A Last Look

I keep thinking about the moment of death when the body just stops breathing, for whatever reason. As a nurse for 47 years, I’ve witnessed many of these last moments. Some were not that peaceful; others left the watchers with a shock at how simple it was.

I remember standing with one family waiting and waiting for that next breath until I realized, it wasn’t going to happen. Then I had to return to being the nurse again. I hold it in my memory though: that watchful expectation, never fully comprehending that I’d already viewed the last breath.

We just don’t know when the last of anything is going to be, that is, we can’t name it as the ‘last’ until we get a different perspective from down the road of life.

“Ah, THAT was the last time we danced or sang or made love.” Typically, we didn’t even know it at the time.

I don’t think we hold such memories of “That was our last fight!” or “That was the last time he forgot to put the toilet seat down.” Those observations don’t seem to be part of the cataloguing of memorable moments, which is probably a good thing. The list is long enough if we really want to spend time making one.

The last of anything is just what it says it is. The re-occurrence of any activity in just that manner will never repeat itself. Ever!

In my case, my late husband will never again wear that dickey hat hanging on the hallway hook. I can leave it there to trigger a thought of him or I can pass his hat on to someone else who may wear it. I won’t. I look ridiculous in it. Nor will he ever wear any of his shoes or clothes, but someone might.

He won’t make his special popcorn, but I can make my own, or not. He won’t take my hand and tug me out of my chair and book saying, “Let’s take a walk.” I do sense a whisper in my ear to that effect sometimes.

With his last breath, which made me cry in grief that his life was over and weep with relief that he didn’t have to suffer anymore, he gave his all to his life, our marriage, to me, and to himself. I can only do as much for my own and make more moments memorable and life sustaining until one of them becomes my last.

On the other side of 2011

I really have to admit, life is brighter.

Now whether that’s because I got tired of whining and got myself off the couch, I couldn’t say. There have been many different influences involved in this new consideration toward life. I’ll name a few:

1. The realization that quite a number of people were standing on one foot then another just waiting to be asked to help me hit me between the eyes. Similar to my misunderstanding regarding my late husband’s telepathic power, this misinterpretation of my friends and family plunked me straight into an attitude “if you don’t know what I want, then I’m not going to tell you.” A person can drown if they keep their noses so far in the air during a downpour. Hence, I am now asking for help. (A daunting task, I might add, since I was raised a ‘do it yourself’ kind of girl)

2. The acceptance that I am the creator of my fate came with more ramifications than I had ever considered. Suffice it to say, I’ve experienced (in a recent Avatar training) the profound feelings around this world view. I’ve had to take responsibility for all those actions I blamed on someone else and deal with the shame and remorse, and then I got to embrace the freedom in realizing I can choose whatever I want to experience and create it. That’s heady stuff.

3. Somewhere in there I had the chance to look at myself and come to the decision “I’m happy to be me!” Bubbles of giggles rise to the surface inside of me when I truly feel this statement.

4. Time has passed since so many devastating losses began in 2009. Although I was positioned to look at all these with blame for something I might have done to make them happen, I was also in a place to see that these things just happened. People move on from this life, this town, this environment, my friendship. They are just doing their lives. I have learned that I must too.

There is one more thing. I now have a tool to express compassion for myself as well as everyone I meet or I know. This has been a real gift. If you’re interested, I can send you the wording in a private email. Just let me know you want it by posting me at reiki@mcn.org

As I watch sun rays touch and caress special objects around my home or just light up a corner of my living room in a loving way, my heart thrills. I may not know where I’m going yet, but I do know where I’ve been, and I know where I am!

What a blessing.

Happy New Year.

Confession #2

OK! I can’t do it! I thought I could, but I can’t. It’s too soon. I’ve not unraveled myself enough from my 33 year marriage to step out with another man.

I thought I could translate my yearning for comfort and companionship to an attitude of adventure and searching. The reality is I yearn for Y‘s arms, his lips, his crazy sense of humor, his world view. He was my anchor in the everyday world of living.

I could count on him to be hungry for lunch at 12 noon sharp and dinner at 6 PM. I could depend on his ability to sort through my moments of confusion about a priority, friendships, food preparations, broken equipment and come up with just the right question or observation or capable hands to settle me back into place. Who else could do that? Who knows me that well? No one! And, I have to face the fact that I don’t have another 33 years to break someone into that role.

So here it is again, that grief of having lost my buddy, of wanting my life back the way it was. I’ve allowed this dating service idea to screw with my head, to be the making or breaking of my self worth, and I’m not going to do it anymore. My value is not out there, it’s inside me and here I am learning that lesson again. Maybe it’s one I never quite understood fully until now. Maybe it’s an age old problem we all face again and again.

So I’m sweeping the pieces of myself that splintered onto the floor when I waited for some kind of reply or acceptance from complete strangers on the internet. I’m putting these pieces into a little paper bag and I will reconstruct the Earlene I wish to be. I have a better idea of whom I have been and what I’m about than anyone else. This way if a piece of the puzzle doesn’t fit in one place, I can put it somewhere else and honor the developing picture of me as I go.

