Happy Birthday, Dad

He would have been 88 today. His mother lived to be 90; she was the only biological grandparent I knew. Dad's dad died young. I think my dad was 17 when his dad died. I'll have to look it up. Dad died a month short of his 69th birthday, 19 years ago. And Mom died 6 months ago yesterday.

So many dates and anniversaries, I begin to wonder if there are too many to really mean anything, other than I get lots of memory prompts in the summer. They each mean a little less the farther I move away from them. I used to go to the shore of Lake Michigan and send Dad a Happy Birthday balloon every year on this date. After 3 or 4 years I stopped. I no longer felt that need.

Yet I also notice that I do not forget these dates. I make a point not to forget all these dates. They must mean something; in fact, I feel as though their meaning is probably fairly obvious. Maybe it's too close, staring me in the face, as they say, so that I cannot make out the relevance of remembering these milestones. Or maybe that's the point, remembering. Those casually tossed off "memory prompts" are the meaning. Wisdom has it that one mustn't live in the past. Ignoring the past is, on the other hand, ignoring what made us what we are in the present.

Whatever the meaning, the memories are here, as is the love (and the fights and the laughs and the dysfunction). Another milestone, more memories, another summer day.

Another milestone

When last I wrote, I mentioned that my dad's birthday is this week--tomorrow, actually. What I didn't even realize was that today, August 12, is the 6-month anniversary of Mom's death.

I had lunch with a friend/colleague today, a mutual friend of my colleague who died two months ago tomorrow. We talked a lot about death, and her aging parents (her mom has Alzheimer's). I would not say it was a morbid conversation, however, or even a depressing one. It was a necessary one, perhaps. What I have found, especially in these past 6 months, is that there are a fair number of people out there who will do anything to avoid talking about, and thus thinking about, death. Quite frankly, that doesn't work for me. Death is a natural consequence of life. To try to ignore it makes absolutely no sense to me. Acknowledging it, accepting it, even expecting it seems not only rational, but helpful. Being at my mom's side when she died was an incredibly grace-filled moment. I felt that she honored me by allowing me to witness that transition.

So a lunch conversation about death does not strike me as odd or morbid, but in many ways as helpful. Death happens.

And Mom, wherever you are now, it cannot be as bad as the hell of Alzheimer's, so I don't wish you back, but I do miss you. I hope that whatever place you are in, in whatever form you are in, it's giving you peace.

Pilgrimage

Monday, July 26, would have been Mom's 88th birthday. To mark the occasion, Jeanne and I drove up to Green Bay (with our dog Cleo). We hadn't been to the cemetery since Mom's burial and the engraving being finished. So I bought a plant, which is surely dead by now unless "neighbors" are watering it, and placed it on the grave. Here is a partially shaded photo:

We didn't stay long at the cemetery; there's not much to do there. So we cruised past Mom & Dad's old condo. We also found my childhood home, which got moved when the YWCA bought the lot for parking. I knew what street they moved it to, but not which block. So we drove up the street until I recognized it; it's a big house, and had a few identifying features that made me confident that I'd correctly identified it. That was enjoyable; I loved that house. We also drove past my old high school, to make sure the headless children still had their heads reattached (long story, but one that always brings a smile. I may have to tell it some day, as Mom has a significant role in it).

Then we picked up some lunch, and had a little picnic at a park by the river. It felt surprisingly freeing to be in my home town with no agenda, no one to have to see, nowhere to have to be.

And then we drove home. I did not feel overtly emotional that day, but I could feel the next day that things were not their placid normal selves. Not much more to report than that. Getting ready for Dad's birthday next week. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the season of remembering for me.

Anniversaries

Today is the 19th anniversary of my dad's death. Monday is the 88th anniversary of my mom's birth. Mom was never crazy about her birthday, and once Dad died, 3 days before her birthday, she liked them even less. Even as Alzheimer's took her mind, some part of her seemed to remember these dates. Ever since she came to live with us, and possibly before, this time of the year was difficult for her. Her moods and demeanor would be a little darker and agitated in mid-to-late summer. She was unhappier. And it definitely was not because of the weather. Wisconsin summers are too short, and she disliked the winters too much for us to think it was a "seasonal" effect. We're sure it was an anniversary effect, though perhaps never conscious.


For me, this is also a time to remember these anniversaries. I try to stay focused on the happy memories.

Grief redux

Back from vacation to California and Arizona. Actually, I presented at the American Literature Association conference in San Francisco, which we used as an opportunity for vacation. Our friends Karri and Pete live in Oakland, so with the exception of the night before my presentation, when we stayed in the beautiful Hyatt Regency, we stayed with them. They are incredible hosts, so we had a great time. My presentation at the conference, despite being in a terrible time slot, went really well.

Lobby of Hyatt Regency SF

Karri and Pete also took us to their bungalow in the Sierra Nevada foothills for a few days, with one day trip to Yosemite. That was spectacular. Can I limit myself to one picture? I took many. Okay, let's do two.

Okay, maybe three, as I have to include our hosts.

One thing that struck as we drove and walked around northern California with Karri and Pete was how often I thought of a story about Mom. I finally made myself stop sharing them, they came up so often. Oddly enough, I can't remember now what those stories were. I think some of them probably had to do with family vacations as a kid, but honestly, I'm not sure what to attribute the abundance of Mom-sharing to. Karri was perhaps the most consistent of my friends to call me and see how we were doing with Mom's care while she was with us. But there was more going on than just that.

Golden Gate Bridge

We also spent 4 days in Mesa, AZ, with our daughter Jobee and her boyfriend Justin. We had an enjoyable, relaxing, and hot time there, including a visit to the Phoenix Botanical Gardens.

