Monday MEME

Sadness is the Monday Meme


My parents were the younger and youngest children in their families respectively. By the time they met and married, they had nieces and nephews in grade school. Due to circumstances beyond their control, they couldn’t have children and after seven years, they adopted me. So I was always one of the younger cousins. I was a child when many of my cousins married and started families of their own.

My oldest cousin, Dar, married at nineteen and her six children were more like first cousins to my sibilings and I then she ever was. Although I lost touch with my extended family when I went off to university, I did grow up, in a sense, with these second cousins.

Dar died a few years ago after a long battle with cancer. She was in her mid to late fifties. Young by today’s standards though my own widowhood has taught me that people are very unrealistic about what “young” really means. I think my late husband may have been in hospice at the time, so I didn’t get back for the funeral and never sent a note or card to her husband. At the family reunion this last June however I had a long talk with one his daughters and discovered that he has adjusted, as we all do, and was doing well.*

DNOS called me Sunday morning to let me know that Dad was not doing well. He’d had a rough night. His breathing was not good and he couldn’t get out of bed. But she had other news too.

Dar’s youngest son, who is thirty, came home after an outing with their two older children – aged 8 and 2 – to find his wife on the bed and not breathing. He discovered  her because their baby, born just this August, was crying. He and his father tried to revive her but she was already gone. She was just 27.

Twenty-seven is very young.

I called a cousin who is close to the family. She is DF’s godmother in fact. She filled me in on the details. Everyone focus’s on the details in the aftermath. The timeline of events takes on huge significance. The story is told and retold, passed from one person to another. It’s important, as validating as the life that is now over. And it will eventually make the loss real.

I reminded my cousin that DF will need support for a long time to come and to not let that be forgotten after the first few months, as it sometimes is.**

CousinA also talked with me a bit about Dad’s turn*** and how hard it is for us now too. But I didn’t agree. 27 is not 81. Young and healthy with a life ahead of you and small children is not old and ill with grown children. All deaths are not equal. Some are more tragic and more unfair.

I have no prompt today, but I invite you to share your tales of loss or memories of loved ones. It’s a good thing to tell the stories because they are reminders in these uncertain days of the other thing we have in common with each other – our mortality.

 

*How well a bereaved person is doing is never really known to anyone but the person. Family and friends always believe we are better than we are. It’s a very subjective call.

**She agreed and of course brought up that if anyone would know this it would be me. I don’t like being an expert on the subject.

***I am reminded was we speak that death often comes in threes. My uncle’s wife two weeks ago and now my cousin’s. And Dad has taken a turn.

The Happiness Project is the Monday Meme


I have a blog on my GoogleReader called Marginal Revolutions. I think I have mentioned it before. One of the bloggers is an economist named Tyler Cowen and he was interviewed by The Happiness Project, another blog whose author, Gretchen Rubin, is researching happiness advice for a book she is writing and blogging about it. Essentially she is trying out any and all happiness enhancer theories from self-help books to O magazine.

I have come to the conclusion that happiness is not unattainable but neither is it something to rabidly pursue or loudly lament during the periodic dry spells of either. Happy is like day. It has to have an opposite in order for us to know it exists. 

My life is good but even in the dark times there was still happiness. Maybe not recognizable to anyone but me, but it was there. Most days. If only for a moment or two. Sometimes though I missed those moments by focusing too intently on what I was lacking.

In the drama over the last week or so, I have noted that happiness is still something that exists even in the face of impending grief. My father for example has been entertaining company, mostly family, but despite his illness and continuing ups and downs with Mom, he probably knows happiness just about every day in some form or another be it visits or phone calls or just the joy of another day that he is still able to do things for himself.

I guess I am not surprised. Dad is a Virgo. They are such practical and grounded people. According to Rob the world would grind to a halt in their absence.

So let’s ponder our moments of joy today, shall we? Here or link back.

The Unspectacular Me is the Monday Meme


This meme is dedicated to the revelation of the mundane. What about ourselves is ordinary and even boring in its typicalness?

Where do I begin?

1) I live in my yoga clothes. I always look as though I am heading off to a class or returning from one, depending on whether I have showered yet or not.

2) I eat breakfast every day.

3) I really like being a housewife. Rob recently pointed out that I live a Hollywood wife kind of existence. Upon closer examination, I realized he is right. My life is by and large self-indulgent now. Even the things that I do daily that are “work” aren’t really when compared to what my life was before or the reality of most women’s lives.

4) I am not a blonde. My hair is sort of brownish strawberry blond. Nothing that would catch the eye.

5) I am still washing dishes by hand and still not unhappy about it.

6) I can read a whole book again.*

 

Meme Terms and Conditions

1. Link to the person who tagged you. 
2. Mention the rules on your blog. 
3. List six unspectacular things about you.
4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them. (Consider yourself tagged– post on your blog, or comment here as it pleases you.)

 

*Reading is the first thing to go when you have been widowed. Don’t ask me why but it seems to be almost universally true – provided you could read in the first place.