Loneliness (Part Three)

I spent three days in that desert town on this business trip.  So much had changed sometimes it was easy to forget where I was.   At times I was overcome by a constant barrage of “what ifs”.    What if ……???  How different would my life have been if I hadn’t married Brian?  I would probably still live here.  I wouldn’t have those memories that drove me away.

  What happened to the connections I thought I had forged there?   When I moved there I thought I would put down roots and that this would be my new “hometown”.  For a time it seemed like that had happened and then with the death of Brian it all abruptly ended.   Perhaps our connections to places are only as good as our connections to the people who live there.  The connections to our memories, our personal history and the culture and identity of the place can evaporate slowly or they can quickly dissolve as they did with me. 

Perhaps connections with people are best left untested by the trials of life. If Brian had not gotten sick I am sure I would be visiting and reminiscing with Eloise on that business trip.   Perhaps I am just too hard and unforgiving when it comes to others.  Maybe I should have spoken to Eloise in the restaurant that day.   I couldn’t at that time. The wound was much too raw.   Maybe Eloise would have told me why she acted like she did – why she stopped being my friend when I needed her friendship the most.   Would any explanation have been able to change us back from strangers to friends again?

I have come to understand, although it has taken much time, that there are many different types of friendships.   A therapist once told me I had an adolescent notion of friendship because I expected too much from people. In retrospect I think she was right. As we mature we have so many competing demands for our time – careers, spouses, and children that there is much less energy and time for friendships.   Could I have relegated Eloise to a casual friend?   I have learned to enjoy casual friendships but I don’t think I could accept a casual friendship from someone who was once so close to me.   I think it is OK to expect close friends to be there during the crises in life if not physically at least with some emotional support.  No it was better not to talk to Eloise in the restaurant that day. There was nothing to gain.  As it is now I have good memories of our close friendship.  It is better left that way.   I don’t need to travel down the road of “what if” I had rekindled my friendship with Eloise.   This trip to the desert has made it possible for me to stop making that journey. That is a relief!

 Unfortunately everyone acted like Eloise during the time Brian was ill and dying.  I lost all my friends.  Everyone abandoned us.  I was bitter about that for many, many years.  I made no effort to form any close friendships.  Should I trust again?  We have no idea how our friends, spouse or children will act in difficult times.  We have to have faith they will rise to the occasion and support us.    Everything in life is a risk especially relationships.  I can’t hide from that forever.   I was too lonely. I was going to have to trust again. 

   I hoped to make better choices in friends this time around or maybe just to lower - maybe that is too harsh a word - change my expectations for others and for myself.  Still I am haunted by the question whether it is asking too much of friends to show compassion and stick by you in difficult times?
QUERY:  Have we lost the ability to forge those type of connections? ( I hope not.)   Is it something that can only be formed when we are young or is it possible to find or develop those connections later in life? Did I simply chose wrongly when it comes to friends?  Did I expect too much of them?   Is what I see as the loss of "community" in our modern world a death knell for the close bonds of friendship?  How do we forge such close and enduring connections? I do know that, as with any relationship, it takes time and commitment.   Are we willing to make the effort and take the time to forge such friendships? Does our busy modern life prevent us from having the time and personal interaction needed to form such close bonds?  Maybe this just isn't a priority for us anymore.  Do you have close and deep friendships in your life?  If not do you want them? I know I do. Are you the type of person who sticks by her friends through very difficult times?

Raising Children the Best We Can (Part Two)

“Hello,” I would shout as I came in the door after arriving home about 6:30 or 7:00 pm. from work.  Usually the three children were at the front door to greet me and they would be jostling each other to try to get my attention.  “Mom I need help with my homework,” Jessica would say.  “Mom Samuel hit me,” Ellen would complain.  “Mom the sitter was mean to me today,” Samuel would say woefully.  They would all end up shouting at me as each of them tried to get my attention.   I would squeeze past them giving each a perfunctory hello and a hug before I rushed to the kitchen to prepare dinner.  I know they each wanted some one on one time with me but it would have to wait until after dinner.   They were all overwrought with hunger by the time I arrived home.   All three of them would continue to talk to me at the same time as I prepared dinner.   I would try to get them to take turns but it was pretty impossible. 

 Sometimes I could find a sitter who was affordable, reliable and cooked dinner but that was the exception.   Sitters came and went on a regular basis.  I couldn’t afford daycare for three children.  My children were not the easiest to take care of.   Samuel and Ellen weren’t keen on following rules. 

