The Power of Voice

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Today marks five years since Candace passed away. I remember that day so clearly, standing next to her and talking to her for a few moments, even though she was in a deep morphine coma. I remember how it felt to see her in her bed in the living room with her family around her and the hospice nurse. Then, leaving with the kids to have breakfast in Sunbury and while eating, getting the phone call that she had passed. Telling the kids, then taking the kids on a drive to look at Holiday decorations because they weren't quite ready to go home.

My grief this year is less, but my anxiety is probably more; I suppose there is always a balance. Today I listened to all the voicemail messages from her I saved - I have four of them. When I hear her voice she is still here. Right next to me. Is it weird I saved her voice? I've kept it on my phone for over five years now. I can feel her presence when I listen to those voicemails, I feel her near me.

It's funny how powerful the voice is. Playing the recording, I'm right back with her. Sitting in the living room, hanging out. Sitting in the hot tub, laughing. But it is so real. So much more real than even a photo. Last weekend, her daughter, my sister, and I took the snow train to Leavenworth. Madi and I sang our hearts out. Candace couldn't keep a note on tune for anything. But she sang with wild abandon. She had fake microphones in her van so she and I could pretend to be pop stars and sing along with the radio. As painful as it was to listen to her sing, it was replaced with the sheer joy she had when laughing along with the music. It's lovely that Madi has such a nice voice. Maybe, just maybe, Madi somehow got that from me.

So much change has happened since she passed, and so much change is still coming. One child is off to college soon and one child will be starting high school next year.  I try to stay with my head above the water and love the journey. I never expected this journey. Never expected any of this. But I remember five years ago when I kissed her forehead as she passed and told her I would take care of them and how much I loved her. And it would be okay. I knew it then and I know it now. It will be okay.

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss her. This summer, we were at Disney. Madi was handing Grant some lip balm. For a brief moment, Madi looked so much like her I gasped, same hands, same mischievous grin, same vocal tone. The two went off to ride a ride and I sat and had some coffee and basked in the energy of her. I knew she was enjoying Disney as much as I and the kids were. And, I cried.

This isn't a long tome to her, I've written so many of those. But this is a tribute to her voice and the power I feel when I hear it. And so, today, I thought I would share it. I apologize it is so clunky, but there is no other way to upload the file here :(.

Love you too, friend. Love you, too.

https://vocaroo.com/i/s0vgjKO1mWdw

Love to you all,

MaryKate

The Minutiae of Grief (or 'Rational' vs 'Emotional')

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A few days ago, I got an email from an ex. It was a canned 'I'd like to be connected' email generated from a popular website. The email had a photo and some current information. Our relationship didn't end well and when I got the email, I felt the lid I had welded shut on that time in my life blown off; frustration and aggravation flooded my heart. All those memories of feeling dismissed and helpless were almost as raw as the day everything ended in a whirlwind of confusion and dismay.

Then, at three am this morning, I logged into my yahoo account. I couldn't sleep and for some reason I got a nudge to go and look at the account I hadn't logged into for over a year. Apparently, yahoo mail has a new feature where you can search old yahoo instant messenger messages. I searched for candyxxxhoo, Candace's old yahoo account. And there they all were! Every single message we had shared since 2009 when she created her account (after I begged her to get one). We IM'd almost daily, up until a few days before she passed and was too sick to type. It was beautiful reading through some of our old messages. I didn't read through them all, there were over 2,000 conversations; the ones I did read through gave me an accounting of many of our sorrows and joys. The most recent messages, before we were no longer able to chat, were about the house I had recently purchased and how she couldn't wait to come and visit me - both of us knowing that wasn't going to happen.

Finally, in my English 12 class this week, we have been reading the Herbert Mason version of Gilgamesh; one of my all-time favorite mythic tales. We were at the part where (spoiler) Enkidu dies. I read the passage* about grief out loud to my class. I got teary eyed at the end of the passage. My students looked at me with compassion and kindness. It was a moment of me being terribly genuine and vulnerable and my students responding with understanding and compassion. It was... amazing.

It's that time of year where the Autumn Equinox hovers around the corner; it's not too surprising this week has been about connecting with grief. I struggle with the emotional side of grief. Rationally, when my relationship ended and when my best friend passed away, I knew I had to pick myself up because hey... life goes on. After a while of rationally processing the situation I put away being 'hurt' and moved on with my life. I had my daughter to take care of and after all, relationships sometimes end, right? I started dating again, and in time found someone with whom I hope to share my life. I am grateful for having love in my life and for these present moments of happiness and joy. I look at my daughter and every single day see glimpses of Candace's face looking back at me. Certain funny faces she makes are faces her mom made. I don't even think she knows that, but each time I see her face squish up 'just so' my heart skips a little and I feel the ache of loss.

