Author: Sheila Quirke

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The Gift of a Cooked Meal

It’s 4:35 as I type this.  Most afternoons, this would be on the early side of me figuring out what should be for dinner.  Pffft.  Who am I kidding?  I don’t really start doing that until 5:30 or so.  (Alright, alright, 6 o’clock.  Sheesh.)

But tonight I’m not worried about dinner at all.  Nor was I last night.  Nor will I be tomorrow.  Don’t hate me because I know what’s for dinner.

Thanks to the generosity of a couple of friends, my family has eaten better in the past few days than we have in weeks.  After a series of frozen brown things (Tater Tots, fish sticks, breaded chicken filets, etc.), last night we ate a ham and cheese quiche with a crust that was out of this world.  Last week, we enjoyed a Shepard’s pie with cauliflower pureed into the mashed potatoes.

Um, yeah, I didn’t make either of those fine dishes.

Food

I don’t have time right now.  Or inclination.  Most of my free time is spent at my Dad’s bedside.  Two evenings a week I cut out at dinner to see my Dad when my husband gets home from work.  Three days I week I have a sitter so I can spend a few hours with him without having to worry about a toddler’s sniffles or need to be entertained.  That allows me time to just sit and be with my dying Dad.  Time that cannot be rescheduled or pushed off to a later date that might be more convenient.

Because of that, dinner has suffered.  In the big scheme of things, that’s not a huge deal, but food is an important part of family life.  It is a common, shared experience — pretty much our only one on weekdays, so a cooked dinner has been important to us. With my Dad in medical flux since last winter, the shared meals have gotten interrupted with either visiting or my distinct lack of motivation to cook after long and sad days.  My son would have probably preferred that homework go by the wayside, but NO FREAKING WAY.

Enter my friends with their cooked meals.  Hallelujah!

There is something so simple, yet so wonderful in the gesture of cooking for someone going through a tough time.  Food can be such an expression of love and caring, which is just how I have felt serving my friends meals these past few days — loved and cared for. Never ever underestimate the power of warm food to provide comfort.

These meals, too, remind me of my last stint as a caregiver, when our little Donna was in her cancer treatment, and even after she died.  She had gone to her pre-school just five weeks before the cancer took her from us.  Five weeks at the beginning of a busy school year is not a lot of time to connect to a whole new community.  But I will never forget how so many of the classroom parents took turns cooking for us in the weeks after her death.

Each weeknight for five or six weeks, Donna’s teacher arrived at our door about 4:30 holding a meal lovingly prepared by a stranger to provide us dinner.  What a true gift during what was absolutely some of the worst days of my life.  Not having to think about food at a time of deep grief was total relief.  I didn’t care about much of anything in those early days, so the warm food nourished me in many ways.

If you’ve ever gifted a friend or family member with a cooked meal during a tough time in their life, thank you.  You rock.  For real.  What you did was a big freaking deal and you should be proud of yourself.

And if you’ve ever gifted me and my family a meal, know that this post is written to you.  That’s right, you.  Yum.  It was delicious and very appreciated.  Thank you.  Oh! And I might still have your Tupperware in my pantry.  xox

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It’s 4/20! Time to Embrace My Inner Squirrel

April 20, or 4/20 as the cool kids like to call it, is that single day of the year when I am reminded, again and again, just what a squirrel I really am.  For the record, a squirrel, in my book, is a person who, while not sheltered, hasn’t really participated in the, um, well, milestones of most normal, red blooded Americans.  I am most definitively a squirrel.

I have never smoked pot, weed, marijuana.  I was about 40 years old before I realized that “Mary Jane” is just one of its many euphemisms.  I still mistake the smell of it for that cute little black and white stripped critter that roams in the woods and helps Snow White hang her laundry.

I made this meme I few years ago, yes, on April 20. The thing is, this gal looks a lot like me. I have a striped dress just like this, wear glasses, have long, dark hair, and think that clogs are the bomb diggity.
I made this meme I few years ago, yes, on April 20. The thing is, this gal looks a lot like me. I have a striped dress just like this, wear glasses, have long, dark hair, and think that clogs are the bomb diggity.

I am guileless. Without known guile.  Guile free, yo.

Like Tina Fey, I remained a virgin until my mid-20s.  And full disclosure, I can count the men I’ve slept with on one finger.

I was that kid in high school that when her friends were hanging out swigging berry flavored wine coolers with the cross country team, I was crying in the front seat of my car, alone, wondering why I didn’t find any of it fun.  Nothing.  Not a bit.  I didn’t get any of it.  It was all lost on me. Sigh.

