Are Optimistic People Just Plain Stupid?

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about a difficult challenge at work and the next thing I was going to try to meet this challenge. And she made it abundantly clear that she believed I was hopelessly naïve to think I could have any power to influence the outcome, since this is just The Way Things Are.

I myself have moments of cynicism, believe it or not. My boss told me awhile ago that I “tend to assume the worst,” not the greatest opinion for your boss to have of you. But despite his opinion, for the most part I believe I am optimistic about having a shot at influencing the outcome in many situations, and that it's worth my effort to try. I reason that if I give up, assume it’s hopeless, and don’t even try, the outcome will be pretty predictable and I’ll regret not having tried harder. So I continue to continue.

Cases exist where this is insane, of course. There are cases where I’m expecting others to change their basic DNA, for example. The only thing in the end that I have control over is my own actions and reactions. I can make an effort to influence others and I may or may not succeed. But if I trudge forward over the same ground again and again without success, at some point it morphs from perseverance to stupidity. Deciding when that point has arrived is a matter of perception, judgment, and wisdom.

God, grant me

The serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

And of course, the wisdom to know the difference can be the hardest part. Things I cannot change:

• Everybody dies

• Everybody makes their own choices and each choice has consequences

• “All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” The Boxer, Paul Simon

Things I can change:

• How I live my life before I die

• How loving I am to other people before they die

• How I react to events that unfold. “There’s something lost and something gained in living every day.” Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell

Sisters of Mercy

A few weeks ago my husband, daughter and I spent a weekend sitting with my husband’s dying mother Jacki; she passed away just a few days after we returned home.

In a tiny Ohio apartment in the coldest days of January, her husband and many family members surrounded her hospital bed, offering what each of them could in love and comfort, seeking ways to say good-bye. The five stages of dying and loss played and replayed themselves not necessarily in neat order, with everything from anger to denial (“I am not dying!”) to acceptance and surrender. I struggled to find ways to respect her experience and her needs as she drifted further and further away hoping my own family would do the same for me one day.

The experience evoked memories in me of other losses including my last days with my father, sitting by his hospital bed feeling as helpless as hell, wishing with all my heart that I could somehow halt the relentless failure of each organ in turn, the inevitability of a life slipping away.

“There’s nothing you can do for me, kid,” he said at one point as we shared an orange together. I remembered him years before offering my grandfather sections of orange in the convalescent home during the last few months of grandfather’s life.

“I know there's nothing I can do—but I wish there were.  I wish there were,” I replied.

And what do you do for the dying in those last hours or days when they can move so swiftly among flashes of fear, denial, regret, pain, acceptance, love, anger? Surrounding her bed, each of us did what we could. Her daughter and her friend stayed there and provided care day and night, her sons were there for her in every way they could be, each of the grandchildren did their best, her husband sat by her bed and asked if there was anything she needed.

I rubbed Jacki’s feet and legs a couple of times, for as long as she seemed to want me to, and was rewarded with the smallest of smiles as she gazed into my eyes. I told her we all loved her. I asked her questions about her distant past, trying to focus on the good memories. I helped her with a few sips of water, took my turn giving her meds mixed with yoghurt, distracted her from her discomfort while the hospice nurse bathed her by talking steadily of those sun-filled summer days at a Florida beach years ago when she took the grandkids for a few nights and gave my husband and me some delightful alone time that meant the world to us at the time. I thanked her once again for that kindness.

My sister-in-law and I sang Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” together for her as I played the guitar.

Oh the Sisters of Mercy they are not departed or gone.

They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.

And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me their song.
I hope you run into them, you who’ve been traveling so long...

We all sang another song she remembered and liked that the family used to sing together: “Abilene.”

Everybody did everything they could to provide love and comfort at every opportunity and yet in the end of course nothing could halt the process, and a few days after we left, she was gone. I am, as I always am after a death in the family, with the feeling that somehow I could have done more, or done things differently--the familiar regret that always consumes me when a family member is gone forever and I’ll never hear that voice again.

