Category: family

support

Even though I had some things in mind, I’m really too tired to post much of anything creative. I’ve been staying up too late again, and perhaps pushing myself a bit hard. And I have some more work I’ve committed to doing tonight, if I can manage to keep my eyes open.

But I’ve been wanting to say some thank yous.

I really appreciate all the comments that people have left recently, especially on the posts where I have been writing about my grief. People have offered wise advice and shoulders to cry on, and I have been very touched by the sympathy and empathy. I have wanted to respond to each comment, but I have been feeling emotionally drained. I may yet manage to reply, but if I don’t, please know that I have read and valued those comments.

And for others of you who have read and thought sympathetic thoughts, I thank you, too.

I have also been very fortunate to have support from other friends and my family. I’m someone who likes to feel like I’m there to help others in times of need, and it’s been very heartwarming to know that people are there for me, too. I sometimes stubbornly like to think of myself as self-sufficient, but I know that my strength comes in large part from the support of those who care about me.

As you might expect, I am still working through my grief. But it has been very comforting to me to know that I don’t need to work through this alone.

wearing my serious pants

Society for the Prevention of Pants
The Fund for Pants Awareness
Pants Across America
The Right to Pants Association
Friends of Pants

This week’s Monday Mission solicits donations in the form of posts about a charity, real or imagined, serious or humorous. (Wow, I just started to type “humourous.” I think it’s a side effect of reading so many blogs by Canadians.) With so many options, it’s hard to narrow down. How can I pick a favorite? Usually, I take every opportunity for silliness. But with things going on in my personal life right now, I’m moved to actually write a serious post, and mention a real charity.

My friend Elizabeth was a beautiful person. It hurts me to write about her in the past tense. But there it is. She died on Friday after a 2-year valiant fight against cancer.

I saw Elizabeth on Tuesday at the hospital. She was still herself, in many ways. Quieter. It was an effort for her to talk. But she still had her sense of humor intact. A close friend of hers flew in from out of state, who I got to meet for the first time. We sat around talking, then reading questions from Trivial Pursuit. Elizabeth and her husband and parents, who had spent much time in hospital rooms with her, had devised a variation of the game. They’d gotten rid of the board ages ago. Instead, they’d read and answer all 6 questions on 6 sequential cards, and total the score out of 36. When an awkward silence started to creep over the room, Elizabeth called for a round of questions. “With three smart women like us, we ought to be able to beat the high score.”

When it was time for me to go catch my train home, I hugged her and told her that I would see her again once she was back home, but I didn’t want to be a pest. I told her she should tell me if I was being a pest. And I hugged her husband, and told him that he should tell me if I was being a pest. And then I turned to the friend, and said “I just met you, so you don’t get to tell me if I’m being a pest.” And we all laughed. Elizabeth, too. I said my good-byes and left. I didn’t dream that it was the last time I would ever see or speak to Elizabeth. I worked on a letter to her that night, determined to share things with her about how much her friendship has meant to me.

She did get to go home. I called on Friday, hoping to make plans to see her over the weekend. When I got the answering machine, I was worried that perhaps she was still in the hospital, that there had been more complications. But then her husband called me back a bit later with the news. Elizabeth had died that morning. It was a huge shock to me, and I dissolved into a blubbering wreck on the phone. “I’m sorry. You don’t need this from me,” I apologized to my friend’s husband through my sobs. But maybe that’s what I’d want in his shoes. To know that my grief and pain were shared.

I’ve had a bit of a rough few days. I’ve had to share the news with our mutual friends, most of whom were not in regular contact with Elizabeth. Some of whom had not even known she was sick. This was a new job for me. I can only imagine what my friend’s husband is going through. He has so many things to take care of. I am so sad for him. And their little girls. And the rest of her family.

I’m still in shock that this has happened. My friend was 35 years old.

She underwent 2 years of procedures and treatments, including chemo, radiation and multiple surgeries. She showed an incredible amount of strength through it all, even as her body became weaker. She didn’t give up hope. She kept living. Kept being a wonderful mother to her 2 beautiful little girls. She was wife, sister, daughter, aunt, friend. And she played all these roles amazingly well.

