Flight Like Falling

I have a meeting with my supervisor tomorrow. When I emailed her my resignation last week, she replied with "(blah blah blah)...passion...(blah blah blah)...dedication." I've told her before that I don't like using the word passion in connection with my work. Right now, in the midst of quitting my job due to burnout, its use feels especially cruel. More on passion in the future, perhaps, when I've regained some spark. 

I wonder what my mom would say. Probably something kind and thoughtful. My dad would be cheerleading. I don't want to be here doing this anyway so maybe that's why I'm not more sad. This is one of those times where it only happened because they're gone so which is worse? And, is this what I had in mind when I named this blog - back when I thought I would process my grief nice and neatly in writing and definitely not in questionable life choices and bitterness - that for ever after, flight might be hard to distinguish from falling? (From the inside as well as outside). 

I beat myself up quite a bit on the descent into burnout. Then I beat myself up for beating myself up because, I know better. I do not believe in taking responsibility for problems that were created above me, but in doing what I can on the days I can with whom I can and where and when I can (terrible John Wesley paraphrase). So the guilt is more about...if I was better I wouldn't be burnt out. I could/should have advocated better for myself and my coworkers and clients, if I had used the right tone and the right word things could have been fixed, I would have more credibility, etc. 
(It's not really a problem of credibility, I don't think, really, but I no longer have the luxury of trying to figure it out and hope I can think of a solution. It's done and I'm walking away and I have to be okay with that). 

Someday I'm going to write neatly about my last few jobs and leaving and endings because they've all been terrible, but I'm not ready yet. Literally the only thing I can count on in my job right now is that I can act with integrity so if that goes out the window it will be total chaos. Like, I'm definitely not going to start screaming about how awful it is to have a coworker accost me, harass me, write a manifesto about me and my other coworker to our supervisor and HR about how we let clients die, and then hear that he punched a fridge in the day center, and has keys to my building and office and comes over anytime he wants something...definitely not going to scream, but I'm not sure how gracefully I can let that shit go. 

It helps to have something to look forward to...a summer with my kids, a potential part-time/on-call crisis counselor job, regaining some hit points and sanity, actually having fucks to give about things that used to feel important. Especially resting up before the big anniversary. Five years. The time, looking back, when I thought I'd be "through" all this and yet have fallen pretty firmly back in the thick of it. 

Happy Birthday, Dad.

We didn't celebrate my Dad's last birthday with him, on the day. Mom, Claire and I were in Florida for the work conference that would turn out to be our first and last mother-daughters trip. Mom had felt quite a few pangs of guilt over leaving Dad for his birthday, but having given in to guilt more than enough in her life she reasoned that it was fair for us to take our trip and celebrate with Dad later. I'm so glad she did. I don't know how Dad really felt about it. I remember that he fell, and possibly went to the hospital, while we were on our trip, but there were so many trips to the hospital.
We celebrated with Dad later in the month. Mom and Dad both had appointments at Emory Winship on the Friday before Memorial Day, and Stanley and I drove up to spend the weekend. On Friday, Miss Susan took Stanley for the day so I could accompany Mom and Dad, and Claire met us later.
That was the day of Mom's miracle, the day the radiation oncologist kept us waiting because he couldn't believe the scans marked with her name were hers. Her brain tumors had shrunk so significantly that he had to go over them, tumor by tumor, to identify her brain by the dim constellation of faded tumors.
There I go, talking about Mom when I am trying to talk about Dad on his birthday. Dad later completed his own brain radiation. Claire and I are 2/2 for parents having whole brain radiation, and we don't need our own turn to condemn it as a family activity.
We celebrated Dad's birthday on Sunday morning with a trip to church, lunch at IHOP, and a trip to the movies with Claire and I. I think we saw X-Men: Days of Future Past. I've watched it a few times since then. He fell asleep halfway through.
I would love to go to the movies with my Dad again. In high school, I always preferred going to the movies with my Dad over most of my friends. He never made me sit through a stupid teen comedy, we watched science fiction, action, and Oscar winners. We split up seat-finding and concessions duties, and I kept guard over his snack until the previews were over.
When I go to the movies alone now I can still hear him turn to me during a particularly grim preview and mockingly ask, "We don't have to go see that, do we?"
Sitting alone at the movies is where I feel his presence the strongest, so every once in a while I take myself out to the movies with Dad. I don't always get snacks, but when I do I try to save them until after the preview. I don't know what he would have thought about Deadpool, but I'm pretty sure he would have enjoyed Ant Man and The Last Witch Hunter. The Force Awakens might have even brought him to tears, and he would have loved seeing his grandson see Star Wars on the big screen for the first time.
I've tried several times to go to IHOP again. Maybe this will be the year, I love breakfast, but over the years my palate has developed past chain iterations of brunch. I can make my own damn crepes and French toast, and I prefer wild boar sausage or scrapple to the rubbery pucks there. Even if I could get past the food, which is the point, what would I be there for? To cry into my syrupy pancakes, to force myself to enjoy the shitty junky mass-produced food my dad was so fond of?
I think of the clothes I took from his closet to Goodwill the day he died. I lifted the bunch of jackets from the trunk and hugged my arms around them until I mustered the courage to drop them into the donation bin. I kept one, and wearing it is like getting a hug back from him.

