I wouldn't say that this tug of war has been specific to the last couple of years (i.e. mid-life, I guess?) rather this pull between what I want to be and what I'm supposed to be has been the constant state of Heather.
This year, twenty-seventeen, has been a rough one for me, and I'm beyond ready to shake it off.
But, since my other strong female warrior she-ro, Glennon Doyle (Momastery), likes to say, "First, the pain, then the rising," I thought some reflection on the events of the past year was apropos.
I started 2017 out with the knowledge that my beloved position with a local non-profit was ending due to an imminent layoff. The December to May job-seeking process, even whilst well-connected and known for excellent work, was more-than brutal. The vicious and exhausting cycle of opportunity - anticipation - rejection rendered my newly re-acquired confidence back to the level I'd had as the insecure little fat girl who always got picked last for kickball. That some of my interviewers were colleagues with whom I had worked made the notifications thanking me for my interest, noting, "but we went with another candidate," sting all the more. Mostly, though, I began to feel like this idea of living the life I wanted was a fantasy.
In the middle of that anguish came the call that my grandmother had fallen in her home and broken her hip. Somehow, in that borderline psychic way I've always had about me, I knew it was the end for her. Her health had been declining steadily since her love affair with cigarettes had cursed her with COPD and a host of other ailments, leaving her independence and mobility all but gone. I knew in my heart of hearts that she would not return home.
She would rather die than be put in a nursing home where she couldn't smoke, though. Grandma's compromise to it all had been to allow my aunt - long-addicted to meth and sex - to live-in with her under the ruse that she would be Grandma's 24/7 caregiver. The quality of that care was laughable, but as all other aspects of that life had been dysfunctional, they made it "work." I had been appalled by the filth and food hoarding (MONTHS of leftovers in the fridges - yes, two lovelies filled with grotesque science experiments) when Mom and I flew out in 2015. During the summer of 2016 visit, were it not for us stopping by with breakfast each morning, unbeknownst to my aunt, Grandma's first meal of the day would not be until late afternoon.
I talked to Grandma in the hospital after she'd had surgery to fix her hip, and she lamented that I wasn't there. A couple of days later, she contracted pneumonia in the hospital and I borrowed money (more like my dear friend shoved it upon me, bless her) to fly out there and be with her. At the same time, I was able to offer my cousin some desperately needed respite. She was juggling work at a new job with being a young, single mother of 3 boys against the desire to have someone with Grandma at all times.
It is hard enough to lose someone you love. Harder still to watch them fend off the regrets and demons of a life wrought with betrayals, abuse, and secrets no soul should ever have the burden of carrying, as they die a torturously stretched out death. I've written about this previously, but it is time to really process.
I arrived on Wednesday evening. My cousin and I drove from the airport to the hospital straightaway. Grandma looked so pale and frail, even thinner than she had been just six months prior. She knew and recognized me, and scolded me for spending money to come see her. I told her to save it for someone who would listen, that I was a stubborn broad, too. She grinned at that and said, "Well, okaaaayyy," in her wry, sing-songy way she always had, "Then I guess Imma glad you're here." That moment of lucidity was short-lived, as within moments I was a man she didn't want touching her, as she snatched her hand out of mine.
My cousin and I spoke at length with a male nurse that night regarding her disorientation and hallucinations. He perfunctorily surmised it was dementia and that she'd had it for a long time. Hope and I firmly said, "Impossible," even as he reasoned away that many dementia patients "pass" the daily tests of living by relying on the cues of a familiar environment. I told him that may well be, but that when my kids and I visited that was VERY out of the norm and she never skipped a beat, let alone when we talked on the phone. Both of those "tests" would have failed at some point if she'd had dementia. He showed us her brain MRI and pointed out a bleed that looked to have been chronic, saying that it would be miraculous if she didn't have dementia because of the oxygen deprivation her brain had experienced for what looked to be a long time.
