20 Things I Never Said Before You Left

Having lost a father and two brothers, I know a little about regret.  I try to live my life these days with that in mind, so that the sinking feeling that "I never got to say" doesn't ever plague me again.  

But before I was so world-weary and wise, I left a lot on the table.  I forgot to say some things, and I forgot to do others.  With that in mind, this one's for my Da.

20 Things I Didn't Say Or Do Before You Died

1.  It's okay to be scared.  You had lung cancer, and you grew up in an era where a man worked, a woman stayed home, and guys were not allowed to feel fear.  I was scared for you, and I know you were too, and I wish I'd let you know that I knew, and that I didn't think any less of you for it.

2.  At the end of my wedding video the videographer put us on the spot and asked if we wanted to say anything to our loved ones. I fumbled, and stuttered, and I said "Mom, thanks for everything, you are the wind beneath my wings...and Dad, thanks for being such a great dancer!" It sounds silly, but the idea that you thought that it was your only contribution to that special day haunts me.  I was honored to walk down the aisle on your arm.  And yes, you were a great dancer; but what I really meant was that I waited my whole life to dance with you in your handsome suit, just the way I remember dancing on your shiny brown shoes when I was a child.

3. I talk too much.  It's a nervous habit, and on Sundays I'd jabber away, instead of listening more to you about your life.

4.  I'm sorry you only met Chris after we were engaged.  I never thought you'd be interested in meeting my boyfriend, and now that I'm a parent I realize how much that must have hurt. I wish you'd had more time to bond over old movies and character actors, and maybe you wouldn't have had to stare him down the first time you met if we hadn't already been engaged.

5.  I'm sorry if you thought I didn't care when you were sick.  I hope you didn't believe that, even as your wife threw it at me in the kitchen.  You told me not to listen to her, and I have to hope you didn't either.

6.  I'm sorry I didn't believe you could die.  Even when they said there was no hope, that you only had a few months to live, in my head I believed that MY Dad was stronger than any disease.  I planned the following week off to spend time with you--but I was too late.

7.  I wish I hadn't been so concerned about doing everything in its due time, because waiting to have a baby meant that you didn't get to meet Shaelin, or Jason, or Lily.

8.  I'm sorry...but I'm glad you weren't alive to see the death of not one, but two sons.  I can't stand seeing what it's done to Mom, and we both know she's always been the stronger one.  

9.  Being a child of divorce was painful, but I appreciate that there were times you tried to make it easier in your way.  You made a point to tell us that your new girlfriend's cooking wasn't as good as mom's, and as a kid I thought that was a weird thing to say...as an adult I realize you were trying to take away any sense of replacement or competition. 

10.  Thank you for traveling two hours on a Sunday just to spend the day with us, to take us to China Sky or McDonald's or the movies.  To this day I can't see a first run movie without thinking of the way we would wait in the lines that went around the building to see the next Star Trek or Star Wars movie.  (FYI, I can't see a Star Wars or Star Trek movie without thinking about you, either.)

11.  I wasn't the rabbit that ate the carrot.  I know you thought I was, but I wouldn't have left a half eaten carrot in the couch cushion--I would have eaten the whole carrot.

12.  I'm sorry if I disappointed you.  I know you (and I, to be honest) expected me to take the R.O.T.C. scholarship and join the military.  Things didn't work out that way, and there will always be a part of me that wonders if you would have been prouder of me if they did.  I have no regrets--I loved the career I chose instead, and I love the writer's life I live now, but I also would've loved to make you proud.

13.  I picked Butterfly Kisses to dance the father-daughter dance at my wedding because I was focused on the Butterfly Kisses-- you always gave me "Eskimo Kisses" with your nose when I was little..but all you were focused on was "after all that I've done wrong I must have done something right."  I never thought about things you did wrong,  both because I loved you too much to care and because Mom always hid that stuff from us.

