Archive for November 2024
Illness, Thanksgiving, and Observing My Late Father’s Birthday
My father was born around Thanksgiving, and even before I knew how to understand things like months, days, and years, I knew as early as three years old that if Thanksgiving was coming, Dad’s birthday would be soon.
Of course, Dad died last year about a month shy of his 87th birthday. Had he lived this long, he’d have turned 88.
There are so many things that have happened in the past year that would’ve pleased him. There were other things that would really have upset him, including the national uptick of bad behavior, rudeness, and obnoxiousness. In some quarters, it now seems perfectly acceptable to treat others with disdain, disrespect, and, quite frankly, dishonor.
Dad was a proud veteran of the United States Navy, and watching the country devolve into chaos would not have been his thing. The pandemic was more than bad enough as it brought out the worst in a whole lot of people that seemingly hasn’t gone away since.
Mind you, there are still many wonderful people out there. I think the majority of people in the United States, as well as around the world, are good, caring, decent, honorable, and kind-hearted people who want only to live and let live. We hear about the others because they are aberrations. But there seem to be more and more of them, and you see this sort of bad behavior everywhere nowadays. On the highways, with road-rage incidents and people shooting at each other. In the grocery store, where I’ve seen several fights break out over the years — more in the last few by far. Really, anywhere a person can congregate with another, including churches, mosques, or other buildings meant for faithful people to enjoy their religion/religious beliefs and others in their congregation, can hold a mass shooter.
Other countries do not put up with this, but the US does. I don’t know why. I’ve written about it many times over the years, and I’ll probably write about it even more when the next unthinkable incident happens.
It’s because of knowing this, along with observing my father’s birthday soon and then Thanksgiving later this week, that I have a hard time finding the blessings there still are.
But there are blessings. As I said, there are good people out there. The scenery can be beautiful. I’m fortunate that I live near Lake Michigan — it’s only a few short miles away — and I can gaze out at it any time of the year and gain some peace from that. Books have always been my salvation, too. Plus, I ponder a lot of moral conundrums, as it’s been my lot in life to be a spiritual seeker rather than a follower of any one religion. (I consider myself a NeoPagan, which most of you reading probably already know. But I read the Bible often for its beauty and elegance and feel it holds a lot of truth within it. I’ve also read translations of the Koran and some of the Bhavagad Gita, though not much of the latter stuck.) I consider Buddhism, as it was my late husband Michael’s practice, and try to let whatever part I can absorb infuse my soul with meaning and purpose. (That sounds odd, doesn’t it? Best I can do right now, though.) I have enjoyed reading about the Stoics and their movement of Stoicism, which isn’t exactly what we Americans think it was…yes, they believed in what one Star Trek writer called “mastery of the unavoidable,” but they didn’t believe you shouldn’t feel. They actually believed more along the lines of “don’t let the bad things throw you, as we all have bad things happen in our lives. What can we gain from life besides the bad things?”
Thanksgiving is a time to honor family, friends, and loved ones, past or present. I do plan to see my family, despite the fact I’m quite ill right now and have been for weeks.
(Some of you may be thinking, “Barb, what took you so long to talk about the illness you’re enduring?” I’m getting to that.)
About two weeks ago, I’d called my doctor’s office about my asthma, the fact my throat was sore, and that my allergies were acting up. I was seen, and told that it was most likely viral bronchitis. If I was still sick in a week, I should go back and be seen or walk into urgent care if it was a weekend.
So, yesterday, as I was still quite ill, I walked into urgent care. I was told I had an acute asthma exacerbation — thus the bronchospasms and bronchitis — along with a particularly wicked sinus infection that was spreading to my ears. I had so much fatigue that walking from my car to the house required several stops to rest, and that’s all wrong. I was very frightened by all of this, which I’ll admit here…I also didn’t want to eat anything, though I was still trying to eat, as my throat hurt so bad I could barely swallow.
I was using all my tricks to amp up my appetite, including drinking diet soda before and during meals. (For some reason, diet soda raises my appetite. I guess I’m not the only one this happens to, but I don’t know how frequently it happens to others.) During meals, I often drink diet soda or some other carbonated beverage in order to be able to swallow the food. (Two endoscopies have been performed in the last ten years to find out why this is and no one has any idea.) Plus, I knew that without food, I’d have no energy with which to heal myself.
