The Music of Her Life.....

This has been the hardest week of my life.

As I work furiously to assemble WWII era songs onto an ipod for my mother, I wonder if I will even make it there on time. 'There' being the hospital where she has existed since September 2010. I wonder if she will even be able to hear them IF I make it there on time. I wonder why I am doing this now when I have had months, weeks and certainly the past several days to do so. The reality of the situation may be just too real now.

It's possible that I don't want to watch her leave this life. The years spent handling her many errands, her desperate and immediate needs and demands, and her numerous doctor and clinic visits wore me out. Nothing was ever right or was ever enough. It just began to make me numb. But, I never stopped loving her. I never stopped hoping that the next time I saw her that we would have an overall positive encounter. She can't speak now, so it's up to me to make this a final positive encounter. As the POA, it is up to me to make the call for hospice and all my siblings are not in agreement about the next inevitable steps. It is ripping my family apart.

I would like to help her leave this life listening to the songs of her youth, her glory days. They are the songs that defined the 'greatest generation'. The generation of so many immigrants who defended our freedom in so many of the most ultimate ways. The generation who may have given us too much because so many of them had grown up with so little due to the Great Depression.

So, I scramble to figure out how to help her exit this world, I realize that writing this blog just made it easier for me to deal with her passing.

Thank you for listening.

A day late and a blanket short...

Three nights a week, as I walk from work to my parking space, I see a person. A very small, obviously homeless person. I had never seen the face or even been sure of the gender of the person until last week.

Now I know it's a woman. She wears a hoodie, tied tightly around her tiny head, dirty coveralls and heavy army boots. She is always huddled in a tiny ball in the doorway of the same shop. She is usually motionless, which always makes me wonder whether tonight is the last night that I will see her. On occasion, as I pass, I will see her shift a bit or hear her murmur something or mutter. A few times I have left a bit of food for her. I stopped doing that last year after a piercing shriek and a tiny,dark fist shot out from the sleeping bag-bundled form. She was probably just scared. Now, so was I.

Week after week, I would check to be sure she had a blanket or a wrap of some sort and she always did. Every week, she seemed to get smaller and my concern only grew. Then, the Groundhog Day blizzard hit Chicago followed by a deep dive in the temperature. That Friday I noticed she was only covered in newspapers and a filthy towel. It shook me to the bone to see her that way. Nothing is open at midnight so I couldn't help that way and there was no blanket in my car. But, I vowed to drop off something to her next week when I worked. I prayed for her safety and well-being until I could help her.

And I tried. I really tried. But, she didn't want the blanket that I brought for her. Or, the small area rug that would separate her from the damp, cold concrete. She waved me off and pointed to the new blanket that enveloped her and said she was fine. Her face was small and dark and deeply-lined. Her eyes large and dark but serene. Her voice was soft and soothing when shoe spoke to me. And, she was so calm. So very calm. She made it clear that she wanted to be left alone. So I walked away, feeling a little bit useless and a day late to help.

But now I know what I truly didn't know before. Don't wait to help. Step up to the plate today, and not tomorrow. The next time someone needs something, I want to be there the day before, with an armful of 'blankets'.

Deep roots...I am a Chicago girl...( and a little bit OC )

It's not springtime but I am cleaning. Clothes, cards, papers, etc., all to try to streamline and de-clutter my life for all kinds of reasons. Sound familiar?

During the process, I unearthed a journal I had kept from a 2 1/2 week, life-changing trip to Australia and New Zealand in May of 2006. It was only the beginning of a re-awakening of all sorts of adventure and creativity for me. A second chance to grow and I truly felt like a seed about to germinate. With apologies to those of you who love L. A., below is the first entry. It was written during a long layover at LAX on my way to Sydney, Australia.

May 19, 2006

"Leaving my little home is never easy for me. No matter how exciting or mundane the destination, I always feel a twinge of sadness as I drive off and away from it. Today was no exception, despite the fact that I am going over halfway around the world to a country I have dreamed of visiting for nearly all of my life. Clothes were washed, sinks were cleaned, dishes and silverware were sanitized. It just doesn't feel respectful to leave 'her' alone for any amount of time in any sort of unkempt way.

It's beyond me why I feel compelled to make things right before I go, but I do. It makes it a little bit easier to leave, knowing that I will come back to the same , sweet, serene setting that I left behind. Ah, maybe therein lies the secret. A sense of continuity and sameness. A lack of disruption, perhaps. No, the first reason is more apt, it's more half-full!

So here I sit in the slightly humid air of the International Terminal of LAX, just trying to make the most of my six hour layover between planes. It strikes me again, in an instant, why I don't like L.A. It's not an immediate,in your face sort of artifice, like Las Vegas. It's more that these people really take it seriously. The falseness, I mean. This is a place where vacuousness is embraced and expected in so many circles.

Give me American Gothic over this Dali-esque existence any old day. Oops, my Midwest roots are showing. Which I am A, 100% okay with on any given day. So there!"

Upon discovering and reading this from nearly five years ago, I realized that there has been an awful lot of living between then and now. And, you know what? It's all good......

JOY IN SMALL PACKAGES....

It's the little things. Truly, it is!

