the way things are now.

‎"the wind changed, the first day that you came through

cut the corn, washed it clean

now everything that's ever gone before, is just a blur

it's all because of you

and now i find, this cities like a stranger to me

... I once was fooled by cadillacs and honey

but no one feels like you

not like you

not like you

not like you



cause even though the flower fades something takes it's place

a marching band on a sunny day, two pretty eyes or a a pretty face"



james vincent mcmorrow
 
Somehow time does not seem to make the sadness of loss go away. It has settled in now. It is a permanent fixture of my aging face, an implant of my soul.

Bad Day

Today is an astonomically bad day. There are those days where you are tired or things are just not going your way and then there are days where no matter what happens to you, you are still going to be miserable. Today is one of those days. Luckily I dont get these days that often any longer. Happily I usually waltz through life, my job, the kids, my routine. Today I cannot get out of my own way. Today I woke  up after having been awake most of the night waiting for Gary to come home from a show and resenting every second of it, tired with Jonah screaming demands at me.......... right from the get go.

Gary had a wedding to go to so for day 2 I was in charge of kids solo, with no plan, in the hottest muggiest most disgusting weather while also being on call for work. This means I can't go anywhere. Normally I would get everyone out, go to the beach, the pool, anywhere but here in this house stuck with three cranky hot kids. Not today.

Today not only the three kids fought all day. I fought with them all day. Which is not typical of us as of late. But this is just how our day went today. I got called out to see a pt and family in the afternoon which was a huge blessing and secretely I wished I would just get called out for the rest of the day too and leave the kids with my mom. I hate being like this with them.

But I am human.

I took a nap while Jonah played quietly with some new toy I had dug up while cleaning (cleaning always helps, especially when it is 100 degrees in this house). I slept so hard I did not know where I was when I woke up.

Gary didn't call me when he got to his wedding (another reason for me to resent him today) and the only thing I was really focused on today turned out to be a bomb as the Red Sox are losing miserably to the Yanks.

There is a favorite book I read to the kids sometimes called "Alexander and the very horrible terribly no good day." In the end Alexander still has a family that loves him and I am sure the next day is better than the one in the book. It is hard to believe I will move through days like today.

But I will.

Dreaming of you

Last night I had a dream about John. It's not the first time I have dreamt about him but it was the most profound dream I have had, one where you wake up and cant remember was that real, are they alive?
In the dream John had come back for a holiday. It was a universally recognized holiday that everyone celebrates and it felt completely normal ........ in the dream.
In the dream it was the holiday that marks the return of a lost loved one. John was there, healthy (he has never been sick in one of my dreams, always without oxygen, always smiling). We were all eating at a nice restaurant and we were happy to be spending this time with him, to celebrate that John had come back, how Christ like, especially for someone who didn't particularly subscribe to the whole son of God thing. And yet, there he was breaking his bread, laughing with us and telling us stories. We were elated and of course because it was a dream most of the people in the dream were not familiar to me, but I knew John, and I knew my mother.
At the end of our dinner I went to take a nap, knowing full well that this was only a temporary thing, that John would need to go at the end of this day, this holiday. Still sleep was somehow more important to me in the dream.
As I drifted off, John called me to tell me to come. That this was important. That I was supposed to be doing this thing, dealing, facing this hard deep profound sadness and longing. That I could not run away from it. That as many miles as I ran or laps that I swam or books that I read or naps that I took, I could not escape the truth that John was gone, that John died and he will continue to be dead, to die again and again in my dreams and in my days.
I woke up wanting to stay in the dream. I tried to put myself back to sleep, to place myself back in the dream, back there holding John's big bear hands or hugging his broad shoulders.
But I couldn't.
I realized that in that dream John was my father.
He is my father.
He is the man who tells me to do things and steers me in the right direction
and saved me when I was falling off of a cliff
and there he was again
in my dream
holding out his hand to me
pulling me to do the next right thing.

marking time

August 1st. Two monthes since John died. That is how we all mark time now. The pictures I developed the other day was filled with before photos and after photos.
And you can tell.
Before John died we went to this amazing concert that Gary was in with the drummer from Billy Joel's band and a full orchastra. It was a great weekend spent carefree walking around Portland Maine, going to meetings, meeting new people, laughing.

It was a weekend where we were not caring for John, not thinking about lung transplants and definitely not thinking about death.