14.  Stop smoking.  Stop smoking years ago.

15.  I love you.  I know I've said it before, but there's just no way I could've ever said it enough.

16.  I hate John Wayne movies.  I wouldn't change the fact that you watched them all the time, because now it's nostalgic and they remind me of you, but God! I didn't fall asleep on the couch because I was lazy or over-worked, I fell asleep because I couldn't keep my eyes open when that cowboy drawl came on.

17.  I always thought you were 6 feet tall, even though you were only a couple of inches taller than me.

18.  No man could ever replace you.  If you ever feared that you were loved less because somebody else lived in our house, you were blind to the hero-worship that we had for you.  Proof positive:  I married a tall, handsome guy who loves old war movies, cheap beer, and bad jokes.

19.  I'm jealous that you brought each of the boys to play golf with you.  I know I can't hit the ball to save my life, but it was such a huge part of you that it always bothered me that you didn't share it with me.  (It's like that "mountain"--which I've since discovered is really more of a small hill--at Breakheart that you always took the boys to see but I was too little.  I'm bigger now.  Grown up.  I can golf.  Sort of.)

20.  I'm proud of you.  I know that there are things you've done in your life that are not things to be proud of.  But you also worked hard at a job you loved,  taught me to read at the age of three and fostered a love of a good Stephen King book, laughed at losing half a finger because it bettered your golf grip, weren't afraid to hug or kiss your kids, fought cancer as hard as you could, and left at the moment you chose to leave.

Dear Family: I'm Not Letting You Go, It's Just Grief & Anxiety

 

     It's easy to think I'm fine.  After all, I've gone out with my friends here and there, I've gone on vacation with my family, I've even taken my mother to Paint Night.  I post pretty pictures up on my Facebook page of all the wonderful things going on and the accomplishments of my three children.  To the casual observer, I'm happy.  I'm moving on.

      The trouble is I'm crumbling inside.  Leaving the house is preceded by thirty minutes of heart palpitations and tension, as I try to keep it together despite the fact that a panic attack is clawing at my throat.  A text that goes too long without a response from my husband and I start worrying something's wrong.

     Something is wrong.  I got the call on January 6th, some time in the afternoon.  "Listen," my brother Bill said on the other end of the line.  "You have to go over to South Shore Hospital.  Michelle called.  Charlie sat down on the couch, then Ari came out and said Papa's not waking up."

     Everything else he said was lost as I fumbled out of the blanket wrapped around my legs and stuttered, "I'm on my way!"  My hands were shaking as I tried to put on my shoes, and my throat was stuck as my husband asked me what was going on.

     I don't remember what I told him.  In my head, I was busy re-playing the deaths of my youngest brother and father, fourteen and fifteen years ago respectively.  Re-playing the last month, when my oldest brother, Charlie, had been diagnosed with colon cancer.  Re-playing the night before, when I'd dropped him off so he could see his girls.

     I declined my husband, Chris's, offer to come with me, thinking the kids would need him more than I would, because I was just being silly. Charlie would be fine.  I would be fine.  I was wrong on all counts.

     I've been late for all three of my loved ones' deaths.  When my father died of lung cancer in 2000, I had been scheduled to take the following week off, but he died overnight and by the time we drove up to Middleton to say goodbye, he was cold, and gone.  I felt completely crushed for getting there too late--too late to see Da one more time.

              My Dad And Me

     

     When my brother Jay went into the hospital after a night of seizures and not being able to wake, I was too late then too.  I had stayed home to watch my brother Bill's daughter, Ashley, but as the night wore on into morning I knew I had to leave her with Chris so that I could go to the hospital.  As I walked through the halls, trying to find my mother, I saw them wheel a completely limp body past me for a CT Scan.  It was Jay, no longer thrashing but lying docilely asleep.  It didn't look like him.  His fever reached 104.5, and they transferred him by ambulance to another hospital.  He went into cardiac arrest on the way.  I'd never see Jay awake again.