Time after time, she got bad news from the tests. She would share the news with me at times. The cancer was spreading. The chemo drugs weren’t working. Then the next chemo drugs weren’t working. That she had basically maxed out for radiation. Two weeks ago she told me that they had reached the end of the FDA-approved treatments. She still had hope for the experimental treatments. It turned out she didn’t qualify. Just last Monday, she was told that the next step was hospice.

I found myself very angry that she couldn’t get those experimental treatments. I find myself thinking that things didn’t have to be this way. Science is making great strides in determining causes of cancers. Strides are being made towards the prevention of certain types of cancer. Treatments are much more effective than they were even 10 or 20 years ago. Or 30 years ago.

My own father died of cancer 30 years ago. And I’ve lost others to cancer, too. My much loved grandmother, who was a powerful force in my life. The father of a close friend, who treated me like family and called me “daughter.” A dear stepfather, who I only knew a short time. Even my beloved dog. With my new grief for my friend, I revisit the past grief. I think especially of the loss of my father, how I not only miss him, but missed getting to know him since I was so young when he died. And I think of how Elizabeth’s daughters will miss out on getting to know Elizabeth as the friend that I knew and loved. Cancer robs us of people that we love, of their contributions to our lives and our world.

And I find myself thinking that things could have been different. That with more research, things will be different.

So I end this with a nod to the American Cancer Society.

The American Cancer Society is the nationwide community-based voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy, and service.

have toddler, will travel

We’ve headed down to the in-laws again for a few days. John’s Dad is doing pretty well, and has been in a rehabilitation place for the past few weeks. We managed to arrive there at mid-afternoon yesterday, a remarkable accomplishment. Our plan was to leave home at 10:00 a.m. (It always drives me crazy when I end a sentence with “a.m.” or “p.m.” What do I do with the punctuation? “a.m..”?). Our plan was to leave at 10 in the morning. And we were out the door by 10:59 sharp!

I’ve been wiped out the past couple of days. Can’t stay awake at night. (And no, I’m not pregnant. Just tired.) I think my schedule and ongoing lack of sleep are catching up with me. I had several days this week that were scheduled up the wazoo. And I spent most of Wednesday (my unscheduled day) doing research, not school or job research, but research about a trip to Europe this summer. I’m planning/hoping to go to a conference in Germany at the beginning of August to present a poster that I’ve co-authored with a couple of professors I work with. John and Phoebe would go with me, but probably not help with the poster presentation. (Though Phoebe is good at pointing, and could perhaps Vanna for me.) It turns out that the venue is in a city that is not terribly close to any major international airports, so we will need to plan on a train trip as well as the flight. And it turns out that it’s just as quick to get there from Paris by a newly opened TGV line than it is to get there from Frankfurt. So, we’re thinking a holiday in Paris would be great.

But.

The idea of travelling with a toddler is Daunting™. (Funny how I feel too tired to deal with footnotes, and yet I just felt compelled to hunt down that ™ symbol.) I did find somebody’s post on travelling with small children that looks helpful. Though things look no less daunting. (cf. other tales of toddler travel.)

We have to decide about whether or not to take the car seat, for one. We will be taking public transportation, so we will need to lug everything around with us onto subways and trains, and possibly busses. We need to figure out sleeping arrangements. We’ll probably need a crib in our hotel room. We may rent an apartment in Paris.

We need to decide all of this very soon. We did apply for Phoebe’s passport, but actually getting her passport may lead to more stress, as I’ve heard that things take much, much longer these days. (There are new regulations requiring passports for travel to Canada and Mexico, leading to many, many more people needing them. Passports, that is. I’m not sure that people need Canada and Mexico in greater rates than previously.)

my mom is cooler than your mom

Seriously, my mother is amazing. I’ve been meaning to write about my mother for a while. I’ve been working on a post, but somehow, I haven’t quite been able to finish it yet. And then I thought, “hey, I’ll post something for Mother’s Day.” But then it was a hectic weekend. And then I thought, “hey, I can post any time I want.” Because there’s never a wrong time to say something nice about your mother. Especially my mother. Because, as I mentioned, she is one cool individual.

