wallpaper.  When my husband died, I had a friend who crossed the street the first time she saw me again.  The comedian in me, momentarily thought about running after, fully expecting to see the keystone cop fastwalk start until she found her car. But I refrained. Besides, I had no energy for that. Haven't talked to her since and that's her call.

There's also the Imma- make- this- about- me- friends."Oh, you are stressing me...your horrible thing has touched my life now! Oh how can this world foist this on me yet again? Cue the facebook post on how sad and stressed They are and a gossipy post about how sad your life is to them. On behalf of everyone who has had a third party social media diatribe about how sad someone is for them without their consent: I truly would like to thank the Internets. And please my friends, it is  Rest In Peace. Not RIP. No one ever got carpal tunnel from 8 extra letters showing a little respect.

I get very quickly annoyed with the' Can I send you cash instead of you talking, Please?' friends. Yeah I get it. Sometimes, the stressed need to talk. It is so very, very difficult for you the listener.  I know. How do you live? I mean, yep, we are stressed but we feel your displeasure and desperation to get away. Laughably, usually the very sick or the very sad person in front of you is editing out 95% of the gory truth. Ending the talk long before they say what's on their mind because you are so dang clear how incredibly difficult this problem they own and deal with daily is for you to merely hear about.

Which is also what you get from a lot of people who beg you to talk. Simply plead and argue about how you need to get it out until....you realize you have got a Chernobyl friend. Suddenly ready to melt down if you say anything they don't want to hear. "Please talk to me...please, I know you need to!!!  Wait!  What?  Too much,too much, too much, suck it up! Gawd, just deal with it already, go away!"

I was raised by people in my teen years who did not fall into any of these categories.  Somebody hurt? Visit. Grieving? Visit. Accident? visit. Troubles of any and all kinds were met with hours of time, casseroles and pies in hand and with open ears-not mouths.

I never once heard Mabel say," Oh, we'll get together sometime. You have my number?" or " So sorry, Let me know if there's anything I can do."   It just wasn't in her to take a person, in the middle of the worst stress and make them come begging for help or worse leave them hanging with an empty promise.

She didn't worry about overstepping or being judged for doing.  She just went. Stayed.  Went back again.  If the house was a disaster she quietly fixed it. If the kids needed attention too; well she brought me or her husband or another sibling. She didn't shout to others about it. Although, I was often met after the school bus with "Go get dressed nice, W's wife died- you are carrying this pie plate, and I want you to sing that nice song he likes while were there."

Not just for friends, but for  anyone in her wide circle, she was there, she cared, a true Earth Angel of a person. School was hard? Homework? Tired?" So what! Get in the car! So and so is in the nursing home with no visitors!  Hurry, wash your hands, be pleasant."  It was a lesson I'll always appreciate. A living example of how to care.

She's 99 now, still doing all she can. Despite raising her own children and many other's, multiple heart attacks, skin cancer, breast cancer, the loss of her husband and falls.  My excuse is invalid.  So is yours.

Right now, I am pretty lucky to have two listeners. Real solid, hey, I'm here for you night and day ones: more earth angels. Rare as unicorn farts in this world.  I hope I can someday stand in the breach between stressed and overwhelmed for them as well as they do for me. They talk me off ledges and they don't even really know it. It seems to me, that the true Earth Angels I find are just as busy and stressed and face as much life as anyone-they just have actual empathy. A heart.

When I had my daughter, I met another Earth Angel. She was someone I had hardly ever noticed in my neighbourhood.  Now having a beautiful baby is hardly a tragedy.  But my neighbor, seeing me come home from hospital timidly knocked on my door- with a fully cooked meal.  She said,"Hey, I only know you to see you, but, here's a list of 6 other neighbors. Don't worry about dinner this week between myself and these other neighbours you will be meeting, we have it covered."  What a gift.  A gift I've never forgotten almost 30 years later.