     As I drove to South Shore Hospital, I knew it couldn't happen again.  How could it?  I couldn't be late again.  When I got put in the small room, I knew it was bad news--but as the doctor spoke to me and told me they were working on him still, I somehow, foolishly, had hope that I wouldn't be too late again.  She asked if I wanted to be there while they worked on him, and because I couldn't bear to be too late, I said yes.  When I got into the room, they had just called time.  I was too late to say goodbye to my brother, and my last remaining brother and my mother weren't there yet to keep me focused on someone else's grief, so I collapsed to the floor.

     When I finally managed to send a message to my husband, it wasn't elegant.  It wasn't careful.  It wasn't gentle.  It said "my brother is dead", because that was all my shaking hands could type.  

     I could tell you all about the services, or the severe flu that everyone came down with except me, or even the ride to pick up his ashes.  But the point is that the world goes on.  Those things are big moments to me, but not necessarily to the world.  To the world, it seems like six months or longer has gone by.  To me it's a day.  Maybe a week.  I put on my happy face, because neither his nor my children need sorrow, and my mother is grieving two sons the only way she can--by pretending it hasn't happened.  But for me, I want to sit down and burst into the uncontrollable sobs that just won't stop.  There's never time for that, so I let a little burst happen here or there, and then I force myself to go outside the house, no matter how much I hate it.  I would much rather spend my time inside, safe in a bubble of music and writing.

          This is my safe space 

     

      Invitations have been coming to family events.  I have a lot of family, and I used to go to all kinds of big events with them until my brother died.  Now the idea of stepping into a room with all of the people who I last saw at my brother's wake terrifies me.  It terrifies me to the point that I shake, and I gasp for air, and I ultimately just say no.  It doesn't make sense, but then anxiety and grief have never had to make sense for me.  

     Because I'm not ok.  All is not well.  My brother is dead, and I'm not ready to move on. It feels like if I go to a big family party, I'm admitting that he's gone, and I'm saying it's ok to move on.  It's not ok, yet.  Not for me.  So please, when I answer no to an invitation, know that I'm doing it out of love, a love for my brother that says I'm still here, I still remember, and I'm not ready to let you go.  Someday, in the way of grief, I will be.  When my tears are dry, when my sobs have finally been purged, I'll be able to think of a family gathering as just that.

     But until then, please understand, I'm not letting go of you.  I'm just holding on to my brother.

The Good Men Project Why We Run Series

I have a post up on the Good Men Project Sports Page.  Stop laughing...I'm sportsy.  Ok, maybe not sportsy.  But I exercise.  This is a series called "Why We Run", and for the first time in a long while the words just flowed out like poetry.  Hope you enjoy, and feel free to like & share!

https://www.facebook.com/goodmenprojectsports/posts/642242769252620

The Wild Child

For the second time in my life, I lost a brother.  He died on January 6th, 2015.  I wanted to write a new post about him, but my heart is so numb that I can't.  The best I can do is share my eulogy with you, in the hopes that you will find the Wild Child in your life and be a little less exasperated with his/her wild side.  

My big brother C wasn't perfect, but he was perfectly C.  From the moment he could walk, he delighted in turning my mother's hair gray.  He was one of those little kids who would tell any stranger his whole life's story, and who knew everything about them within minutes.  He had a curiosity about the world that was just not contained by the fact that he was a kid.  There was the time when he was three, when he escaped the confines of the house just to go walking down the beach...at 3 am... in his underwear.  He was picked up by the police and returned safely home.  Then there was the time when he was six, when he took his 4 year old brother B "thumbing" on the expressway.  Again, his luck kicked in and he was picked up by a very nice truck driver who delivered him to the police, who figured out that C and B V***** were not their real names and again delivered him to his frazzled parents safely.  There was the crane incident, where he climbed up and fell off, giving himself a concussion and my mother heart palpitations.  It got so bad that when she called the Malden police and said "It's Mrs. B******" they only asked "Does he have the dog with him this time?" Then there were the motorcycle rides.  Lord, the motorcycle rides.  Sometimes he'd give me rides to work, and I'd get there all disheveled and wind-blown because he would pop a wheelie just to make me scream.  He was the "cool" brother back then, the guy who would never grow up.

