Reflections On My Sister

My first memories include my sister. She was 16 months old when I was born. In my memories she is “there” for me in a stabilizing--offering--security kind of way. I am depending on her so I don’t have to feel as though I am alone. I am depending on her to talk for me. I know she gets along with everyone and makes people feel at ease through her conversations and I need her to do that for me. I need her to protect me. I don’t feel like the adults are in control and I need her.

I was an incredibly shy little girl and not a happy child. My mother was erratic and angry a lot of the time. Often, she was angry with me. This scapegoating could take the form of silence or ridicule depending upon the moment and situation. Quite frequently, her rage spilled out against our father—especially at night after we were in bed. It was not unusual for my brother, sister and me to be huddled under a table during these tyrannous outbursts.

I shared a room with my sister. I know this annoyed her. It was “her” room. I don’t know how I knew this or why it wasn’t “our” room. But, it was hers. Every night I peed in the bed and then I cried. I would cry and cry until our father would come in and get me. Then I would go to sleep in my parent’s bed and my sister was left to sleep in the peed-in bed. This was very aggravating to her! I knew this at a very deep level. But, I didn’t stop peeing. Eventually we got twin beds. I don’t think this made my sister any less dismayed but perhaps once the quiet was restored and I was not there she might have felt relief.

It seemed to me, as I grew older and my memory came into sharper focus, we were quite different from one another. I liked to play with my friends, climb trees, play ball with the boys, make mud pies, work in the yard, garden. I enjoyed doing anything active outside. My sister preferred being inside designing and making elaborate doll clothes and watching TV.

The differences between my sister and I seemed to widen as we hit adolescence. By high school the tension between us was obvious and uncomfortable. This didn’t deter my feelings of needing her for security. It is easy now to remember my grief when she went to college and I was left alone and unprotected for the first time in my life. I was outwardly calm and collected but inwardly I was lost and terrified.

It took me many years to work out my dependency issues with my sister. My "mother issues" were complicated enough and challenging to unravel. It hadn't felt as though my actual mother had been present to me and my needs so I sought and received "positive" nurturing from my sister. I had to redefine myself and reorganize my entire way of thinking and identity to relieve the anxiety I felt. Only when I had stabilized and grounded myself inside was it possible to actually begin to let go of the dependency. We both struggled as adults to develop a healthy relationship with each other.

Only in the last 20 years have I really gotten to know my sister for who she truly is. Imagine my shock to discover how alike we are! She is the one person on the planet who really knows me. She knows without my saying a word what I am feeling and what is going on with me. When we are together, we don’t even have to talk to know what is going on with the other or our response to those around us. Our taste is similar and other than her being a “girly-girl” and me maintaining my “tom-boy” persona, we are two peas in a pod.

I haven’t seen my sister in over two years. I am preparing for a visit over the holidays. I am SO excited! Loving someone your entire life and then being able to share quality time as adults can be incredibly sweet. It has taken both of us being willing to "do the work" on our low functioning childhood and the unhealthy parts of our relationship to reach the point we are now. I am grateful to both of us for our tenacity, courage and strength. We have a lot to celebrate!

My Friend's Passing

There have been times in my life when a person presents themselves and you just know they are going to be your teacher. Being a teacher can take many forms: muse, healer, and changer to name a few. The lessons can be gentle, violent, inspiring, or challenging but regardless, they seem to be placed in your life to further your personal growth.

Rodger was one of my teachers. I met him at a low point in my life in 1990. I was moving into a little house in Upstate New York. He lived across the street and saw me carrying things in from my car in the swirling beginning-of-January snow. From what he told me later, he was often too shy to push into a new situation but that day when I looked up--there he was, offering to help.

Our friendship was immediate. It was "sweet" from the very beginning. I am a great listener and his stories of WWII, his changing careers mid-way through his working life to become an artist, and all of his travels (from riding the trains as a boy to driving to Florida or New York City as an adult)--all were welcome to my ears. He loved art, writing poetry and dancing. He loved these things almost as much as telling his life stories. I happily listened to the same stories over and over through the years and never tired of watching his face and his animation as the stories unraveled but never were ambelished or changed.

