The Far Better Half

One of the most difficult things for me as a father has been to balance what I want for my daughters with what makes them happy.   My primary goal so far has been to keep them safe.   I’m sure they think that if I had my way, they would all be living in a bunker deep in the ground, or in the tallest tower of a far away castle.   In truth, this would be appropriate because they are my Princesses, despite the fact that I am in no way a King.

One of our goals as parents has always been to give our girls a strong self esteem.   We didn’t want them to go looking for their self-worth in a man, because a lot of men prey on young women who crave even the slightest bit of attention.   These men can easily take advantage of that lack of self worth and eventually they take complete control.    This was not a life we wanted for our daughters.

As I look back on my life as a father, I realize that I have done a few things right, but many things wrong.   I was probably too over-protective (although, in my defense, they have been largely injury free!).  I did not set a good example regarding diet and exercise.  I was sarcastic when I should have been sincere.    I was jokey when I should have been honest.

It’s amazing, miraculous even, that they have turned out as wonderful as they have.   They are good kids.   Better people than me.  Better people than most (yeah, I am not very objective on this subject). 

I owe much of this to the Grace of God, who gifted me with them in the first place and then didn’t let me mess them up too much.    They also have a great support system in their extended family, who love and support them unconditionally.    Finally, they have their mother, the best choice I ever made both for them and myself.  

I see Connie in all the good things about my daughters, which fortunately outweigh the faults they got from me.  They are careful, but not paranoid.  They are sarcastic, but caring.   They can joke and play, but know when to be serious.   They like pizza AND salad!

A good marriage, and a successful family, is based on teamwork.    While I find myself usually out in left field, Connie is our most valuable player, and also our Coach, team doctor and our cheering section.   Without her, we wouldn’t know how to play.

I hope my daughters understand that why I love their mother so much is that she doesn’t need me.   That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me, but that she doesn’t need my constant approval to make her happy.   She is her own person, and she has her own interests.  She doesn’t think she’s as awesome as I know she is, but she has a healthy self-esteem.   She stands up for herself when she needs to and she will sacrifice for others without giving all of herself away.  

She is comfortable in a crowd, and can light up a room, but her favorite place is sitting quietly in a field in the mountains.   She has an adventurous heart, tempered by logic not to do something insanely dangerous.   She hikes for the journey, not the destination.

I hope my girls remember that she is never too tired for them.  No matter how late it is or how little sleep she has had, she listens intently to whatever story they think is important enough to share.   As my “Dad Hearing” ability to tune out chatter becomes stronger with age, she hears everything they say and remembers.   She understands more than most of us that nothing is unimportant when it comes to your child.

In case I’ve made her pedestal a bit too high, let me say that she’s not completely perfect.   She doesn’t believe me when I tell her how beautiful she is.    She doesn’t understand that I think she’s one the smartest, most capable people I have ever met (and at my age, I’ve met a lot of people…and a lot of them have been VERY smart and VERY capable).    She doesn’t grasp how proud I am to be her husband and anytime I don’t show it is due to my issues and not hers.

So, as my daughters get older and are reaching crossroads in their lives, I hope they pray for guidance and listen carefully for the answers they should hear and not what they want to hear.   I hope they think about the example set by their Mother.   I hope they appreciate her as much as they should.  

It seems so little to say, but here it is,   "Connie...my wife, my love, the amazing mother of my children...Thank You…"

Searching for Gratitude

 

If I seem to have been preoccupied with death and dying recently, I think it’s because death and dying have been preoccupied with me.   I have a tendency to be a bit morose on the best of days, so cover me in a shroud of mourning and mortality and watch me devolve into what can best be described as “the dark place.”  Since the first of August, my family has lost my sister, my mother, my uncle and just a week ago, my cousin.   Meanwhile, my Dad has been dealing with ongoing health issues and now my brother is in the hospital for the week of Thanksgiving.  

 

Yes, I’ve been in “the dark place.”    It’s not very pretty here, and I’m not very fun to be around.    I’ve been describing my thought process lately as “Swiss cheese,” with big empty holes where logic or short term memory used to reside.    My mind is muddy, and my self-pity has been keeping me from finding my way out.