I guess I didn't realize that you can be happy in your life yet still have moments when you grieve something from the past that you didn't even know you were still grieving. The relationship I spoke of earlier wasn't the best of relationships - it wasn't all that healthy. It was, however, important to me. I loved, deeply. It ended abruptly and I felt left behind, dazed, and wounded. It feels like the end of a relationship isn't that different emotionally than having someone you love, die; it is an end to a connection, the 'price' of love.

I realized this week that it is okay to grieve. It is okay to say to myself that even though I am in a place of joy, I can still have tender spots in my heart that are painful when poked.  I realized, that makes me normal - it doesn't make me a failure for not 'being over it by now'. The rational part of me had been whispering that I *really* should have moved on with these issues; I felt stupid for still feeling hurt about events that happened in the past in a relationship where there won't be resolution or answers. I felt broken for being vulnerable and still caring. For a while, I even felt I should stop missing Candace.

However, the heart is not ruled by a rational timeline; the heart has its own timeline. And the heart, or more accurately my heart, doesn't want to be punished for loving by being denied the time it wants and needs to grieve the loss it feels. It's on its own timeline and that doesn't make me weak or broken. It makes me human.

I guess the rational part of me is just going to have to be okay with being imperfect. Turns out, I'm just fine with being human.

Peace,
MaryKate


*Here is the Gilgamesh piece on grief:

All that is left to one who grieves
Is convalescence. No change of heart or spiritual
Conversion, for the heart has changed
And the soul has been converted
To a thing that sees
How much it costs to lose a friend it loved.
It has grown past conversion to a world
Few enter without tasting loss
In which one spends a long time waiting
For something to move one to proceed.
It is that inner atmosphere that has
An unfamiliar gravity or none at all
Where words are flung out in the air but stay
Motionless without an answer,
Hovering about one’s lips
Or arguing back to haunt
The memory with what one failed to say,
Until one learns the acceptance of the silence
Amidst the new debris
Or turns again to grief
As the only source of privacy,
Alone with someone loved.
It could go for years and years,
And has, for centuries,
For being human holds a special grief
Of privacy within the universe
That yearns and waits to be untouched
By someone who can take away
The memory of death.

Almost...

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Today feels like a day of 'almosts'.

It is almost a year since Candace passed away. I think about her almost every day. Almost every day I want to call her or talk to her. Not a day goes by that I don’t think the world is a little less bright without her in it. I almost made it through the day without crying.

Almost.

It is almost four months since M came to live with me. While we are certainly over the ‘honeymoon’ phase, and rapidly moving into the ‘how do I navigate this new life’ phase, I am almost certain that this is normal. I am almost certain I am strong enough to do the work I need to do to be a good parent. There are times, however, I question my strength and my patience. I am almost sure this, too, is normal. Not a day goes by that I am not aware of how much I love her and that I am glad she is here. I am almost sure that in time, we will be stronger for having gone through this together.

Almost.

It is almost 2014. I am almost overwhelmed by how much my life has changed in almost 365 days. I’m not sure how my life will change in 2014, but I am almost certain it will change and then change again. I am almost sure I will do my best to handle it with love and grace. Almost every moment I am aware how fortunate I am to have an amazing partner, wonderful family and incredible friends, people who gently remind me I am loved and valued. I am certain that without them, I wouldn’t be who I am or how I am in the world. As I sit here singing along with Andy Williams, I am almost ready to take on 2014.

Almost.

But through every ‘almost’ today, I allowed myself to just experience it with as much grace as I could muster. I cried. I got frustrated. I got angry. I smiled. I laughed. I got the most amazing gift of love from my boyfriend - maybe the kindest gift anyone has ever given me. I still get teary when I think about his kindness. And I keep telling myself that this is just a hard time of year. And as I sit here watching a recorded “Andy Williams Christmas” special, I am reminded of how I loved these Christmas specials as a child. When, as a family, we all sat around the one television in the house and watched and sang along all those years ago.  I find myself smiling and singing along, now. And I realize my dad, my sister, my brothers, myself, we all made it through difficult times and we turned out pretty okay.