Rodger had no children and was strongly bonded to his wife, Virginia. He told me one time that it took a lot of work to have a long-term relationship and that it was sometimes not easy. His 70 years of marriage was testament to his commitment and stamina and willingness to love well.

I had struggled with my father forever, feeling like he wanted to be the child in relationships and knowing that all he wanted was to be a part of a family. Not his own family of wife and children, but in-laws, sister-in-laws, brother-in-laws and parents. I believe our relationship was disappointing to both of us. By the time I met Rodger, my father and I had for the most part given up on each other. I think we both felt abandoned and orphaned when we were together.

My relationship with Rodger quickly took on a father-daughter tone without the struggle, angst, or trying to change the other person I had with my father. This was clearly one of the aspects of Rodger's being my teacher that I recognized early on. 

The healing grew and expanded through the years. It was incredibly refreshing to have him not be needy with me. He would never think of "guilting" me into coming to see him. His way of expressing that was to say, "I will really look forward to seeing you when you can visit." And he meant that! He did other fatherly things, like asking me about my car to make sure I was safe. He was easy to talk with and even though he was a product of his time we found a way around that and seemed to be able to talk about anything. There was never any judgement. There was simply encouragement.

It was extremely difficult for me to move away from Rodger and Virginia in 2003. The miles were made closer as we nurtured our long-distance relationship with regular calls and long letters with photos and poetry added to bring a level of physical reality into the enormous distance.

I think we did very well at keeping in touch. Rodger would express he genuinely missed me, as I did to with him. But there was never bad feelings about it. There was just an enormous understanding that I was doing what I needed to do and it had nothing to do with rejecting him. If anything, distance brought a lot of richness to our relationship as I shared my life from afar.

It was hard to watch Rodger grow old. In his late eighties he began to mention the difficulties of old age. All of the friends in his age group had died. He couldn't do things he had loved to do like fishing and dancing. He seemed to be losing interest in things, possibly to deal with the loss of not being able to do things that he had always done with no problems. When he turned 90 his body began to shut down and all he wanted was to have his life end. He no longer had a quality of life that satisfied him. He hung on for Virginia. I understood and felt helpless because there was nothing I could do but listen (sometimes between the lines) and be there to tell him how much I loved him.

Virginia died this last summer and that pushed him into a deep depression that was totally understandable. He was adamant about wanting to stay in his house and immovably stubborn about fixing it up so that it was accessible for an older person. It became increasingly a worry to me to think of him there alone. He was miserable and all he wanted was to be die and be with Virginia.

I talked with him last on his 94th birthday. We didn't talk long but I took the opportunity to tell him how much he had meant to me in my life and that I loved him to the moon and back. He told me he loved me BIG too. When I got off the phone I felt complete and knew it was the last time we would talk. It made me extremely happy and nostalgic--my mind scanned the years with lovely memories. And, I was gripped with an awful sadness that I had to work through. It didn't take very long.

My "sadness" process brought me back full circle to my own father. Just as Rodger had lost his parents at too young an age, my father had lost his, too. Rodger took it in stride and grew up to adulthood. My biological father remained as a small child. I felt true compassion for both of them. I realized that through my relationship with Rodger my anger at my own father had softened. Understanding replaced hurt feelings and I actually began to let in feelings of love for my father and recognize good things about him.

Rodger was a great teacher. His presence in my life gave me a sort of steady ground that I had never know. He died last night. I will always be grateful that he was put in the path on my life journey and that I could share so much with another person. Rest in peace, dear friend...

Unscathed by a National Disaster

Last week the part of Colorado where I live experienced horrendous flooding. The water made all of the mountain streams flash flood into the cities and farming communities below. Hundreds of people lost their homes. Several thousand were evacuated. The damage was extensive. Entire towns were taken out and no longer exist at all. It will take years to rebuild bridges, roads, houses and other structures, as well as businesses. The storm was called a National Emergency Disaster fairly soon after the flooding started and the National Guard and people who had helped with hurricane Katrina came to rescue people and help with the devastation.

