grief issues

Terry Fox, My Old Nemesis, We Meet Again


Photo of Terry Fox, Canadian cancer fund-raise...

Image via Wikipedia

Terry Fox Day is a Canadian thing. During the month of September, communities all across the country organize run/walk events to raise money for cancer research in Terry’s name. This year marks the 30th anniversary and celebrates the $500 million that has been raised in his name since his attempt to run the length of Canada thirty years ago.

What made Terry’s run special and inspiring to Canadians was the fact that he’d lost part of his leg to a cancer that would go on to claim his life at the age of 21. His cancer returned after a three-year remission during his trek and he never saw the finish line, but his family was determined that the run become an annual event and it has.

I first heard of Terry as a high school student. We read about him in our Catholic high school back in Iowa. It was one of those grisly teachable moments that the nuns and priests were so fond of when I was a child. “See how lucky you are that you aren’t one-legged and being eaten away by cancer?” was the gist of the lesson.

As an American though, I didn’t know the run went on to become a yearly event.

Until I emigrated to Canada three years ago.

Terry Fox came back into my life via Dee, who discovered Terry in kindergarten and developed a morbid fixation that plagued us for months.

At the school assembly, where footage of Terry’s original run was shown and the children received morbid Terry tattoos, Dee met up with death too young – again.

She created a tiny little shrine for the tattoo in our dining room and all manner of death, cancer and why questions haunted Rob and I more than our own dead spouses do when they are feeling feisty.

Last year, Dee asked if she could skip school on Terry Fox Day. She didn’t want to see any more pictures of him. They made her feel sick.

“So you don’t want to take a toonie or go on the walk?” I asked.

The kids bring “toonies for Terry” and go on a 3km walk in the afternoon. She loves donating coin. We can’t walk past a street musician without tossing change, and she adores group walks, which is ironic because “walking” her father is the eye-rolling height of boring in her opinion.

“No, I want to bring a toonie and walk, ” she said. “I just don’t want to hear about him or see him anymore. He makes me sick.”

A quick flurry of emails between her teacher and I resulted in Dee being excused from the assembly after which she happily strolled hand in hand with her teacher.

This year? Same thing. Pictures of Terry give her “a sick feeling in my tummy” and she would rather stay home from school (she adores school so much that she can make weekends unbearable for Rob and I) than endure the sight of Terry.

More emails. A new, and fortunately equally sympathetic, teacher will handle distraction duty.

My own feelings about the cancer run/walks is predicated on the fact that my late husband died of something rare and unglamorous and, therefore, not worthy of fund-raising. The boobie bracelets for breast cancer and the fun-runs for cancer research in general distract from the fact that most people die of something other than cancer.

Rob’s heart attack is a stark reminder that cardio-vascular ends await more of us than cancer does and, between it and accidents, that’s how most of us who don’t die old and asleep in our beds will shuffle off this mortal coil.

Despite losing my father to lung cancer and Rob losing Shelley to melanoma, I feel removed from the whole cancer thing most of the time.  I have read too much to believe that there is a cure anywhere or ever, and I am a bit hesitant to cheer for treatments that mostly seem aimed at allowing death to whittle away at you at the expense of life’s quality and at the greater expense of the physical, spiritual and mental well-being of your loved ones.

Dee took a toonie. The school’s gym isn’t finished and so there will be no assembly, but her teacher will shield her from any reading material the class goes through. And she will walk. She does love to go on those walks, which I am grateful she is healthy and able to do.

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Conversations with Mom


I waited until Thursday to call Mom this week because I wanted to see how her first session with hospice grief group went. She was a little leery but felt she had to go because a) it was recommended to her by the hospice as a good thing for survivors to do at the five or six month point and b) she thought perhaps she wasn’t grieving right because,

“I just don’t feel sad all the time.”

Which is the Catch-22 of grief, the fact that you don’t feel sad every single second of every single day for months, years or decades after losing a loved one. It’s just not physically or emotionally possible, and no one ever really tells a person that. It’s just something you figure out as time goes by.

But when I called her, she’d had another encounter with CB and a voice message from the X-SIL which upset her.

“Your brother called and he needed money again, ” she said.

I always feel like she throws the term “your brother” out there as a way of reminding me that she would be rid of him if I hadn’t stuck up for him last fall and convinced her to bring him back to see Dad before he died and to be there for the funeral.

