Death Isn’t For Sissies

A good friend of ours died from brain cancer this week. Losing people we love too soon is never easy, but this was especially hard.

Bill putting a garden window into Darcie's room

Bill wanted to live to see his grandkids grow. He fought so hard. He had such a positive spirit. When the MRI was clear this fall, the doctors told him he was one for the record books.

Then the next appointment they gave him until April. It was like being on a roller coaster, up and down, euphoria and depression.

I love aerobatics but I hate roller coasters.

Maybe I’m just angry because it shows, once again, how little control we have over anything. Maybe I’m sad because life just isn’t fair, and once again, this proves it. I don’t know. My mom has lost three husbands, so I’m no stranger to death. Bill’s wife has now lost two husbands. That’s part of my frustration – it is so hard on the ones left behind.

One of my girlfriends just doesn’t understand how a loving God could let this happen. I think it is so much more complicated than we can understand at our level. God is Love and “HE” isn’t up there on a throne whacking and hurting some people while finding parking places for others.

Pacing and kicking things in my yard the day Bill died, I thought about all these things. I also thought about possessions and stuff. Bill wanted to take the blanket my niece (his granddaughter) made him for Christmas when he died. So it went with him to the funeral home. (I started crying when I found this out….)

Delaney, my niece. She made a U of O blanket for Bill for Christmas. That was Bill's only big flaw: he loved the Ducks.

My daughter thinks “things” are too important to me. The truth is, I like my house and my stuff – and all the memories that go with it. But I don’t need them. And I do appreciate the thought and effort that went into some of my possessions that people made or gave me. They represent and remind me of their love for me.

Maybe some people hang on so tightly to too many things because it makes them feel more “in the world” – more tied to it. Safer.

 I’m not afraid of death. I came so close a few years back…but I’m still here. Why? Unfinished business? Luck of the draw? All I know is that the fear left me.

But given the choice, no matter how wonderful the afterlife is, I want to stay on earth longer.

When Bill moved to the county years ago, we hired him every time we saved enough money for another project.

Bill built our deck, put in new windows and doors, added walls to our dirt basement, a mudroom, a fireplace, two bathrooms and a bookcase. We loved having him here, and kept him from working by talking with him constantly.

Bill was just one of those people who could carry on a good conversation about anything. You wanted him in your house and your life.

We painted the basement once Bill was done!

We put a futon down in the basement and actually slept down there once. I swear I could feel the bugs crawling all over me all night.

The kittens liked the new deck!

My new bay window lets in so much light!

The only good thing out of all this is that, wherever we look, we can remember Bill every day.

Even this photo of my kids was taken in front of the fireplace Bill installed.

Brain and pancreatic cancers are horrible ways to die. But I believe it’s even worse for the loved ones involved in their care.

My grandpa went up to take a nap and died in his sleep. That’s the way to go, I think.

All I know for sure is that Bill will be missed…and remembered.

Grandaddy died in his sleep. That's the way to go.

I wrote this poem when I was so sick. I believed it then, and I still do, but sometimes it doesn’t help:

   CASTLES

I BUILD A CASTLE WITH MY HANDS…

MOLDING SHIMMERING, SHIFTING SANDS.

IN MY MIND I CLEARLY SEE

WHAT THIS CREATION MEANS TO ME.

TO TOUCH.  TO FEEL.  TO SEE.

MY LIFE IS A CASTLE IN MY HAND…

BUILT OF COUNTLESS GRAINS OF SAND.

CAREFULLY, PATIENTLY FORMED BY ME,

INTO A PERSON I ‘M PROUD TO BE.

I LIVE.  I LOVE.  I SEE.

LIKE THE CASTLE IN THIS RHYME…

A WAVE COULD TAKE ME ANYTIME.

AM I FINISHED, READY TO GO?

HERE IS A SECRET THAT I KNOW.

AT ANY TIME, MY CASTLE IS COMPLETE…

FINISHED, SPRAWLING AT MY FEET.

UNTIL IT IS GONE, I ADD TO IT:

A SHELL, A FEATHER, ANOTHER TURRET.

THIS IS MY LIFE, SHINING IN THE SUN…

AN INCOMPLETE PROJECT, ONCE BEGUN.

WHETHER I DIE NOW OR AT ONE HUNDRED AND THREE

I AM EVERYTHING I WAS MEANT TO BE.

LIFE IS A TREASURE IN MY HANDS.

TIME IS THE WAVE THAT WASHES MY SANDS.

I love life.

                                                                            

Retirement is Child’s Play

Me thinking about retirement...