For one thing, my mother is an artist. How cool is that? Check this out:

speaking of mice and men

Actually, I guess we were speaking of mice and cheese. (We were also speaking of “Of Mice and Cheese“.)

What I’m talking about now are those best-laid plans. As in “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” And here’s something I learned about this quote.

The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”

Anyhow, various schemes have gone a-gley, as it were.

John had a scheme that we would go out to dinner to celebrate mother’s day, but that didn’t work out. John’s dad has had a couple of rough days, leading us to conclude that John’s mom wouldn’t want to take the time away from visiting hours.

Our original plan was to head home last night, however the roughness of the days for John’s dad led us to decide to push back our departure till today. I had my violin lesson scheduled for Monday at 5:00, so the plan was to be on the road by noon.

Our revised plan for the evening was to get take-out, and enjoy the feast at (John’s parents’) home. However, my grand scheme to eat food from my favorite restaurant in the universe has been thwarted. Those cruel folks are closed on Sundays! Noooo! (I at least got some enjoyment from reading the menu, and making plans for our feast before making the discovery of the restaurant’s startling lack of openness. Perhaps later I will post what we were going to order.)

John’s dad had an even rougher afternoon than anticipated, and has been transferred to another hospital as of yesterday afternoon. So John and his mother’s plans to be home in the middle of the night and get a good night’s sleep were somewhat adjusted, and replaced with a revised plan of waiting around in an emergency room, and not returning home until 3 in the morning.

The resulting lack of sleep led us to revise our plans for departure a bit, and I have rescheduled my violin lesson plan for later this week.

Happily, John’s dad has responded well to the treatment in the new hospital. So our new plan is to head out this afternoon, stop by the hospital and arrive home late tonight.

a small laughing matter

Phoebe is making great strides in her walking skills. Also singing. And tickling. I have a few movies from earlier this week that I can’t help but share.

First, the tickling! Phoebe found a hole in John’s sock:

Second, Phoebe walks forward on cue, retracing her steps of 3 weeks earlier:

Third, my favorite. Phoebe starts off strong with singing (or possibly trying to communicate with dolphins), and showing off her stellar hand-eye coordination. But just look out for the dramatic finish.

(That last bit makes me laugh every time I watch it. As it did the first time I saw the little topple. John says that Phoebe will some day resent me for that little laugh of mine that can be heard at the end of the movie. Perhaps she will resent me, or perhaps she’ll realize that she could have a career in vaudeville.)

Anyhow, we’re down in NY once more for the weekend visiting the in-laws. The drive down was looooonnnnngggg. (So long that I am inspired to use additional non-standard orthographic elements to represent my exaggerated lengthening of the word.) Traffic was slow, leading to a 4 and half hour trip, when it usually takes 3 and a half. One extra hour doesn’t sound toooo bad. But, somebody no longer falls asleep in the car. (Oh, except for the last 5 minutes of the drive, leading her to wake up cranky and howling upon our arrival.) She (it’s Phoebe we’re talking about here, by the way, not me) seemed to need constant entertainment the whole way down. I generally sit in the back seat with her. And I sang, I danced (well, the belted, seated kind of dance), played games, recited stories, soothed, talked, sang, talked in silly voices, sang, counted toes. (Did you know that Phoebe has 5 toes on each foot? I counted them several times to make sure.) When I’d stop, we’d get screaming. (Not me, mind you.) Let me tell you, we had some Quality™ time.

But, we arrived, tired, but generally with some sanity left intact. Though my voice is feeling a bit strained today.

And here we are. John and his mother are out hunting for a new microwave, and Phoebe is napping. Later, we’ll go visit John’s dad in the hospital. (It’s a sub-acute care facility. He’s been in and out of many, many hospitals of various types since he rebroke a hip last summer.) It’s good that we’ve been able to get down here pretty often.