When we moved away from Dorchester and he came to live with us, there was this room in the basement.  He immediately claimed it.  "The basement?" we all asked.  "Why would you want to live down there?" In about a week, we saw why, as his room was completely set up for his friends to come over and play Dungeons and Dragons on a nightly basis.  

While you could never say C's wild side was tamed--he would hate that--his life changed drastically with the birth of his first baby, his C******* J**.   He was so proud of that baby, and he couldn't wait to show her picture off with every chance he got.  He became a Dad, and something changes in you when you become a Dad.  When we lost my brother J in 2001 and were all so devastated by the loss that we couldn't function, it was somewhat surprisingly C who stepped up to make all the arrangements, doing what the eldest son and a Dad would do.

  

We all changed a little then.  B and C became closer.   Over the years, B has become kind of the caretaker--driving C's girls home, having a place where C could go.  I know that in his grief B thinks he could have done better.  But you have to know, B, you did more than enough, and you were always a rock that C could and we all could anchor to.  

C soon had two little girls to think about, because along came S******* M******.  His little peanut, his S****. 

His girls became the most important thing in his life.  Every time we talked, it was about the girls or the kids.  Any person in this room, if asked, would tell you that they were his whole world.  Our kids have grown up together, so I've gotten to see more of him in the past 14 years than in probably my whole life--I count that as a blessing, even though sometimes it meant having an extra kid along--like the time I had 5 kids at the beach, and they were totally fine, and then he popped by after work and had them jumping in the high waves and giving me a heart attack. He made up for it by insisting on taking all the kids for ice cream... at the other end of the beach...in 98 degree weather.  Or there was the time he took the kids for a walk in my neighborhood and somehow came back soaking wet because he fell in the river--not the kids, C.  Or the time he let them all jump off the dock at the lake, just trying to give me some gray hairs, and telling me they needed a little freedom.

He was a Dad, but he was still the wild child, after all.  

This past November he got diagnosed with colon cancer. They wanted to do surgery early, and he kept telling my mom that all he wanted was to be able to work so that he could afford Christmas gifts for his girls.  She told him that the girls would rather have him for Christmas.  We postponed Thanksgiving so he could have his surgery that Friday, and we got to spend Thanksgiving together when he got out of the hospital on Sunday.  Despite not being able to keep a lick of that food in his stomach, he didn't want to miss it and even mustered up some energy to play with Rose.

When the doctor said he would need to start chemo, he was surprised.  He made sure that he could start the day after Christmas, so that he could have Christmas Day with his beautiful girls.  It was a good day.

The night before he died, he wanted to go to the girls' house in Hull. He often took the train and bus there just so he could see them--no easy task.  He was a little tired from the chemo meds, and he asked if I could drive him to Quincy so he could catch the bus on time.  If you saw the stretch of road he would've had to walk when the bus came late, you would know how much he loved those girls.   I told him I'd just drive him to Hull after I got Punkgirl from dance.  On the way there, we chatted.  He told me the best place to get a car when I need one was not that guy in Brockton --he had good prices because he got a lot of his cars from car wrecks, and that I shouldn't get a car there ever.  He knew because he talked to the guy every time he went there for gas back when he was driving, and he knew this guy's whole life story, just the way he often did as a kid.  