Everyone was on alert. My phone announced every few hours for a number of days that flash flooding was a possibility. Day and night the phone would ring or vibrate. Many roads were closed because of water covering them or bridges that were washed out. This made travel nearly impossible. People were advised stay at home unless absolutely necessary so that emergency vehicles could get through.

Blessedly, my home was spared. There was a drainage ditch nearby but it did not overflow—although all the people in the area kept close watch on it. The rain was torrential and steady for days. My parking lot was constantly covered by several inches of water all through the weekend.

I will be forever grateful that I didn’t have to deal with losing my belongings or have to wade through mud to recover them, as many have had to do. Even though I didn’t encounter physical harm or disaster I can’t minimize my experience of the disaster.

Emotionally the flood was frazzling. Fear was the overriding feeling that accompanied the rain and the flooding. My anxiety level was through the roof! I couldn’t relax and the rain just kept falling and pounding. I couldn’t leave and go anywhere and that created a trapped feeling, one of my all-time most challenging feelings. It took all the energy I had just to maintain a sense of equilibrium.

Many people lost electricity. I did not. That didn’t take away the anxiety that it might go out and I might be without my phone—communication with the outer world. I had plenty of food and found myself eating just to calm myself.

I am certain that many people were affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the ordeal. I know all week even after the sun came out and everyone started assessing the damage, I was tired and emotionally wasted. I had to be particularly gentle with myself. I required less activity and more sleep. It was definitely a healing process that I was encountering and I am just now beginning to feel like myself again.

Being in a National Disaster but being on the outside is an interesting experience. It reminded me of growing up in Kansas when tornados would whirl through and we would huddle in a root cellar or in the basement until it passed. This time, though it went on for days. The flood of 2013 will go down in history as the worst in recorded history. I can’t believe it happened all around me and I was not directly affected by it like many people. I feel deep gratitude, as I don’t know how well I would have handled losing everything or being displaced.

No. I don’t feel like Noah. I don’t feel like the end of the world is coming, either. Mother Nature has always charted her own course with the weather. It’s just that now people are living in the way of her path. We will all come together and find our way out of this horrible catastrophe but it will take a long, long time.

Virginia

From the moment I met her, twenty-three years ago, she was always optimistic. It was totally authentic; she didn’t “try” to be positive. She just naturally looked at the sunny side of life. I thought of her as radiant. Sparkling. A being of light.

It was her innocence that made her charming. Especially as she got into her 80’s and began to lose her hearing, she didn’t miss a thing. She kept right on jumping into conversations and finding her place.

She had no children. The doctors told her after her accident it would be dangerous for her to get pregnant. The accident was freaky. All the men at the factory where she worked were off fighting in WW II and she was asked to “play” Santa Claus at the annual Christmas party. In those days artificial beards were made of a highly flammable material. Someone lit a cigarette while she was getting ready in the bathroom and she ended up with 2nd degree burns over ¾ of her body.

If she was sad that she didn’t have children she never said so. I always felt from the very beginning of our friendship that she took me under her wing as a surrogate daughter. That was an unspoken part of our relationship. I lost my mother to cancer when I was 28 and so having Virginia was a great blessing.

She was always up for a new venture. I distinctly remember one time I decided to go to a “no kill” cat shelter to surprise them with a cat. The shelter required the new owners to answer some questions correctly—such as not allowing that cat to be an outside animal. I called Virginia and tried to get her to understand what I was doing and get her to answer the questions without fully disclosing that it was about a cat. It helped that she couldn’t hear well especially on the phone. So she answered the lady with a series of “yeses” and I brought them the cat—a total surprise to her. That cat, Sabrina, gave them years of joy and delight.

Virginia had lost her job in the factory when she was still in her 40s and decided, rather than look for another job, she would dust off her paints that she had enjoyed in high school and become a professional artist. Her work was fun just like her—mostly life-like animals painted on natural surfaces especially on pieces of wood and bark. She was gifted at copying photographs and she sold a lot of them. She loved to find old metal trays or milk cans and paint scenes on them. She was able to support herself with her painting and kept painting right up to the end of her life.