 

I would be content enough to wallow in all this for a good long while, I think.    It’s an excuse for lots of things.    I can be anti-social, sullen, sarcastic, bitter…and it’s so easily explained by my loss rather than just being my “go-to” place when I’m not happy with myself.    Like the crutch of “comfort food” (and I went there too…with gleeful and gluttonous abandon), playing the “woe is me” card is the easy way to deal.

 

After the punch in the gut of a loved one’s death, sometimes you need another punch in the gut to wake up.   On Monday afternoon, Shelby called to tell us that one of her fellow music majors had died Sunday night in a house fire.   I had seen the news reports that day and seen the smoldering rubble on television.   The report was that three had survived but one had not.   Turns out that the woman had three children (ages 12, 8 and 5) which she got out of the house, but then she returned to save the family dog and never came back.     Horrible as this is, we learned that her husband had died in late August of heart disease.  

 

So now these kids have lost their father, their mother and all their earthly possessions in the course of 3 months.    The immensity of this just breaks my heart.   I know how hard it has been for me to deal with death in the last few months, but at their age…to watch their mother go back inside that smoking home and not return…the fear and pain must be immeasurable.  

 

For the first time since Mom died I was sincerely overcome by incredible gratitude that I had been able to have her in my life for as long as I did.   I was able to see past the loss of the moment and see how fortunate I was.   She was there for me through so many important moments in my life.    She was able to share her special kindness and love with my children, who are old enough to have those memories and carry her with them for the rest of their lives.   

 

Over the course of my life, I received so many smiles and so many hugs.  

 

I am grateful on this first Thanksgiving without her, that I have so many Thanksgiving memories of her.   Mom was the warm heart of our family, and she gave a piece of herself to each of us.   My self-pity would not honor her.   

 

Last weekend I was cleaning up messages on my phone and was grateful to find two with my mother’s sweet voice speaking to me.   One was wishing me a happy birthday last year and the other was from this summer when she was checking in to see if I was okay.    She always worried over us.   She worried about me travelling and flying so much.    I’m grateful she doesn’t have to worry any more.

 

This has been the hardest year of my life.   Sometimes it seemed like too much, but that’s only because when I look back, my burden had been pretty light for the most part and I hadn’t built up the strength to carry a heavy load.    I should be grateful for that.   I’ve had a great life.    I’ve been blessed with loving parents and siblings, an incredible wife, wonderful children, and good friends.   When I start to stoop from the load I’m carrying, they lift me up.   The faith my parents instilled in me lifts me up as well.    If I just let go, my burden will be light once again.

 

I have so much to be thankful for.   

What I didn't know...

The “Proscenium Arch” is a theatrical term for the framed area of the stage where the primary action takes place.   It is where our focus is drawn.   Actors perform for us within that arch and then go off stage, where they might spend their time refreshing their makeup or checking their scripts.   We don’t really know what they are doing, because we don’t see them…and frankly, when they aren’t in that arch, we quickly lose interest in their existence. 

In truth, we each live our lives like that.  Our vision creates our own personal “proscenium arch” on which the theatre of our life plays.   We see what is in front of us at any given moment, and those things that are going on behind us or far away from us (out of our line of sight) take on a far lesser importance.  

I had the crazy idea once that if I turned around fast enough, I might actually see that there wasn’t really anything behind me.   My theory (which is incredibly self-centered and kind of ridiculous) was that if I wasn’t seeing it, maybe it didn’t really exist.   It’s kind of like that old saying that “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, would it make a sound?”  

My point in all this theorizing and postulating on what is real and what is not is that there are a lot of things going on in this world that I can never see or experience firsthand.    Still, just because I don’t see it within my personal “proscenium arch” doesn’t mean it isn’t taking place somewhere and might at some point have an impact on me or someone I care about.

Since my world revolves around me, I usually think I understand it pretty well.  I know those who have fallen into my orbit (family and friends) and I think I have them pretty much figured out.    Ask me about one of them and I can sum up who they are in a couple of common, simple words or phrases.   I can do this because this is “my world” and it’s all about what I know.

The problem, as I have become acutely aware, is that I don’t know that much…and what I do know, I don’t understand all that well.