For a long time I felt misplaced because of these things.  Different than, separated from my peers.  No one would ever mistake me for cool.  Some of the time, like when I sat in that car, alone in the dark in 1986, I felt pangs about that.  Most of the time, I didn’t.  I was more focused on the certainty that when I achieved the next milestone, be it junior high, high school, or college, life would get better.  I would find my people.

Eventually, I did find my people, but that didn’t happen until I stopped fighting my nature.  I’m a squirrel.  There is no shame in that particular game.  I embrace it now.  Fully.  Those folks who really know me and love me are charmed by it.  If they aren’t, pffft, their disdain no longer phases me.

At this stage in my life, I embrace those odd traits that make me me.  I no longer feel less than or apart from others that are different than myself.  I don’t mind never having traveled in the fast lane, as the slow lane has always been more my speed.

It’s cool here, in the slow lane.  I get to stop when I want and look at the clouds or admire a tulip on a spring day.  I belt out really bad pop songs when I’m in the car, alone or with my kiddos.  I don’t worry about being judged anymore.  Who’s got time to be judged anyway?

I’ve claimed my inner squirrel and am proud of that.  Squirrels of the world unite!  And if you’re not a squirrel, embrace whomever you might be — even if you’re a skunk (see what I did there?)

Me circa 1986, 1998, 2004, and present day.
Me circa 1986, 1998, 2004, and present day.

 

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The Call

A few hours ago the phone rang.  Typically, this is not a big deal.  Six o’clock, cooking dinner, the telemarketers know and use this time to reach you at home.  Except this wasn’t a telemarketer, it was my Dad.  And my Dad, as of one week ago, is on hospice care.  I literally cannot remember the last time my Dad called me.

Six months ago, a call from my Dad would have been a regular thing.  He, my aging aunt, my stubborn sister who spurns technology, and telemarketers are about the only folks who reach me on the landline.  And, full confession, had my Dad called me six months ago at six o’clock on a week night, I guarantee you I would have shut that call down and fast, probably with a sigh of exasperation for good measure, just so my Dad knew it was an inconvenient time for me.

6 PM is the height of the bewitching hour where the kids are losing steam before bedtime, I am juggling dinner and homework and a melting down toddler, and counting down the minutes before my husband walks through the door after long days for both of us.

But when your dear Dad who is on hospice calls you at 6 PM, you take the call and you’re grateful for it.  You realize, even while you’re talking to him, what a gift that call is and that you may never get another one like it.

Phone home

I spent a couple of hours at my Dad’s bedside today.  He didn’t really talk to me.  He slept, ate about eight sips of soup for me, grimaced every time he tried to turn over in bed, and didn’t respond when I said goodbye.

Hospice is the real deal, folks.  My Dad knows his time is coming to an end and we talk about it regularly now.  I don’t know if it is the quality of relationship we have, or that I worked with older adults and hospice as a social worker, but we speak about his death with ease.  We have both made our peace with it, it seems.

All of this makes me sad, so very sad.  I will miss my Dad terribly, something I was sure to tell him last week just after I informed him the docs thought he was hospice appropriate.  I also told him he was one of my very few anchors — one of the people I rely on most for advice, guidance, support.

Did I mention how much I will miss my Dad?  How much I have missed my Dad these past five months of medical turmoil?

I used to help people — older adults and their families — cope with this stage of life.  I have sat at the bedside of countless dying people.  Seriously, I don’t even know how many.  It was my job and my passion and I was good at it.

So much of being helpful is just about showing up.  Being there, being present, and bearing witness is the only thing a dying person needs at this stage of the game.  I did this for many clients over the years and now I am doing it for my Dad.

It’s a different experience with my Dad.  I go home heavy, feeling the weight of his soon to be absence. I want to cocoon up in my bed, alone and silent, thinking, until the next time I can be at his bedside.  I don’t truly want to be anywhere else right now.

But that’s not realistic for me.  I have kids and a husband and a badly neglected blog. The dinner must still be made, the laundry must still be washed, the kids must still be bathed and shuttled back and forth and cared for.  So tonight, at 6 PM, I was doing just that — tidying the house, supervising homework, wondering what I could pull out of the fridge and call dinner when the phone rang.

And there was my Dad.  “What’s happening?” he asked.  Just like that.  Just like it was six months ago and he was perfectly independent and perfectly healthy — well, as healthy as an 81 year old man with a history of lung cancer, heart attacks, COPD, and emphysema can be.

He asked what I had done all day, not remembering that it was me who had fed him his soup at lunch, me who had stuffed the pillows behind his back to help achieve some level of comfort.  He wanted to know when I would return.  He wanted to talk about money, “Who’s paying for all this?” he wanted to know.  I am hoping that by tomorrow he forgets he was curious about money.  My Dad might shoot me if he knew how expensive it is to die these days.

For those few moments, on a call at six o’clock, it was just me and my Dad talking about our days.  What a gift.