Because I’ve got so many friends and family on the Other Side now, and fewer remain on this side, I thought a lot about why I continued to fight to stay on this plane of existence. Yes, I feel I have unfinished business. Yes, there’s editing to do. Yes, I’ve got I don’t know how many books in me to finish plus at least seven stories at work either singly or in collaboration with my friend Gail Sanders. Yes, my family needs me, and yes, I hope someday that I’ll find some nice man that can tolerate me (better yet, light up at the sight of me and enjoy all our interactions, but first things first) and that I can tolerate in return (again, I want a lot more than tolerance, but I tell myself, “Patience, grasshopper” in my best Kwai Chang Kane voice).
Still. My chest hurt so bad it was like a vise was around it. I couldn’t get a good breath. My cough was unproductive in the extreme, though intermittent. And until yesterday, I had been told it was viral and that I couldn’t do anything about it other than put up with it and hope it went away.
I’m fortunate that I still have medical insurance, though I wonder for how much longer. That said, I had it now, and I was able to get the medication I needed at a lower price than I’d have paid on my own after I was diagnosed with acute asthma exacerbation driving the bronchitis and a wicked sinus infection driving everything else.
Just knowing what’s wrong helps. Being able to take some medicine (in this case, antibiotics and steroids) that I know will work has improved my attitude overall, to the point I can at least come to my blog and write/talk about it.
I’m glad that the US still believes in helping those in need, those who are not as fortunate as others (I, a disabled, long-time and still youthful widow, count in that category). But the uptick in bad behavior has me concerned. If we as a country go all in for “I’ve got mine, to Hell with you!” we are doomed.
I think most of us want the US to be a strong and safe country with leaders that make sense and try to do the people’s bidding rather than go off on tangents and only fix their own, personal hobbyhorses. I also hope and pray that people in the US, as well as around the world, will know that putting someone else down does not make you rise up. It instead lowers you to your enemy’s level.
This has been a long blog. But it all weighs on me. Dad’s impending birthday, that I’ll probably celebrate out at the cemetery where he’s buried. Thanksgiving, where half the country seems to hate the other half. This illness, which came too close to me just saying, “OK, if my time’s up, it’s up.” (When you can’t breathe well, you can’t think, you don’t really have much in the way of energy as I said before, and trying to find positives seems like a Herculean effort.)
I hope those of you who are ill right now, in body, mind, or spirit will know that you are worth it whether anyone else knows it or not. I also hope that this Thanksgiving will be one of reconciliation and kindness. Somehow.
If you want to light a candle, though, please do it. Pray for peace, especially in the Middle East and the Ukraine. Pray for wisdom among our elected leaders. Pray for strength for ourselves, and healing, too. Pray for the downtrodden, those marginalized by bad circumstances, by faults not their own, and pray their situations get better. (Here I’m thinking about the Sudan, much of the problems Middle Eastern women have, and other such things along with the prosaic.)
If you want to add to your prayers, say a prayer for my father, who I hope is in Heaven/the positive afterlife of his choice now. Or you could even say one for me, and I can’t stop you…(I know it’s a weak joke, but that’s all I’ve got right now).
Please have the best Thanksgiving holiday you can, though. Try to find the good in your relatives, even if they are difficult and insist on only the choicest cuts of turkey and hog all the dressing to themselves. (You can always wait until they get up to use the bathroom and grab the rest of the dressing if they refuse to give it up, you know.)
Find meaning and purpose however you can. Remember, don’t spread vitriol, and do be kind to others.
That’s what I want this week. That’s what I want always.
Musing on Life’s Purpose
There’s a lot of angst right now, partly due to election season and partly because of other factors. But we all need to realize this: We have a purpose in this life even if we don’t know what it is.
If we can do one good thing for someone else, just one, that can move mountains in time. It doesn’t seem like it. It’s maybe an incremental change, rather than a sweeping one…but doing something good for someone else just because is one of the best virtues I know.