She loved her tomatoes. Every spring there would be hundreds of little containers in her kitchen windows in preparation and anticipation of the season ahead. After she moved them outdoors she would talk about their progress at length. She would can sauce, paste, juice and salsa. She had fresh tomatoes all winter until the next spring when the whole process would start again.

One of her lifetime passions was dancing. She loved the beat of the Big Bands. She loved dressing to the 9’s and looking really “hot”. She loved wearing high heels and swishy skirts. She and her husband started dancing together on their first date and  were at a loss when there were fewer and fewer live bands that played “their” music. Dancing was a great source of pure joy for Virginia.

Her greatest inspiration for me was her love of letter writing. After I moved away, 10 years ago, I got my first taste of this dying art. Especially as her hearing went, we could always communicate through our written words. As she aged we wrote more and more often. I would always recognize her perfectly formed “hand” when her letters arrived. Every other week we exchanged bits and pieces of our lives through lengthy letters. It was so fun to use this form to slow down and reflect on the week—picking out the high points and putting them into irresistible stories that brought to life the most mundane. I even received a letter in the mail after I had heard that she had died.

She was a natural storyteller and loved to delve into the past with memories that thrilled me. The many unusual adventures of her life took on Gothic porportions when she got going. She was a product of her time. Even though she lived her younger life before women’s lib, not having children and working during the war she definitely gave her the flavor of being an independent woman. This was mixed with traditional marital values. She, for example, would never put herself before her husband in anything. She, at the same time, didn’t forget who she was in any given situation.

It was no surprise when I heard that she had died. She had some health problems that she never complained about and had gotten totally frail and vulnerable. She admitted in her letters that she was suffering and that it was challenging to endure. Mostly her concern was for her husband because he was being so stoic and miserable about getting old and it was dragging Virginia down to be around his pessimism. Still, up until the end—and they were married 70 years—she found only loving things to say about their relationship. He was more forthcoming about the hard work marriages took to endure. Virginia took it in stride.

I miss Virginia. She died a month ago. She was 90 years old. Not living close to her makes it more difficult for me now to find ways to remind myself that she is no longer sitting in her little house writing me a letter or enjoying one of mine. She was a delightful, steady friend that I loved with all my heart. What a sparkling being of light she was!

The Blessings Of Ladybug

          

May 30, 1997 - July 11, 2013

Ladybug was two and a half years old when she came into my life. She was a Champion, having spent her early years as a show dog and then having one litter of puppies. I already had two Tibetan Spaniels, Arty and Abracadabra, and was indecisive at first about adding a third. But my life lent itself to having multiple dogs and in a weak moment I said, "yes". 

She didn't really have a chance to shine with the other two. Arty had my heart and that was that. He was cuddly and faithful to me and I found him endlessly loving and entertaining. Abracadabra was exactly like her name -- a magical fairy being. She was a little shining light -- clearly the center of the Universe.

Ladybug was hesitant. She always followed and liked what the others did and was never the leader. She was sweet and I liked her. But, she did not like me. She would bond with whoever was around but she would walk past me with her nose in the air. It wasn't until many years later, after Arty and Abracadabra had both passed on, that I sat down with her and said, "if you are truly unhappy with me I will find you a place where you want to be. This blatant rejection, though, is not working for me". 

After that talk, she was mine. She followed me everywhere and would often fall asleep at my feet. She made a 180 degree turn around and we were both happier because of it. I found myself opening my heart to her as well. We became a team and delighted in each other's company and companionship.

Soon after we became friends she was accidentally let out of the house when I was not there. We were living in the desert south of Tucson. She got out of an open fence and disappeared. Everyone searched for her but she was no where to be found. After 4 days, I had given up hope of finding her. There were coyotes and rattlesnakes, mountain lions and many other creatures that were just waiting for an innocent little dog. I made my peace with her loss.

Then I got a call from someone several miles up the road that they had seen Ladybug and recognized her from a flyer I had posted on the main road. I went where they had seen her in a heavy  monsoon rainstorm and she came running to me. Surprisingly, she was okay and we were reunited again.