“Mom, Ellen is crying again,” Jessica told me.  It wasn’t like I didn’t know.  I had just walked in the door from the office. It was about 6:30 pm.  I saw Ellen sitting in the hallway that connected the main part of the small house to the bedrooms.  She was hugging her stuffed animal and sobbing.  I stroked her head and said, “I love you.  Everything will be OK.   Come have some dinner now.”   Ellen continued to cry for the rest of the evening.  I finally coaxed her into my bed about 8:30 p.m.  She was exhausted.   This same scene was replayed every night for months.   As soon as I walked through the door she would start to cry.   I was desperate to get her to stop. I know I was not always patient and kind when she cried. I was overwhelmed at that time in my life to put it mildly.  I wanted some peace and quiet in the evenings.  At the time I had no idea why she was crying.  As I look back on it I think it was her way of grieving over the divorce and the loss of her father.  For Ellen that was a significant loss. But I didn't have any clue about all of that at the time this was going on.
One night I sat down next to Ellen in the hallway and pretended to cry.  The funny thing is that real tears came down my cheeks.   We cried together for several nights.   After that Ellen just stopped sitting in the hallway and crying.  If only I had thought to do that sooner!
In all our effort to manage the day to day "necessities" of life sometimes we forget to or simply don't have the energy to make time for the emotional needs of our children.  This was Ellen's way of getting my attention.  How many times did I ignore her pleas for attention and maybe help?   I tried not to berate myself too much for my failures and instead vowed to do a better job in the future.  Somehow the pressing demands of life continued to push the emotional well being  or emotional needs of my children and myself down to the bottom of the "to do" list. I would pay a price for that later but I would also learn to make it a priority.  As a single mom or a busy mom or person, how do we remind ourselves to take the time out of our crazy, busy lives to listen to and give love to our children and others in our lives?  Isn't there only so much of "us" to go around.  Is it an ongoing challenge for you as it is for me?

Death and Love Together (Part Four)

Brian’s walk became increasingly unsteady as ALS continued to ravage his body.  He would teeter and totter when he walked and I was terrified he would fall down.  He started using a cane to steady himself.  He couldn’t use that for very long because he couldn’t hold it when he lost the use of his right arm.  I bought a wheelchair and put it in the family room hoping he would use it.  It sat there empty for quite a while.  Brian was having difficulty standing for any extended period of time.  He was becoming fatigued very easily.  One night we had a few of his high school friends over.  He grabbed the wheelchair and sat in it.  He was able to move around to talk to everyone that way.  It still sat there empty for a while after that.   

 “Do you want to rent a wheelchair for the day?”  I asked Brian.  He just ignored me and my request.  I didn’t say anything else because I knew it was useless to do so.  We started walking through the zoo.  Brian started to get very tired.  He found a bench to sit down.  Without asking him I went back to the entrance and rented a wheelchair for the day.  I arrived back at the bench with the wheelchair.  Brian didn’t say anything.  He just got into the wheelchair.  He looked haggard and defeated.  Brian refused to look at me for the remainder of our day at the zoo.  He seemed to feel a little better when Gary asked to ride on his lap.  At two years old Gary thought it was great fun.

The phone rang.  I picked it up.  “This is Officer Smith of the Police Department.  We would like you to come to the police station tomorrow at 10am to talk to us about your son, Samuel.”  “OK” I responded.  I hung up the phone.  “Who is it?” Brian asked.”  I lied.  “It was nothing important,” I said.  Brian accepted that answer.  If he weren’t sick he would have known I was lying.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Brian said.  He wasn’t able to physically shake me at this point in time.  “OK,” I said.  “Just give me a minute to wake up,” I replied.   “I have to go right now!” Brian said desperately.  Patience was never one of Brian’s virtues but, in his defense, who knows for how long he had been trying to wake me.  His voice was not very strong at this point in time.  I walked to his side of the bed.  I wrapped my arms around his waist and hoisted him to his feet.  He steadied himself for a minute.  “OK” he said to me.  We started to walk very slowly to the bathroom.  Brian held onto my arm as he shuffled his feet.  I lowered him onto the toilet seat.  After he was done I leaned him against my body as I reached around to wipe him.  I pulled his bottoms back up. (We had actually done this in an airplane bathroom on several occasions).  We proceeded slowly back to the bed.  Just before we reached the bed Brian lost his balance and fell to the floor with a thundering thud.