For my sister, in the style of McSweeney's Internet Tendency

February 1st, 2015

To the friends who were "too tired' to make it to my birthday party,

First of all, I want to say that I realize how hard the past few months have been on you. My parents being ill, then dying, then the first Thanksgiving and Christmas without them - well, now that we've made it to January, I have to say, I don't know how you made it at all! The exhaustion of being aware of your friend losing her parents at a young age, then awareness of your friend's struggle to deal with their disorganized estates, their medical bills, shit even their vehicles...well now that I've written all this out, I'm exhausted just thinking about it. You clearly have earned a long nap. 

And this cold winter weather doesn't help at all. At the end of a long week of work and being aware of your friend's dead parents, you really deserve a nice hot toddy and a lie-in. Self-care is incredibly important for friends of the bereaved, especially during flu season. Wearing yourself out with awareness of your friend's dead parents and upcoming birthday can only lead to sniffling, sore throat, headache, and ultimately questioning the futility of maintaining these fragile bodies we've been stuck with. Existential exhaustion can really mess with your sleep, and certainly doesn't put you in a celebratory mood! 

So in closing, I want to say how much it means to me for you to struggle with all this, and to in the end choose a good rest over showing up to my birthday party. You really took my mind off my parents being dead and all the shit I've been dealing with since my LAST birthday a year ago. I'm sure by next year, I'll have reconciled this whole dead parents/celebrating the annual creep of my own mortality dilemma. Keep in touch and I'll let you know how that's going! Unless, of course, that would uncomfortably remind you of the uncertainty of your own existence.

Love,
Claire, age 30 (!)

Saturday

Two years ago Stanley began playing organized sports for the first time. He started with soccer, on cold winter Saturday mornings, and we drove out to the fields off SW Archer Road. I missed his first game because Graham and I were still in the hospital after he was born, but all of Stanley's grandparents came out to cheer him on.

I am driving out Archer Road on a cold winter Saturday, and I realize that two years ago nothing was wrong.

"How's that bricklaying comin',
How's your engine runnin'?
Is that bridge getting built,
Are your hands getting filled?
...I am lost in my mind,
I am lost in my mind."

Alone with all your letters

I have been home sick with the flu for three days now. Really sick, so dizzy I can barely stand and coughing and headachy when I move around too much. Which is why it's taken me three days to get to this box.It's a box of cards Mom sent me when I was away at college. I sorted through the trunk they were in 2 years ago, before her cancer came back, and forgot all about them. But all the thoughtful cards that have come in the mail, day after day (thank you friends!), reminded me that I had these. I remembered exactly where they were, and why I had decided to keep them.

I went a long way off for college on purpose, to try something new and make a fresh start. I struggled with depression and anxiety all through high school, and while my parents tried to get me help, I don't think they ever really understood the extent of my depression. So I had very little desire to move a few miles down the road to Athens with most of my graduating class and be reminded of my academic and social failures.

Now I can better imagine the terror of sending your child off to a strange city. And I suspect my mom was really worried about how well I would 

cope. But she encouraged me and gave me my space and always let me know, on the phone or in writing, how much she loved me and believed in me. I keep these cards for so many reasons - her words, her handwriting - but right now what I need them for is to remember the person who believed in me even though I created many of my own problems. The person who had a front row seat to my biggest flaws and never failed to cheer me on. 

How I know that she loved me

I keep trying to hold on to the things Mom surrounded herself, and us, with. Things I remember from my childhood, or remember her buying for herself. 

But then I found an envelope of pictures from when I was born. I've seen some of them separately in other albums, but some I'd never seen before.

And when I see the look on her face as she held newborn me, I realize this is all I need to hold onto, for the rest of my days, to know that she loved me. This was the message I was holding out hope for.

Hummingbird Tattoo