And that is what I hold on to. That as hard as this time of year can be, as difficult as transition is, as chaotic and messy as life gets? I’m here. I’m healthy and I’m sure that love is enough to get through the hard times.

Well… almost.

It's more than losing someone you love...

Letting go of 'golf carts'...
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In my English 11 class today, I was sharing with my students why I missed the last week of school before our two week Winter Break. I told them about the death of my best friend and going to Ohio to tend to the details and the pieces I could tend to.

While I was talking I had a realization. Maybe it is a realization that everyone knows about and I am late to the party - wouldn't be the first time :).

The realization worked its way up from the murky depths of my unconscious when I wrote the extra credit assignment on the board today - write an essay about, 'one event that changed your life.' I explained that they were young, and it didn't have to be a huge event. It didn't have to be as difficult as the death of a friend. It could be the death of a favorite pet, or a divorce, or a huge argument with a friend that ended a friendship. It could be a positive event, a trip they took, a race they won, a competition they participated in, a summer camp. Regardless of the event, when they look back on it, they had to realize they had changed - something inside them saw the world a little differently. Assignments like this can be tricky. Some students really don't like writing about their lives and I don't force them to do so, thus the 'extra credit' part of the assignment. And, as always, if a student is genuinely uncomfortable or can't think of an event, that student can come to me and we figure out a different assignment, together.

But I started thinking about why I put that assignment on the board. And the realization that was bubbling below the surface of my awareness, came to light.

I was telling my students about my 'big future plans' with Candace. We used to sit up at night and laugh about our future. We would talk about how we were going to get little cottages near each other by the water. We were going to get golf carts. Every morning, rain, sleet, or sun, like postmen, one of us would throw on her slippers and bathrobe, jump in her golf cart, and head over to the other one's cottage where coffee and something homemade would be waiting. Coffee cake, bread with homemade apple butter, donuts, whatever our latest experiment was, we'd share it in the morning over coffee. We'd trade off days making breakfast for each other. We'd talk about politics, about Madalyn and Grant, about husbands. We'd get dressed and go make flower arrangements at the Senior Center. We'd take bus trips with the other seniors and laugh about that crazy bus trip we took together so long ago. I'd be writing novels, she'd be planning our next adventure. We had plans! We had stories we wanted to tell. We had adventures we wanted to share. We had a future we were creating.

And that was when I realized, when you truly love someone and they die,  you aren't just losing the immediacy of the present with them. You are losing the 'future' of them.

Last summer, Candace went on a trip with her husband. She was excited to spend some alone time with him; they hadn't really had the chance to do that since Madalyn was born. When her husband was diagnosed with cancer many years ago, doctors only gave him a few years to live. He's lived much longer than 'expectations' and is doing very well right now. One of the things we talked about when she returned from her trip, was how, while they were on the road, the two of them 'future planned'. She said, "You know MK, ever since he got sick, we haven't dared to future plan. We've been so caught up in the present and his getting chemo and staying alive, then my getting chemo and staying alive, that we lost that ability to dream about the future. I didn't know how much I missed that. On our trip together we talked about growing old, we talked about things we wanted to do with the house, we talked about the kids and college, we talked about moving to the lake someday. It was really great to reconnect like that. It reminded me how much I love him."

Until I lost Candace in December, I didn't really understand what she meant. I mean, I understood it on a head level. It made perfect sense that she hadn't had the opportunity with all the cancer around her to 'plan the future' with her husband - but I didn't really 'get it'. When I lost Candace, I realized on a heart level that I had also lost the future with her. Not just her laughter on the phone, her telling me how sexy my blond hair looked, her telling me how much weight I'd lost and how great I looked (even when I hadn't lost a pound), her telling me how happy she was that I was finally happy in my life and had met someone so loving and 'worthy' of me, her excitement about meeting my boyfriend for the first time (something she never got to do), the absolute joy she felt whenever she talked to me - the same joy I felt talking to her. Even when she was upset, angry, in pain, or scared, she shared those things with me in the context of "this too shall pass". I remember in August of this year, her doctors told her that her liver was doing better. When she told me on the phone, we both let out whoops of joy and said, "HELLO GOLF CARTS!" No one but us understood that reference, but I realized even then, even when in the back of my mind I thought, "I don't know that there will ever be golf carts", I was excited and I held on to the hope that our shared future included those golf carts.