Before she died, I would have described my sister with a few words:  “strong willed,..fun loving...stubborn.”  I would have told people that she “loved her family and friends” and I was “amazed at how resilient she was in the face of her physical challenges.” 

I would have said these things to encapsulate the entirety of her life.   Almost 44 years boiled down to 23 words.   Not even close to a word per year.

I loved my sister, despite some of our differences, and I thought I knew her, but I did not.   I knew what I saw, in that narrow window that I view the world through, but I did not see her off my stage, living and interacting with others. 

It was not until after her death that I began to get a better view of Tracy and who she was.   Through the words of others a picture of my sister emerged that was much more complete than the role that I allowed her to play in my life.  I did not see the impact her compassion and friendship made on others.   I did not see how her determination to live life on her terms was inspiring to so many.

I did not know.

Our life has many Acts, and sometimes characters that perform such an integral part within one Act will play a much less significant role in others.   Without a doubt my parents, my two brothers and my sister were the stars of my life’s first Act.  

Mom was the central character; my moral compass, my teacher, my healer, my therapist.   She defined my childhood with her unconditional love and her acceptance of who I was and who I wasn’t.   She was rarely off the stage, and if she wasn’t front and center, she was busy in the background, doing something to make my life easier and happier.

My life’s second Act began when I met Connie.   When she was on stage, she held my rapt attention, and when she wasn’t, she was rarely off my mind.   The stage was reset when we married and after moving to Tennessee, the sets and scenery changed.  Three new stars took center stage when our daughters were born, and the appearance of beloved characters from the first Act were far less frequent.  

You justify in your mind that talking on the phone once or twice a week or visiting three or four times a year keeps you involved in someone’s life, but that leaves a lot of time unaccounted for.   You don’t intend for those characters to stay offstage for so long, but there are so many things going on in front of you at any given time that it is easy to forget who is waiting in the wings.

We do not recognize that we are co-writers of our own script.  We have considerable control over who comes on stage and who doesn’t.   Since we are generally making things up as we go, most of the time we see what we want to see at that particular moment…and later we might wish that we had written things differently.   

As I look back on the staging of my life, there are many scenes I wish I had written differently.

I did not know that my sister would die on August 1, 2012 and that I would be fortunate enough to be there and say one last goodbye. 

I did not know that only six short weeks later I would receive a 2am phone call from my brother telling me that my mother was gone.   I did not know that I would never get to tell her “Goodbye…I love you,” or give her one last hug.  

I did not know, when I spoke to her in that quick conversation from the airport the Friday before she died, that it would be the last time I would hear her sweet voice.   I did not know that when I was busy on Wednesday evening and thought, “I’ll call tomorrow,” that Thursday would be my first day without my mother.  

There are so many things I did not know…

Mom was offstage for much of the Second Act of my life.   She was often on my mind, and always in my prayers, but I didn’t write her into as many scenes as I should have.  

I must also recognize that Mom was living her own play in which I was a character.   She did not write me out of her script, but set me free to live my own.   She did this because she loved me, and she never stopped.  I loved her too, and I am grateful that I told her that many times.  

Her final Act on this Earth ended much earlier than I wanted.   I thought she would be with me for many more years.  Still, I could not ask for a more wonderful passing for someone that I love so much than to go peacefully in her sleep in her own bed.  A better author than I wrote that part of her script.

There are times when I would like the chance to do a re-write on parts of my own life, but I know that is impossible and probably unwise.    I have to accept the simple fact that there was much I did not know, much I did not do, and much I did not say.   These are things which I hope will inform me as I enter the final Act of my life.   If nothing else, Mom would have wanted me to learn something, to find out those things I “need to know,” and to be a better person.

I have just begun the long mourning and the missing of her physical presence in my life.   To never be able to pick up the phone and hear her voice and her wise counsel again breaks my heart.   To walk up that path to the family home and not see her at the back door, smiling and ready with a hug, is almost unbearable to think about.  But as the wise young pastor, who spoke so eloquently at her funeral said, "she's now waiting at another door."  

I know that to be true...and I'll hug her again one day.

I love you Mom.