Category: Grief

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The Orange Balloon: A Story About Grief and Living

Once upon a time I took my daughter to the grocery store.  She was in the midst of cancer treatment, but it was that brief time of the month in between her chemo sessions that she was able to walk and breathe freely amongst others in the world.  We got pretty efficient at packing 30 days of living into six or seven.  And a grocery store doesn’t seem like much, but, hey, it was Trader Joe’s and she was a young toddler, so trust me when I say a trip to the grocery store was cause for celebration.

We had finished our errand and my little bald headed Donna was gifted a balloon by the cashier after we checked out.  It was a bright orange balloon, on a white ribbon.  I remember it like it was yesterday, despite the calendar telling me it was almost eight years ago.  Stupid calendar.

As we drove home I remember feeling anxious that Donna was holding and playing with a latex balloon.  Can you even imagine a child with cancer dying after ingesting a balloon?  In those days, my worries ran high and I kept peeking glances in the rear view mirror, reminding my girl not to put the balloon anywhere near her mouth.  She laughed and giggled and wiggled her fingers along the orange balloon, making funny squeaking noises that brought us so much joy.

We got home and pulled into our parking space.  It was a bright, chilly afternoon, but one that held the promise of warmth and spring not too far away.  I ran the groceries up first, then came back down to carry in my girl.  As I opened the door, in the flash of a moment that will stay with me forever, Donna’s bright orange balloon flew past me, weaving through my arms, ascending higher and higher.  It was gone with the wind.  Literally.

Tears ensued.  Wails.  My beautiful girl was so, so sad.  I was so, so mad at myself.  Why hadn’t I thought to open the door more carefully?  Why hadn’t my arms and fingers reached higher or more deftly?  Why hadn’t the girl been holding on to her precious balloon more carefully?

None of those questions mattered.  The balloon was gone.  Long gone.

I tried to make lemonade out of the lemons of that lost balloon, telling Donna, as we watched it fly higher and higher into the sky, moving further and further away, that perhaps it might reach her Baba, my mother, Donna’s namesake who died before she was born.  We never talked about heaven much or what it meant to be dead or where you went, but in that moment, grasping as I was, the idea comforted both of us.

Today's orange balloon, which looks so much like that other orange balloon. The bright blue skies are the same, too. It is for Donna, and her brother, a small connection.
Today’s orange balloon, which looks so much like that other orange balloon. The bright blue skies are the same, too. It is for Donna, and her brother, a small connection.

Hours and days and weeks and even months later, Donna would remember her orange balloon and tell me how sad she remained about it.  It became part of our lore, our little family of three.  We all knew the significance of that orange balloon and the sadness it brought to our girl.  But just as she remembered her sadness, she, too, felt comforted with the idea of her grandmother, a fine lady she had never even met, keeping it for her, holding it safe, being cheered by the orange balloon herself, up high in the sky.

Not an orange balloon crosses my path that I don’t think of my girl and that beautiful day and her profound sadness at losing something she treasured, if only for a short while.

Today I was at a different store, paying a different cashier, when I spied a bouquet of balloons at the next register, clearly waiting for a young child to claim them, one by one.  They were pink and yellow and orange, of course.  I was child free this morning, but when I grabbed my change I asked the cashier if I might take one for my little guy at home.  “Of course,” she smiled, “that is what they are there for.”

I lied to that cashier.  I told her it was for my little guy, but that was a fib.  That orange balloon was for Donna.  Every orange balloon is for Donna, today and every day.  Of course, when my boy wakes from his nap, there will be an orange balloon waiting for him to play with, but you know, and I know, that his afternoon joy comes courtesy of the sister he never met.

That orange balloon will always and forever be for Donna, the little girl I treasured, if only for a short while.

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On Saturday, March 19, 2016, the 5th annual Donna’s Good Things shave for St. Baldrick’s will be held in Chicago.  Please consider joining us as a shavee or donating to our event.  CLICK HERE.  Just like that orange balloon, raising money for pediatric cancer research is part of Donna’s legacy.

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The Good Enough Christmas

It’s December 8, folks.  High freaking gear for the holiday season.  Are you ready?  Are you freaking out?  Do you feel your heart rate rise just thinking about December 25th being less than three weeks away?

To date, I have ordered some gifts online, my family holiday cards arrived in the mail yesterday (but need to be addressed and posted), and I stopped at the Dollar Store to buy a few holiday gift bags for that inevitable moment on Christmas Eve when I don’t have a single gift wrap left in me and I allow myself to surrender to the less lovely, but far more user friendly gift bag.

With the holidays, as with most things in my life, I follow the simple rule of “good enough.”  Will my preparations be good enough?  Will the tree be good enough? Will the decorations we manage to put up be good enough?  Will the love and anticipation my kids feel on Christmas Eve as they lay out a plate of cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer be good enough?  Will the mix of lovingly prepared cookies and brownies, most likely made from a mix this year, be good enough?  Will the gifts I choose be good enough?

My answer for all of the above questions is a resounding, “YES.”  Everything will be good enough, because I will be doing the best I can and that is all there is to it.

A dear friend posted this “cry for help” — her words, not mine, by the way — on her Facebook feed a few days ago.

Holiday Text

 

This is my girl, yo, so don’t any of you get any funny ideas of slicing and dicing this gal in the comment section.

