They remember my world

I helped serve a public dinner on Sunday. I recognized the older couple and when I saw the lady I thought of my mother. She must be nearly the same age as my mother. Chatter was light as they passed through the food line. After they had eaten the gentleman came to me. When he and his wife sat down, he said, his wife asked, “Is that Goldie?” 

I was touched that she would remember my mother. I reached out and said, “Hug your wife for me. I am so touched that she remembered my mom.”

“Do I have to?” he grinned. 

A while later I got to thank the woman myself. “I miss her so much,” I said.

“I understand,” she said.

A woman came through the line. “You’re Goldie’s daughter, aren’t you?” 

I was surprised again. “Yes, I am.”

“When you were going to get married—you were so young, the both of you—you came and bought a table and chairs from me.” 

I remembered immediately. But my surprise was that she remembered me! Again I was touched that someone had so much recall about my world.

I am thinking about how I told God I feel lost. I don’t know where I belong, I told him. I’m thinking that he is guiding me to figure that out. 

© 2014 Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ All Rights Reserved

Say a little prayer

          “Father God,” I said, “No matter what they say or do, I will never leave you. Please don’t let them take you from me.”

          I faced a lot of issues at that time. (We face issues every day of our lives.) Next month will be five years since Dad died, starting the snowball down the mountain. It doesn’t show signs of stopping any time soon.

          The latest situation was the painful flu that struck our youngest daughter. It never leaves you, that desire to protect your child from the pain – physical and other. This “child” will be 27 next month. Hearing her voice over the telephone from more than 500 miles away caused such a feeling of helplessness. What could I do from so far a distance? Should I be on the road to get to her? Was it “just” the flu? Could it turn into pneumonia? (A lot of people who get the flu are going into pneumonia.) Of my four children, this is the one who gets sick … very sick.

          My friend, P, and I had a limited discussion about my God. She asked if my god is vengeful or forgiving. If he is so forgiving why is Cathy afraid of his judgment … or is Cathy just the dutiful daughter?

          Oh, my! Excellent question!

          My God is my heavenly father who has stayed with me when my dad wasn’t around – which was a lot of the time. When I haven’t had the strength to pick myself up, my God has carried me. When I need comfort, the assurance that I am not alone (which it seems I am a lot) he is with me. I guess I look at it as a parent-child sort of relationship … since he IS my heavenly father.

          Parents are supposed to discipline their children. A healthy fear of parents keeps us on the right path. When children honor and respect their parents they are rewarded. Parents don’t always like what their children say or do. They don’t have to. Kids don’t always like what their parents say or do. They don’t have to.  There is a little thing called “unconditional love” that covers it all. No matter what, one loves the other, no conditions, no strings attached. It just is. We are to hate the sin, not the sinner because every one of us has fallen short of the glory of God … or simply fallen short. We all are human. Love one another!

          When we look at it, what is more important: each little piece or the grand picture? Who is more important, the individual or society when used in the proper context? People who are uneducated or under-educated just don’t get it. Maybe nobody ever got it. What will be required if we are to survive?

(c) 2014 Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ All Rights Reserved.

Looking Ahead

In the fall of 2012 I made a decision. I adopted a mantra to live by: A new me in 2014. I gave myself a year to sift through the memories of my life and plan for my future. And I've spent this year working on rediscovering me.

It's not easy to be truthful with ourselves. We want to deny that we have "bad" traits or that we have messed up sometimes, although it is only human to make mistakes, to "mess up" sometimes. I ask for forgiveness from those I might have offended. And then I forgive myself for my mistakes and go on.

It feels like I have alienated friends and acquaintances because my opinions differ from theirs. And our opinions should be able to be different without causing friends to no longer be friends. But, these are different times we are living in. If you disagree, if you speak what you are thinking, hoping for an exchange of ideas, that isn't what you get.

So, a few people have stepped on my toes this year. And I have said what I thought. And now they don't want to speak to me so I feel like I was wrong to express what I thought and felt. When I expressed that I was assured that wasn't so. Still, when I post to an online group and nobody responds to it I, like so many others--maybe the reader, maybe the people I have tried to reach--take it personally, even though I tell myself I shouldn't. Why does it matter so much to me what people think? I don't want them to think I'm a neurotic woman, a loose cannon. I'm not those things. But not knowing me well enough to judge--and I am probably doing the same thing to others here and judging from what I see and read--well, it has created "issues."

Except, I'm not sure that is true. I attended the calling hours for the mother of a childhood friend. I remember all the hours we spent together and think of the neighbors at that time as "extended family." I was thanked for coming, told it meant a lot. But one of the daughters of the deceased looked at me, and voice dripping in condescension, said my name as if I was unworthy of being there. Obviously she does not hold our childhood memories in the same "family" status as I do. Well, my conscience is clear. I paid my respects to a woman who was deserving of respect and always spoke to me with mutual respect whenever I saw her. I offered my support to my friend and her sister who do not, apparently, regard me as that same friend, but just someone they used to know. Ah, well. I will love them like sisters forever, even if I'm just a distant stranger to them.

Here's to the memories of childhood where we accepted everyone and offered patience, love and kindness to all...And tolerated the bullying from those who were bigger than us and were so low class as to pick on someone too small to fight back. Cowards.

I can't apologize for that last bitter note.

Dreams set us on our way

“You can do whatever you want, achieve whatever you set out to do if you’re willing to work hard to get there.” Mom said those kinds of things all through our childhood, growing up years.

“You’ve done so much with your life,” she said, this from the vantage point of her eightieth year, this said by a woman with many gifts, raised in strict Victorian style and restricting patriarchy in an American Bible belt.