There’s a particularly bright star on the horizon. We are (hopefully, hopefully, hopefully) going to get to go to my favorite restaurant in the universe. It’s a little place about 40 minutes away from John’s parents’ house in a town called Pine Bush. The restaurant is called Pure City, which leads me to regularly call it Sin City. (Not to the proprietors, though.) I keep meaning to write about it. However, it may not make it’s way into this week, since this is Cheese Week. And this restaurant is 100% cheese-free. Aside from some tofu cheesecake. Does that count?

insert witty egg-themed pun here

We went down to John’s parents for Easter, and just got back a little while ago. (Ugh, it’s late.) But I wanted to share a few pictures from our egg-related festivities. The highlight of our holiday was having Phoebe’s first Easter egg hunt. To get ready, we dyed some eggs. Here’s the end product. (Two of the eggs seriously cracked during a hideous boiling accident, so were deprived of dye.)

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It had been many, many years since I’d dyed eggs for Easter. I think it was probably in the early 80s. I would expect great advances in egg-decorating technology since those times. Remarkably, the package of dye that John’s mother had on hand looked remarkably like the ones I remember from my childhood, though. Here’s our set-up, with pot of hard-boiled eggs and the egg-decorating kit.

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Please look closely at the date on the price tag.

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In case you can’t make it out, it’s “3/81”. As in March, 1981. Yes, this egg-decorating kit dates back to the egg-decorating days of my youth.

The 26-year-old dye tablets didn’t fare terribly well. Only one of these “fizzing” tablets actually managed to put on a display of fizz.

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With a little help from some drops of relatively fresh food coloring (which, judging from its packaging, may have been only 20 years old), we had some dying success. Voila!

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Of course, all our efforts were made worthwhile by Phoebe’s glowing face on the egg hunt!

Hey, you! What’s-yer-face!

I have a sort of strange confession to make. I don’t know what to call my mother-in-law. I’ve actually known her for almost 15 years. And in that time, I’ve deftly (and sometimes not so deftly) avoided calling her by any term of direct address. I’ve been “you-ing” her for over a decade. She’s of a generation and disposition that doesn’t really invite someone of my age calling her by her first name. She’s never suggested that I do. And I’m of a generation and disposition where calling someone I know well “Mrs. X” seems wrong. At some point, maybe shortly after John and I got married (the first time), she started signing cards “Ma & Pa X”. While I appreciate the effort to give me some forms of address, albeit many years after first running into the issue, I just can’t manage Ma or Pa. They sound straight out of Little House on the Prairie. And nobody else calls them that. John calls his mother “Mom.” (I call my own mother “Mom.” I don’t want to call John’s mother “Mom.”)

So I have to say I found it pretty funny to come across this in my class reading:

Knowing how to address your father-in-law (or mother-in-law) has often been a problem for many people: Mr Smith is sometimes felt to be too formal, Bill too familiar, and Dad pre-empted or even ‘unnatural’. The arrival of grandchildren is sometimes seen as a way out, it being easier to call a father-in-law Grandad than Dad. (Wardhaugh, p. 269)*

Tomorrow, we are heading down to NY to visit Grammy and Grampa. Problem solved.

Yes! This is why people have kids!

Brought to you by Great Moments in Family Planning.

*Wardhaugh, Ronald. 1992. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Second Edition. Cambridge, USA: Blackwell.

a metaphorical filled pause (and a cute baby)

Ok, so I don’t have time to write tonight. I have lots of work to do, and am seriously sleep-deprived to boot. So I’m using this post to signal an expected delay. Think of it as an um.

But to distract you from my lack of writing, I feel compelled to show off this picture of Phoebe that I took at my sister‘s house, and that John cleaned up for me:

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Also, please note that Phoebe is wearing a hat. I tell you this as an excuse to share with you that Phoebe can now say [hætʰ]. And I finally posted a bit to the Phoebe Blog about her latest verbal accompishments. Ah, the perils she’ll face of having a geeky linguist for a mother. (I’ve already been chasing her around with a microphone. But she tends to clam up when I try to interview her. I may have to resort to bugging her crib. Catch every word she says to her dolly and stuffed puppy dog.)