“Help, help,” Brian was pleading.  I was frantically pulling and tugging to try to get him on his feet.  It was the middle of the night.  Last time this happened my Father had been around to help.  He wasn’t here now.  “I’m going to have to wake up Samuel,” I said to Brian. “”Please don’t,” he pleaded.  “I have to. I can’t get you off the floor,” I said.  I rolled Brian over onto his back and put a pillow under his head.  I went to get Samuel. Samuel and I managed to pull Brian off the floor in increments using a vanity stool and to get him back into the bed.  Brian would fall a few more times before he finally agreed to use the wheelchair all the time.

I would need a break from the physical demands of caring for Brian.  I knew he didn't want anyone but me to care for him.  I knew I couldn't last much longer.  It would take maybe more strength than I thought I had to face Brian's anger and my guilt when I finally decided to get some help.  (To Be continued) 

Raising Children the Best We Can

“I’ll be over to pick up the kids to take them to a movie,” David, my soon to be ex-husband, said over the phone.   In my naiveté I told the children that their father would be over tomorrow around 11 am to pick them up and take them to a movie.    The two younger ones, Samuel and Ellen, were very excited.  They were 3 1/2 and 5 years old.  They got dressed early Saturday morning and waited patiently.   They were talking about what they were going to do with him and what movie they wanted to see.   At least as much as kids that age can discuss those matters.  I knew they were excited and quite frankly I was looking forward to a little time to myself.  I was going to sleep.  “When will Daddy be here?” Samuel asked.   “We are going to miss the movie,” he later complained when the time came and went for his father’s arrival.   “He will be here.  Something must have come up that caused a delay,” I said.  

After an hour passed with no phone call and no knock at the door I realized he wasn’t coming. I should have said something to the children.  I was a coward.    Eventually Samuel just found something else to do besides wait for him.  He went to his room and played with his matchbox cars.  Ellen, who was three at the time, cried and carried on. I tried to get them interested in going out with me to a movie but they didn’t want to. Their hurt was palpable. 

“How could you just not show up,” I shrieked into the phone when David finally did call.  I was surprised at myself because I had given up on fighting with him over how he treated me but apparently I still had the energy and grit to fight with him over how he treated the children.    “You are crazy.  I never told you that I was going to pick the kids up and take them to a movie,” he responded.    “Did I misunderstand him?”  I asked myself.  

I had just about gone crazy the last few months David and I lived together.   We would talk, make plans or make a decision and then when things didn’t go as planned he would tell me he never said that.  Now I started to doubt myself again.  It was actually stronger than that.  I felt totally disoriented again – a feeling I had all the time the last months of living with David.    Was I going crazy? Was the stress affecting me that much? Why did I even bother to say anything to him?  I knew that nothing was ever going to change with him.  He would never admit he made a mistake or did anything wrong.   But what about the children I wondered.

 Most of the time when David did show up he would take only one or two of them.  “I simply can’t handle all three of them or I simply can’t afford to take all of them to the movie,” he would say.  One very radiant child would leave with him while the other would crumple up in a ball on the floor and cry.  I was left with a shattered child whose pieces I tried to put back together.  (Jessica, the oldest never really wanted to go with her father.) That is how I came to view my children.  They were shattered into pieces at a very young age and the rest of their lives have been about putting those pieces back together.   The pieces never fit back together perfectly but at least, now, all the pieces are back and in some kind of reasonable order. 

“We don’t want to take a bath.  We want to go live with our Dad!  We want to go live with our Dad!” Ellen and Samuel were chanting.    I was somewhat accustomed to hearing this by now.  It had been several months since their father, David, had moved out. This chant accompanied just about every request I made of the younger two to do something they didn’t want to do.   I gave them a bath silently, dried them off and got them into bed.

 It wasn’t hard to be a better parent than their father, David.  I have often wondered if that is one of the reasons, unconsciously, that I chose him.   Eventually he just went away altogether. That is what I had hoped for but not until after he had made our life a living hell for quite a long time.  

Loneliness (Part Two)

I continued to drive around the city. I drove past the last home I lived in, past the school Gary attended for kindergarten, past the high school my oldest daughter graduated from, past the elementary school my children attended and past the church we all attended.  But I never did drive there.  I couldn’t.   I had stopped going there long before I moved from this desert city.   I felt guilty about that even when I still lived here.  Now I felt as if I should go there but I can’t seem to direct the car there.   I am not exactly sure what will happen if I go there but whatever it is I am afraid of it.  There is something about seeing that name etched for all eternity into a stone in the ground that unnerves me.   In the past I would start sobbing uncontrollably when I saw it.  I have no reason to doubt that would happen now and I don’t want to be so unnerved while on a business trip.