Thank goodness I haven’t made too much of a flirty fool of myself. Thank God I looked up the last fellow who gave me his name. Turns out he’s going to trial in January for sexual battery and assault. Somehow the Universe and Great Spirit have a better plan for me or I wouldn’t have gotten that information before meeting him.

There I feel better. I guess confession is good for the soul

I Must Confess

I didn’t realize it, but I inadvertently joined the 39%. That’s the percentage increase of men and women over the age of 50 who are now participants in On-Line dating sites. (I didn’t make that number up. I saw it on the news!)

Being on the leading edge of the baby boomer generation, I’m a little flummoxed by this experience. I don’t feel like a pioneer of the movement or even that I know any of the rules. There are so many decisions to make; I’ve had to take over a month to design my greeting which involves describing who I am. It’s taken even longer for me to figure out what I’m looking for.

I started this experience in June and got so anxious when I received flirts and winks and 24 hits in less than five days, I disconnected from the site.

Now in November, I decided to check out the process again. I’m thinking many men have embellished their descriptions of themselves. I guess women do the same thing. This reminds me of high school where competition for approval and dating social strata was more than I could deal with. When I read these men’s descriptions with such adjectives as kind, sincere, trustworthy, likeable, friendly, with a good sense of humor, and I see they are also divorced, I wonder what kind of woman walked out on that? What are all these men not saying? My cynicism tells me there is a disconnect between their views of themselves and the reality of another person’s observations.

I’m more than a little anxious about one of the characteristics of this site. If I click to learn more about a man, my actions get noted on their personal profile. So since I haven’t been able to keep profiles and pictures straight, I’ve been clicking on ones I thought I remembered to see if I have the correct details. On their end, they must think I’m stalking them. When I save their profile to a favorite list, they know about that too.

I have the same deal, and it has had the effect of making me check the site every hour to see if anyone has looked at my profile. I’m appalled at myself. I’m a grown woman glued to a dating site to make me feel like I’m some kind of attractive. It has done nothing for me but screw with my head. I even squealed when some guy 'faved' me and, so far only one man has. We met for coffee and you’d have thought I was no more that 15 years old. When I’m looking at it logically, I tell myself I’m just trying to understand what the dating scene is out in the world now. When I look at it with a little more honesty, I have to admit living in the mountains in the middle of all this lovely wild life and mountains is a bit lonesome. But what am I looking for? I’m beginning to suspect the experience of being on the site is the end of the process because, after the one and only uninspiring coffee date, I’m not really ready to jump into the next phase of meeting men. That experience took the wind out of my sails. Maybe that’s why I’m keeping the areas of my profile searches limited to New Jersey, Maine, and Florida. I won’t be embarrassed by someone at the grocery store asking, “Didn’t I see you on Senior People Meet.com? Gosh your picture made you look ________!” (Choose your own embarrassing adjective: thinner, younger, more rested, or sexy.)

A Helpful Memory

One of my all-time favorite, comfy, cozy drinks is a combination of coffee, hot chocolate, creamer, and sweetener. I remember in nurses’ training, I was able to concoct this drink in the distinctive St. Luke’s mug I received from my Big Sister (someone whose name I just can’t remember). We weren’t allowed to have hot plates in our rooms but I’d found an electric heating coil I could plug in then immerse the metal into the mug of cold water. In less than five minutes, I had bubbling water. Instant coffee, instant cocoa, powdered creamer, and a package of sugar did the trick.

My stash of instant products was kept in a metal tin next to the kitty cat light my Dad had donated to my room from his sojourn in the Philippines just before he retired from the Marines. The lamp itself stood 16 inches high on a black plastic base large enough to also hold an opaque glass figurine of a kitten with its tail curled around its feet.

The bulb inside the cat acted as a night light so my Dad or I always had some kind of warm, glowy greeting when we returned from dinner. His evening meal was shared in a mess hall with hundreds of other Marines. My last meal of the day was in St. Luke’s Hospital's cafeteria which served patients’ families, staff, doctors, interns, residents, and lowly student nurses.

Sometimes I’d make my special drink first thing in the morning as I dressed before attending the required chapel service instead of eating a healthy breakfast or during a weekend afternoon of studying as a treat. Remembering my ritual now and digging through the cupboards to find the powered hot chocolate, which must be at least ten years old, I wondered why I never made my special drink for my first or second husbands or even my kids.

Maybe it was because my first husband was addicted to Pepsi for his caffeine fix. My second husband was a purist and liked his coffer black. I think I didn’t want to introduce caffeine when my two were young and now my daughter likes some kind of Star Buck mixture and my son takes his as strong as possible.

Maybe it’s because I wanted to keep a little something just for me without exposing it to criticism or opinions or possible rejection. It’s just mine and no one else has to like it.