The way I define success is, “Did you make any positive difference for anyone?” And, honestly, I think most of us do. We’re not perfect by any means, but most of us try to be good to others, at least some of the time — or to help someone we don’t know, because it’s needed in that moment.
I’ve run into a lot of different things in my life that have changed the course of it significantly. Some were very good, such as meeting and marrying Michael, my late husband. Some were not good. Some were just plain bad, in fact. But when you look back on your life, you can sometimes find small moments that made a huge difference.
My small moment was this: I had been divorced, I’d just gotten out of a relationship that hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped, and then I met Michael. I had a choice: could I open my heart to him, despite how badly I’d been hurt? Or was I going to just drown in the sorrow of it all?
I chose the risk. I opened my heart.
As difficult as it has been to be without Michael all these years since his passing, it would’ve been far, far worse for me to have stayed closed and to have kept Michael at arm’s length. I’d have missed out on great love, happiness, true understanding…the two of us wanted to be around each other, wanted to make each other’s lives better. We could talk about anything for hours. We could sometimes even sit in silence, holding hands, looking at one another, and be perfectly content.
I was right to choose the risk. But no one would’ve blamed me (except myself, of course) had I said, “I have had enough of men, thank you!” and not done so.
The main reason I fight so hard to make any sort of positive difference I can in this life is that I believe Michael being in my life at all was a miracle. I know that has to sound very odd, maybe even a bit woo-woo/out there. But it’s what I believe.
So, if I had turned my face to the wall (metaphorically speaking) years ago, and not opened my heart, I’d have missed out on that miracle. I am glad I didn’t miss out.
For those of you who are hurting for various reasons, I hope you can take some comfort in the fact that you are not alone. Good human beings care about one another and try to help when they can. (I know I’ve been overloaded lately, as I said in my last blog. But I still try to do something, anything, that’s positive, even if it’s just wishing the cashier at the market a good day and telling them they did a great job.) Good human beings notice when you’re making your best effort, and that does matter.
It may seem like it doesn’t. But don’t believe that.
Believe that you are worthy. Worthy of love, worthy of friendship, worthy of understanding, care, and concern.
Don’t let anyone, ever, grind you down into nothing. You are worth more than that.
Why I’ve Not Blogged Lately…
Folks, the past several months have hit me hard. There have been several “sadiversaries” (AKA sad anniversaries), in a row, and it’s been almost unbearable sometimes to deal with all the grief, mourning, and frustration.
That’s just a fact.
In addition, one of the sadiversaries was the first anniversary of my father’s passing last year. My entire family had trouble with this; it was not just me, not in any way, shape, or form. When the day of observance came, in some ways I didn’t know what to do with myself.
See, going back into June, there was my wedding anniversary, which was possibly the happiest day of my life. Still, when you have had far more years without your husband’s physical presence than you did with, it can be hard to see any of the remaining happiness.
Then there was my husband’s birthday, which he never observed. (As previously stated here at my blog and elsewhere, Michael believed far more in every other day of the year. He’d rather celebrate 364 days than just one.) Yet I observed it…while I never got along with his mother, and never got a chance to meet his father (as Michael’s father died before I met him), the fact is that if they hadn’t met and married, Michael would never have been here at all. I felt that day was worthy of commemoration, and while Michael was alive I would treat it much the same as any other day, you have to understand something: I was so ecstatic to be with Michael, the man I loved, the man I married, the man who understood me…every day was like Christmas, New Year’s, July 4th, or any other holiday that you might wish to observe.
Getting past those two things wasn’t easy. But then there was my birthday, which went surprisingly well this year, followed by the anniversary of Michael’s passing in September. As it’s been a rough couple of years, I couldn’t help but wish I still could feel Michael’s arms around me, and hear his voice tell me it would be all right so long as we had each other. (Anything else could be surmounted, you see. We’d proven that.)
Then came the anniversary of Dad’s passing a few weeks ago. And it’s like something inside me just refused to keep going for a bit.
I think that’s part of the reason why I’ve been sick, physically ill, far more often than I’ve been well in the past few years. While my health was never as robust as it could’ve been, there’s been a marked downturn in some ways of energy, maybe because I’ve had a lot of responsibilities and not too much in the way of fun or entertainment.