After that we spent another year in Arizona, a year in Philadelphia and two years in Colorado together. We were adjusting quite well to her aging process. She still had relatively good health. She would go for walks and sniff at everything and walk slowly about 15 minutes and then suddenly run full tilt back to our apartment. I would literally have to run to keep up with her. She did this until her death.

Three weeks before she died she poked her cornea. I never figured out what she poked it on. None the less, it was a serious wound and I had to put antibiotic drops in her eyes 10 times a day. The eye improved minimally but didn't really heal. She appeared to not be in pain or really bothered by it. One night I woke her up for the last time out for the evening and she riled up from her bed in terrible pain. I stayed up with her the entire night and through the next day until our appointment at the Veterinarian's. She only found comfort by standing close with her face to a wall where she would pant for a half hour before finding another wall. It was excruciating to experience and I have never felt more helpless!

The Veterinarian (who I have the deepest respect for) said he would give me his honest opinion about what needed to happen. After examining her he confirmed that she was in a lot of pain and that the eye was not healing well. He felt, as I did, that the compassionate thing to do was to euthanize her.

The most enormous thing Ladybug gave me was relaxing in my arms before the shot. She had never done that before and I realized as it was happening that that was her gift to me. More than any other animal or person who has died in my life, Ladybug showed me grace in dying. I felt extremely sad (I was a wreck, actually) but filled with love and the knowledge that Ladybug and I had reached to end of our lives together in exactly the right time and way.

My perception of death has shifted since that day. One of my dear friends passed away last weekend and I felt the same way that I had with Ladybug. I had always wanted to feel peaceful and not fearful about death but had never achieved this. The blessing I received from Ladybug is that death is simply part of life. It is just a part of the cycle. I have known this for a long time but never really "gotten" it. I will be forever grateful to my little girl!

Becoming a Grammy on the Other Side Of The World

My grandson, Finn, was born yesterday. I am so ecstatic I can hardly contain myself! He is beautiful, plump and healthy. Perfect! I could go on and on—but hasn’t everyone listened to a new grandparent at one time or another? To avoid mushy redundancy, I will simply say I am very, very excited to watch Finn’s life unfold and to find out who he is.

I wanted to go. I wanted to be there to hold him when he was newly arrived and welcome him to the world. But, my son and his wife live in Great Britain.  I live in Colorado. I admit I was attached to the newborn “thing”. I love newborns! I love how they smell, how they sleep, how the nuzzle up and their lovely gentleness. It is a miracle how they arrive, as if from another world. Birth is a mystery that fascinates me and always has.

It took me probably too long to hear my daughter-in-law’s request for space. At first it felt like a slap—an “I don’t want you around”-kind-of-rejection. After a while, I took the high road and kept perspective. From that vantage point I realized a greater thing—my place in the process of Finn’s arrival was to help  them from the other side of the world.

But, “what does that look like?” I wondered. How do you participate energetically from thousands of miles away? I needed to pull out my metaphysical hat to remember the answer to that question. This one was going to need BIG thinking.

My emotions were scrambled and ENORMOUS as I tried to calm myself enough to wade into this territory with a different approach. Once I really began listening to my feelings the situation began to shift. I needed to let my emotions direct me to what I wanted. What I wanted was to be the best, most helpful, loving Grammy possible.

I calmly meditated on what this might look like. The image conjured was of loving children. I was flooded with images of my son when he was born. It felt like my heart would burst. There was more love than I ever imagined. It didn’t take long to feel the pattern once again. Concentrating on and holding  “love” energy was what I did in my son’s birth and entry into the world. Now, as Grammy, the process was the same for Finn.

I felt the hugeness of the love. I felt the energy of love. I felt the bouyency of the energy of life. I felt part of something much greater than myself. That energy had no bounds. It was not personal, situational or in one particular place or another. I didn’t own it. It was simply there for me to be held. I liked it! A lot!!!!!