Then there were photos from the Symphony. The week before John died we had an indescribably "perfect day." I remember posting that on my facebook page: Kelli Backstrom had a perfect day.
Sadie won her soccer game, the weather was beautiful, we found gluten free ice cream and we took the kids to see the Symphony with Hailey.
We laughed, people told me what a great family we have and I knew that.
We are happy. Life is normal. We are all here together.
The next day we played "gotcha last" with John, had a cookout with John and listened to the sounds that had become our normal; coughing, wheezing, gasping.

Then there was after.
The day after John's memorial service we went to Jonah's kindergarten graduation. All the kids had prepared songs and ways to show off their new skills. I would like to say I remember this event but I don't. Somehow I knew to take some pictures and boy do they say it all.

There is a glazed over look and a left over feeling that we are left with and it is here all over Nora's face.
As the time after you have a baby, first you mark it with hours. She is two hours old! Then you mark it with days. Wow, she is big for ten days old! And then you mark it with months. I can't imagine my life without this four month old.
I can't imagine my life without John and yet here it is, my life without John.
There was before and now there is after and somewhere in there is the in between time.
I think we are there now.

Camping

Tomorrow will be one month since May 27th, the day John left us. I get to learn first hand about grief and loss and I can tell you that it is not like they say in the books and it can not be learned. I have come to find out that if you want to know what grief is like, you have to go through it.
I have heard people describe many experiences of loss in my work and in my friendships and to be honest, I really had no idea. How can you explain what it feels like to be freezing when you have never been cold, or to be drowning in a desert? It's surreal, at best.
In the last two weeks I have had moments of clarity and moving on "ness" where I wake up and the first thought that enters my mind is not, "John's gone. John's dead." but more like "It's morning, where's food? I don't want to get out of this warm bed........... oh yeah, John' gone. John's dead."
I have had periods of time where I am working and I am focused on my task at hand. I am not immersed in sadness. I have a purpose.
My mother went to see a grief counselor who told her that it might not be a good idea for her to come camping with us and the Family Folk Chorale for the weekend. She told her that going away from home so soon after a loss can trigger really intense emotions. We talked about it, she wanted to go. I didn't think anything of it.......... until about an hour in to the drive.
We had gone up for our summer retreat with the folk chorale, a community of friends who have come to be our dearest friends. It was rainy and gross out and I dreaded the whole thing. But the kids were excited and I felt like it would be fun for them. Why not?
Half way through the performance I was crying and at then end Jonah and I had left the stage and were wandering through the strawberry field looking for something that wasnt there.
The thought that came in to my head was that we had left John all alone in the house.
I know this is logically crazy
but this is how I felt.
I kept thinking about that box that my mother had so lovingly decorated with John inside of it. I had picked the box up out of morbid curiousity, how much does a full grown man weigh, when broken down in to ash?
It was surprisingly heavy.
We had to get home.
It was too soon to leave him alone in the house.
We wouldn't have left him alone in the house before so why would we now?
It poured.
I cried.
Jonah got muddy and wild and just like that we were all packed up and headed home.

I couldn't get there fast enough and slept like a baby and when I woke up I heard the birds and thought that John was there
and he was.

Midweek Musings

Midweek musings: Death — and celebrating life


Midweek Musings

The Rev. Arthur McDonald The Gloucester Daily Times Tue Jun 14, 2011, 11:27 PM EDT





I so remember some years back watching a "Star Trek Next Generation" episode in which a scientist from another culture, having finished his work with the Enterprise crew, was preparing to go back home to go through an end-of-life ritual.



Seems that in his culture, when one's primary work is done, and before one becomes ill or enfeebled, he gathers family and friends and has a celebration of life and accomplishments, then ends his life.



As would be expected, the crew of the Enterprise was enraged and tried to talk him out of what they all considered a barbaric practice. But the episode raised great questions around the meaning of life and death, and I was reminded of the fact that in our culture we don't often deal well with death.



We often avoid talking about it and are not always sure how to do ritual around it when it comes. Often parents are not sure whether to include young children in the death and dying process of aging relatives. And only in more recent times, at least in my experience, have we thought of funerals and memorial services as celebrations.



As a minister, performing rituals is a significant part of my pastoral duties. Rituals remind us of what anthropologists tell us, that at base, we human beings are symbol-makers, ritual performers. Truth is, in our lives we do ritual all of the time, both religious and secular. Weddings, baptisms, blessings, healings are all special rituals.



But the ritual I most relish is the ritual we religious (spiritual for those who prefer that designation) people perform around death, i.e., wakes (viewings) and funerals or memorial services.



