Christmas is over, with all its mixed emotions and tension. It was a relaxed day after all the preparations. No family disagreements, just a fun time at the river. Our children are adults now, some with babies of their own.  They help prepare the dinner and get the tables ready.  We have a close family even with our differences.  Our family is reforming after the deaths of our parents. I think we're going to be all right.

Year one of retirement

My retirement began with my best friend's cancer diagnosis.  I was driving on the Atlanta freeway when she called to tell me that she had stage four cancer.  It was a Sunday, and I was driving to North Carolina to meet friends for a week in the mountains. I had retired the previous Friday, and was ready for a some down time.  She had been shuffling from doctor to doctor in order to ascertain the nature of the  lump she had discovered several months earlier. I was stunned by her news, and was navigating  an unfamiliar freeway, so our conversation was brief.
 A blur of doctor appointments, treatment, hospitalizations, hope, and denial swirled past me for the next seven months.  She continued to teach art, and I took two of her classes.  Her students had become her friends, so she received energy from teaching.  Chemotherapy was  started, which made her so sick that she was hospitalized. Different chemotherapy was begun.  She lost her hair and experimented with wigs and hats. She was too tired to care for her dog, so a friend took him temporarily.  She gave me her house plants.  She made funeral arrangements with our priest and wrote her obituary.  She started giving friends pieces of her art and jewelry.  She donated her body to the local university where she had once taught.  She took care of all of the end-of-life details so that her sons wouldn't have to do it after she died. She did all this while hanging on to the hope that this cancer might be reduced to a manageable condition. This started to seem possible.
 She joined my family for Thanksgiving Dinner and we enjoyed sitting on the front porch chatting in the mild November weather.  She organized a Christmas potluck at the Art Center where she taught.  We went to church  together on Christmas Eve, and several people mentioned how beautiful she looked. She and her son spent Christmas day together, and she made the meal she most wanted-tuna casserole.  She enjoyed the company of her three cats.          
 She decided she needed a land line in case she needed to call for help and her cell phone was out of power.  We made an awful trip to the cell phone store, where she was hardly able to walk from the car to the store and had to sit down as soon as we made it through the door.  The salesman was not patient with her difficulty expressing her thoughts, but we finally got what we came for.  She went in for scans, then we had a conference with her doctor. Her son, and six or seven friends gathered in a tiny room designed for four people at most.  Her difficulty walking was a symptom of the cancer which had metastasized to her brain and bones. It was also present in her lungs. She was admitted to a hospital room at once to begin a 12 day course of radiation of her brain.  She seemed eager to get this treatment.

Summer weather is here, which means that Summer Day Treatment cannot be far behind. Summer Day Treatment means that we will spend more time indoors with the kids because the high temperatures and high humidity levels outside make being there uncomfortable. It also usually means that my aides may change as we get settled. What all this really means is that I am sick of my job, mostly because my schedule allows little free time. It's killing me. Now that I have decided to quit after Summer Day Treatment is over, I am scared. I fear slipping deeper into depression, like I am doing today. I fear loneliness. I feel unsettled. I will miss parts of my work-the people I see every day, the families I work with, the pretty parts of my drive, having good supervisors, having support staff, the teamwork approach to getting the job done. I don't think that I will ever work for pay again. I'm so tired of being always on the go, of having nearly every minute scheduled. I could sleep for days, maybe years.

Another Funeral

My cousin died this week.  She was 60.  She had cancer, breast cancer, 15 yrs.ago, then remission, then it came back and killed her.  She was much loved by her family, students, friends, and fellow church members, and her funeral was standing room only.  She was a devout Christian, an evangelical Christian.  She got up every morning at 4:30 to have her, "time with the Lord."  I was mystified by her brand of religion.  She stopped going to Mardi Gras parades. Her children didn't believe in the Easter Bunny.  She invited me to come to her church.  I did not go or want to go.  I felt superior to her because she was a fundamentalist.  Years later we came to an understanding concerning our spiritual lives.  I visited her new church.  We remained close, especially in the last year or so.  What struck me at her funeral was the remark I heard over and over.  "She never said anything bad about anybody."  And she didn't.  She called people who were lonely, slept on the floor of the hospital waiting room when her childhood friend was dying, called her mother every day, taught history to fifth graders, raised two wonderful daughters, and remained a vibrant and entertaining person who was fun to be around.  She enjoyed her life immensely. She was a happy person.  Now I think that what I saw in her life was a product of her ,"time with the Lord."  At some point she told me that God had showed her that she didn't know anything.  I took this to mean that she had opened up to the idea that there are many ways to follow the example of Christ.  I'm thinking now that her life was lived with her God , and that I have been fortunate to have been the recipient of her love and care.  Her emails in these last months have been so full of hope and praise.  She was exhausted by chemotherapy and its side effects.  Her test results were disappointing.  Still she thanked God for her family and friends.  Looking back, I realize how remarkable she was.  She was a person who fully became the woman God had intended her to be.  She lived her life with joy. I will miss her loving kindness and uninhibited personality.