It was an easy small step from this awareness to transferring love to Finn and my son and daughter-in-law and their little daughter, Amelia. I could just think about them and feel the love and light. There was an endless bounty of love. In fact, love seemed to expand exponentially as I was immersed in it. I had found my place to be the best Grammy possible on the other side of the world.

Last weekend, before Finn’s birth, I got an indication from my daughter-in-law about when it would be good to visit them. October. I am thrilled when I think about going. It helps me formulate a concrete plan. I will undoubtedly enjoy it beyond imagination. Still, I am blessed with the awareness acquired through the process of Finn’s birth:  Love is bigger than personally being in one place or another. Being part of something does not exclude you. You can participate in something wonderful and be on the other side of the world. I love being a Grammy!

Getting Conscious Closure

We live in a society of instant gratification with hasty moving from job to job, home to home and relationship to relationship. This behavior encourages walking away from situations and people without looking back or processing anything. This disconnected behavior doesn’t naturally encourage the important step of conscious closure. For the sake of this blog, conscious closure is finishing something with full mental, emotional and spiritual awareness. For me, conscious closure buttons down the hatches completely, leaving no loose ends: no things unsaid, no feelings unobserved.

Conscious closure is an acquired skill. We get better at it the more we do it. At first it can be scary. This is true especially for those of us who have experienced a lot of loss and abandonment in our lives. We can learn the process if we are willing and patient.

The first step is to be willing to let go. Letting go is very difficult sometimes and our attachment, especially to a person, place or thing can be strong. There are times, though, when we have outgrown situations or people or we are being injured emotionally, physically or spiritually in some way that calls for action. It is time to let go and we must find a way to finish “it” cleanly.

Being willing involves feeling all the emotions that come up. You can expect there will be a lot of challenging emotions. Learning to allow feelings to wash over us is critical. The old way of us getting stuck in our feelings and then “thinking” them over and over does not work and needs to be updated. Having a strong support system to help keep us honest and not allow us to tell ourselves lies to minimize the situation so that we stay too long can be invaluable.

After we’ve told the truth to ourselves and accepted willingly to move on and deal with the feelings that have come up, it’s time to begin the process of letting go. Some people stay in this part of the process for a while and continue working with their feelings. I find it helpful to set a time limit to be in this phase so that inertia doesn’t keep us stuck in the feelings of fear of moving on. Give yourself 6 weeks or 6 months or whatever works for you--but have an ending point.

Moving on usually means addressing some part of the situation outside of ourselves. This can often mean communicating your needs and intentions to another person. This can be really scary but is necessary. Before communicating it is helpful to write out all you are feeling and exactly what you need to say. No matter how you choose to communicate, it is best to keep your intentions simple and to own your part in the situation. To be successful there can be no blaming. You are just stating what you need and intend to do. (Blaming invariably ignites arguing and makes healthy communicating impossible. Avoid it!)

The next step can feel really difficult—allowing the other person to have their responses and feelings without you feeling responsible. It is important to let them have their feelings. It is equally important to protect yourself and set boundaries around listening to them, especially if you are vulnerable to wanting them not to be uncomfortable or feel hurt. It can seem cruel to set limits on how much you participate in their process but it is important to let them use their own resources to work on it. Your work is dealing with your feelings. Their work is dealing with theirs. 

In an ideal world, this is where the alchemical process of conscious closure would begin to percolate. It would involve sharing the good parts of the situation, expressing any unfinished business and communicating feelings, regrets, needs, and anything else that would bring things to a healthy finish. If one person is stuck in their process and is blaming and wanting the other to take responsibility for their feelings, then the conscious closure needs to happen within and not with them.

The process of conscious closure is one that feels great when it is done by both sides and is completed out of mutual respect and support. The creativity of this process can bring you to a new level and the change can be most gratifying. This is the best possible outcome. I practice holding onto the best possible outcome in my mind’s eye by imagining and visualizing what will be said, felt and known. It gets easier to be truthful and communicate your needs to others with practice. It is important to allow yourself to practice reaching for conscious closure in the minutest of aspects of your life every day. Then, when the big things come up you will be well along your way of attaining conscious closure and finishing things well.