Death gets our attention; stops us in our tracks. When someone close to us passes on we are often devastated, or, at minimal, deeply pained and saddened. There is a hole in our lives, never to be completely filled.



Yet, in most cases, despite the pain of loss, there is so much to celebrate. And while funerals and memorial services are meant to give expression to grief and sorrow, as they ought, they are also meant to honor and celebrate and the richness of a life, always a gift.



As a minister, it's always a privilege to be asked to lead a memorial celebration. While it's important to bring a certain solemnity to the ritual, I believe it is equally important to bring a sense of joy and gladness.



I recently was asked to be part of a wonderful such remembrance of a local hero, a former "lumper" (a word I recently learned) at the docks in Gloucester and postal clerk, John Mullen.



John died too young — 59. But he accomplished so much in those years. Nothing extraordinary, just special.



Mostly, he was a loving spouse, brother, grandfather, uncle and friend. He always had time for his family and friends. His oldest niece most remembered as a child that Uncle John always took time to play with her when other adults were too busy.



He was a straight shooter; what you saw is what you got. He loved his family, friends and the Red Sox and hated war and politicians who started war. You might have seen him at Grant Circle with his simple yet direct message on a sign that said something like "War is not the Answer."



Big John's memorial service brought tears and pain, but even more so it brought laughter, joy and deep gratitude. There were moments of profound reflection, personal stories, and wonderful music and singing.



The church was filled; a lasting tribute to the manner in which this good human being touched others. Everyone left with a rich memory, a trait they admired and which they hoped to carry with them.



John is no longer visible to us but his spirit lives on in those he so deeply touched. And that's the point, really. We learn from one another what it is to be human; what it is to live well; what it is to be truthful and just; what it is to love.



So, once again, I am reminded how rich it is to ritualize life's major transitions, passages: birth, coming of age, partnering and death. And I am reminded what a blessing it is to be in ministry and to be part of a spiritual and religious community.



Death is a rupture and often the most difficult of passages, yet it is a time for us all to assess our own lives and make adjustments where needed. Are we living out the values we claim to aspire to? If not, how to we get back on course.



Celebrating another's life can be that moment of re-direction; "recalculating" as the GPS voice says. To celebrate a life, especially a life well-lived, is a deep gift to the human community, and I pray that as a culture we will all see and experience the value of facing death as just another passage and, despite the real sorrow and loss, to learn to celebrate our lives and loved ones as the best way to honor their legacy.



The Rev. Dr. Arthur McDonald is pastor of the First Universalist Unitarian Church of Essex

The Family Hero

John died two weeks after my mother had bought a 55 inch flat screen TV for him to watch the Bruins games. John loved TV. The kids love TV obviously as kids will just love TV no matter what but the other adults in this house don't really care for it too much. Now we have two 55 inch flat screen TVs but we don't have John and we don't have the Bruins anymore until next season.

The night John died my mom called me at the Cape house to tell me, distraught and confused, disoriented, her world changed forever. I was two hours away and when she asked me to come to the hospital I told her I would be there soon but not that soon and maybe we should just meet at home. Molly drove from NH, I drove from the Cape and we were all about the emerge on her in our home in Gloucester. Molly called me to tell me that she had just talked to Gramma and she was doing the strangest thing. She was reportedly at home watching the end of the Bruins game.

Of course she was.

And it was an amazing game. We were all sure that Johnny must have helped that last goal in to solidify the Bruins going to the Stanley Cup. We were sure that there was something divine working here and it had everything to do with John.

Tomorrow it will be 3 weeks since we lost John.
It feels like 3 days and it feels like 3 years and it feels like 3 minutes since I kissed the top of his head and I got him last and I walked out the door never to see him again.
Three weeks of crying and planning and laughing and sleeping and walking around outside our house in the dark looking for John.
Three weeks of hoping for the kids and telling the story of John's life and John's death and three weeks of the Bruins.


Last night the Bruins played the 7th game of the Stanley Cup final in Vancouver. Tim Thomas was our new family hero replacing Big Papi and Tommy Brady and Jonathon Papelbon and
Grampa John.

We cheered for the home team from the big flat screen TV, me, my mom, Charlie and Eddie. The kids were at the Cape with Gary but they called throughout the game to cheer with us, to yell with us and to celebrate the home team.

For the first time in those three weeks there was a long period of laughter and forgetting, of staying present with the team, with the moment.
It was not as loud as if John had been there because he was always the loudest yeller but Charlie and my mom came in a close second. We ate pizza and poked fun of each other and we watched at the edge of our seats.