The kitty-cat light is long gone, and the mixture now has decaf coffee and no added sugar instant cocoa with non-dairy creamer and stevia. Oh well.

Interesting how I pulled the memory forward to this time while I’m learning the ropes at living alone and did it on a gray day with wild winds battering the trees. Another sign I’m learning to care for myself again.

Teacher Relearns a Lesson

When I was teaching “Choosing to Change”, a course for Tobacco Cessation, I used several experiential techniques to help smokers handle cravings so they could become non-smokers. I never promised them their cravings would go away, but I did promise they could survive them. I ran across these exercises again today when I was cleaning my office. I needed the lesson, not because I want to stop smoking, but because I just want to stop feeling sad.

Our minds are so strong. Mental images dash about from one picture to another and can leave us confused or out of sorts. Other images can fire off all manner of hormonal releases in our bodies. Just remember a romantic encounter and feel your sexual organs perk-up. Focus on every strange sound around you while walking down a street at night and feel adrenalin rush in as your heart beats faster and your breathing shallows.

When we’ve experienced any kind of trauma or ecstasy, imprints remain. All our experiences involve not just a brain memory but a physical, emotional, and spiritual memory of that experience as well. The next time a similar situation of greater or lesser degree occurs, we can have a similar response either appropriate or inappropriate to the degree of that trigger.

One of the techniques I employed required that a clothes pin be attached to a finger. It was meant to cause a bit of discomfort. Each class participant was told to concentrate on the pinching sensation and report the degree of pain. The longer they concentrated on it, the more intense the pinch became. Then I had them slap their other hand against their leg and asked again for a report on their degree of pain. They admitted there was less sense of pinching but they really felt the slapping. When they focused entirely on the slapping, they had no feeling of pinching. I had them switch their attention between the pinch and the slapping several times until they finally got the point. They could choose which sensation on which to focus.

All this now helps me realize again I am responsible for what my mind can do. I can rerun my current situation which involves a high degree of loss and see all the details of my last two years of experiences, or I can look outside myself and see what there is next to do: turn oak leaves into the garden, change the generator oil, finish sewing a birthday present. I can choose to focus on my pain of aloness, or I can call someone to share a dinner or an outing. Even with regards to the events in the world, I have a choice: I can watch every news program and worry about the bombings in Israel, the loss of life in Afganistan, the value of the dollar and the state of the economy, or I can cook soup and take it to someone alone and on chemotherapy. I have any number of other things I can do to help myself or others within the framework of my life.

I can choose to change the focus of my mind. My situation and that of the world may not change, but I will survive and move through it all.

Another Beginning

Since a journey begins with a single step, then perhaps a blog can start with one word. That, at least, was my thought as I stared at this blank page.

My inclination to write my thoughts has been tempered by my hesitancy to share the repetition of my emotions which have ridden higher than the summer sun as it crosses the sky and lower than the deepest rift in the ocean. I fell into this inability to write by getting caught in the admonition that what if no one wants to read about this emotional rollercoaster ride of mine. Everyone is having their own problems these days. Everyone has lost, is losing, or is about to lose someone or something dear to them. It might be a loved one, and it could be their home. I am not the only one, and with this I became self-conscious about my runaway emotions, not wanting to admit that I might be having trouble with my ‘insights’ by not being inspired by my own revelations. They weren’t sticking to me.

I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t stable, that I couldn’t be an example of how to be in control of my situation, let alone myself.

A friend reminded me I wasn’t supposed to be. My focus was my process, sharing the difficulties of widowhood with all its stumbling moments, sharing the fact that somehow I was getting through it, and sharing the glimmers of hope I saw periodically.

I pondered this. There have been times when I was in fetal position and didn’t know what to hope for except that the pain in my belly might go away.

It, I am glad to report, is lessening. My mind has alternately moved from numbness to one with an occasional idea that has led to an action but then back to a period of paralysis until I can get up again.

I don’t know what I would be doing without the women friends who take turns calling and checking up on me. I couldn’t get through many of my days without my growing relationship with flower essences and my personal processing supported by several techniques I’ve been learning, such as process coaching, EFT, and of course Reiki and praying with my chanupa.

After a sauna session last week, I looked out the glass door at the decking. To the right I saw a fuzzy caterpillar purposely scuttling across the slatted deck. He/she followed some unseen path, once getting sidetracked by a scratch in the weathered wood. He/she returned to is chilling path next to an abyss much larger than its own width between the wooden planks. He/she would veer toward the dark pit then save itself. Finally it stopped, seemed to assess its position. Aiming directly at the far plank of wood, he/she pitched itself across what must’ve seemed like a ravine then pulled its many legs onto a new 'terra firma'. Head down, he/she continued to the left of me on the new board, its many feet following each other.

How could I deny the lesson? ‘Keep going forward, Earlene, and, when it’s time to make the leap to another plank on the path, just do it. Just take the next first step; just write the next first word.’