That was the first inkling for me that she'd actually had a stroke first, which caused the fall, resulting in the hip fracture. God, oh, my dear Lord, the exhaustion of having to play forensic detective and medical advocate, while also begging my loved ones to face the music that despite the doctors' sunny outlooks, she was not going to survive. It was soul-depleting.
I spent all day Thursday with Grandma at the cursed hospital room. She saw the souls of many who'd gone before her in that room, and conversed with them, fought with them, sometimes telling me what the contexts for these vignettes were. Often, I had to guess, educated by the pieced-together revelations of many dark family secrets.
Someone had called Adult Protection Services on my aunt, concerned regarding the circumstances of Grandma's fall. My aunt began furiously texting my mother and me about that situation. Minutes later, the APS worker came to visit my Grandma and me. Never a dull moment. Grandma was sharp and lucid during that time, for the first time all day. She could barely take in any liquids, let alone food, and I constantly had to swab her dried, sunken mouth to get the chunks of dehydrated spittle out of her. She was in a constant state of agitation. So I sang to her for awhile, hymns of comfort and peace.
Eventually, she was cleared for a transfer to a nursing home, where she would supposedly recover from the hospital delirium and the hip fracture, then go home. I knew otherwise in my heart. In the hours leading up to the transfer, her agitation and the ever-present death rattle in her throat just got worse and worse, to the point I felt her end was imminent.
The transfer was bungled from start to finish. First the transferring medics came with a damned wheelchair, when clearly this was a gurney job. Hours later, they returned with a gurney into which to transfer her. They banged her hip on the rail, which caused her to cry out. The nursing home staff were not prepared for her meals since her arrival was well-outside their normal hours for such activity. The director came in to welcome us and explain everything, noting she would contact the kitchen for a liquid diet dinner, but she got called away to an emergency, from which she never returned. A couple hours later, when a CNA came in, I let loose my inner advocate - albeit professional, my anger had simmered all day about the incompetency from the hospital to there...that poor woman was terrified of me, and my cousin wondered in awe how I knew to be such an eloquent bitch without actually descending into vulgarity.
Grandma entered a calm state, and we sat with her, my cousin, aunt (she'd finally showed up around 5pm, just as the transfer was happening), and me.
My aunt bailed when Grandma had a painful altercation, bawling that she just couldn't stand seeing her like this. I roared, again, asking her - this time with plenty of vulgarity - how the fuck she thought I'd felt watching her heart-rending suffering all damn day. But, you can't reason with addicts, and she left, not realizing this would be her final goodbye. No doubt that haunts her today.
She passed just a few short hours after Hope and I left her, sleeping peacefully, that night.
Hope, my cousin Zaryn, my Uncle's son who had just been an infant when we'd moved from Washington to Colorado in 1993, and I managed the tasks of acquiring information from the funeral homes about options for Grandma's remains, which we would later relay to my mother, Power of Attorney while Grandma was alive, now Executor of her will. When we went back to Grandma's room to talk about arrangements with the funeral home director, we entered the scene of Grandma's body being put into the body bag, rather crudely and forcefully. Hope and Zaryn had to leave the room, while I broke with Mom on the phone. Just as I felt my knees start to give way, my body wracked with sobs, Zaryn's primal, keening embrace bolstered me. The fact that we were virtually strangers, yet his family devotion was so fierce caused me to weep even harder.
It got worse from there. When Mom and my step-dad George arrived after their long haul from Colorado, we had to move through the grief-numbed motions of settling Grandma's financial affairs. What we found was heart-breaking. Exploitation in obscene amounts, leaving my mother with serious debts to settle and precious little in the bank accounts.
Along with the normal phases of grief anyone goes through with the loss of a loved one, were betrayals that only compounded the emotions we had to navigate. I have found myself asking God how any one of the women in my family's history could ever have seen evidence of His hand in their lives, so much evil had colored their lives. Why do some people have so much ever-present trauma in their lives from birth to death that their souls are the hardened soil Jesus spoke of in the parable of the seed-sower? No hope for the Unreachables. Just how and where is the mercy in that? And for someone to quote John 3:16? Puh-lease.