There are tangible ways to help in all situations.  It might surprise some to know that with their very own eyes they can see them and just do it. We don't need to add layers of hurt to people with gossip, false concern, platitudes and ignorance. A simple card, a shared meal and an ear. Our time. A real body sitting with real body instead of Hugs! from somewhere online. A couple hours of babysitting. A walk with someone. Taking care of a pet. Laundry. 12 cookies.Yes, some will never get the joy it is to actually, for reals, care.  To get the heck off the couch and just do for someone else.

It might just be the reason we are here. There really is a greater satisfaction in live human interaction than spending our precious years holed up with popcorn, netfix and a tablet.  What a lonely world it would be without Earth Angels.

Circus Freak

Grief is a funhouse full of distorted mirrors.  Most days I feel like a circus freak, still.  It's in my emotions, my reactions and the way people look at me.  Not the center attraction in the circus but certainly a curiosity in the side show tent.

I feel a bit steadier than I did nine months ago when Norm died.  Steadier but  I cannot say I have found my feet yet.  I have searched my soul for a good analogy but I just do not have one.  There is really nothing to describe it:  one day you have the person who made your life.  The next you do not.  It is not having the rug pulled out from under you- then you would just get back up and everything would resume as normal.  Nothing is normal now and I am continually off kilter.

The things I think about have changed.  Mentally I am always making a list.  No matter what happens in a day it ticks immediately over to the "Norm will not experience this with me" list.  Whether it is a change at work, a milestone for one of the kids, a rainstorm, just another lunch hour when he would have been with me,  a new neighbour or a more difficult challenge I immediately feel that ping of it adding to the list of things I cannot share with him.  Other lists fill my head too.  The list of our plans we cannot finish.  The lengthy list of things I need to talk to him about, but once again, I cannot.

It has changed the things I wish for people too.  I used to wish everyone could find what I had.  A person who just got them, did not judge them and who always had their back.  A person who loved them fiercely and wholly.  Someone who knew how much to push and when they had had enough.  Who could pull a smile out of awfulness and weep with them when necessary. Not sure I would wish that for everyone anymore.  At very least, it might be easier to go through life not realizing that truly having "another half" is possible.  Being in it: wondrous and enchanted.  Being left behind by it:  excruciating. So perhaps I would wish that  death was not a thing at all.  That those of us who love should be exempt.

So my emotions run a weird confusing maze now.  Yes, I think sweet older couples are adorable.  At the same time part of me deep in my brain is screaming that that could have been us and should have been.  Sure, I am excited for my kids when they learn something new.  Learn to drive, make new friends, try to cook something all on their own, make plans to move or to go to school.  On the other side of excitement is just so much pain.  He should be here, he would be so pumped up.  How is it right or possible that he cannot be here to share this with us?  My emotions look like that kid's attraction at the Fall Fair.  The one with the crazy tippy floors and spinning rooms.  Glass walls I run into at a moment's notice.

I miss things that I shouldn't miss.  I miss being cuddled.  I miss body heat.  I miss having another human care if I am upset.  I miss him fighting with me over who should pay for things. Him teasing me about getting old.  Him calling me Puddles.  The late night calls that used to drive me crazy. His snoring and his crankiness and the overly manly way he stepped in and defended me if anyone dared say a negative thing about me or anyone he loved. Having someone to talk to who listened and didn't make it about him.  Who didn't have to compare what was happening to his life because I was his life.  Someone who just got it: even the my stupid sense of humour.  I miss all these things and more but I have no way to regain them.  The source of these things is gone.  These precious things.

Often since "it" happened I have wished that no one else knew.  Impossible.  Life doesn't allow for that.  Just desire a moment when I could be alone in my grief.  Where I did not have to deal with the sad looks, stories from others, platitudes.  The assumption from some that every reaction I have or action I take is a result of grief.  The sad head tilts in moments when I am doing okay that set me right back.  The need some people seem to have to share all the negative past moments he had.  Like, really.  Not my experience.  Go talk to someone else.  I cringe inside and resist the urge to kick in some teeth.  I walk away and feel that somehow I have caved just by listening.  Diminished somehow.  I hope those people have enough conscience to feel embarrassed by those statements and especially embarrassed to have shared them with me....or my children. I am pretty sure they don't. At least not as horribly bad as they should.   Other people are the Roller coaster of grief.  There's great heights and huge drops.  Unexpected turns.  It can leave you feeling exhilarated for a minute.  It can also leave you feeling violently nauseous.