In the moments after I read her text, bravely posted publicly for all in her Facebook orbit to see, comment, and silently judge, I just wanted to transport myself to that Target parking lot where my friend was and hug her and hold her close and assure her that it was all going to be alright.  Not having any kind of cool technology that enables me to transport myself (maybe I’ll get one for Christmas!), I did the next best thing and left a supportive response.  “Oh, honey. Your kids have everything they need. For real. Your love and support and nurturing and wisdom and humor and kick ass cooking. Take a page from Frozen and let it go.”

We are too hard on ourselves, especially at the holidays.  For whatever reason, and I know there are many, we convince ourselves that more is more.  If we did this last year, we should do THAT this year to make it better.  Did Facebook create this culture of more?  Do people see what their friend’s elves are doing every morning and translate that damn elf into feelings of inadequacy and emptiness?  Are we all required to morph into Martha Stewart / Betty Crocker / June Cleaver in December?

How amazing would it be to absolve ourselves of that pressure?

Full disclosure, I had a hard time relating to my friend’s post, feeling sympathy for her more than empathy.  I hate that she was hurting in those moments, I hate that the pressure she was feeling was real and legitimate, but I have never truly felt that pressure myself.  Cue the “good enough” mantra I live my life by.  READ THIS POST I wrote in 2012 to understand what those words mean to me.

We don’t need to be perfect and our kids don’t need for us to be perfect.  They need for us to be present.  Sure, around the holidays they like and expect presents, but the most valuable thing we will ever provide them is being there for them.  Showing up.  Every day.  That is enough.  It truly is.

I think back to the Christmases I had as a kid.  My memories are a mix of bitter and sweet, like the chocolate we put in our cookies.  We had an artificial tree that was well worn and way past its prime and required copious amounts of anguish and hope and sheer force of will to put up and make vertical year after year.  My Dad suffered from depression and the holidays really weren’t his bag — my Mom flew solo the holiday season.  They fought about Christmas shopping and money and even getting to the mall, as my Mom didn’t drive for much of my childhood.

The flip side of that Christmas coin are fond memories of listening to super swanky 1960s holiday music on our ancient stereo.  Enjoying Midnight Mass as a family along with my Dad’s two sisters who were nuns, bellies full of homemade cookies as the beautiful service unfolded, the church twinkling in candlelight.  Lying in my parent’s double bed on Christmas Eve with my three older siblings, giggling with anticipation, and tearing down the stairs once my Dad, who always, miraculously, found his Christmas spirit just in the St. Nick of time, had rung the jingle bells on the front door yelling out, “HO! HO! HO!” signaling that the Christmas booty had been deposited under that precariously teetering tree.

My childhood Christmases were a hodge podge of stress and tension and joy and light, but ultimately, they were good enough.  I trust that they might be very similar for our boys.  When you live in grief, as we do, it’s hard to escape the heaviness made heavier by the holidays.  But alongside that are the things my husband and I do together to make, what we hope and believe, is a good enough holiday for our sons.

We have no elf and the holiday books we read are the same ones that got packed away the previous January.  We might nosh on boxed brownies instead of eight different types of homemade cookies.  Our tree will be fresh, but it will be small, probably no more than five feet, and probably not make an appearance before the 15th.  We like it that way.  Our gifts, even the ones already purchased, will no doubt sit naked until after the kiddos go to sleep on Christmas Eve, making for a marathon wrapping party late into the night (that’s when those gift bags I scored at the Dollar Store will come in so handy).

It’s what we can manage and none of it is perfect and all of it is okay. Merry Christmas, folks.  May it be good enough.

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The End of a Life in Photos: Saying Goodbye to Da

My 81 year old father, Da, died last spring.  He was a lion, a character, a flawed King Lear, my anchor.  He taught me much and I am grateful for his lessons.  I miss him.

Because I spent twelve years working professionally with older adults in health care, aging was something he and I spoke of frequently.  Sometimes he would allow me to accompany him to the doctor, though usually not. He used to say that his kids should send him out to sea on a raft if he ever got too old to function or exercise his independence.

My father died like many older Americans are dying these days — entwined in a medical system that is not equipped to cope with the needs or wishes of our older adults, many of whom are kept propped up through ill considered medical interventions.

His last five months were heartbreaking — nothing he would have ever wanted for himself and nothing I would have ever imagined for him.  Two of those months he spent hospitalized (in three separate hospitals) and three were spent in a locked assisted living unit for people with dementia.  He called it a “warehouse.”  He was not wrong.

He did not have dementia and it was only confirmed shortly before his death that the acute and quickly evolving cognitive, behavioral, and neurological changes he experienced in those last months were caused by lung cancer. The same lung cancer that had been treated the previous fall, doctors felt successfully.

He knew he was dying long before I did. He told me one day and, in all sincerity, I tried to comfort him and explain that he was simply going through a difficult period. Sometimes I feel I failed him.  I know that our medical system failed him.

I started photographing him in January 2015 when the sunlight on his leg dangling from his hospital bed struck me as poignant.  I snapped a photo.  I kept snapping photos as the months went on.  He and I talked about the photos, he looked at them sometimes. While we never discussed what I would do with them, he knew why I took them.  To remember.

I am fortunate that my father was a great supporter of my work, my writing — specifically how my husband and I documented our daughter’s cancer online.  He read every word and saw its merit.  I see these photos serving a similar purpose — to educate and encourage a dialogue.  I really think my Dad would get a kick out of that — his stubborn version of having the last word.