It was 24 years ago when I first saw this city in the desert.  I had already decided we were going to move there – the whole family.  I had never been here when I made that decision but sadly anything was better than where I was living at the time.  I was living in my hometown which was located in the “Rust Belt”.  It was 1985. 

I always smell the desert before I see it.  It is a peaceful smell or I feel peaceful when I smell it.  That was the first thing I experienced and came to love was the smell of the desert.  It may be what I miss most about the desert.   Smells are so much more evocative and memorable than any other sensory experiences.   Sometimes the only thing I can remember is the smell.   You can’t really describe a smell in words.  It is one of those things you have to experience.  You just know it when you smell it.  Like the smell of the perfume or cologne of a loved one long after they have gone.   The smell of the desert is best experienced at night or very early in the morning.   I remember smelling it on my very first visit as I explored the city in my rental car at night.  In spite of the painful memories I feel peaceful as I drive though the desert at night with the windows of the car rolled down.  I feel enveloped in the comforting arms of the desert.    

 The desert is a beautiful and fascinating place.   As you drive you see lights everywhere and then suddenly you see total darkness.  This city is huge now.  It is ever so much bigger than when I moved here.  Then it was a sleepy, little desert town.  But in spite of its growth there are still mountains in this desert that defy development.    And so I sat on the balcony of my hotel room and looked out over the lights and blackness. I closed my eyes and soaked up the rich smell of the desert.

This desert town is full of beautiful resorts. For some reason I chose to stay at the resort that I had frequented when I lived there.   I thought it would have changed so much over the years that it wouldn’t matter.  At least I didn’t recognize it in the photos posted on its webpage when I made the reservation.   They have excellent amenities and great rates so I booked a room there.  After I settled into my room I went to the restaurant to have dinner.   I was amazed to discover that it still bears the same name it did 20 years ago.    The only thing that has changed is the color scheme.    I waited in the lobby for the hostess to seat me.  I remembered the last time I was here.

 “Can you meet me for lunch at the Pointe,” Brian asked me.  “It is too far from the office.  I don’t want to take a long lunch today,” I protested.  “I really want us to have lunch with my parents today,” Brian pleaded.  As usual he persuaded me to do what he wanted.   He had a real knack for doing that.  When I arrived Brian and his parents were already seated in a booth.   It was that one in the corner over there.  I saw it when I entered the restaurant this night. His mom and dad were seated in the middle of the booth.    I slid into the side across from Brian.   We chatted quietly and then I left to go back to the office.    It was the last time I saw his mother.   She died of heart failure a few days later.

I decided just to eat at the bar.   As I sat down on one of the bar stools I remembered that this is where Bill had first introduced Brian and I to his wife.  Bill’s company did business with Brian’s company.   They had become friends long before I met Brian.   Bill called us a lot right after the diagnosis but he too, like Eloise, simply disappeared from our lives when Brian was in the early throes of the illness.  Oh he came to the funeral and even to the event at the house after the funeral.  I was amazed that he could do that.   I forced myself to stop remembering while I ate my dinner.   I returned to my room and thankfully fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.  

 I never really had a plan for my life, at least not consciously.   I wanted to be open to all of the possibilities. I didn’t want to be so focused on where I was going that I missed an unexpected opportunity.    That was a rather naïve view, to say the least.    Without any plan I was buffeted around like a jellyfish in the ocean.   You need some sense of direction or purpose I think now.   My stubbornness, my obsession to be independent, my craving for affection and my passive rebellion caused me to make choices that I see now were wrong for me.   My life, intentionally, did not follow the script set out for women with my background and education.   Sometimes I think I just sabotaged myself.   Other times I think I just wanted to do the unexpected – to be different and adventurous as much as possible for me.

 As I look around I wonder if the people who followed the “script” are really happier than I am.  They are in long marriages with grown children living in the same house in the suburbs in which they raised their families.  I was, for the most part, following that script in my life with Brian in this desert city.  We had a traditional marriage, lived in the suburbs and raised our children there.   I remember feeling stifled by all of that at times.

 Do the people who followed the script have regrets like I do?  From the outside looking in I imagine them to be very content.  I will probably never know because for some reason we don’t talk about those things or won’t talk about them honestly.   Often I wonder if I am the only person who even thinks about all this stuff.  That just adds to my feelings of loneliness and isolation.  What are those barriers? Why are we afraid to cross them and open ourselves up to others?  What do we think would happen if we did reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings?  Are we afraid we would be judged the way we can't seem to stop judging others?   How can we connect with others if we don't let our guard down - if we don't let people see who we really are?