What the Year 2017 Taught Me

Somehow, growing up, I came to believe that there was a day when all my life lessons would be learned. I think I finally realized that wasn’t going to happen about a decade ago. And what I do know now is that life teaches me things that I never knew I needed learning. Here are few from 2017:

1. Escapism is sometimes a good form of self-care.  Most times it’s not.  Learning the difference will bring you more intimate relationships with everyone who matters in your life.
2. Know who matters in your life.  It’s never too late to rid yourself of those who no longer matter.  Just send them along with compassion.
3. Everybody needs your compassion.  Repeat:  EVERYBODY needs YOUR compassion.   If you can’t figure out why you’re incapable of feeling compassion for a person, than dig deep, because it’s more about you than the other person. Compassion is not the same as forgiveness.
4. Forgive your family, again and again and again.  And especially when they can’t seem to forgive you. Love your family.
5. Life is fleeting, love remains.
6. The topic of death and one’s more mortality becomes more prevalent as one ages.  Grieve, but never let loss sink you or harden your heart.
7. A wise heart is a gift. Don’t use it to throw judgment or, as my son’s generation would say, don’t “throw shade” on another person who doesn’t seem to “get it.” We all have our unique path in life.   Stay in your lane, and let your wisdom shine the way forward.
8. If you don’t know what your lane is, find your purpose.  And don’t let the overwhelming life events take you away from it.  If you do, you’ll find yourself in a deep rabbit hole.  Living your purpose is the only thing that will get you out.  (*Note: If you think your "purpose” is just some self-help, hubabuloo, it’s not!  Google it, find out more.)
9. Reach out to anybody when you’re in need of an ear, or a hug, or a shoulder to cry on.  About 99.9% of the human population is actually capable of providing one of those things when you ask for it.
10. No matter how much you think you’ve got this thing called life, each of us is always capable of digging deeper to learn more about ourselves, our blinders, how to love and what will make us happy.  It’s OK to feel that you don’t “got this thing called life” and there’s no need to give those feelings a fancy label. Just feel and see lesson #8.

Wishing you a happy, wise, purposeful and prosperous 2018!

Sibling Rivalry through the eyes of Alzheimer's

My mother came to see me yesterday after a visit with my father.  She says he asked about one of my brothers and said that she as sitting in “his” seat.  My mother thought this was some logical thought, based on perhaps the last time my brother visited and that being the place where he sat in the room when he was there. I thought about it briefly, since I was there with that brother the last time he visited and remembered he sat on my father’s bed, and not in a chair.  In my mind, this is another sign my father, to be crass, is “losing it.”  My mother has an uncanny ability to make logical every random thought which my father verbalizes. It frustrates me. Even when my father is in the full mid to late stages of Alzheimer’s, she has the ability to explain it all away as an attempt to make herself feel better.  Sometimes I have compassion for this, sometimes I have none.

There’s an illogical reason why this incident makes me particularly bitter.  I become jealous when my father makes mention of one of my brothers but not me.  In my family, my 3 older brothers are lumped together as one.  And then there’s me, the youngest and only daughter.  About a decade ago, at my grandfather’s funeral, I was standing with my three brothers and an old family friend came up to us to express their condolences.  They hugged me first and said, “Oh Donna, so great to see you!”  This person then pointed to the ensemble of my brothers and said, “And nice to see the S. brothers, although I can never tell you apart, so hello to all of you.”  I’m not sure if this bothers them, it’s just how it’s always been.

But as my father’s mind begins to deteriorate, this isn’t his view and probably never was.  As a parent, I can understand how each of his children are a very different entity. But how that manifests in his demented state leaves me puzzled.  During one of the most difficult moments in the past 9 months. My brother was visiting from Boston. We showed up at my father’s hospital bedside and as soon as he saw my brother, he started in on a demented rant.  My brother tried to calm him down, which only made matters worse, so I signaled my brother to get out of the room, out of site.  The nurses swung into action to find a sedative drug as my brother and I stood in the sterile hallway, looking at each other as we strained to make sense of the continuing rant.  My father was carrying on like a true mad man.  He yelled, “My son ruined my life when he moved to Boston!”  My brother and I straightened up in surprise, looking at each other with mirrored glances of confusion.  My brother moved to Boston nearly 40 years ago.  My brother covered his mouth to suppress a laugh.  I stood paralyzed in utter confusion.  How would my brother’s move to Boston so long ago have possibly ruined my father’s life?  He was the one who encouraged it, enabling my brother to pursue his passion for music, a move which most parents of that era would have certainly discouraged.  I mouthed the words to my brother, “What does he mean?”  My brother shrugged his shoulders and continued trying not to laugh. 

I knew if my father had said something similar about me in a rant, I would have been wracked by guilt.  Instead, he apparently said to my mother around the same time about me, “I don’t understand why she came back to live in Rochester, she has no reason to be here.” I wasn’t present when the comment was made so I don’t know objectively if there’s a right way to interpret it, simultaneously knowing full well that much of the verbalization of a person with Alzheimer’s disease should never be logically interpreted.  Yet, I preferred to take the negative interpretation, ie, that I shouldn’t be around.  So that my brother somehow ruined my father’s life by moving away but I ruined it by coming back make my felt less important in my father’s ranking of sibling relationships.  The only other time I know of that my father has spoken about me in a demented rant came before he was hospitalized, again, when I was not present.  My mother says he was insulting me terribly but she refuses to tell me what words were said.

Its an odd thing for me.  I’ve never had a troubled relationship with my father, compared to the one I have with my mother.  I always thought I was the apple in his eye as his only daughter.  And while I berate my mother for trying to come up with a logical explanation for my father’s mid-stage Alzheimer’s dialogue, I assume I can attribute some judgement on my own importance to my father’s life by how he speaks about his children at this point.  It lacks all sense and yet it is truly understandable.