The Bruins won and they won big. Vancouver went nuts and destroyed the town and in Boston we celebrated but after 5 minutes of watching the after party on TV a new feeling set in, the Bruins are over, John's dead.
It was the same type of feeling I would get when I ate a whole sundae or bought a new outfit. It's so exciting and a great fix for about 5 minutes and then reality sets in and whatever it was that you were struggling with to begin with is still there.

I'm not going to go to the rolling rally in Boston. I'll watch it on my big screen TV. I won't be able to find John in Boston but I find him here in the living room, on the couch or in the woods on top of the hill in West Gloucester. He is walking and dancing and he can breathe. He is a little boy skating down at Fernwood Lake with his friends and his brothers and he can breathe.

Sometimes I feel like I am slowing sinking to the bottom of that lake
without a breathe
without a noise.

Mother Natures Son

In the last week I have had the chance to look back on this blog. What was supposed to be a blog about a homeschooling family, I realize now became a blog about a family in the midst of illness and watching our beautiful grandfather/father/husband/friend die.

It happened so suddenly. It happened on such a happy day. We were all running through the house, grabbing clothes and high fiving, grabbing Haley at the last minute to take her with us to the Cape for a long memorial day weekend.
It was the last time I worked. I pulled in from a long day of visiting patients and we were off. Going to the Cape.
I had stopped. I'm so grateful that I stopped. I didn't always stop and I wish now that I spent so many more moments in that house with him. But that day, May 27th, I did stop. I kissed him on his head and I told him, "next time I see you, you will have new lungs." He smiled at me.
He had a great day that day. He told me he felt better than he had in days. He smiled at us. He got us last.
And then we were off.
And that was the last time I saw him.

How quickly life can go.

He died suddenly in my mother's arms, a sudden and fast heart attack, respiratory failure, the death certificate said it happened in minutes.
He had pulmonary fibrosis for years but his death happened in minutes.
I hope you didn't feel any pain, John.
I hope you are at peace John.

Today I got in the car and the song on the radio was "Mother Nature's son." It was one of his favorites and I know he was with me.

But I wish that he was with me.

Grampa John

I wanted to tell you all about a part of John that most of you may not have been able to see and a part of John that was most likely a huge surprise to John himself. I want to tell you about Grampa John.







Grampa John was a single man until he was 47 when he married my mother and became such a huge part of our family. Grampa John had no children of his own but was well versed in childhood, having an innocent heart and a boyish way about him. He was a delight to the children in his life. Grampa John had many nieces and nephews who were a big part of his life and his journey. He loved you all and was changed because of his time with you.






When John was first trying to persuade my mother to go out on a date with him he put his 14 year old niece Patti Ann on the phone to vouje for him. He attended many baseball games and musical events as Uncle Johnny, Johnny Johnny TaTa and Johnny Weed. Uncle John knew how much all of those nieces and nephews loved him.






Grampa John inherited an adult child, me and a special needs child, my sister Colleen. Such a giving and righteous man, he took Colleen and loved her without condition, caring for her through seizures and through sickness, all the while maintaining his sense of compassion and humor. Colleen adored John and she is forever changed because of her time with him.






Grampa John inherited Molly, his first of the four grandchildren. Molly was 5 or 6 when John came on the scene and he took right to her, joking with her and taking her fishing and camping. Grampa John taught my daughter Molly about politics. They fought feverishly over current events and pop culture. Grampa John taught Molly how to drive in the parking lot of the West Parish School, with his calm and patience he sat in the passenger side all the while talking about his mother who was buried in the cemetery in the back of West Parish. John taught Molly about Gloucester and the wharf, about what is important and what is real. Molly is forever changed because of her time with him.






Grampa John welcomed all three of my younger children in to the world. Coxing me up Centennial Ave in labor with Sadie, all the while telling me the stupidest jokes he learned at the post office. He was the godfather to Sadie and I realize now that he was in this role because he was the most spiritual man I know. John cared not for organized religion and looked down upon corruption but John knew God in his everyday acts of kindness and serenity. I knew that John would lead Sadie to God and he did and he continues to through his illness and at his death and today. We know you are here with us Grampa John and we are forever changed because of you.






In his illness John taught us so much. He taught us that Delanys pizza really is better than Sebastians, that a smile is easier to form than a frown, that a kind word can be the best thing but sometimes the kindest thing to do is to not say anything at all. John taught us that there is always time for family and that sometimes family can be created in the strangest ways. Even in his most sick moments John never lost his sense of gratitude in the world, thanking God for the doctors in his life, the oxygen that sustained him and for a good episode of Monk or CSI.