See, we don’t live by bread alone. We need other things to season that bread with, or to put on the bread so it tastes better. Salt, pepper, olive oil, butter…you name it, any of those things will make bread taste better, especially if you combine a few. (Such as peppered butter. Yes, that’s a thing.) Yet in my case, I’ve been on subsistence rations for many years now.
I refuse to put on a false face for anyone, because I feel it detracts from my energy, my strength, and my sense of purpose. The way I do my best is to present myself as a hard-working, put-together woman who is trying her damnedest to overcome a difficult series of obstacles. I do that because that is my truth.
I worry, though, because we have AI now, and they aren’t paying writers what they should — or even anything at all — for scooping up their work and training the AIs in the vagaries of human behavior. (At least, this is what it seems from the outside.)
Another problem I’ve been dealing with over the past several months is the physical pain brought on by osteoarthritis throughout my body, along with fibromyalgia flare ups. This saps my strength further, because pain does that. (Then again, as one of Lois McMaster Bujold’s characters says, what golden moments can you wring from life despite the pain? Still working on that one.)
I also worry because I had a very weird experience with someone recently. I thought we were getting to know each other, as friends, and I enjoyed having someone to talk with at the odd hours I have to discuss anything…someone new helped for a while, because I worry that I put too much on my long-term friends as it is. (Sometimes it’s harder to stand and watch as your friend flails than it is to actually do the flailing. Or at least I’m willing to postulate that as possible, maybe even probable.) I looked forward to discussing things with this person, until the day came where I was asked for money — and not just, “Can I borrow $20?”
See, this individual may or may not have been telling me the truth. But one thing I did know was that what was being proposed — me paying bills for them that I’d supposedly get reimbursed for later, all because the account he had was frozen — was a well-known scam. Maybe there’s someone out there who has this real problem, but if he or she does, they need to realize only their long-term friends with a very, very long baseline of knowledge about said person and their life experiences is going to be able to do any good.
What I ended up doing was, I said if the finances were so terrible, it was time to go to the state and ask for help. (Supposedly this person’s son was very ill. The details I’d heard were correct, too. Some con games are far more successful when there’s something true about them, though.) Or go to the hospital and/or clinics the son was being treated at and ask to have bills reduced through community/charity care. (This is a real thing, so if you ever get in a financial bind in the US, ask for help.) Further, I pointed out St. Jude’s Hospital for Children in Indiana, as this person said he was from downstate Illinois — not very far away from Indiana! — and said they were a possibility to bring their sick child to in order to get care. St. Jude’s takes no money from parents; they raise money via donation, in the belief that sick children need care regardless of how much, or even if, their parents can pay at all — and they’re right.
Then I blocked the individual.
I tell you all this for one reason: it’s been a huge stressor on top of other huge stressors. Something that started out as fun chit-chat ended up as that (someone who wanted something from me that I could not provide), and it made me feel like I was just a piece of meat or something. (Shades of Lady Gaga’s “meat dress” from years ago.)
So, that’s why I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been trying to get through what seems like a minefield that, while not necessarily filled with active mines, definitely was filled with quicksand (to pull me under), molasses (to keep me stuck), and a whole lot of trepidation.
I don’t know how I’m going to get through this stretch of time. But I figured I’d at least come here and let you know — whoever is still reading, or will read this whenever they see it and are bored (or whatnot) — that I am alive.
Frustrated, but alive.
Angry, but alive.
Tired out of my mind, wishing for a good thing to happen somewhere, somehow…but alive.
My only thought now is this: I hope you all are being good to yourself and your loved ones, and are treating each other the way you, yourselves, want to be treated.
Despite everything, I still believe that is the best strategy to go through life. Treat each other with respect, dignity, and try to find the good in people…or at least try not to spread vitriol, as I’ve said so many times before.
I hope I’m not just shouting into the void, now, with this blog. But if I am, at least I tried…picture me ruefully chuckling at that, because I’d rather try and fail than just refuse to do anything at all.
Let me know how you all are doing, OK? And if you have had something good happen that made you smile, tell me about it in the comments. (Please?)
Barb Caffrey's Blog 