“What’s wrong now? His van again?”

“No, he wants the money to move back to the Bay Area,” she said.

“How many times can your Mom fund his moving back and forth from Tahoe?” Rob asked me later.

Indeed.

CB needed $350 to rent a U-Haul for his stuff. He has a place to stay. Yet another friend will be putting him up. I marvel at his ability to always have a friend in reserve for those prolonged periods in his life when he is in breakdown mode, but he is a charming bastard when he needs to be. He never seems to need to be as charming where his family is concerned.

Long story short, Mom sent the money, but what really pissed her off was the phone message from X-SIL which can be summed up thusly,

“You made a commitment to CB when you adopted him (almost 43 years ago now) and you need to honor it by helping him out now. Besides, you are old and alone and he could come live with you and help you out (which would get him the hell away from me).

X-SIL’s predicament should be a lesson to all who foolishly have children with men they don’t want to marry all that much. I mean, if you don’t like or trust a guy enough to marry him – ever – why sleep with him in the first place? And the no-breeding thing should go without saying.

On Thursday, I tried to be rational and matter of fact and it was not what Mom wanted to hear. She wanted me to share her outrage and do the verbal equivalent of a head nod as she ranted. Trouble is, I have been in the widow window she is in, and I know better than to feed that kind of pointless emotion. It’s draining and in the long run, not really what serves a person best. So I pointed out the facts in a non-judgmental way:

1) CB is mentally ill. Being angry with him is pointless. Send him money or don’t, but stop expecting my agreement that he is somehow responsible for his looniness. 

2) X-SIL is nearly as nuts and she isn’t a part of our lives – hasn’t been for a decade easily. Consider the source and erase the message. 

Afterwards I wondered just how annoying I was when I was 6 months out with my perpetual focus on myself and how the world was impacting me. My poor family, friends and co-workers is all I can say though truthfully, most people dealt with me by pretending nothing had happened and I seldom brought it up in real time. I know now that there is a very good reason for the “pep” talks the grieving are given starting from around that time period. These are “make or break” months. Whether a person pulls themselves together and begins moving forward depends on those around us being supportive without enabling.

Friday, of course, I felt bad. Six months out is a rough time, and I didn’t want Mom to feel as though all I do is give her advice when she wants validation. I called her again. I told her I was sorry if I added to her trouble or made her feel bad. She assured me that I didn’t. And then she rehashed the whole thing again, this time throwing in the fact that Nephew1’s grandmother (he lives with her and his dad now) called and asked for a loan of $200 to pay the electric bill.

“What I should have told her was to stop eating out every night and buy food that needs to be cooked rather than microwaved and maybe she wouldn’t be short at the end of the month,” Mom was indignant, but she gave her the money.

I feel bad about having counseled  Mom to use money as a way to keep the problem people in her life at bay, but at the time, it was the quickest and easiest solution. That time, having past, means that the heavy-lifting of redefining her role and willingness to be supportive beyond good thoughts, a shoulder and prayers has arrived, and I am not sure she can do it.

“I am all alone now,” she said.

And while she is not technically alone, she is spiritually/emotionally alone with Dad gone because no one has her back at a moment’s notice anytime and anywhere anymore. I get that.

As I was listening to her on Friday, DNOS showed up to hear the offending voice message. When I talked with her privately today, she confirmed my suspicions that X-SIL was simply being manipulative and trying to rid herself of the burden of CB by convincing Mom into bringing him home.

At the time of the conversation however, DNOS was in,

“Uh-huh. I see. Really?” mode, which is code for “Just shut up and let me handle things because I am here and you are not.”

Later at dinner – BabyD was off at a birthday party – Rob and I discussed, yet again, extended family and our siblings in particular. Rob’s younger siblings are just as off track as CB and my youngest sister, but they rarely ever contact him the way CB does me. Rob doesn’t like the way CB’s issues and my Mom’s difficulties dealing with CB affects me. I don’t either. I wish I could figure out a way to disengage from CB completely. I can’t help him. The system hasn’t any mechanism to allow for his being helped without his permission, which he isn’t capable of giving anymore, and the whole thing is now boiling down to damage control.

In the end though it is up to Mom to simply putting an end to the mooching and being the go-to for our less responsible family and shirt-tail relations.