I'm still struggling with that. My walk with God this year could be illustrated as an arduous hike, riddled with fallen logs that have ripped chunks of my flesh off me, boulders that have caused me to slip and fall, repeatedly skinning my knees, elbows, and smaller rocks that have caught my foot, resulting in breath-robbing falls that have left me gasping. And I don't know that I can say that I've arrived on the other side of this period....yet. I'm still taking steps toward it...my wounds keep coming open again, but each time they close up a bit, then re-open, smaller. I know some day, those wounds of my battered faith will no longer be scabs that hurt as the oozing restarts, but scars and bruises, painful to touch, but no longer vulnerable to the threats of infection. For now, though? I'm still awfully tender and would ask that you're careful with my heart.
I returned days before my job timed out. The job that helped me re-see myself as the capable, confident, and stronger-than-most woman I am. I returned to the soul-sucking task of job-seeking adding a layer of loss to the already fresh row of grief covering my heart. It felt like an unrelenting season of injury.
In April, a job opening was made known to me that didn't just call to me, it screamed to me. So I applied, interviewed and got the call with the offer the morning of my 38th birthday. It marries my interest in disrupting inequitable systems/policies with empowering others, and has provided the resources for me to return to graduate school. That is a part of 2017 that I would never trade.
The end of September, I was able to realize a dream that has been in the making for the past 17 years. My March Mommies had finally devised a plan to get together! Not all of us, but 10 of us! We planned on spending a weekend in Vegas, and it was a-mazing. It was the first non-work, non-family crisis overnight time spent away from my family in...ever. And with the women who've known me the longest, walked with me through some of my most difficult times? Paradise.
Until the last few hours.
We had decided that night not to go out, to just eat in at the hotel and play around inside. We played Ellen's Head's Up game and sang cell-phone karaoke, drank wine and ate an equal amount of gourmet goods and junk foods. Basically Moms Gone Mild. We'd had so much fun.
And then, texts about the shooter began to hit some of our phones. Just down the street, the nation's largest (within the past century at least) mass shooting was unfolding. I can't describe the feelings of terror with a specificity such that someone could understand.
Some people have said, "Well but you weren't really there, there," meaning I wasn't at the concert.
And while they're not wrong, they also don't get what it is like to see people streaming the streets, running in fear, fear that is very real. They don't know what it's like to not be able to contact loved ones to assure and be assured that you are ok (Seth sleeps with his cell phone on silent, and it was after 11 in Colorado). They don't know what it's like to be in such a hyper-vigilant state that you pull an all-nighter. They don't know that when you need to seek answers, even if they infringe on your political views, that their invalidation is re-traumatizing and basically tells you, "I don't give a damn, nobody means more than my guns!"
I was in a fugue like state for a week before I called the therapist. I had to be able to talk about it, and my family members weren't safe to talk about common sense gun control with, nor was Facebook the media in which to do so. I'm still seeing him.
Then, Seth's fourth surgery in three years hit. It's taken a toll, and wreaked havoc with our family dynamics, from finances to division of labor, to in sickness and health, to is this the rest of my life, to mental health role reversal and my discomfort with it, coupled with a dawning realization...we are now at week 10 of what we thought would be an 8 week recovery. There've been moments of barely hanging on, where another downed log on my faith trek clawed deep enough to reveal bone and require stitches. Thankfully, family and our church have shown up.
In a BIG way.
For that, the Lord blesses you, and we are beyond grateful for the meals, cards with encouragement, and generous financial blessings.As it turns out, everything discussed here so far, all rolled together, brought me to the unraveling mentioned in the opening quote, facing some desperate questions:
What do I really want in life?
Who am I, really?
Over the next several days, I am putting together my vision, hopes, and dreams for 2018 and beyond.First off?
Saying 'Bye, Felicia,' to the trials of this year, and clutching the precious teachings 2017 provided close to my heart, carrying them into 2018. Growth mindset, baby.