John never complained. This was the hardest to understand. How could he never complain? If it were me I would have whined and moaned and felt incredibly sorry for myself and if he had we would have understood but he didn’t. Grampa John described himself in the last year of his life as the luckiest man he knew, because of his family and his sobriety and his home on the hill in West Gloucester.






All these things we didn’t talk about enough, we were too busy playing “gotcha last” and watching the Simpsons with you. We were too busy feeding you and cheering you on, singing to you and coloring pictures for you. We were so busy loving you that we often forgot to tell you how much and now you are gone and so quickly we are stunned by the silence in our home. Sadie told me that her heart felt as if half of it were missing and Nora looked for you after she came home from school but you were gone.






I see you in everything. I see you in the garden and in the pine trees, I see you in your brother Charlie’s smile and in the crevice of the couch where you spent so many afternoons with the cat. I see you in the opening of a door and I see you when I turn out the lights. Molly, Sadie, Nora, Jonah, Gary, Colleen and I are forever changed because of you.

Gray

I think that this is a time better than any other time to think about how crazy our lives really are. What I used to believe was that one moment we are happy and free and another moment we are sad and despairing and there is hopelessness and there is rejoicing all wrapped up in packages in our closets separate. What I know now is that you may find me in a room full of mourners laughing at a line from an obituary wondering if the fluid running down my face is filled with joyful cells or sorrow. Life is not easily catagorical. I know a lot about this. I have learned a tremendous amount this year. Grampa John now has a chronic cough that is so debilitating that when he laughs he runs the risk of coughing himself right in to a grave but do you think that stops us? We can still be found from time to time playing "gotcha last" or reminding him about a famous wharf story about some Gloucester character that was mistaken for a dog in a motor vehicle by the police. Now that's funny.
I have learned that just because I kept my children out of school for so many years didn't guarantee that they would not be subject to the schooly way of life and that I can only hide them out here for so long. One day or another someone somewhere was going to grade them and I was going to lose track of where they were exactly anyhow. And they were going to live, and live quite happily or sadly or both.
I have learned that really it had nothing to do with school in the first place but everything to do with the people that they were born to be and the family that we create. I have joined the ranks and the herd. I am no longer alone in the museum the day after Feb vacation but totally immersed in a crowd of brown and white and fat and skinny and muslim and jewish people all running about taking their school vacationing kids to the same place. I took time off this week from my new job just like most of my office did and I will resume the joyful sorrowful difficult, exciting and boring depending on the moment employment that I have just like most of America on Monday. I am no longer swimming against the current and I am floating of a raft toward the warm sand.
That is not to say that my homeschooling world was a sham or that the joy was not there. I am grateful for every moment of it and my children are too. It's just not so one sided. Life is a heavy duty amount of gray. My mother came in to tell my my grandfather was hospitalized again and I pocketed that information for later. There was just too much in the way at that moment. I had a bill in front of me, a bunch of hyper children about me and food to think up, get out and create.
I cried later.
Right then I smiled, I think I even cracked a joke. I looked at Jonah who told me he was a honey badger today and I thought about my dying patients. I smiled and laughed on my face and cried and mourned in my heart.
My daughter Nora learned a perfect Ode to Joy today on the violin. I thought we would never have time for those things if we did school but of course we do. She ran to play it for Grampa John but he couldn't stop coughing. She cried because she was mad and then she smiled because there was a cookie waiting for her and a hug from her mother and Jonah had decided to strip down and lay on the floor and grunt like a pig. Sadie was curled up in a ball reading Harry Potter for the thousandth time and Gary was cooking.

The coughing stopped and we breathed a sigh of relief and held our breath for the next moment.

White Flowers

White Flowers


By Mary Oliver



Last night

in the fields

I lay down in the darkness

to think about death,

but instead I fell asleep,

as if in a vast and sloping room

filled with those white flowers

that open all summer,

sticky and untidy,

in the warm fields.

When I woke

the morning light was just slipping

in front of the stars,

and I was covered

with blossoms.

I don’t know

how it happened—

I don’t know

if my body went diving down

under the sugary vines

in some sleep-sharpened affinity

with the depths, or whether

that green energy

rose like a wave

and curled over me, claiming me

in its husky arms.

I pushed them away, but I didn’t rise.

Never in my life had I felt so plush,

or so slippery,

or so resplendently empty.

Never in my life

had I felt myself so near

that porous line

where my own body was done with

and the roots and the stems and the flowers

began.