Kicking and screaming, I retired. Well, I didn’t kick too hard. I was jet lagged and tired. I felt like an old clock that was running down. But my whole being was still hooked into being a pilot. It took forever to unplug. Every bit of self-importance and identity was orbiting around that “pilot” center. I didn’t realize it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be that way, but I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t flying.

Six years later, I think I know. I’m the same person I always was, but better. I’m more relaxed, happier – just okay being me. You don’t like me? That used to be a bad thing. Now I realize, finally, that trying to get people to like me is nuts. What is even more nuts is trying to get people to like me when I don’t like them. As a copilot, I used to try so hard. Why didn’t I just fly the airplane and let it go? Why did I care so much about what they thought? Because I was a people pleaser to the max. Sad but true.

Why do we grow being people pleasers?

I love people, and I love doing what I can for them, but I know I can’t live their lives for them or fix them. I want to be the tool box: I’m glad to share my tools, but I don’t want to be their carpenter. They’ll have to build their own house…I just don’t think it helps to help too much.

I’m not angry that so much money is going to welfare or inner cities or any of the causes that seem so good. I’m just sorry that it doesn’t help. Giving and giving and giving until you have nothing doesn’t work. I wish it did. But I think the best way to teach others is to show them. Just live life the best you know how, and hope people want to emulate you.

So many kids nowadays are not surrounded by happy adults. The people around them are just getting by – just getting through the day and their life. How can you be excited about growing up and going into the world if it doesn’t look like anyone is enjoying their life? Why do kids dream about being athletes and movie stars? Because those people look like they are having fun! Look like is the key phrase here, and that discourages kids even more, because if those who “have it all” aren’t living great lives, how can they?

Kids should be excited about growing up.

I’m not trying to oversimplify or be a Pollyanna, but I don’t know how else to put it. Enjoy your life. Wake up every morning and spend a few minutes looking at the ceiling and thinking about the day. I ask God to help me be the best I can be: loving, kind, full of integrity, caring, grateful. I honestly don’t think most of us can live our best lives without asking and listening for guidance.

We human beings are reactive. We don’t, for the most part, live from “the inside out” as Christina Sestan says. http://www.citruscoaching.com/ But we would be happier if we did.

I don’t get up in the morning and watch the news. I can’t handle all the suffering in the world before breakfast. Hell, I can’t even handle it after a bottle of wine with friends. It is too much to know all the sorrow and trouble in the world. I don’t care if someone in North Carolina just got murdered. Wrong, I do care: I care too much and that is the problem, but I live in Oregon. To quote John Mayer, it’s not that I don’t care – it’s just that the fight ain’t fair.

It is too overwhelming, too all-consuming, for me to think about the tsunami in Asia, the nuclear melt-down in Japan, our government’s huge debt, the lives lost in an airliner crash. My inner psyche gets overloaded – it’s all too big, depression sets in, and nothing gets handled. None of us have the capacity or the knowledge to handle so much sadness and chaos. My niece used to come home crying because her biology teacher told them about all the animals going extinct and how the world was falling apart.

Do we need to know about every problem in the world?

Really? Seriously? What is going on in our schools today? How are we teaching our kids to cope? Maybe we aren’t. I’m not sure we are even teaching logic any more, but if you don’t learn to think logically, you can never think anything through. You can never put anything in perspective because you can’t reason through it.

So, if you want to wake up every day and enjoy your life, you better decide what you are going to let in. Neighbors who gossip and are negative do not share morning coffee with me. But sometimes they sneak in my back door or into my head and I can’t get rid of them.

When did people get so judgmental and cruel? Oh, I guess they always have been…thinking about Nellie Olson and her mom on Little House on the Prairie.

No one deserves the cruel gossip that I keep hearing. No one.

So how do we fight the negativity, the meanness? Because I want to go to bed every night with a heart full of love and kindness. I like to think that, if my dad and grandpa are up in heaven watching, they’ll be proud of how I turned out. I want to live the virtues they taught me: integrity and kindness, love and thoughtfulness.

When I hear people badmouthing others it just makes me sad. I want to cry for them. I want to have compassion and try to understand where they are coming from. Instead I get angry. How can they be so cruel – so mean? I want to run far and fast before I get dragged down into the muck and mire with them.

I want to live consciously, caring for others. I want to be compassionate, feeling empathy, not judgment.  It is so easy to forget how much our words can cut and hurt another person who does not deserve our cruelty. I know that I am accountable for my thoughts and actions.

It is easy to hurt people we love without meaning to.