Winners

12-4-11

I’m surrounded by losers.  Not the capital L to the forehead kind of loser.  That’s just mean.  I’m talking about people who are living through loss.  My family, friends and neighbors are handling loss the best they can.  I once heard that we grieve the way we lives our lives.

My neighbor Michael lost his wife of over fifty years a year ago.  He breaks down when he talks about the moment she died in the hospital holding his hand.  He lives alone now, friendly to all, happy to show me his house, his pictures, his old Life magazines.  I see him in the school yard some days flying his kite, or on his porch listening to jazz, or in the park feeding the squirrels.

Another friend of mine is dealing with the loss of her husband and her abilities mostly in isolation.  She’s angry and resentful that he’s left her to deal with life and its burdens alone. She kept her life small and never quite figured out how to find consistent support from like minded people.  Now in her toughest time, she’s finding ways to seek help in her own time, on her own terms.

On a morning walk yesterday, I saw another neighbor John walking alone, without his dog Shorty.  “Where’s your four legged pal?” I called out to him.  When I met up with him he said, “He’s gone.”  He told me the night before his dog died, he lay on the floor with him, holding him, scratching his belly.  He said he knew then Shorty’s life would end soon.  We cried as he shared his grief.  He said, “I never want to go through this again.”  People told him he should volunteer at a shelter, but he said he’s too tenderhearted and would end up taking them all home.  I suspect I’ll see him within the next year walking another dog. 

In the early afternoon I drove out to see my dad, who, for the second time this fall is in a nursing facility for rehab.  When I visited him the night before, I was shocked and scared by his disorientation in time and place.  He asked me where I got the chair in his room and how much I had to pay for the blinds, as if it were my place.  He started off a sentence in the present and switched to include reality from forty years ago, as if it were now.  “I don’t think I’m going to go to work tomorrow,” he said.  When the aide came in to help him use the bathroom, I cried in his dismal room, listening to his loss of ability.  With more jumbled conversations, he started giggling, saying he talked like this to some women earlier and they didn’t know what to make of him.  He broke the barrier.  He had some awareness that he was confused and he could laugh at it.  I said, “Your thoughts are jumping all over the place.  You’re doing all sorts of time traveling, aren’t you?”  We laughed through the most of the visit.  I was tickled when he tried to use the remote, pushing a random button, hard, pointing it at the large painting on the opposite wall.  “Dad, that’s a painting.  The T.V. is over there.”  I was so grateful for this space of grace opening up, replacing my fear and grief.  During my visit yesterday, he was more oriented.  He advised me that it’s better to talk to people at the nursing home, “because you start to feel more comfortable being here.”  My dad even made a couple of jokes.  He said, as if I didn’t know, “Your mother has trouble with her back.  Part of it is sticking out and it gives her trouble.  She’s getting shorter.  Pretty soon she’ll be down here,” he said with a squeaky mouse voice, holding his hand a foot off the floor. “Then we’ll have to put her up on the table to talk to her.”

In the later afternoon, at my book group, the host was in sad shape.  Earlier that morning she lost her dog.  Her little family member had been with them for more than eleven years, a part of their home, always at their side, snorting her way through their lives.  Now my friend cried, as she’d been doing all day, saying her dog died in her arms, next to her heart, on the way to the vet.  She could have cancelled the book group, but she wanted her friends with her.  She lit dozens of candles and said we couldn’t leave until they all burned down. 

We’re all a bunch of losers.  It’s part of the human condition, something that connects us all.  Flying kites, mingling hugs and tears with friends and neighbors, finding help in our own time, grabbing on to humor, lighting candles: we all find our way to win through the loss.  I’m grateful for neighbors, friends and family who demonstrate losing with grace, how to be a winner.

12-11-11

Now, a week later, I hope I can learn from those around me.  After a six day tumble down a steep hill, my mom died yesterday.

I have no recipe.