Very early on I said to someone, somewhere that I wished I was about six months in so that I was past the worst of  the uncertainty, the misery.  Well, here I am. Nine months.  Not much better. Not much stronger.  A little more worried about a few things.  A lot more lonely.   Full of  a void that only my Gnomie can fill.  My estimate was profoundly off.  My hope I guess, a little too optimistic.

Mixed Messages

Grade 2. Lovely fall class room. Construction paper leaves adorn the walls and the alphabet runs its comfortable circle around the classroom near the ceiling like an annual school hug. Mrs. Y:  "Children your brain is the computer of your body. We will fill it with information and you will solve problems just like IBM". Hold up Mrs. Y. Yes, my brain is an intricate system. Pathways for pain, autonomous body function, memory, pleasure, higher judgment.....I have been filling it with information for another 40 or so years now but my brain is not just like a computer. I cannot reboot, defragment, or alt control delete my brain. I cannot, try as I might, erase the hard drive. I often want to but I cannot.

Every one talks these days about screen time and no real communication. That argument has merit. The world outside of cell phones, televisions and tablets also has many voices -often too many. I sometimes have trouble trying to decipher who to and not to listen to or whether to listen at all. In my nearly 5 decades I have lived an interesting life. My brain is full of stories, memories, experience and I have listened. Listened to so many stories....friends, counselling clients, children, relatives, coworkers. Do I have room in the old brain for all of this?

There are people who just talk. Meaningless pleasant drivel. Most of them understand the basic etiquette of not discussing religion, politics, money or sex in polite society. This kind of talk is mostly handleable. It is what we used to call small talk. Mostly unnecessary but fills some time.

On the other side of the coin are the deep, dark talkers. The ones who should really say : "Hey, allow me to dump all this really heavy emotional crap on you and then I will move on to get attention and sympathy from someone else while I do absolutely nothing about any of it."


The Agenda talkers also have a purpose. That is to bias you. Here is a story about X. X did this. Last time X did this to Y. If you talk to X this will happen to you. This type of communication tends to be self serving to the utmost. Unless it is your Mother.

The touchy talker also gets a mention. It is just me, mostly, but the touchy, huggy, standing too close to me talker is the hardest to understand. I have ears. I can hear you. Please do not invade my space.  Believe me:  I am sure what you need to say is important.  At least to you.  However, I am not in a super secret spy agency and your need to go pee is not a state secret.  There is no need for you to lean in and whisper like no one in the history of the planet ever peed before.

Most hilarious for me are the Third Party chatters. They definitely have something to say. Usually to you but will they talk to you? No. Much better to loudly voice their concerns to a small child, nearby animal, their spouse or just the air. I once witnessed a gentleman with a 9 month old baby very publicly lecturing said baby on how close a nearby man had parked to his car. Apparently he found the proximity of the other car distressing. I am not certain why he felt his 9 month old could rectify the situation. I am sure the other man would have preferred a straightforward, "Could you move your car?" To a booming, " Well, Timmy I guess this guy over here doesn't care if his car gets scratched!!!"

No wonder we are confused. Quite understandable that we have been choosing to grab headphones and check out since 1981. Heck some of us carried a boom box around before earphones and walkmen were even a thing.

Is conversation meaningful ? Is it drivel or is someone trying to tell me something? I don't know most of the time. Kind of wish people came with a sign to tell me how to take them.

Hey, do you think we could require people to wear an emoticon shirt? Wear the "ice cream" one if  it is small talk day, the happy face if you are straightforward, the serious face if you wanna tell me something that has some weird hidden deeper implications, and the embarrassed smiley if you are going to talk about yourself all day.

Valid debate, close conversations between pals and family, the chatter of children is great.  The rest, sadly :  just more noise.