Perhaps there will still be golf carts in my future. I don't know. Even if there are, it won't be the same. Of course I will carry Candace in my heart for the rest of my life, but there will be no shared breakfasts, golf carts or floral arrangements.

Losing Candace in my present, also means losing Candace in my future. I realized that is a large part of my grief. Having to let go of all those dreams and hopes for what we would be doing 'tomorrow'. I'm fortunate I have no regrets about what we did in our past together. And I am fortunate that in the time I knew her, we had almost enough adventures for a life time.

Almost.

Peace,

MaryKate

Tending to the Heart

On Dreams and Other Things...
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I had two dreams last night - both of my closest friend, Candace. In the first dream, she was sitting on the couch in her living room. She was trying to talk to people because she had things she wanted to say. Everyone was gathered around her, and she was telling people how much she loved them and how she was going to miss her family and her friends. She was getting tired but we listened as she spoke to everyone individually as best she could. Then she got sick. She fell on the floor and I covered her with my body and held back her hair and she vomited - over and over. She said she was tired of being sick and I told her I love her - that everyone did. And I held her while she cried.

In the second dream, we were out shopping for Christmas gifts for her children. Grant and Madalyn were with us. Madalyn wanted a specific pair of shoes and we were in our third store looking for them. Candace looked at me and said, "Wow, look at you all getting me out shopping. You always gave me energy when I didn't think I had any". I looked at her and I said, "Honey, you know you aren't really here, right? I mean your body is back in that bed." And she looked at me and she smiled. I fell to the floor sobbing. I said, "How am I supposed to go on without you? How do I do that, because I don't know if I know how to do that." And I full-on, open-heart-chakra started wailing. She waited a moment, smiled at me again, touched  my head with her hand and said, "MK, my body is full of light." And I knew she'd be okay, I just wasn't so sure I would.

For the last two days I have watched as my best friend slowly drifts away. She has not been lucid. She has simply slept while hospice gives her medicine every few hours and people come and whisper their "I love you's" into her ear. I have tended to the kids, and let others tend to the things that needed tending. There has been a lot of 'tending' going on. I have tended to everything... everything except my heart.

I'm sitting in my hotel room right now; my beautiful goddaughter sleeping next to me. I'm trying to cry quietly so I don't wake her up. My bff hasn't eaten or had anything to drink for 4 days. It won't be much longer now.

But in my dreams? She is a ball of light. She is smiling. And she is full of love. She is the long-haired, hazel eyed, cheerleader. She is joy. And my heart knows that even as she transitions to another place, she is not so different there than when she was here.

ETA: 3 hours after writing this blog, my best friend died. I wanted to say she 'transitioned' or she 'passed' or any of those other euphemisms, but her body simply gave out. Her spirit did not.

All Too brief
74/100

Today I found out that a student at our school perished in a car accident. Details aren't in, but I don't suppose they are important to this blog, or, in the end, to the pain people left behind are experiencing. I don't care who the young person is, or the story, any death of a young person feels tragic. This young man however? Was simply a delightful young man. He was a young man with a scholarship to a fantastic university next year for lacrosse. He had an incredible smile. He was dedicated and was working so hard at his studies to make it in college. He was focused and a bright light to everyone that knew him.

When I heard the news, the first thing I thought of wasn't him, but his parents. How do you wake up one morning and everything is amazing, then wake up the next morning and nothing is? Yet you have to somehow keep going forward when a part of your heart, your spirit, your soul is absent. I have no children, I truly can't imagine the grief. But I can hold the space of those two people who will wake up tomorrow where nothing is amazing.

I have no story of my own past grief to tell. I suppose I could tell about the day I found out my mom died. But there is no comparison. There is no way to begin to touch the grief that family is experiencing. I will not try. That would somehow take the grief that belongs to them and make it my own. I didn't have him as my student, but I find myself crying for the loss I feel and for the teachers I know who deeply respected and cared for him. I cry for the family and friends that somehow have to wake up tomorrow morning and face the shining sun, the clear day and the beautiful weather when everything in their world is a storm of terrifying thunder and darkness.

I will say a prayer tonight. For the family, for the friends, for the teachers, for the crossing of such a bright light. And I will say it again tomorrow night. And the night after. Because, like my father having a heart attack, things came into focus for me today. I got some needed clarity about what is important. There is no joy coming from a situation like this, but it does remind me to hold close those I love and appreciate every moment of life I have with them.

Peace,

MaryKate