03.31.05
Posted in Mom at 4:33 am by Beau
Two years ago today, my mother succumbed to her metastatic lung cancer that had been diagnosed six months earlier. I was fortunate in that I was set up at work to be able to take a leave of absence and essentially move back to Ohio to care for her those last six weeks. I look back on that time as a whole, especially those last six weeks, and realize how much of a blur it all is but thankfully, I was able to blog through it so I have some uncorrupted memories. I still look back at that time and in a strange way, for the sadness and loss that it was, it was also something so significant that it couldn’t help but change who I was; in subtle ways but change none the less. I’m better because of it and I guess that is the silver lining on the whole thing.
Now we’re two years out and I have to confess that this anniversary sort of crept up on me. I’m otherwise engaged and focused with work and school and vacation then all the sudden today was here. It wasn’t a bad day and it wasn’t even as particularly sad in the way that last year seemed to be. I miss her every day and especially in the last couple of days with my promotion, I really wanted her to be around to be excited for me. I know wherever she is (and she’s everywhere) that she knows and I know she would have been excited for me but it is a pale shade of really having her here and hearing her on the phone as I told her what happened. But really, that’s more about me and what I need which is sort of selfish, really.
It would be impossible for me to not draw some comparison between her death and the horrifically drawn out ordeal of the Terry Schiavo case. There was some headline a few days ago from her mother pleading, “Don’t let my daughter die of thirst!!” which absolutely turned my stomach at the hyperbole and drama of this whole thing. It actually infuriated me that the dying of Terry Schiavo has been so overly-exploited and twisted. I thought of all those people being arrested for trying to sneak water to her and keep her alive under any circumstances and all for what? For God’s will? The case is obviously much more complex then anything I can say here but ultimately, I think you just have to be a first-person witness to the dying to know what is and is not true and to know that sometimes the hardest choices to make are learning about one’s own selfishness and how to overcome that to let go when the time has come.
For my family and myself, when Mom was diagnosed and quickly decided that she was going to turn down chemo and radiation, palliative treatments that would have possibly extended her life for a bit longer than six months, it was the hardest choice she ever had to make and one that was equally hard for our family to accept but I never once thought that my Mom had ever given up. She never once rolled over and let her impending death overcome her will to live. She did however recognize and embrace the idea that we all have our time to live and die and sometimes you just take the time left and make the best of it. It was something that even saying I admire doesn’t do it justice by half.
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03.26.05
Posted in Being Better at 5:10 pm by Beau
I was greeted yesterday morning with the news that I would be promoted to director of my office effective immediately with what could not be considered an insignificant raise. I was at almost this exact point last year when a previous director had left and I was asked to take the acting directorship until a replacement could be found. At that time, just a few weeks into starting my MBA, I envisioned apocalyptic scenarios of outright hostile backstabbing, professional suicide, and dookie getting smeared on anything I tried to do. This time around, those things haven’t exactly changed but for whatever reason, I’m completely confident I can handle it or at the very least, realize that if I can’t, I’m not going to be hunted and brought irrevocably down, never to work again. How in the hell did I get here?
I don’t seem like this person but apparently I am. I still feel rather seventeen, gangly, and clueless to this whole “professional responsibility” thing but whatever the disconnect, this is where I’m at and I’m willing to give it a run for its money. The Dean who anointed me yesterday morning gave me these words of support, “You’ve always known what you needed to do and you deferred to other people. Now’s the time for you to stand up and do it without reservation.” It was a little less spiritual then it sounds but it did have that sense of cracking a crop across my trained thoroughbred thighs so the intent isn’t lost on me. Of course I’m moving my favorite office-bulletin board affirmation to the director’s office down the hall, the one that starts out,
A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves.
But then of course right underneath, I’ve added my all-time favorite, get-your-head-out-of-your-ass affirmation from Eleanor Roosevelt,
You must do the thing you think you cannot do
So they kind of balance or if nothing else, they allow me, the Fence-Sitter, to have a good view of the edge of impending oblivion while at the same time, the vision of righteous accomplishment. It’s a good line to be straddling right now.
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03.21.05
Posted in The days at 10:45 pm by Beau
I’m spinning so fast in each and every day that I do not know how to stop. I’ve retracted my anxiety-producing, long-range outlook of days down to that one, simple cliche: one day at a time. The mere thought of how I’m going to get to Wednesday shrinks me up and I pull back so I only have to worry and fret over Tuesday instead. Wednesday can just fucking wait. Tomorrow comes first.
All that being said, I know that (or at least, hope that) the frantic rush of the days can’t last forever. Time off from work and school comes in several weeks and that’ll be a nice break but it won’t really cure the problem which is the quandry I’m in now. What to do, what to do.
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03.18.05
Posted in Being Better at 10:10 pm by Beau
Ten years ago today I was 24, 25-pounds thinner, and was thinking about what I was going to wear to my first circuit party and how nervous I was to be the mid-western transplant in the middle of big, bad New York City. As it turns out, life changed forever in that big, dark backroom of the Black Party. Ten years later, Jeff and I are celebrating our anniversary by going home to upstate for the weekend to enjoy some relaxing time with one another and then take a cruise down south in April when I’m finished with class this term.
Neither of us is big on the mushy romance of it all and that’s just fine because we’ve always shared that kind of played-down sentimentality. Still, ten-years is ten-years and quite a milestone from where we both started out and for someone like me who gets bored and ready to move on to the next better thing after the initial fun wears off, it is quite something. That means Jeff has been the next better thing all along and I’m thinking I’ve been pretty good for him, too. So, happy anniversary to us for ten really good, really hard, really significant years together.
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03.05.05
Posted in Movies at 1:04 pm by Beau
Screw Willy Wonka…it’s all about September’s Corpse Bride.
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