Turning in, instead of shutting out

Smiling, remembering four calls I received yesterday from Peter, who sounded so much better than he did on his call Friday.  The specialists are agreed that  his blacking out spells are due to an enlarged thyroid, rather than a growth.  He expects to be in surgery early this week.  

I don't really understand it all, but it seems that when they go & see what it is, either one type of specialist will be needed or another, so two teams have to be standing by.  Peter joked, "Guess the other team will head out to a bar."

He called four times over one hour, once just to share that he'd been served a very tasty-looking pasta salad with his supper.

Of all the magical moments I've experienced over the past years, perhaps none were more incredible than those four calls or the floating feeling that was over me all night, the joy of having the sublime satisfaction of being a real, honest-to-goodness, 100% certified SISTER.  

And I found myself thinking about how easily I could have blown it, seven months ago.  Felt like I camethisclose. 

Much to my surprise, Peter was apparently completely unprepared for Mim's 07/03/15 death.  I assume she was as upfront with him as she had been with me, from the first phone call after she was admitted to the hospital through the emergency room.  The doctors were clear that her condition was terminal; that due to an inability to process nutrients, she'd be gone in  7-10 days.  She certainly was open with all three of us - Peter, John, moi - when we visited on Friday, several days after she was admitted.  

When we went back for another visit the next Friday - she was in Toms River, NJ & I was without a car - she was resting peacefully when we walked into her room.  Except she wasn't - she'd died less than 25 minutes before we arrived.

John & I were stunned, but not surprised.  It turned out that Peter was taken completely unawares.  On the drive home, when he shared his shock at it being so fast, I was amazed.  Mim had been so upfront about what was happening, what to expect.

When I said that, Peter went off the deep end, experiencing my surprised comment as me criticizing him.  The more I tried to set things right - that I wasn't being judgmental, just taken aback - the nastier he got, a brother I recognized from the past that had set my world on edge, someone who could easily have triggered all sorts of retaliation.

Praise be, 25 years of being married to healthy, whole John had made it safe for me to feel & process all the wild emotions coming at me.  Something deep inside knew that how I reacted would be respectful of my sister's death or just the opposite.  Instead of reverting to ancient family patterns, I took a mental/emotional pause.  Then, I calmly drove into a parking lot, pulled the car over, looked at Peter & said, "Excuse me for being emotional.  My only sister just died.  I am upset."   


I wasn't able to console Peter in his unexpressed grief, but at least I didn't make matters worse.  The three of us made the long drive home in quiet.




Thoughts about those potentially devastating moments came back to me today, thinking about the laughs we shared last night on the phone, what a relief it was to hear from Peter himself that they don't expect to find anything more than an enlarged thyroid.

This is a new, delightful role for me.  When he was hospitalized before, the rest knew about it, not I.  Not even when they expected him to die.  

It gives me chills, thinking how different things would be if I'd let a thoughtless response by me to Peter's misdirected grief blow up into a relationship ruptured beyond repair, if I'd shut him out instead of turning in toward compassion & caring.  
 

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This SERIOUSLY cheered me up!

Was feeling small & powerless, unable to help two older loved ones who are in particularly challenging places.   To pull myself out of the depths, called two friends - good gab with the one, having tea later with the other.  Bucked me up a lot.

Feeling chersier (chur-C-ur, as my dear old Mum would say).  Took a moment to ponder how important it is to drench folks facing dementia with activities, sent loving healing wholesome thoughts off to my beloveds, then looked up "dementia & activity" which lead me to this wonderful listing - 101 Activities to do with family friends clients dealing with dementia!

 

My Top Ten favorites:

1. Play favorite music
2. Color pictures
3. Read out loud chapters from favorite books
4. Cut out pictures from magazines, make a collage
5. Look at maps
6. Make paper butterflies
7. Give a manicure
8. Call a friend
9. Take a walk, indoors or out!
10. Bake frost decorate cupcakes ~ take some to friends, with a note

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"a time you weren't invited"

"A time you weren't invited" - this was a prompt Nancy Aronie used during the writer's workshop a couple weeks back, at Rowe.  

A situation late last week got me thinking about it & how it feels like I was never invited into the circle of people that made up my family.  How it still seems to me like none of us felt invited.  

Suddenly swept with memories of the "Lemon List" at the private school Mom (Class of '28) & all of us kids attended.  

The Lemon List was a not-so-secret shame we Lockhart females shared.  Not the guys.  Dad attended Harrisburg Academy, boarding back when it was all boys.  And Peter & Mike?  HA!  From pre-school through college, they were social A-List, all the way.

