This
poem is about an encounter my grandmother had with Eleanor Roosevelt.
In college, my grandmother was assigned to interview the First Lady for
the school paper. When she actually got to sit down and talk with her,
Mrs. Roosevelt asked my grandma about herself, what she was studying,
what she was interested in, etc. By the time the interview was over, my
grandmother looked down and realized she had nothing written as a
result of the interview -- she had done all the talking instead of Mrs.
Roosevelt! My grandma carried this memory with her and learned to follow Mrs. Roosevelt's lead and always be more interested in others than herself.
Last month my friend said July was just plain awful for her and she couldn't wait for it to be over with. August started and she was relieved. Days later, I was stricken with strep throat. 104.3 degree temperature, enormous tonsils, the works. Not pleasant -- but little did I know, that was merely the beginning of the month that I would soon wish to be over.
A couple days after recovering from strep throat, I got a random text from a friend I hadn't heard from in a while telling me to call him and that it was important. After seeing the text, I realized that he had tried to call me earlier, but not recognizing the Colorado number, I didn't answer. So I dialed up the Colorado number expecting my friend to have an immigration-related question for me to help with (generally the reason people from the past contact me out of the blue these days is to answer or help with a random immigration situation). Unfortunately, that wasn't the case at all this time. Jason got right to the point: "Peter Bausch died today." Peter was a friend of ours from my law school days. He was my age and had two little boys about the same ages as my girls. He was fit and healthy and his life was on a good path. He had gone up to Michigan to participate in a bike race that weekend, and something happened between the start and the finish of the race -- his body was found just about a mile from the finish line.
Beat.
Impossible to process. There are no words. There is no way to understand. There's just sadness and loss. Brain wracking for memories of things said, moments shared... Pulling out photo albums. Remembering. Helplessness. Watching his widow who looks like she could be me sobbing down the aisle behind a casket. How can this be happening to a friend my age?
Two days later, my sister called to update me on the outcome of a doctor's appointment my dad had. He's been dealing with blood issues and after multiple tests we finally got a diagnosis: myelofibrosis. With no treatment, he'd have 3 - 5 years; the only "cure" is a bone marrow transplant that only has a success rate of about 50% and an unsuccessful transplant means death.
Beat.
And now my brain tries to process. I try to be positive about my dad with the perspective that at least we might actually have time, as opposed to what happened with Peter where it was just -- BOOM! Gone. But how do you cherish those delicate moments of time without being depressed?
Me? Depressed? No way. But then it started coming over me. The proverbial dark cloud. The lure of the notorious black hole to crawl into. There was inexplicable fatigue and an ache - a literal ache - in my chest. I could turn up a smile on the outside. I could dutifully answer "Good" to the classic and empty American greeting, "How are you?" But the pain and sadness and futility of everything was there, begging me to just curl up inside myself.
Fortunately, I saw it and I didn't like it. It wasn't a place I wanted to be. It wasn't me. I reached out. And then and only then was it pointed out to me how much I keep everything in. In college my friends used to call me "bottled". I didn't think it was something I still carried with me until a conversation last week with my husband and a counselor. I just don't tend to talk about what's going on with me, I don't share, I don't expect people to want to hear about me. Even writing all this is so very hard. But I realize that's not okay when there is so much sadness, so much hurt. If I just keep it in, it starts brewing like a dark batch of coffee, burning from the inside.
So it's something I'm going to work on. Expressing. Sharing. Opening up. Essentially, what it comes down to, when I really think about it, is being vulnerable. Showing my weakness. Showing that I can't always just handle everything. But it's also about acknowledging that my feelings are worth sharing. Believing that others really do care. Accepting that I need the support of others to get through things that are beyond my own comprehension and capability.
The good thing, I suppose, is that now I do "know my problem -- I keep it all in", so it's something I can be aware of, work on, and hopefully improve.
In the meantime -- I miss my friend, I'm desperately sad for his wife and kids, and I'm so very scared for what my dad will be going through. There's nothing anyone can do about any of those feelings. But there. I've put them out there.