He joked about how he was sure Rose was really one of his kids because she's a wild child, too.  And as usual, he talked about his girls.  I remember him telling me how S**** had over 1000 Instagram followers, and how when she got her 1000th follower you would have thought they hit the lottery.  He was so animated talking about her.  We talked about how C*** was planning for college, how smart she is, and how glad he was his girls were so smart, smarter than him.  We got to talking about how mom is turning 70 this year, and I mentioned that B and I had been checking out halls for a party.  He said "70 that's right...yeah, we should do that.  We should definitely do that, Ma should have a party to celebrate that.  I'll give you some money, too, because I'm going to work on the weeks that I don't have chemo."  Like everyone in our family, I told him that he was crazy, he should rest instead. 

When he got out of the car he did this double tap thing on the top of the car.  You know that cool double tap thing.  Looking back, from the beginning of that car ride, he was just the cool big brother, the wild child, so perfectly C. I know now, he's with my Dad, and J, and everyone else who has gone on.  But when the kids want to jump off the dock, or go into the big waves, or Rose escapes the house one day to go on an adventure, I'll know the wild child is still here cheering them on every step of the way.

Ahhhh Sunshine!

I love when it's warm enough that even I will venture outside.  Today we took the kids to the local park trail, and we got some much-needed fresh air and sunshine. 

While we were there, it kept occurring to me that there are lots of great photos of the kids & Coffeeguy:

...and even some great pics of the local wildlife:

....but not so much of me.  When I die they'll look for pictures for the slide show and they'll find none, because I'm always behind the camera.  I tried taking a "selfie":

...but my arms are so short that I couldn't get much of the background!

Are you the photographer in your family? I am thinking of hiring someone so we can all be in a few pictures together!

The Adventures of Punkgirl and Happyboy

      Punkgirl and Happyboy are twelve and ten, respectively.  Punkgirl is my Joplin-loving, record-listening, knee-high-sneaker-wearing writer.  She has super short hair and a super long memory, she is snarky and smart, and if I were a kid she would be my idol.  Happyboy is her younger brother, and he has idolized her since birth.  Over the years, he has developed his own personality, though, and now, instead of wearing cute things that his sister would wear, he wears cute things that he likes for himself.  These range from pretty butterfly cardigans to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirts, so needless to say his taste is unique.  The emergence of his own sense of style and his own sense of self has caused some troubles in our house, mostly because his older sister and he both have control issues (and gee, I have no idea where they got them from.  Ahem.)  There are times when I watch them, and everything jells, and they hit that groove.  In the groove, they are so creative and funny and loving together.  And then there are the normal days.

     On normal days, they correct one another constantly, tell each other what to do, and the word stop (which becomes stooo-ooop) is repeated more times than I can count.  There are times where I think they can't stand it when the other breathes, and it just kills me.  Having lost my youngest brother at the bright young age of 31, I feel every snipe and every sneer like a sharp knife in my heart.

     At the beginning of the summer, I started giving them "challenges" to get them to work together.  Eight out of ten times they got frustrated and angry because neither wanted to compromise on a project.  It became a struggle between them and I began to despair.  But eight out of ten became six out of ten.  By last week it became four out of ten.  They're finding the groove.  

     For my brother and me, it was comic books.  We could fight all day, but take us to the comic store and we were the best of friends, picking out the best issues that we both could agree on (for you fellow geeks, it was Avengers, Xmen, Thor, Iron Man...occasionally Batman, though I had my concerns with the slim coverage Batgirl was given in that comic...) For Punkgirl and Happyboy, it's creativity.  I give them the camera and a theme, and before I know it there are costumes and props and can they use this or that.  I tell them they need to make a comic book and they are on the computer, heads together, the argument they had ten minutes ago about Happyboy constantly singing instantly forgotten as they come up with graphics and snappy dialogue.  They hit the groove.  I don't have to worry then that they might grow up disliking each other...these moments are proof that their sibling love exists.  I cherish them, those moments, more than I could possibly say, and I miss that bond with my own brother keenly but bitter-sweetly.

      I suck at being a stay at home mom. But sometimes, even I get it right.  That's when we're in

the groove.