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There is a story I love to tell about my mom.  One Sunday morning during my senior year of high school we were driving in the neighborhood and Howard Jones “Thing can only get better” was playing on the radio.  She turned down the radio and said “I hate that song, things can always get worse”.  My mom also hated it when people said “Everything happens for a reason”.   She could give you lists of things that happened that had no reason and finish her little lecture with “Sometimes shit happens”.

This rather fatalistic philosophy of life allowed my mother to be happy because in some way it freed her.  She never spent too much time railing on the injustices of life and lived in gratitude because “be thankful for what you have” always proceeded “things can always get worse”.   Her world view allowed her to ride out a personal economic disaster in which she lost everything. Through all the turmoil and uncertainty she was able to enjoy her life, without spending too much time being bitter.   Some of the more joyous and beautiful things happened during this time and she never lost the ability to feel true delight in those moments.

I try to focus on the positive and try to not be bitter.  I cannot imagine how she made it through without wanting to kick someone repeatedly and scream at the gods but she did and I wish I had her grace.

My parents came through their economic turmoil and the triumphant symbol that they had finally made it back was their town home.  For almost twenty years it was the center of our family.  It was where we celebrated Christmas Eve (which was also her birthday) and had summer parties in the garage.  It is the first place I went, with a mile wide smile, when Brian proposed.  It was the only place I would take my precious newborn babies sometimes just so I could get a nap or a few hours of adult conversation.  It was where we met before our epic shopping days.  If a relative from Ohio came to visit and we would all end up there, gossiping about the latest family news.  It was the place we gathered when we found out she had cancer and the place we ended up the morning she died.  It was a shrine to her as Dad did not change one thing.  It was where we went to be with Dad, where he and I had a million conversations about politics, hockey and baseball.   Just 4 months ago I sat on the couch at two in the morning trying to convince him to go the hospital not realizing it was the last time I would ever sit on that couch with him.

Today, their town home sits empty, devoid of the life that made it beautiful.  I signed the papers this morning and now it is the center of another family’s life.  I am thankful that we were able to sell it so quickly and smoothly but it is still bittersweet.  It was a closing in more way than one.

On April 24th, 1993  I was on a train to Toledo to attend my beloved Aunt Dolores’ funeral.   My sisters and I had taken the train to Ohio, 24 hours in a cramped, smoky Amtrak car most of which I spent thinking about the guy I met the night before.

A few months before, I had been lamenting to Karen about the lack of available men.   She claimed to have met the perfect guy for me but he had a girlfriend.  I explained to Karen that the presence of a girlfriend made him less than perfect.

The night before my aunt died, Karen called to ask if I wanted to go to Old Chicago’s.  I said I was tired.  She said the perfect guy was coming and he no longer had a girlfriend.  So we went to Old Chicago’s.

I remember that night like it was yesterday. I remember the mullet and the snake-skin boots and how he told me I was too smart to work at the DMV.  He drove me home and asked for my number so we could go out the following night.

The next day was spent planning to get everyone to Ohio.  When he finally called, I had to cancel our date because my aunt died.  He thought I was trying to blow him off.

I told my sisters about him on our train trip. Karen and Meg convinced him that my aunt had actually died and invited him to a party the next weekend.   When I got home, we went to the party together and have been together ever since.

20 years later, the mullet is gone but the boots are still pulled out for rock shows.  After two kids and all the craziness that life has thrown at us there is no one who I would rather be with on this roller coast ride.

Moral of the story: Karen is always right!

I tried very hard yesterday to remember my last Easter with Mom.  I could not remember it.  I could not remember if I hosted, what we ate and who was there.  Even after looking at the pictures, I remember little about Easter 2008.  Only one picture brought back any kind of memory.  It seems that such an important event should have been burned on my brain but it isn’t.

I do remember with great clarity the rest of that spring.  In late April, Mom and Dad went to Ohio for my cousin’s wedding and Mom was experiencing back pain.   By graduation season that back pain grew to the point where she went to the doctor.  Mom was one of the toughest people I have ever met, so for the back pain to constitute a trip to the doctor (and a missed graduation ceremony), it must have been excruciating.  Months of physical therapy, pain killers and unanswered questions ended with the discovery of a lump near her hip.   In July, the doctors discovered that she had lung cancer that had grown and spread to such an extent that it was breaking her hip.  Two hip replacements followed and by the time she started chemotherapy in October the tumors were literally coming out of her skin.  Instead of cancer eating away at her, it seemed to be engulfing her.  She died a day before her birthday  but was gone long before as she was lost in  pain and fatigue for months.

I have an almost photographic memory of the conversation with the doctor about hospice and how proud Mom was that she was awake and aware throughout the conversation.  I remember trying to find a hospice facility and a cemetery and I remember calling quite a few people.  The conversations were hard.  It was in these conversations that someone reminded me of a simple startling fact.

When one spouse dies, the other spouse is more likely to die.

No one could imagine my parents apart.  They had been such a team in life that it seemed impossible that either one could go one without the other.

For 49 months, I knew Dad would join Mom.  It was just a matter of time.  Too bad that knowledge did nothing to prepare me for the reality of his death.

I have a good job.  Some would say a dream job.  I work for a great non-profit that has an innovative idea and when they decide to take that idea public, I will share it here.

I work for two great women and my boss is one of the best I have ever had.  I have learned a ton.  I work from home, part-time and make my own schedule.  If I get too busy with the kids or one of my many volunteer commitments, I can work late night or over the weekend.

However, since Dad died, I have found little time to work.  I could blame that on estate demands but the truth is that I have been wildly distracted.  I keep coming to the same conclusion… this is hard. Losing your parents (my mom died 4 years ago) and becoming a 45-year-old orphan is much tougher than I had every imagined and I had spent a lot of time imagining what losing him would be like.  So I was really happy when I found this blog “Life as a widower”.  Not because of the subject.  The blog tells a heart wrenching story and I encourage you to read it.  I was happy because in this particular post the author talks about the effects of grief on work and cites motivation and confusion as ways that grief can effect work.  Which was good to know and explains why the job I loved two months ago became the bane of my existence but left me asking, two months in “Shouldn’t I be over this and back to normal”

So I as I ponder these questions, I do so without a job and the determination that in that extra hour or so I will write.

Writing is really scary. I hate criticism.  Being noticed or singled out literally makes my skin crawl and my voice shake.  Which made what happened today a little disconcerting.  One day after I decide to write a personal blog, the information I put on that blog was used for political gain.  I thought about deleting my blog site but then I remembered what he would have said…stay and fight.