The truth is, I'm only giving a very abbreviated version of our vacation. When we got home, we took a few more days off, then started working our way back into some sort of routine of work and downtime. I was supposed to go to lunch on the Tuesday after we got back with my friend and colleague, Shelly. Shortly before leaving on our trip, I attended a work-related 'retreat,' and that's when we set the date. Shelly was diagnosed almost exactly a year ago with pancreatic cancer. She had surgery, but was constantly struggling with chemo and radiation. They would start the treatments, and her platelets would go out of whack. So they would stop, and try another dose, combination, whatever. So things like lunch with a friend were a high priority for Shelly, especially since she didn't always know if she would be feeling up to it on any given day.

The day before we were to meet, I sent her an email, asking where she would like to meet. That evening, when I checked my email to see if she had answered, there was an email from a mutual friend and colleague, Ellen, with the subject line "News about Shelly." The email said I should call Ellen. I knew this was not good. I called her. She, too, had just returned from a two-week vacation. She reported that Shelly had been have trouble with a post-surgery stent, and had been in and out of the hospital while we were both gone. The Thursday before, she learned, Shelly became unresponsive. On Sunday, June 13, Shelly died.

Shelly and I were friends, though not in each others' closest circles. And I can't stop thinking about Shelly, and how sad it is that I will never bump into her on campus, and that we'll weren't able to have that last scheduled lunch. Shelly was a great teacher, tough and demanding, and I admired her dedication and the tremendous hard work she put into moving her students to a new level of understanding. And I know that somehow, the grief for Shelly is weighted on top of the grief for Mom, magnifying both.

And I can't stop thinking about the loss, our loss, now that Shelly is gone.

Love

Grief is a strange beast. I rarely feel actively sad about Mom's death. Mostly I feel strange things going on in my physical self. I'm tired a lot, even though I get enough sleep. I have more aches and mysterious pains than I used to, and I'm convinced it's not just a part of getting older. Not all of it, at any rate. I was talking to someone I know who has recently been through more than his share of grief. He said that while he was in the midst of his wife's cancer, people kept asking him if he was okay. He always said he was, because he didn't realize until after her death that he wasn't. You have to keep going, and you don't recognize the effects caregiving takes on you. Then after his wife died, he said it was like all the air rushing out of a balloon. It's an apt metaphor.

Recently, I've started remembering Mom more. Up until now, it's been a lot of blankness. But now I start to think of her more often. I remember her, her life, not just the past 6 years. She was a great mom.

This may seem a bit after the fact, but I am posting the eulogy I wrote for Mom's memorial service. I guess it's time.

I would like to read from 1 Corinthians 13:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

So I trust that, with love for my mother and my mother’s love for me, my words will be neither a noisy gong or clanging symbol.


And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Of the people I’ve spoken to in the last 3 weeks, almost all described my mother as a lady. And she was.
And she was patient, and kind, and never arrogant or rude. One of my favorite
stories’ of Mom’s was about how she met Dad. She was working in the treasurer’s office at Wartburg College. Dad was teaching there.
Mom’s home congregation in Nauvoo, IL was temporarily without a pastor.
They were getting supply pastors from all around, and one week, Dean Kilgust was
tapped to go preach there. Mom’s roommate, Arlean, told her, “Ask him for a ride; you can go home and visit your family. Besides, he’s single.” Mom, who was already in her late 20s and convinced marriage was not in her future, said, “No, I don’t want to ride with Dean Kilgust. He’s so arrogant.” Well, Arlean finally convinced her that it was a free ride home, and worth putting up with Dean for. Mom told me that on that ride to Nauvoo and back with Dean, she saw a different side of him, and found out he could be thoughtful and kind. And the rest, of course, is history.

It was not until Mom came to live with us that I found out how strongly that love endured. When words were becoming hard for her to use anymore, we would often get the picture albums out for her to look at. She enjoyed that most of the time, but the only time her face would light up would be when she would see a picture of Dad. Then she would gently touch the photo, and sometimes stroke his cheek. I always knew my mom loved my dad, but it took Alzheimer’s to show me that she was in love with him.

Language was the first thing Mom had trouble with due to Alzheimer’s. She loved to read, and always had a stack of library books next to the love seat she would sit in. She, more than anyone, modeled for me the reading that became both my love and my life’s work. It was when Mom could no longer remember what some of the words she was reading meant, words that she knew she knew, that she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.


Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

Mom endured Alzheimer’s with a grace and dignity I couldn’t quite fathom. When something she used to be able to do became hard for her, she would say, “Well, that’s the disease. I won’t be able to do that anymore.” She wasn’t perfect, or a saint, but
she faced her disease with more acceptance than I thought humanly possible. She never asked, “Why me?” and she didn’t complain.

As her disease progressed, people would often ask, “Does she still know you?” That was always hard to answer, because I don’t believe she knew our names, or who we were to her, but she did know us. She knew that Jeanne and I were the people who were always with her, and who cared for her, and who kept her safe. On that last day, she knew we were out that afternoon; she knew when we got home; and she knew that when we got her into bed and comfortable, that she could finally leave.


For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

Being a witness at my mother’s death was one of the greatest gifts she’s given me. It was a privilege to be with her at the end of her life on this earth. And now she is complete again.


When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Mary Kilgust embodied love, and I am blessed to have had her as my mother.

At the Hairdresser's

Yesterday I got my hair cut. I know, by itself, not exactly big news. But this stylist is the same woman who has done Mom's hair for at least the last 5 years, maybe 5 1/2. She said that she cannot believe the number of people who have been asking where the lady in the wheelchair is. Not just her customers, but the customers of the other stylists who rent spaces there. "It's amazing," she said, "how many lives your mother touched."


It's amazing indeed.