ALL of my writing for the past 15 years has revolved around the values, lifestyles and local society that has influenced me, governed me, and perhaps imprisoned me. Each step I’ve taken started with a tentative step—the first step being the most difficult, but commitment rising quickly. If I’m going to take a step I am going to plunge forward…until a conflict arises between what is best for me vs. what my family needs, all with my personal perceptions based on what I know, mostly from my own experiences, my own observations, my self-education.

Always I have put my family first. My journalism career was good for me. If Mom hadn’t been at my back, pushing, urging, encouraging my reluctant footsteps, I would not have spent 14 years in radio and print news.

But when I perceived my children at risk, I could not, in good conscience, put myself ahead of them. I made the conscious decisions to bring each of them into the world, at first tentative because parenting carries such a deep, consistent commitment and dedication. But when that first step was taken, my honor and commitment carried me full-speed ahead. I have NEVER regretted those choices I made, even when an ignorant receptionist refused to assign an appointment with my OB-GYN because my husband’s job was gone in the Economic Malaise and we had no insurance. I should get an abortion, she recommended. I feel such joy when I am sharing life with my twin daughters, now 26 years old. What did that stupid woman know?

It’s not that I haven’t been published nationally. It’s that I have my sights set on something more.

“You’ve done so much with your life,” Mom said.

It seems like there is so much yet to do. My motivation is that I stand for my mother and my grandmothers who were not given opportunities to excel with their gifts and talents, and to teach my daughters (birth and adopted—that means my daughters’ friends who have called me Mom) and granddaughters to learn who they are, why they are, to set their goals, dream their dreams and reach for the stars.

Mom tried to do the same for me. I’d say she succeeded given where she started from. I am passing the lessons forward. But it’s a two-way street because my daughters are excellent teachers, too.

©2013 Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ All Rights Reserved.

Perspectives

“You really look like your mother,” Carol said to me yesterday at a Spruce Street gathering. Mary and Sandy agreed. (Carol is “Dorothy,” Mary is “Rose,” Sandy is Blanche and Dolly is Sophia. Dolly was absent.) I am amused. ROFLMBO!!!

When I moved in at Mom’s after Dad passed away, Mom and I settled into a pattern. Routine is an important point in Alzheimer’s. Every night after the 11 p.m. news broadcast, Mom and I watched reruns of The Golden Girls. When the broadcast was ended, Mom would put her crocheting down, go to the bathroom and change to her pajamas and say goodnight so I could get my rest.

Everything about being there was about a safe haven. Even with the stress of AD-related events, there was love and respect there. A certain camaraderie. I wished my husband would agree to live at my mother’s house and help me to take care of her. He declined.

In 58 days it will be two years since Mom’s passing. I am looking at things from a different perspective these days, some of which may be related to my approaching Purple-Ten birthday. 

Sometimes we come up against reality and clarity. We finally grasp that thing we have tried for so long to understand—or avoid. And we need to remember that moment of clarity when we are inclined to soften our resolve.

Change isn’t always easy but sometimes it’s necessary.

© 2013 Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A Parting in Progress

She and I were never close. Mom said the problem was that I intimidated my sister-in-law. Me? Intimidating? How on earth could that be? I am so “down-to-earth,” so non-threatening, harmless. Why would anyone be intimidated by me? I still don’t know the answer to that question.

Last week my nephew contacted me to let me know that his mom was in the hospital. She was in a coma, but nothing like he had ever seen before. She has been diabetic for a lot of years now and on dialysis for a number of those years. She didn’t take care of herself to control the diabetes. I wonder if she thought, “That happens to other people. It’ll never happen to me”? Mark thought his mother was dying. He was worried, afraid.

 I visited my sister-in-law in the hospital. I thought if she heard my voice, saw my face, it might help bring her out of whatever was going on. We have been at odds enough that her old feistiness might push her to respond. She opened her eyes at the sound of my voice. She looked at me. Her eyes looked terrible, but I didn’t say anything about that. She started to stir in the bed. But she didn’t speak. I didn’t stay long because there just didn’t seem to be anything that I could do.

It was told to me that Deb’s sugar level dropped to 10 and when she was found in that condition, they had no idea how long she had been at that level. The doctor feared brain damage. After a few days he ordered an EEG to see what was going on in her brain. 

For whatever reason, a feeding tube was inserted. I asked my brother if his son—who would not leave his mother alone, had been at the hospital since Saturday—had told them to do whatever they had to do to keep his mother alive. He said yes. 

It’s so hard to let go of someone who is dying. I understand that. But a feeding tube only prolongs the suffering for someone who is never going to recover, is never going to be more than a body in a bed. I don’t want that for myself. Why would I want that for her?

A few days ago Bill, my brother, talked to me. He said Deb woke and talked to him. She was so weak it tired her to talk much. But I think it gave him some hope that she would recover. In my mind I knew it was not that she would recover, but that moment of clarity that happens so often just before a person’s condition takes that turn for the worst that leads to their demise. Her health is just too fragile to rebound. 

My brother contacted me yesterday (May 15, 2013). Deb has been removed from life support. Hospice has been called in. Social services support has told him and his children that they are doing the right thing. I know this is a difficult thing to do.

My niece was there yesterday, at the hospital. I was glad to hear this. Her father and her brother need her to be there. She was nowhere to be found when our dad died in 2009. She was nowhere to be found when our mom died in 2011. Her grandparents. They were always there for her when she needed someone. And she failed to show up when they passed away. If she didn’t want to be there for them, why wasn’t she there for her family who needed her? And when she needed her family. I still do not understand that. 

So, here we are at the end of my sister-in-law’s life…her last days. She and I were never close. Her life was difficult, more than challenging. I hope for her to have a better place on the other side of the River. Deb, go in peace.

(c) 2013 ~ Cathy Thomas Brownfield ~ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED