Eight Days: From Times Square Naked Cowboy to Mark’s Death

This post is inspired by Rosamund Lupton's novel, Afterwards. As a member of www.fromlefttowrite.com, I received a free copy. Lupton weaves a skillful story of a parent's love and criminal mystery in a medical setting. There was no question about the memory this novel provoked for me. 

After the conference dinner, John and I walked back to the Edison Hotel via Times Square. Neither of us had been in New York for a while and it was great fun to just walk among the crowd on a Saturday night. The Naked Cowboy in his tiny tighty-whiteys strummed away and we stopped to buy a t-shirt for Mark. I have no idea what that t-shirt said or whatever became of it.

            When we walked into our hotel room the phone was ringing. Strange, I thought. Everyone calls us on cell phones these days. My niece’s voice sounded anxious from the start. “Bren, Rebecca has been trying to get hold of you all evening. Call her immediately. Mark has had some sort of accident.”

            I didn’t panic right away. I’m a glass-half-full person who thinks every problem has a solution. “Don’t worry. I’ll call Rebecca right now.”

            Rebecca’s voice sounded twice as anxious. She was driving with a friend from Huntsville where she and Mark were in school at Sam Houston State University to a hospital in Houston. A helicopter ambulance overhead was taking Mark.

“They wouldn’t let me ride in the helicopter with him because I’m not related to him! We don’t know anything except he fell off the back of an ATV and hit his head. I was right behind him on another ATV and I thought he was joking when he got up. You know how he can be. Then he got very angry, almost violent and we knew something was wrong. The emergency vehicles came and they decided he needed to be flown to Houston.”

After exhausting all questions and answers I could come up with, Rebecca said through her tears, “I’m so sorry, Bren. I hope he’s going to be okay.”

“Don’t worry, Beck. I’ll get on the phone with the hospital now and stay in touch until they know something.”

Mark and I in 1996.

The next few hours stretched forth as the eternal nightmare no parent ever wants to experience. I finally reached the neurologist who had already done surgery on Mark. He said Mark’s brain was swelling and they did surgery immediately to relieve pressure. He would give me no further prediction of how Mark was or would be and said he would be in touch as they knew more.

Scared but still telling myself, Mark would be fine, I decided to call an old friend who was a neurosurgeon in Lexington. When I got him on the phone and described the situation, he said, “Get a flight and get to Texas as fast as you can. Yes, I would have agreed to the surgery to relieve pressure.”

I made the call thinking he would give me reassurance, now my panic soared. John began working on his cell phone to get me a flight and a taxi to the airport while I returned calls to Rebecca and family to update them. I shook with fear and chills as I dialed each number. John wrapped me in blankets with one hand as he held his phone with the other.

The taxi drive in the middle of the night through strange parts of New York City would have scared me on other nights. Now I had far greater fears. The driver deposited me safely at the airport. I took a sleeping pill on the plane to force myself to get some rest on the flight. The realization had set in that I would need all the strength I could muster.  

I arrived at the Houston airport about the same time as Rebecca’s mother coming in from Lexington. A friend of Mark’s from Sam Houston State picked us both up and delivered us to Memorial Hermann Hospital. I didn’t have a choice of hospitals and would not have known how to choose, but I learned later that Memorial Hermann is one of the nation’s best and the place where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will rehabilitate in the coming years. No parent wants or deserves to spend eight days by their child’s side and ultimately lose him but the staff at this hospital made the experience as bearable as they were able.

We scrubbed up to enter the ICU. Only two or three of us could go in at a time. Being very familiar with ICU, I walked in knowing what to expect. And yet. This time my dear Mark was lying there with tubes coming out of every orifice of his body, his head wrapped in bandages and multiple machines attached to him. I swallowed back the hot spit and willed myself not to vomit. I resisted the urge to climb into the bed with him and use every mode of comfort I knew so well from twenty-five years of parenting him.

Others arrived hour by hour. Sims flew in from Oregon, Leah from Philly, college friends drove over from Hunstville, his best friend Patrick Wallace from Kentucky, an elementary school friend and my step-grandson who both lived near Houston. My sisters Ashley and Margaret, Rebecca’s sister Hunter Quinn. And, of course, my dear husband.

John had flown back to Lexington, performed necessary duties with work and house and got to Houston as soon as he could. We had just married in January, this was April. From the moment the phone call came in New York until this day, John has been my tower of strength. Who thinks they’re signing up for death and grief and catastrophic change in their wife three months after they say, “I do?”

So a “crowd of witnesses” had gathered in Houston. By Monday, the neurosurgeon gathered everyone present around a big conference table outside of ICU. The surreal atmosphere hung heavy around us. The people around that table loved Mark unquestioningly. But as the doctor asked and then listened to each person weigh in about Mark’s life and death, I fought the urge to scream, “No! No! Nobody gets to decide about Mark’s quality of life and pulling some plug except ME! I gave him birth! He is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Stop it!”

Some shred of humanity or pastoral identity choked those words back. I knew the doctor was allowing everyone to have their say for multiple reasons—I suppose most compassionately to aid in the grief that was ahead of each one of us. Still, I wanted to cling to my baby boy with every scrap of maternal instinct in my being—primal ferocity.

The beeps and blips of the machines attached to Mark became familiar to us. His heart pumped on—young, healthy. His brain activity declined. By Wednesday, my intuition knew the boy I gave birth to was gone. Mark was so identified with his intellect. He once told me the curse of being smart was that “no matter what I become, I cannot exceed anyone’s expectations. If I’m president, my elementary school teachers will say, ‘I’m not surprised. I knew Mark would be something great.’” All that potential gone—forever.

Still, there was my son’s body—a big, beautiful, healthy body. We could not layer waste upon waste by burying his healthy organs with him. I wanted every usable piece of his body redeemed, reused, giving life in someone else’s body. Thus began days with hospital ethicists, doctors, chaplains and social workers. In order to donate Mark’s organs, he had to be brought out of the induced coma to verify brain death. I was scared. What would that mean? Would he feel anything? Would he know anything? My gut stayed tense for days as we each took turns standing by his side, talking with him, touching him, reminding him of stories and place and people we had shared. I couldn’t help but wonder if bringing him out of the induced coma would reveal changes. Could he possibly surprise the doctors? Was there an ounce of hope? So many questions, such medical answers but this was not their next patient, this was my Mark!

Thursday, Friday and Saturday, we continued to take our turns standing by Mark’s bed saying our good-byes—long, surreal, mind-numbing, gut-wrenching good-byes. We stared at the brain monitor—numbers that determined when they could declare the end of my baby’s life. Numbers! Leah and I were the only two in the unit at one point and we both used that moment to sing to Mark the songs we each sang to him as an infant and toddler. Each person’s grief and loss seemed to bury me under another layer. How can anybody, even me, go on with the weight of this grief?

John’s resourcefulness never takes a vacation. He got the idea and cautiously presented it to me that we might want to save some of Mark’s sperm.

“You never know what the future will present, Bren. Will Sims need to use that sperm? Will Rebecca one day want to have Mark’s baby? You never know.”

            The cruel twist is that John knew the pain of multiple miscarriages from his previous marriage and I was too numb to have ever thought of this step. The hospital officially said, “No, we do not perform that service.” John was tenacious. He found a urology intern who was willing to harvest the sperm; John found a sperm bank listed in a free local paper and the potential for future grandbabies toddled off to the bank. In 2006, after the birth of Sims’ son, Tristan, and Rebecca’s marriage to another, we made the decision to discard the sperm. I have never regretted that we saved that piece of Mark for four years.

            Even the cremation plans were complicated. The medical examiner asked John, “Do you mind if your loved one is cremated by an African-American crematory?”

            “Of course not,” John responded.

            “Well, then, it will be a couple of thousand dollars cheaper.”

            Would customer service in a white-owned funeral home have asked if we minded if our son was cremated by white people? Another hidden injustice in our society.

Sunday morning arrived and John and I were in a car with some folks who were taking us to church. Who were those people? What church were we going to? How did this come about? I suppose I knew then, but my memory fails me as I try to reconstruct. The eight days had taken a toll and I began to move robotically through the days. As we drove through the streets of Houston, my cell phone rang. The hospital. “Mark’s brain activity has declined, please come now.”

Saying that last good-bye with Mark’s heart still beating haunts me. The number by which experts make such calls about life and death mean nothing to a mother walking away from her son’s beating heart. As we walked out of ICU for the last time, Sims and I turned to each other and grabbed hold. The agony on Sims’ face etched itself into my brain. Mark, the younger brother, had become the older brother in recent years. Now Sims would live the rest of his life without those phone calls, without the UK basketball trash talk to each other, without sharing wives, children and Christmases to come. The grieving began a new stage.

    We returned to Lexington and started plans for Mark’s service. I’m doing the tasks. I’m walking, talking and sometimes sleeping, but feel strangely numb and removed.

Then my son arrived in a box one day. Just like Amazon or Overstock.com, a package came in the mail. I signed for it; accepted it into my hands and stood there unknowing. What is the next step when I’m standing there holding my son in a box?

Inspired by Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman

Upon receiving the next book chosen for www.fromlefttowrite.com, I was pleased to see it was a memoir about being a widow. Of course, having been a widow, I assumed my post inspired by this book would be about widowhood. Not so. Becky Aikman's memoir is as much about female friendships as about widowhood. At one point I considered naming my memoir, Girlfriends Get You Through Life—not a great title but a Truth for me. I have constructed my personal group of girlfriends whose friendships consisted of strong building materials that withstand the tsunamis and hurricanes of life.

We named ourselves Kindred Spirits. Even as their pastor, I expected little beyond meeting once a month, studying spiritual material and sharing thoughts about our faith experiences. Oh, ye, of low expectations. In the following thirteen years, we fed each other’s souls and met routinely. We didn’t need to know of well-recognized research on conversation with sisters making for a happier life and we didn’t need for the sisters to be biological. We lived it out.

From the beginning we combined intense spiritual work and serious fun. One of our first outings together, we dressed up—it is an understatement to say there isn’t one unattractive woman in this group—and headed to Keeneland Race Track in Lexington, KY, for a day of racing. Seated in a box, we were having great fun when one of the guys in the box next to us couldn’t resist asking, “What kind of group are you all?”

Mary replied, “We are a spiritual life group from our church.”

His eyes grew wider, and just as I pulled my shoulders back to take my jacket off (Let’s just say I am amply endowed.), Mary responded, “And this is our pastor.”

He couldn’t get the question out of his mouth fast enough, “What kind of church is that?”

Rosemary being the comic and wit in our midst didn’t miss a beat in replying “The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.”

We collapsed in laughter.

Three biological sisters, Rhonda, Lisa and Martha, predisposed the circle toward blood-like commitment. Rosemary, a Maryland transplant, sought a local substitute for her own remote family. And Mary’s years of broken relationships steeled her determination to “keep it real.”

We hailed from four different decades, thirties to sixties. Age mattered not. Perhaps, we would not have chosen each other as friends had we met under other circumstances. Life tossed out experiences that could have bonded us to each other or driven us apart. Four graduations, six marriages, two babies, one divorce, one separation and more deaths than any small band should have had to bear. We’ve talked through romantic relationship breakups too numerous to count and tended each other through more surgeries than we care to admit—the flotsam and jetsam of six lives over thirteen years inextricably wove us together. Our raucous laughter caused on-lookers to ask, “What can possibly be that funny?” Perhaps they missed Rosemary’s suggestion we raise money for the church by doing a calendar of me, their pastor, draped over her husband’s antique Corvette. Rose, alone could have kept us laughing the past thirteen years. Tears and sorrows necessitated communal distribution; their weight too much to be borne alone.

When we first formed, Mary, a many-years-sober alcoholic, red headed, tri-athlete influenced us to select for our first study material, The Twelve Steps: A Spiritual Journey a book modeled on AA’s Twelve Steps (RPI Publishing, Inc. 1988). This nitty-gritty guide demanded we dig deep and share courageously every month when we gathered. So we did. We started by telling our life stories with truth and trust. I recommended this step for any group who decided to share a spiritual voyage and hold themselves accountable to each other.

What has made these friendships work? Trust, accountability and a fierce commitment of time. Teaching each other to live authentically required all three and more.

“Have you opened that bank account in your own name like you promised? Why not?”

“That’s not your problem; give it back to your husband, it belongs to him.”

“What are you doing to care for your health this month? Chocolate doesn’t count.”

“Are you pushing yourself too hard at work? If so, why?”

“Is this guy you’re dating enriching your life or an avoidance of something else?”

“Didn’t we commit to a full day of retreat? Why are you saying you need to go back to work? Home? Shopping? Are all calendars clear for the third full week in July next summer?”

Here’s a mini-list of what this flock has given me: Mary has taught me every day how to deal with alcoholics in my past, present and future. Rhonda has modeled a stunning example of steadfastness and introversion, absent in my own life. Lisa has shared her love of style and even shopped for the shoes to match the yellow silk suit I wore to my son’s funeral. Rosemary physically held me upright the day I resigned as their pastor after my son’s death. And Martha introduced me to my soul-mate and husband, John.

These women have been kind enough over the years to tell me what I have given to them. The list included the ridiculous and the sublime. Rhonda pointed out I taught her and her sisters not to wear horizontal stripes because they are blessed with broad shoulders. She also maintained I gave her permission to question all things sacred so as to deepen her spirituality. Passing along what we as pastors learn in life is as important as passing along what we learn in seminary. These Kindred Spirits confirmed this concept for me.

Martha, the youngest of our group, has shared in these thirteen years her graduation from college, marriage and birth of her children. She has grown from a college girl into a multi-tasking business professional, wife and mother. She shared with me at one point “You are a mentor and guide for all areas of my life. Period. You model living freely as your true self, with no apologies, unlike any person I have ever met. You nurture my spiritual life and build my self-esteem as a strong, independent woman. You offer unconditional love and compassion in the twinkle of your eye and with reassurance as if you are mother of all women.”

Rosemary, the artist among us, reminded me I gave her a book about using the visual arts in worship which freed her to worship in a way that reached her soul as nothing else had. She delighted in reminding me I gave her permission to be an imperfect Christian and not beat up on herself about sin. Her sleepless nights as a teen and young adult were spent worrying she would burn in hell for sins she has since learned have nothing to do with God’s love for her and are probably not worthy of the word sin.     

The Kindred Spirits taught me to accept my role as leader even when not leading. I experienced in this group the difference between being wise and being right. I told my biological sisters what to do and assumed I was right. In ministry, I learned I could have all the answers for others but a wise leader allows them to come to their own truths on their own time.

Girlfriends in community give and receive. As I struggled in relationships with my biological sisters, these women helped me see I was a leader and could lead without imposing my will on others. I could be wrong and still share wisdom. The diversity in this group reminded me of the richness which comes from being friends with people who have walked very different journeys—economically, socially, educationally. Two of us have Master degrees, one has a high school education. Our salaries in range from minimum wage to six figures annually. Our differences which became our strength taught me to be myself and I would not feel isolated or responsible, I would just be me.

I give thanks for the difference all girlfriends have made in my life. I know this much is true—when I die, my list of honorary pallbearers will be the girlfriends who have carried me in life. In addition to the Kindred Spirits, there will be Linda, Rachel, Wendy, Vonda, Boog and Laura.

Response to The Expats an excerpt from Sweet Lonesome Journey

This post was inspired by mystery thriller novel The Expats by Chris Pavone. Kate Moore sheds happily sheds her old life become a stay at home mom when her husband takes a job in Europe. As she attempts to reinvent herself, she ends up chasing her evasive husband's secrets. Join From Left to Write on January 22 as we discuss The Expats As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

The following post is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir, working title--Sweet Lonesome Journey to be published in 2013.

My precious Mark and Sims, ages ten and thirteen, walked me down the aisle of a packed Central Baptist Church to start the wedding of my dreams and the marriage of my nightmares. Moisture filled eyes followed us to the altar. Everyone celebrated I had found a young, good-looking professional man because they also had watched and prayed as I lost Bart to cancer. I irrationally thought two and one half years amounted to enough time for my grief—which verifies out how grief cripples your judgment.

The gorgeous wedding ended and the marriage began. I accept full responsibility for this huge marital mistake. However, I do wish to note for the record, no family members and only one friend voiced misgivings about this match. Even my therapist later apologized he had not noted the signs of –what? Mental disorder? Dysfunctionality? Woundedness? All of the above? And that’s the part related to Dan. My part in this colossal mistake? I underestimated the psychological healing I had yet to do. At this point, I remained clueless concerning damage I still carried from childhood wounds. I didn’t know the work that still lay ahead of me. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Shortly before the wedding, my groom-to-be commented, “Your friends seem to think of you as being very sexy. I’m not comfortable with that.”

“No kidding.” I replied. “Did you think you were the only one on the planet who had noticed?”

The warning gong should have clanged with concern over his unhealthy attitude about sex, relationships and more, instead, his thinking ticked me off. This constituted the beginning of my daily urge to say to him, “Do you have applesauce for brains?”

On the honeymoon when he brought up issues he had not mentioned in a year and half of dating—all issues related to his need to control me, such as what I wore, where I could go and who I could be friends with, my stomach knotted in fear. My expression in all the honeymoon pictures looks like I’m gritting my teeth. I was. He assured me he just found it “necessary to rake back the glitter” when confronted with someone who shimmered like Brenda. I replied, “You’re doing the job with a god damn backhoe, not a rake.”

I repeat—I offer no excuse for my part in this gigantic mistake. Devastated by Bart’s death and desperate for emotional security, I thought I found a good man. A college professor who attended church, had two sons of his own, Dan shared many of my values and desired the kind of home life I wanted for my boys. His issues with sexuality and obsessive, irrational thinking escalated from the honeymoon until the day our divorce finalized. I learned an important lesson about myself from this marriage: I had very low tolerance for someone who needed to control me in order to feel safe himself. Circumstances necessitated I become my own authority at an early age, he didn’t stand of chance of controlling me in my forties. I also learned I didn’t have enough relationship skills to bridge the psychological divide between Dan’s dysfunction and my own.

Response to "January First" by Michael Schofield

Michael Schofield’s daughter January is at the mercy of her imaginary friends, except they aren’t the imaginary friends that most young children have; they are hallucinations. And January is caught in the conflict between our world and their world, a place she calls Calalini.  Some of these hallucinations, like “24 Hours,” are friendly and some, like “400 the Cat” and “Wednesday the Rat,” bite and scratch her until she does what they want.  They often tell her to scream at strangers, jump out of buildings, and attack her baby brother.

At six years old, January Schofield, “Janni,” to her family, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, one of the worst mental illnesses known to man.  What’s more, schizophrenia is 20 to 30 times more severe in children than in adults and in January’s case, doctors say, she is hallucinating 95 percent of the time that she is awake. Potent psychiatric drugs that would level most adults barely faze her.

I received a copy of January First through my membership in www.fromlefttowrite.com. This is a response to the book not a review.

As Good As It Gets, a 1997 movie with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, tells the story of two imperfect people who find the humanity in each other. Jack plays a jerk with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. He eats lunch every day at a restaurant where he demands that Helen be his waitress as he maintains the excessive rituals that assuage his OCD. His relentless need for her presence in his life leads him to help her critically ill son, and they form a quirky but caring relationship in the process. Toward the end of the film, he tries to visit her apartment but finds the disorder there more than his illness can tolerate, so he suggests a walk at 5:00 a.m. Though walking at that hour seems bizarre to Hunt’s character, she agrees. As they stroll along, Jack avoids the cracks in the sidewalk and attempts to convince Hunt that if they walk for just fifteen more minutes the local bakery around the corner will open and they won’t be weird people at all—“We’ll just be two people who like warm rolls.”

That line went straight to the heart of me and ignited an understanding about myself and my family I had not confronted. It forced me to acknowledge that what separates mentally disordered folks who behave in bizarre ways from the so-called normal folks can be a narrow as fifteen minutes and a stop at the bakery for warm rolls. I have spent far too much of my life trying to find, define and perfect normal when our life’s task is simply to find yourself. I’ve turned the corner and I just happen to like warm rolls now.   

Response to "Girl Gone" by Gillian Flynn

This post is inspired by mystery thriller GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn. They may not have the perfect marriage, but after Amy goes missing, Nick becomes the number one suspect. Can he discover what happened before it's too late? Join From Left to Write on June 12 as we discuss Gone Girl. As a member, I received a copy of the book not for review purposes but rather for blogging inspiration.

“Why do people get married?”

“Passion!???”

“No, because we need a witness to our lives. There are a billion people on the planet, what does one life really mean? But in a marriage you’re promising to care about everything, the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all the time. Every day, you are saying your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.”
        

Masayuki Suo (from the movie Shall We Dance)

With the chaos of my childhood behind me (or so I thought), I assumed creation of my own family would constitute the best part of adulthood. Nothing prepared me for the reality that the formation of my own family would be like a blind woman buying art. I doubt I am the first and quite sure I won’t be the last person to come out of a dysfunctional family who thinks she will form the perfect family and “do everything right.” In spite of failures and everyday bumps along the road, I cherish marriage and parenthood as pieces of life that helped me survive and thrive.

At first blush, five marriages would indicate I failed at doing “everything right” and that I’m not good at marriage. Au contraire. Ok, Ok, I certainly didn’t do “everything right” as planned. But I have had two great loves and two marriages that satisfied and fulfilled me--one of those ongoing. Another two husbands who should have remained dear friends not husbands. Now don’t let me off the hook of responsibility for my role in constructing the less-than-desirable marriages just because I had no model for how to craft a stable marriage. Marriage number three, a monumental disaster in judgment also taught me valuable lessons. I discovered more about myself from each marriage, perhaps lessons my parents should have taught me. I grasped more about myself in the good marriages but I also digested a few morsels from the bad. With time, therapy and additional self-understanding I have forgiven myself for the mistakes. I now embrace the marriages as part of the journey to find myself, know myself and esteem myself. Understanding as relates to men in general did not come easily for me. I didn’t have what psychologists call a “daddy hole,” the emotional lack of relationship with your father, I had a Daddy Crater and I learned to fill that crater in unhealthy ways.  

Grief Comes Calling--Again

During the fifth month of her pregnancy of her first child Natalie Taylor is devastated by the sudden death of her husband. Her journey with grief is chronicled in the memoir Signs of Life. Join From Left to Write on March 29 as we discuss Signs of Life by Natalie Taylor. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

Robert Mark “Bart” Bartella

He may not have played it exactly as written,

but there was indescribable charm in his interpretation.

Paganini quote used for Bart’s funeral cards

I met Bart the summer I worked as a cocktail waitress at the Firebird Lounge in the Phoenix Hotel, downtown Lexington, Kentucky. I needed income during the summer when I didn’t teach so a friend suggested that I make an audition tape for an on-air position at WVLK radio station which crowned the top of the Phoenix Hotel. In 1972, with women’s voices uncommon on the radio, the station staff said my voice sounded too high. One of the radio staff knew the cocktail lounge on the ground floor needed a waitress and suggested I apply there.

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “I’m Baptist. I’ve only tasted liquor two times and don’t know any drinks except the beer and whiskey the alcoholics in my family drink.”

The manager of the Lounge, a woman, replied, “I don’t care; you have great legs.”

The first week I worked, Bart came in with his ex-wife as his date. He ordered Drambuie, an after-dinner liqueur. I asked him to say it three times and spell it before I knew what to request from Joe Lewis, the bartender.

Bart scrambled to ask, “Are you married?”

“Yes.” I replied.

He inserted, “But not happily.”

Still married to Dennis, I had not yet given birth to Denny and thought I had a good marriage. Bart proceeded to chase me around three Kentucky counties for the next three years before mine and Dennis’ marriage deteriorated and we divorced. During the summer I worked at the Phoenix Hotel, Dennis also grew acquainted with Bart. Bart arranged for athletic tickets for us, advised us about our first home mortgage and they knew each other in a distant way. When Dennis and I separated and I moved to Lexington, Dennis called Bart and said, “Brenda is moving to Lexington and doesn’t know anyone there. Would you look in on her?”

Bart, more than pleased to fulfill that request, “looked in on me” more than Dennis had intended. He was thirty-two years older than I. Yes, you read that correctly. He had two daughters, one two-and-a half years younger than I and the other two-and-a half years older. I told him from the beginning that I would see him socially that summer while Dennis and I were in divorce proceedings but that I could not get serious about anyone and I would date other men before I would consider marriage again.

We saw a lot of each other that summer. Bart wined and dined me at Lexington’s finest restaurants. We spent long weekend afternoons at the pool in his apartment complex and met each other’s families. While my eyes opened to the vision of dating an older man, they also opened to a new vision of myself as seen through this man’s eyes. I knew that Dennis and his family viewed me as part and parcel of a poor dysfunctional family. This new mature man saw me only as an individual. My family didn’t seem to be clinging to me in his vision.

Finally, the clanging cymbal of love rang for me. Finally, I got it why movies and books and songs got written about this thing called love. Love happened to me. I had no idea the power of this love. In those early years, I didn’t know love would enable us to make love with a colostomy bag in between our bodies and cry together afterwards. I didn’t know love would enable me to pack a surgical wound that went six inches into Bart’s body. I didn’t know his love for me would mean he agreed to have another child when he was sixty-two years old. I learned that love for us meant all these and so much more.

I exacted a promise from Bart before we married that we would at least discuss having another child when Denny turned three years old. When Bart was sixty two years old our Mark, his first son, arrived. Their relationship played like a symphony which required only two musicians. Bart also decided to legally adopt Denny because he wanted Denny to feel loved by him and be a Bartella.

Ten very happy, fulfilling years followed before Bart died of lung cancer in 1985. He said we had a “one issue marriage.”

The two-shaded blue stretchy knit bathrobes clothed our little family of four for more years than I had imagined when I made one for each of us. Bart supported my sewing projects because he thought it occupied my days and assuaged my desire to go back to work. My Bernina sewing machine, the best on the market, challenged me enough to buy him one more year of a stay-at-home wife and mother. Then I gave him the ultimatum of law school or another child. He chose to have another child, a wise decision. We were three years in to this stay-at-home career path at this time.

The Stretch and Sew store in the Landsdowne Shoppes taught technique for new knits. Matching bathrobes smacked of cutesy to Bart’s no-nonsense mind, but he wore his more and longer than any of the rest of us.

For better or worse, too many of the memoires in that bathrobe mix in my brain with the sound of the ice in his glass followed by the stream of rum and coke. He awakened around five a.m. every morning and many Saturdays and Sundays, he sat there in his big orange recliner wearing that bath robe and well on his way to drunkenness by time I awakened around eight or nine.

The crashing realization that I loved this man as I had loved no one in my life sloshed around in my heart with the cruel irony that he was an alcoholic. Dressing the family up in matching bathrobes doesn’t cure alcoholism.

With the gift of maturity and Al-Anon, I accept and acknowledge how I enabled Bart’s alcoholism. In the beginning, I denied it as alcoholism. The drunks I knew didn’t dress in coat and tie and go to work every day as successful executives. By the time I knew in my bones he was an alcoholic, I loved him and thought my love would make the difference in his drinking. Foolish love. When he bought rum by the case, I meticulously loosened the state seal, poured out a third to a half and refilled it with water. I deluded myself that I had made the difference when “the issue” went away the last two years of his life. A more accurate explanation--the change occurred because he knew when he retired that he had to either quit drinking or die. Sadly, he did both.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in psychiatry to diagnose my marriage to someone three decades older had something to do with the “daddy crater.” But that explanation presents a shallow interpretation of this deep and rich relationship. Some folks said Bart served as my Svengali. He said, “I just provided a stable marriage and home life so you could blossom as you desired.” After his retirement, he joked that people in our home town began to know him as Mr. Brenda Bartella. Other folks called me his “Trophy Wife,” a summation accurate only in the sense that I was the young, attractive and glamorously dressed woman on his arm. Marriage to Bart offered me options I had not considered as roles for me—glamour girl, volunteer, civic leader.

Oh, the trophy wife moments happened—like that fabulous strapless shirred white evening gown which he called “the Rita Hayworth gown that stopped the gaming tables in the Monaco casino.” On vacation in Monaco, we decided to walk through the gambling casino before dinner. Because of the celebrity culture of Monaco such a distinguished older man and attractive much younger woman could only mean—they must be someone famous. As we walked around the perimeter of the room, the gamblers stopped their games and stared at us as if we were the newest People Magazine cover. In moments like Monaco, I pinched myself and asked, “Am I still Brenda Sims, the poor white trash girl from the projects?” The answer to that question even after marriage to Bart remained, “Yes, I am Brenda Sims and I have grown into a sophisticated young woman who still has a good deal of growing to do in spite of a white gown and a trip to Monaco.”

To finish with the speculations on the character of our marriage, my family joked that Bart thought he chose a glamorous sex object and got a Baptist Sunday School teacher instead. He didn’t get one or the other, he got both. The jokes and theories created part of the fun because our marriage rested on solid knowledge of each other. We enjoyed music, sports, books, movies, travel and shared parenthood. Since Bart had peaked in his career, he gave himself permission to enjoy these experiences in a way that he didn’t allow with his earlier marriage and his older children. Grateful for a second act, he made the most of it.

I do not underestimate the financial impact of this marriage on my life. It moved my standard of living from struggling lower middle class life to secure upper middle class. I remember the first time I thought, “I don’t have to parcel out the strawberries because there are enough for all of us to eat as many as we like.” I remember when Bart directed me, “Buy diapers in large quantities when they go on sale.” I had never had enough money to buy more than the quantity necessary short term. Upon seeing an advertisement in the paper that a scissors expert would be demonstrating at McAlpin’s Department Store, Bart suggested I run over there to buy several different kinds for our household use. What? Specialized scissors? I seemed the height of luxury to this girl from the projects.

Bart provided a lovely 5000 square foot home, swimming pool, constant travel and even after his death, paid for my two Masters degrees, Mark’s undergraduate degree and Denny’s long and winding road through education. Bart, of course, had a comment about this financial impact too, “I know Brenda could walk out of this marriage any day of the week and make it on her own in fine style.” The glue of this marriage of broken persons was love.

When I insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement for the marriage that followed Bart’s death, my attorney tried to dissuade me. “Brenda, you are not a wealthy woman.” He had no idea how vast that inheritance appeared to little Brenda Sims.

The repercussions of losing Bart in 1985 rippled forth in my life. I suppose I lacked awareness myself of the ways in which I could not let go of him. Ten years after his death, a new seminary friend commented, “Since knowing you, I also feel like Bart is just away on a business trip and will be back soon.” The mirror she held up for me reflected that I communicated a relationship with Bart that existed only in my heart and mind. I also endured nightmares in which Bart still lived but had moved on to another house, wife and family. Stating the obvious, I had deep-seated fears that all men would leave like my Dad.

In 2001, after meeting John, my last and current husband, I saw an advertisement on TV for a new film about a great love story. I thought, “Oh my god, I’m being reminded of great love and for the first time in sixteen years I don’t wish for Bart to still be alive!”

The Good, The Bad and the Oh, So Frustrating in Each of Us

There is so much good in the worst of us

And so much bad in the best of us

That it hardly behooves any of us

To talk about the rest of us.

Edward Wallis Hoch

The holidays always provide an opportunity for us to remember all people can be good and bad, kind and irritable, helpful and obstructive, accommodating and frustrating. Yes, even the sweetest among us have a dark side and, woe to you who triggers the dark side of a perpetually sweet one. I hear they are scary.

Treat yourself to seeing the movie, The Descendants, with George Clooney, directed by Alexander Payne. But first, don’t get your hopes up about lusting after George. I know you will think this impossible, but they do attempt to make him look dorky. In those pants and with the running scene, they nearly succeed. Even so, it’s a stretch to believe any wife would cheat on George! Nevertheless, the movie is worth your time to be reminded of the truth of the Edward Wallis Hoch’s poem above.

Every person in the film reveals both sides of his/her character. Yes, George too. It forces the viewer to grapple with moral and ethical dilemmas that we would like to deem easy, clear cut choices. Does being an absentee father make it okay for your daughters to talk to you with disrespect? Does being a friend mean you don’t tell the spouse about infidelity? Without spoiling the film, let’s just say—there are no easy answers when you’re willing to admit we are all flawed human beings.

The reminder I walked out of the theatre with is this: I want to be loved in spite of all my shortcomings so I must constantly remember to put aside the bad, irritable, obstructive and frustrating behaviors of others. Easier to remember than to pull off during the holidays! Renew your strength and just do it!  

Expecting Adam by Martha Beck

This post was inspired by the book, Expecting Adam by Martha Beck.  As a member of From Left to Write book club, I received a copy of this book. This is not a review, it is a post inspired ll opinions are my own. You can read other members' posts inspired by Expecting Adam on book club day, November 9, 2011 at From Left to Write.

“This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living; the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.” from Expecting Adam.

I applaud Martha Beck’s discovery that relationships are the true essence of life. I also want Martha to know that not all of us start with the loving family that Adam got.

           As sure as my love for unsweetened iced tea, one glass of white wine with dinner and Lindt chocolate peanut butter balls, relationships are essential to my very being. For connection, I started with what I received biologically. Decades later, I continue to define relationships as the richness of life and I am forced to admit, I started with interesting raw material.

We’d take the big round table in the corner if I gathered my family at a local restaurant. Older brother Bill, in bib overalls, no longer reeks of alcohol but his wrinkled skin, droopy eyelids, and dark circled orbs broadcasts that his body has not recovered even though his spirit is a perpetual “pink cloud.” (Alcoholics Anonymous jargon for the euphoria from getting sober.)  As he laughs too loudly and tells stories of drunken days and lost weekends, I see glimpses of the little boy and the teenager who greeted each day with “Hello world!” and wore a Japanese happy coat (generally translated to English as hapi or happi coat not happy) through much of high school. Bill could fix anything that needed fixing especially if it was a hydraulic engine. During the worst of his drinking years, he worked for two companies that maintained big garbage trucks in the Chicago area. He would wear out the patience of one company with his priority on alcohol and the other company would hire him by the next afternoon. His extraordinary skill encountered something he could not control when one of the giant tires on a truck exploded at his chest. His injuries are not visible at this dinner but they continued to scar his health the remainder of his life.

Bill’s logical explanation about The Incident that caused him to be a registered sex offender by the state of Florida hangs in the air like a leftover party banner. Perhaps his pink cloud drifted away on that day he raged at his mentally challenged stepdaughter and grabbed her breast.

Pretense only brings Bill to this dinner because his early life of drinking and smoking took its toll and Bill died of lung cancer at age sixty-five in 2010.

Sister Margaret arrives after Bill. She, too, looks on the outside like the choices she made on the inside. Her anger worn thick like her mascara, her bitterness as brittle as the tenth coat of hot pink polish painted on her nails. I dig deep to find the bright little girl who skipped second grade or quick sense of humor of her young adulthood. Margaret’s laughter at a joke or situation that struck her as funny spread like news of the best shoe sale in town.

Margaret blurts out as soon as she is seated, “Can you believe I have to have another surgery? This time it’s for carpel tunnel syndrome.” She delivers this news with excitement rather than the resignation or frustration usually accompanied with surgery. 

Bill reassures her, “Margaret, you may have had cirrhosis of the liver when you were five but you don’t have it now and you’re not that sickly little girl anymore. You should have dropped the hypochondria decades ago.”

I accepted Margaret’s hypochondria and surgery-of-the-moment ages ago, I wonder how someone as bright as Margaret cannot remember when to use she/her and he/him and they/them?  When confronted or teased about her grammar, she tells you rule by rule the correct usage, yet refuses to use such rules in daily speech. This stubbornness completes the picture of refusing to get her undergraduate degree. For decades, she worked at a university where she could have finished for free. She dared to call colleagues “educated idiots” when they didn’t see things her way.

Sister Ashley hobbles behind Margaret, the years of looking like Linda Carter of Wonder Woman fame locked away in her memory. A run-in with a forklift on the factory floor interrupted her work life, sapped her will and drained her desires for years afterward. This waning of her will started early but the accident squeezed its last breath. Her creativity, sensitivity, beauty and wit might as well be specimens in the jars of a science lab for all the use they were to her. Perhaps her children have taken the jars off the shelf, handled them with curiosity and put them back, thinking “Surely these belong to some one else. They couldn’t possibly belong to the hollowed-out, used-up, emotional cripple that is our mother.” Ashley sparkled on stage when she sang and acted. Her wit, even as a child, shined through in letters she wrote to me when I was in college. If Emerson is correct in saying, “What is needed in life is someone who will make us do what we are able,” Ashley didn’t have that someone in her life. I thought it would be me then discovered it wasn’t.

            Our final sib Vivian, may be the most fortunate in having less potential to work with. She wonders aloud, “Am I retarded?” We assure her she’s not, but quilt-like comfort can’t be found in some simple diagnosis. The family shakes its corporate head and says, “She’s just Vivian.” In subsequent generations, Vivian would have been diagnosed with multiple learning disorders. As a child, her waif-look, quaint vocabulary and general neediness manifested as Cosby-kid cute. At forty, it evokes wells of sadness and pity. Circumstances will require legal intervention to protect one of her children from Vivian’s lack of parenting skill. Her other child will spend time in prison, may still be there. Vivian doesn’t hobble physically like Ashley but the weight of her mother-guilt rests so heavily on her psyche it cannot be alleviated by crutch or cane. Pretense also brings Viv to this dinner, she too succumbed to an early death at age forty-seven in 2006.

            At this imaginary dinner, I, of course, made the reservation, order some appetizers and resolve for the umpteenth time not to pick up the whole check. I wear my excess of education like my expensive, well-tailored Doncaster clothes. The skinny little girl whose crinoline always hung out below her skirt no longer exists. The smile, grooming and practiced charm weave a curtain of denial which covers the pain, vulnerability and poor self-esteem of the Family Enabler Extraordinaire. I keep nurturing the thought that I can redeem every embarrassing characteristic of my family with my own perfect behavior. It’s exhausting not to mention arrogant.

Then there’s the general perception hanging in the air like humidity in August that Brenda experiences no pain because, “She has money and a good man. My God, what more could she want?”

Oh, my, I sound bitter and angry. I must work on that.

As I pick my fingers raw (under the table, of course), my soul longs to be seen as a whole person by these people--fragile and strong and oh, so, imperfect. That’s what I want. Perhaps it is an unreasonable request of these people who are immersed in their own struggles and rendered myopic by their own pain. I bore the weight of guilt about rearing these siblings before I ever became a mother. My plan that a college education would pull each one of them along with me failed before I framed the diploma. This guilt rests like concrete blocks on both my shoulders.

            Oh, I forgot, Mother is here.

Ashley surely chose Mother’s too bright Wal-Mart dress; Margaret must have fixed her low-maintenance hairstyle and Vivi hovers over her expecting her to actually be a mother. Tall, big-boned, a bit overweight, Mother looks older than her years. Her high forehead and rectangular face hit at attractive but don’t quite make it there.

From her earliest encounters with motherhood, Violet Lee struggled. She laughs at herself and tells stories about her attempts at parenting like the day Bill swung a fish hook into my eyelid. She called a taxi to rush me to the hospital and left Bill, age six, alone on the sidewalk.

Surprise! Surprise! Dad arrives late. Perhaps we should honor him for showing up since he has built a life around the role of absent father. He doesn’t have his pet pig in tow this evening and appears sober. At eighty-six, he looks one hundred and five and the self-proclaimed “shit-eatin'” grin that made all women between twelve and sixty weak-kneed now seems as rusted out as the moonshine still in his back yard. Dad pulled off this larger-than-life character with stunts. For example, he had a photograph of himself framed and surrounded by individual pictures of all six of his wives. He had nine marriages to these six women.  Friends flocked to his place on the Ohio River where an extra refrigerator devoid of shelves had its belly-filled with a keg that hooked up to an exterior spigot. Dad invented this decades before appliance companies got the idea to have water and ice accessible on the outside of the fridge door.

            If my family is the poster child for wasted genius, Dad is the Jerry Lewis circus barker trying to convince the world that it’s cool to underachieve. I cringe because I’m so afraid he will grab his chair, straddle it backwards and order a “smart alec.” I don’t know what that drink is but I know he can’t pull off the devil-may-care party animal anymore. At this pretend dinner, we will laugh, have fun and never acknowledge or deal with realities like alcoholism, divorce, education, intimate relationships or caring for Mom or Dad when they’re old. The strain put on the fabric of reality causes even the table, chairs and menus to tense the fibers of their being.

Why Can't LOVE be simple?

This post was inspired by the novel, Carry Yourself Back to Me by Deborah Reed. A copy of this book was given to me by virtue of my membership in www.fromlefttowrite.com.  This is not a review of the book.

Deborah Reed sets up a story for us that highlights all the ramifications of loving others, loosing those we love and learning to forgive. Like many good stories, it is a universal tale of love.

The book instigated my thinking about the complexity of loving others, a proposition that is rarely, if ever, simple. Perhaps the most pure form of love is mother for child but even that can sometime be made complicated by circumstances. What if you have to give that child up for some reason? What if you have initiated the pregnancy as part of a scheme to get the money required for the survival of the rest of your family? Why can’t even that purest of all loves be simple?

A favorite John Lynner Peterson photo says it all about  LOVE!

I have a new friend and a very old friend who are staying in loveless marriages for their own complicated reasons—in spite of loving someone else! Why can’t love be simple?

I have loved more than a few alcoholics in my family. That is truly a complicated love that many people have experienced. Why can’t love be simple?

And then there is the complicated love we experience as parents when we learn there is an expiration date on children following our wishes and demands. We learn that we love people even when they make decisions we disagree with and when we can no longer protect them from themselves. Why can’t love be simple?

I’m currently thinking the purest form of love is grandparent for grandchild. I revel each day in the simplicity of it. I don’t want the day to come when it will be more complex. I hope the most complicated disagreement we will ever have is whether Poppa will buy him a Happy Meal or not. I know that will not always be the case. Why can’t love be simple?

Have you experienced a simple love? What made it so?

Guest Post Today by Lynn Motley LCSW

My guest today is Lynn Motley LCSW whose post on Labor Day spoke to my need to self care. It would make me feel old if I told you that I taught Lynn in Sunday School when she was in high school, so I won't. Thanks, Lynn, for appearing on Grit and Grace.

Ironically, this Labor Day, rather than playing I had planned PROJECTS. I wanted to use this three-day weekend to get all of the things complete on my “to do list”: things that can keep me up at night — thinking and planning all of the things that I never seem to have time to do. I love that feeling of accomplishment and checking things off my list.

Just as the weather this weekend did a U-turn, so did my plans. After several blistering days, I awoke on Saturday to a break in the heat with slightly overcast skies. It was if someone had pressed the mute button on the audio. It was quiet. I was quiet. I found myself in a very mellow mood, a mood that would not support me with accomplishing all of my plans. Truthfully, I really could have cared less….I just wanted to “BE”. When a thought arose about my list, it was met with disinterest. What’s up?

I decided to surrender to my mood and just go with it. Rather than “fight it” or try to push through it, it might be a way my body and soul are trying to tell me to PAY ATTENTION. Maybe the Universe was conspiring to get me to pay attention, too.

Pay attention to what?

Here’s what I learned:
That when I listen to myself, there are gifts that unfold….Gifts that are more important than getting the next thing checked off of my list. In rejuvenating, recharging, and tuning in, I can be mindful of the small things. I tune into nature. I can appreciate myself and my body for more than just doing. An ease in relationships shows up and the space between moments of busyness in my family expands. I find Inspiration to sit in my pj’s and write this blog….

I love the idea of being planful and it is important to “git r done”; I also love being organic and being in the flow of life.

Why is this important?

As we learn about relationships, attachment and connection, we know that all of this juicy relatedness stems from responsiveness and attunement. Simply put: being present, paying attention and meeting another’s needs. If this is what the “glue of relationships” is made of, why would it be any different for our relationship with our self?

This got me thinking about really honoring ourselves and giving ourselves permission to listen into our needs, our wants/desires and to take care of ourselves, just as we would with others. Self-care — not selfishness. What if we had this as the most important and the first item on our “list”? I think this self-attunement has gotten misappropriated onto the “selfish” list or the “lazy” list; rather than on the “self-care” list — that keeps us balanced and responsive to life.

Try starting here with this as the first item on your list, today and everyday as a window into your soul. Tune in and pay attention. Without labeling, just observe. Notice what your body is telling you. What inspires you — or not. Honor this place. Maybe there is a need you’ve shoved down, or an action you’ve been taking habitually, rather than listening into what is best serving you. Giving ourselves permission to “be” at the top of our “list” is freedom and power. As for my planned “to do list”, it will always be there. But the moments of being responsive and attuned-in this weekend have given me an interesting detour into a more important place.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Why, when something important happens to you, do you feel compelled to tell someone else about it? Even people who are reticent to talk about themselves can’t help telling others about events significant to them. It’s as if nothing has happened until an event is made explicit in language.

Roger C. Schank

In our continuing conversation about living authentically, let’s spend a moment thinking about who you share information with. It’s probably easy to say who you call when you have good news---friends, family, post it on Facebook, etc., etc. But who do you call when you get bad news? If you’ve lost your job, didn’t get the job you wanted, made a decision to get a divorce or even worse, have had a sudden death in the family---who do you call? This list may be smaller and may even be different people. When the chips are down, we turn to the people that have the ability to give comfort.

Now let’s examine another category---who do you call when you are being your worst self? When you have the mean-nasties or experience the ugly, crying jag or move into the bitchy-gossip mode. Who is the friend or family that you trust to see you as your worst self and still love you.

That’s the person who knows you most authentically. The potential for more relationships to be as rich as this last person you named is directly correlated to how willing you are to be your authentic self.   

Johari Window helps Authenticity

Photo by John Lynner Peterson

I want to live authentically but what if others don’t? Does it put me at risk in my career or even in my personal relationships, if I want relationships based on honesty and truth?

The Johari Window supplies a good answer to those questions. When we open ourselves to others AKA living authentically, we give them permission to do the same.

The Johari Window is a four square table about communication. It describes how our openness in human communication increases respectively when you share with others and decreases depending on how clearly we express our self and how keenly we are listening to each other. The model was developed in the fifties by the psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. To give and to obtain feedback is an important process in all co-operations. By having a listening attitude and obtaining feedback you get to know how others look at you. By giving feedback others get to know your view of things.

  

If this is a bit scary for you, start one person at a time. Do you need to start with your spouse? Your children? Your parents? What would it mean to be fully authentic in one of these relationship? 

Perfect--Adjust Attitude

My step-daughter reminded me last night about an occasion when she and I were sorting through a group of her shirts. My role was to alter, mend or pronounce the shirt dead and prepare it for burial. I pinned notes on each shirt so we wouldn’t forget the status as we moved on to mending. One shirt needed absolutely no alteration, mending and was still very wearable but she just didn’t like it as much. So I marked it, “Perfect—adjust attitude.”

This same dear step-daughter shared with me last night that she now applies the phrase “perfect—adjust attitude” to relationships. She’s brilliant! It works. When you let go of the need to change others, change the relationship and adjust your own attitude the affect on your relationships is magic.

Try it today.