Every day is not Christmas Day or my birthday or the anniversary of something fabulous that happened in my or a loved ones life. Lately, it's about cherishing micro moments in time. The ones that burst with sweetness. Or, those that are quick or cute or funny or just uniquely beautiful.

If I pay attention, there's at least one a day. How the sun glints off the gorgeous fall foliage, even as it fades. Kids tossing the football in the street. Playing chuck-a-ball with Harvey the Wonder Dog and reveling in the unadulterated, pure joy that he takes in retrieving the ball for me. Okay, he IS a Labrador retriever, but that's beside the point!

One of the best laugh out loud moments came not too long ago. After reading aloud the book that I wrote about Harvey to my two very young great-nephews, the 4 year old asked me to read "Harvey Finds His Smile" and pointed it out on the back of the book. I told him that I had yet to write that next book. He cocked his head in a most quizzical and thoughtful way and said, "Well, can't you just write it right now while you're here this weekend?" I paused, laughed, hugged him hard and thought about what he said and just smiled. A magical moment of pure innocence.

Truly a joy. In a very small package.

EYE OF THE TORNADO....

It's a new level. Or maybe a new refuge, simply renamed. I am the eye of the tornado. More than merely 'inside' of the eye of the tornado. What I mean is that I AM the eye. Here inside of mine, it is rather serene with no sound louder than the quiet hum of a faraway vacuum.

But the question that begs to be asked is this: When you go here, if you do, if you are able, is it because you are really calm and away from the absolute violence and the unpredictable nature of the winds and the rain and the hail that really hurts? Or, safe from the lightning that once it strikes you, is so stunning and damaging that nothing is ever the same? You are not the same. Or, because in that calm center, the winds and rain can't lash at you and pull at you and rip you all to shreds? So, is it a temporary respite and healthy, like meditation? Or, is it avoidance, because it's just all too much at once?

It seems to help, at least temporarily. But to inure oneself from the unpleasant too often is to miss life. Or worse, accept what is not so good. So, I will take three deep breaths to decompress, let the storm close to me dissipate and allow the swift, dark and angry clouds to swirl about until their energy is spent.

While I am not sure I completely answered my original question completely, there is at least something to consider. Personally, I opt for the former. As a temporary defense mechanism, it may be a good tool and certainly not pharmaceutically addictive. Maybe the eye is an okay place to be. Once in awhile.

The World is Not Our Garbage Can....

This didn't start yesterday. The awareness, the annoyance and yes, sometimes the outright disgust while watching somebody litter for no good, or obvious reason. It was fostered by my parents, both of them. For this lesson, I am so very grateful.

Certainly, I don't recall ever seeing either of them drop something on the ground in public or around our house or on our property with the expectation that somebody else would, could, should or might be hired to pick up after them. If they dropped it or tossed it, they picked it up. We were expected to do the same and without question, we did. Not because we were perfect kids. Oh my heavens, no! But, because the logic of it all made sense. The logic that we were presented with was so simple, yet so direct. If everybody dropped just one piece of litter every day, what would the world, the ocean, the lake, the country, the state, the town, the street, the neighborhood look like? When delivered that way by them to us, without accusation, judgement, or condemnation, it was thought-provoking. And most importantly,it worked!

We were shown, by example, that we were responsible for the space around us wherever we were. That we were caretakers of wherever we were in the world. That we could effect a change just by doing the right thing. By not causing damage.

The concept is one that I embrace each and every day. It is powerful and wonderful and a task that I am proud to practice, to carry out and to pay forward.

Thanks for listening. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Remembering Mike.........

He woke up and asked for ravioli. Just opened his eyes, sat up, and asked the nurse at Stanford Hospital to bring him ravioli. He loved Italian food. This, after a surgery two days prior that did not go at all as planned by the doctors. It took seven hours instead of three, was not successful, and determined his fate as terminal. Not terminal in the sense that it was possible to physically knock off anything on a bucket list that he may have been keeping for himself. Terminal in that his family was told 24-48 hours are all that he has left.

It's not clear whether he knew this. That he had extremely limited time or that there was a very clear and driving reason to just be there, present in the moment. To be awake and present for as long as it would take. All I know is that he woke up on a Thursday afternoon and was completely lucid. Not just any Thursday afternoon. The Thursday afternoon just hours before the tip-of the Lakers-Celtics Game 7.

If you were his friend, even casually, you know what this means. At least, I think I know what this means. Somehow, on some level, as he drifted into and out of consciousness the past week, he knew. Knew that his beloved Los Angeles Lakers were about to make some history of their own and that it was TONIGHT. So, he ate his ravioli, watched the basketball team that to him , hung the sun, the moon and the stars. Then he went back to sleep.

Nine days later, my friend Mike passed away. He lived a life that was full and fast and full of friends. So many of these friends had fur. Horse fur and dog fur of any and all type. Those friends loved him purely and completely. And so did we. The friends of Mike who wanted nothing more than his crinkly blue-eyed smile, his energy that knew no bounds, the drive that catapulted those who worked for him into sales a stratosphere that they may have only previously dreamed about.

I will miss him so very much. My good, kind and dear friend of childhood, adolescence and adulthood. He was yours, too. Let's be kind, be good and be a real friend. What a great way to honor our friend, Mike.