Mom, Mim et moi were not so blessed.  Our names were always written in scarlet letters on the Lemon List - girls without dates to dances.

There were three dances everyone had to attend - Alpha Kappa Mu/Phi Alpha, Deka/Sigma & Junior-Senior Dance.  Girls who didn't get a date showed up on the Lemon List.  Either a high school boy was dragooned into asking you or, if none could be strong-armed into it, a college guy would step up to the plate.  

It was bad enough to not be asked, but to be asked in that way - supreme mortification, three times a year.  In my four years in high school, I always showed up on the Lemon List.  Just as Mom had, just as Mim did.

When Mom was in her late 80s & I was closing in on 50, we were part of a mother-daughter discussion group. Just the two of us & three other pairs.  Except for one mother, all of us had attended the same high school.  Luckily, the other daughters had no memory of the Lemon List, long gone when they were in school.  The other two mothers had vivid memories of it, although they’d both been spared. 

The 4^th mother - the one who didn't attend the school, but whose daughter had – listened to our back & forth.  She was silent, soaking it all in.  Finally, she looked at Mom & asked, "Mrs. Lockhart, what was it like, being on the Lemon List?"

Mom took her answer in an interesting direction.  She was effusive in her appreciation for the all the dashing college men who had chivalrously served as her escorts, remembering them by name.  It was a happy, appreciative reply.  But I suspected it missed the mark of what Helen had tried to discover.

On the drive home, I mentioned to Mom my sense that Helen had been asking about how it felt to be on the Lemon List, to have everyone know that no one had asked you to the dance.

Will always remember Mom's startled expression & her simple, simply devastating answer - "But I was a lemon."

 

Imagine the feelings that swept through me.  I pulled the car over to the curb & turned to Mom, looked fully into her face.  Once before, I'd had the same sensation of looking full into the face of a teenager, not my octogenarian mother.  "Mom, no one should ever feel that they are a lemon."  

To this day, am not sure which of us was the more floored - me, at hearing Mom trash herself, or Mom at thinking it was anything but right & just.

That moment was extremely revealing for me.  Mom wasn't outraged when Mim & I were subjected to being Lemon Listers - we simply followed in her foot steps.  Mom accepted being a lemon; when her own mother emotionally abused her, that was acceptable, too.  When Peter & Mim treated her like dirt - as they did throughout her life -  my guess is that felt right & natural to her, too.   What else would a lemon expect?  

Even with her friends, Mom felt lemony.  She was close to several remarkable women who clearly found in her a kindred spirit & whose friendship meant the world to her, but she always marveled that they found her to their liking.

In Mom's life, Dad - like her sister, Betty - was the aberration, someone who made her feel like a beautiful rose, its petals unfurled under the basking glow of his love & tender nature.  

 

I bring this all up to underscore that, with the exception of her beloved husband & sister, Mom never felt invited into a circle, a greater whole, why she stepped very gently around Mim & Peter, because one poorly expressed word or presumptuous expectation & they'd chill her out, feeling lemony, lonely, like she'd been cast out into the cold.  Again.

To this day, I don't feel invited to be part of my family.  I doubt the others do.  Everyone assumes we are, but not so.  It feels like when Buddy Dudlik had a big party at his house, with its indoor pool, back in 7th grade.  The whole class was invited.  I received my invitation, too - except Buddy took me aside & told me I better not show up.  That feels like my family - we all got invitations, along with the message to not show up. 

My great saving grace was that I invited myself.  Oh, not to Buddy's party - I steered clear of that big event.  But to my family.  They didn't consider themselves part of my circle, but I made them part of mine.  Not from any wild-eyed hope that maybe, some day, they'd like me.  It's always been clear they'd never see me as part of an inner circle they only acknowledged to let me know I wasn't in. 

The odds aren't very good that I'm ever going to feel invited into a family circle that's highly fragile at even the best of times.  Ah, but there is another circle, one that's strong, resilient, offering open entree to any wanting to come in, showing a smile & a beckoning wave to any lingering outside.  That one has existed in my heart from my earliest days.   

My dear friend, Diana Glenn Peterson, knew the Lockharts about as well as anyone.  Her mother, "Aunt" Alice, was close chums with mine.  She was in Ian's class, shared our heartbreak when he died at eleven.  Her sister was in Mim's. I was in my late thirties when - knowing my grief over being so separate from my sibs - she wrote out a poem by Edwin Markham to help ease my heart:

Outwitted

He drew a circle that shut me out--

Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

With that poem in my back pocket, can never feel uninvited or in the least bit lemony.  Call me a Perennial Pollyanna, but as long as we answer Life's invitation with a resounding YES, nothing else matters.  

 

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