Farewell, Jacki.

M

Each year the entry on my calendar says simply “M.” This morning I go to the hospital and change into one of the thin pink (they are always pink) gowns, place my clothes in the locker (I always try to get #7 but it is never free) and wear the key on its stretch band around my wrist. I sit in the waiting room filling out a form on a clipboard. Next to me this year is a very old lady with a lovely, well-lined face and snowy white hair, in a pink gown much like mine. We commiserate on the meager two-snap closing in the front of the gown, and then she blinks in dismay through thick glasses at her own clipboard.

“They want me to fill this out and I can’t see,” says she. “My daughter usually helps me, but she left for Alaska this morning.”

I don’t want to presume, but I want to help if I can. “I could help you if you like,” I say.

“Would you?” She seems genuinely relieved, so I scoot over to the chair next to hers and we work together on the form. I learn that her name is Marilyn. She was born in 1918 and is 91 years old.

She has had two different kinds of cancer and two different operations for it, one for each breast. “What bad luck,” I say, “But you sure are a survivor!” She smiles gamely.

She tells me she is very glad her daughter lives nearby and can’t imagine how it would be to not have family close at hand. She is wonderful, and positive, and still quite spry. I feel a surge of grief for my own mother, gone for 11 years now.

“See you later, and good luck,” I say when they call me in for the strange imaging process that involves mashing my breasts into various painful configurations.

I ask the technician how this test is done for women who have had double mastectomies and remark on how positive the woman waiting outside seems to be. “Oh, she probably had lumpectomies and we can still do tests in those cases. Yes, it sounds like she hasn’t allowed breast cancer to define her. For some women, it ends up defining them forever. For others, it defines them for a short while of course, but then they live through the experience with grace and strength. Seeing that happen is one of the best parts of my job.”

So far each year, despite a few false alarms, the news has been positive. Whatever comes, I hope for grace and strength.

Do Not Go Gentle...

E-mail over the weekend reveals that several family members are struggling with how best to support their parents through the last years of their lives. Mothers and fathers in their 70s and 80s are confused and angry, sometimes fighting tooth and nail for what they view to be that last ounce of dignity or choice in their lives.

My husband and I are reminded of one of the most famous poems ever written, by Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” He wrote the poem for his dying father as is clear from the last stanza.

The poem begins:

“Do not go gentle into that goodnight,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

From my own experience losing my parents a few years ago it is hard to know which is more difficult: when they are raging against the loss of all they knew of life – or when you can see in their eyes that they are starting to fade away. Dylan Thomas’s wishes come clear at the end of the poem:

“And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

We all hope for a quiet end with dignity and without suffering, in peace and knowing we did the best we could. But most of that is luck, and meanwhile we do the best we can to help those we love at the end of their journey.

Wish You Were Here

There is a succinct phrase Mark uses to describe death and one of his philosophies about it; I first heard him mention it when my Mom died and he says it comes from an old movie, although I have never found the reference. The phrase is: “You’re not here, you’re here, you’re not here.”

Somehow this links in with an earworm I’ve had for the past few weeks: the classic Pink Floyd tune circa 1975, “Wish You Were Here, ” by David Gilmour (music) and Roger Waters (lyrics). To me this is a song about the despair and grief you feel when someone you deeply love is not really there anymore—even when they might be right next to you.

The song begins with the sound of a woman’s voice on the radio and what sounds like a twist of the knob, scanning the channels, classical music, a search for a better station. Then strumming begins on a 12-string acoustic guitar, quietly scratchy at first as though over the radio. The sound seems to floating across a lake late at night. It gets a little louder and another guitar joins in with the lead. Finally the song starts:

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears,
Wish you were here.

Listen to it sometime. I swear it is a song about two people together but apart: "Wish You Were Here.” At the end, you can hear the lonely sound of wind scouring a desert or moor (or perhaps the dark side of the moon).

You’re not here, you’re here, you’re not here.