Month: July 2017

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Broken

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve started this post. Maybe I shouldn’t write it if I can’t get my thoughts together, but maybe it will help? I don’t know.

My brother, my big brother, my first friend….Phil….died on July 23. To say that I’m heartbroken or to say that my family is devastated does not seem to really say what we’re feeling. I don’t want to speak for them, but any parent who loses a child, whether 2 months old, 14 years or 49…it’s unspeakable, unfathomable. And my brother-in-law lost his partner of nearly a quarter of a century. My brother was the younger of the pair. How does this man, who was with my brother not only throughout the years but through the past few weeks of pain and uncertainty and thankfully with my brother as he took his last breath…how does this man go on without having Phil there to make him laugh every single day?

How do the rest of us?

If you know me well or if you’ve known me for a long time, you know I looked up (literally and figuratively) to my brother. He was a giant in my life, and being 6’6″, a giant in most people’s lives. He was always naughty, like in a Groucho Marx kind of way. He was incredibly kind, especially to his family and friends. He loved us with everything he had and it showed. I don’t think I realized how good he really was until I saw him with my son.  Watching my brother read to my son or play action figures with him or chase my boy with a squirt gun not only made me happy, but it allowed me to watch another person become completely enamored of my big brother and with good reason.

Phil made us all laugh until we cried. He could find humor in nearly every situation, no matter how dark.  He listened. He was never afraid to be himself and encouraged that in others. Hence the photo.

Phil&Brihats

He loved to cook. He loved to try funky foods because he knew he would never travel again and that was how he could “vacation” or experience life to the fullest. His music tastes ranged from Weird Al to Adele to show tunes. His taste in books were as varied as his taste in music. He loved Stephen King and other horror writers, but he enjoyed Liane Moriarty, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and MAD Magazine.

But he was also a writer. A really good one. I have some stories and poems he wrote years ago, including a story he wrote me for one of my birthdays, that portrays himself as a monkey. Which is perfectly fitting because he had a thing for monkeys. He was finally published a few years ago by Forbidden Fiction with some of his gay erotica stories. And before you start judging, you should read some of it. He always said that his erotica (and most others) were really romance but with a bit of nastiness thrown in. Love, not sex, is the true focus of erotica.

Phil was an amazing human being. And I miss him. But even saying that doesn’t sound right. It’s so much more than missing someone. I’ve had this constant ache in my belly since he died. I’m so tired and I feel heavy and even when I think I’m ok, something will trigger a memory and I’m caught off guard and I’ll let out this quick little sob. I try to hold it back, but what’s the point, really?

My brother is in every room of my house. He was here nearly every week for the past decade, either to visit with us or babysit my boy after school or here for family gatherings. He has a pair of slippers here that I bought just for him after my husband and I bought this house. (His size 16 feet were not easy to buy shoes for.)  There’s a box of Splenda in my cupboard for when he came over for a cup of tea. He has his own profile on my Netflix account. He’s everywhere.

And yesterday, we even scattered some of his ashes around the outside of my home. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that, but my boy did. He knew right where Uncle should be. And once we scattered a few of Phil’s ashes, my boy said, “I’m never going to wash my hands again.” We squashed that idea immediately, but I knew exactly what he meant. I didn’t want to wash my hands again, either. In fact, I kept rubbing them together, trying to embed some of my brother into my skin. Later in the day, when I started to wash dishes, I realized what I was doing and pulled my hands from the water like I had been burned. I was so mad at myself. I forgot. I fucking forgot. Rationally I knew I had to wash my hands at some point but did it have to be then? Couldn’t I have tried to hold on longer?

But here’s where everything gets *really* difficult.

Life goes on.

How the hell does that happen? Actually, I’m not even asking how right now, but why? Why does it have to? There’s a big chunk of me missing. That person I used to watch the Oscars with, the relative my boy would look forward to seeing each week, that guy I’d talk books and writing with….fuck.

Easter, all of our birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Phil was here for all of those things.

And now he’s not….and I’m just…..

 

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Getting My Shit Together

A few months ago, I read this fantastic book:

getyourshitHave you read it? Or anything by Sarah Knight? I love her. Yes, she swears a lot (hence my attraction to her work) but she also gives great advice. And although I loved her last book more (The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck), this book came at the right time. A time when I was feeling out of control and needed to get a grip. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, though. Maybe I need to read it again?

Last week at the library, we had a fantastic speaker by the name of Janie Downey Maxwell. She has a blog called Organizational Habits where she discusses what one can do to become more organized. Her talk was called “Organizational Zen” and she not only talked about tools to become more organized (planner vs. calendar) but also how one can find a bit of peace while becoming organized.

I’ve been anxious to hear what Janie had to say. I’ve never felt more out of control than I have this past month. Last week I had an appointment with a surgeon (Dr. Huang) to talk about my pancreas. I didn’t fully understand why I was seeing him before my new gastroenterologist. Huang wants to do a CT scan of my pancreas so he can see it when it’s not screaming at me. Totally smart and completely understandable. I may have a cyst or a pseudocyst or possibly something else sitting on the tail of my pancreas. He very subtly mentioned the rare case of pancreatic cancer, but said there’s no reason to worry right now because they don’t know anything yet and I seem fine at the moment.

Huh.

Ok. I wasn’t too horrified…until I left his office. I went to take one of his business cards and realized that not only this doctor, but everyone in this office were surgical oncologists.  Well….fuck. I’m just glad I didn’t know that BEFORE my appointment.

So…between my health issues and attempting to “fix” Mom’s finances, all of my goals for this year have gone right down the tubes. Our spending moratorium hasn’t gone well since the end of April. We’ve helped my mom out a bit, then had an unexpected car repair and dentist appointment, so out came the credit card from my little hiding place. My goal of running a half marathon again this year is going to go on the back burner. This body just isn’t having it.

After listening to Janie, I decided to finally put forward something I should have done months ago. I often feel overwhelmed by my range of responsibilities, don’t you? I was afraid to write everything down because if I saw it all in black and white then this feeling of drowning would overcome me and a breakdown would be inevitable.

Yet…I’m doing all of it anyway, so why not have a slightly better handle on this crazy thing called life?

Meet my new pencil and planner:

planner

It is time to yank up my big girl panties and stop freaking out and just do it for fuck’s sake. Write it all down.  Every appointment I take my mother to, every appointment I take my son to, and yes, even every appointment I need to take myself to–write it down. The dates to pay my mother’s bills, the dates to pay my bills, the dates to clean my mother’s house–write them down. When to run, when to walk, when to breathe—write it all the fuck down.

But I want to write down the fun stuff, too. The hikes in Acadia National Park I plan to do with my son, the ice cream we plan to eat, the anniversary dinner with my husband, the mini vacation in Bar Harbor, the beach day with friends, my friend’s wedding in New Hampshire. I have to write all of that down, too, because honestly? All that other stuff–the doctor visits, the cleaning, the bill paying–that is what life is really made of.  That’s the shit we *have* to do, but doing the fun stuff is how we are able to carry on and do everything else in life that’s difficult and messy and just plain awful. And I have to be able to see those fun things in my planner. I have to know that all of this hard stuff is not *just* what life is. It has to be more than that, right?

It has to.