rip away the tears; drink away the happy years

My brother passed away today. 

As much as we have always been bracing for this, it took us by surprise in the way a sheet of ice on a sunny day can melt just enough to waft down from a high skyscraper window and slice a pedestrian in half. 

My mother was alone with him in a hotel room in Nashville, where he had come to have a consult about a heart and lung transplant. It was a couple of tests and 31 vials of blood. Not a procedure. Not a surgery. Just as it had been for the last few months, no matter the position he simply could not get comfortable in the hotel room. She’d stand next to his bed and rub his back till he was snoring on her shoulder, then lay him down and go to her bed to try and get some rest. But then he’d suddenly be sitting up, again saying he was uncomfortable. She repeated the process, but this time the small voice inside of her that has never guided her wrong suggested she lie down next to him. She stroked his hair and laid her hand on his chest. And then it stopped moving all together. He struck out his limbs as if he’d had a shock and wouldn’t respond. She had to pull him to the floor and start CPR.

My mother managed to maintain his weak carotid pulse until the front desk attendant ran in to help with compressions and the ambulance arrived. The EMT patted her on the back and said “you did a very good job.” They let her ride in the ambulance, but in the front, helplessly watching their attempts at resuscitation from the little window. She called me on speaker at 12:15am and I heard it all; including the call of time: 12:34 am. It felt like I was in a movie about a made-up character, not a person without whom I feel I have no identity. 

She said it was the most agonizing thing she’d ever done in all her 72 years. It’s remarkable—many mothers give birth to their children, “but how many can say they had the honor of giving their child his last breath, too?” 

All I could do was look up into the air and thank all the good things of the world that after all of the agony and the suffering, the loneliness of being misunderstood and underestimated, my brother passed on from this world connected to the person who loved him the most. He didn’t have to face the journey alone. 

We are not okay.

#NaBloPoMo

“What Would You Say?” Dave Matthews Band 

either way it’s ok, you wake up with yourself

I wrote this post about my brother’s well-loved teddy bear in May 2005. That thing has traveled with the kid to every state he’s ever lived in and is still propped up in a corner or a closet in his house. Dude is in his 40s and not ashamed to be rocking that stuffy, which has been with him through some tough times.

If you read the comments on that post, Jon commiserates, saying he’s got just as well-snuggled a bear of his own. Nearly six months after writing that, he put that bear in a suitcase and boarded a plane from LAX to MDW to meet me in person for the first time. We needed to find out if there was anything *there* there. 

He came off the plane at 1:10 am in his jeans and Mr. T Experience sweatshirt (which he still has)—I can’t remember if it already had the remnants of a sticker that had gotten through the washer and dryer or if that happened after we had been out at a concert together. Some of the details are fuzzy now. I do remember I had agonized over what to wear and finally put on what I hoped would be a flattering, “put together” outfit: black turtleneck (which is still somewhere in our closet, too) fitted/flared work trousers and high-heeled boots. It was an unseasonably warm night in early November. 

Things were awkward at our first stop: The all-night Omega diner, where he ordered a Reuben sandwich and I had a bowl of chicken with wild rice soup. There was stilted smalltalk with a lot of shy silence that I rushed to fill with gibberish. He made little move to reciprocate. Where was the chatty guy I had gotten to know over a million hours on the phone? This was a REAL bummer. 

I dropped him off at his hotel and went home to wallow in disappointment. In the morning I called cc in tears because I hadn’t felt even a twinge of the Zeus-strength bolt I assumed would blast between us the first time I looked into his eyes. I was crushed.

CC gave me a pep talk and I went to pick him up. Ok, so maybe no spark. Oh well, he came all the way out here. The least I could do was show him why Chicago is the best city in the world. First stop? Portillo’s for a Chicago-style hot dog. 

Obviously now I clearly see what’s between us was never going to be an instantaneous, explosive chemical reaction. What in the Hallmark Channel had I expected? In the only photo I’d seen of the guy before then, he had a dozen mini doughnuts stuffed into his mouth. I had studied it and declared to Ale that, yes, he is most definitely cute, and his hair looks like it’s really soft, too. By the time he bought those tickets, I was half in the bag and just looking  for confirmation that there was chemistry to back it up.

This thing started with a tiny ember and steadily picked up kindling as we spent the weekend making jokes, sharing random anecdotes and marveling at how two people who seem so very different could be aligned on so many random topics. We drove around the city, waited in line, looked out over the skyline from the top of the Sears Tower. And, like one of those long-lasting fireplace logs that sits there looking forlorn while you impatiently press it with a flame and pray it catches, a pleasant glow verrrrrry sllllloooooowly started somewhere out of sight and began to take over. By the end of the weekend, it felt like this slow burn might be strong enough to last for much longer than we ever expected. Jon became my H, even though none of you had any idea it was happening at the time.

When I went to drop him off at his room, I caught sight of a small, beige, stubby, nubbly sort of thing. There is a very specific texture a once-fuzzy and floofy stuffed animal takes on after decades of being squeezed and slept on: His bear. I’d recognize something so beloved anywhere. It was surprising he’d let me see it the first time we met, but I had a feeling he’d known I would understand. 

We’ve been together almost two decades since then. Now we live down the road from that Portillo’s I first took him to, but these days he orders a cheeseburger, no lettuce and cheese fries. And we’re not terribly far from the Omega diner (now under new management and certainly no longer open all night, but I’m guessing the menu hasn’t changed very much).

The bear, Ted, is safe in this house somewhere, and not getting many snuggles, the poor neglected thing. These days there’s no space for him. Two rambunctious littles who inherited their father’s very soft hair compete for space in H’s arms instead. And when I’m lucky I can find a safe space in them, too.

#NaBlPoMo

“My Life” Billy Joel

a footnote in someone else's happiness

I shouldn’t have waited until Day 6 to say something to you, the two people I imagine might meander over here to read what I have to say from time to time. I owe you both an apology. 

That last post that was hanging around here since June 2020 for three-point-four years was "vagueBooking" at best. And the ensuing sustained silence may have insinuated that my brother was clawing his way through a serious medical swamp...from which he might not have emerged. 

He was. But he got out. 

I'm so sorry I didn't come back and tell you that he was ok. He is ok. 

That year—2020—was hell for a lot of people. And nobody who knew what was going on will ever be the same after having lived through it. Collective trauma and all that. 

For us, the stakes felt higher. Many people in my life took this approach: “Well we have to live our lives!” Or “sure but what’s the cost to our mental health?” It was especially surprising coming from the pastor who lived next door, but who knows what kind of stuff he was having to counsel people about.

Those are valid points! That said, all those folks had the luxury of assuming that Covid-19 would be a miserable experience, but they (and their loved ones) would likely come through it to the other side with their lives. Mental health is important, to be sure, but if your body doesn't make it, neither does your mind. 

We suspected that Covid would likely put my brother in the ground and didn’t want to take the chance, especially because my mom and I were his lifeline to the outside world. It felt as though every person I knew who was bitching about having to wear a mask didn’t actually give a shit about his life. Or what losing him might to do to mine, frankly. Eh, he has a pre-existing condition. What can you do? Those people are expendable, right? Certainly not worth being *uncomfortable* for more than a few months to try and protect. It's not like losing one of them could destroy a family or anything. And even if it would, that's somebody else's family and somebody else's problem. So all of us locked down harder than anyone else we knew.

Then we got smacked with something no one was ready for: That post I left you hanging on for three years? It had nothing to do with Covid. It was about a headache that turned out to be a brain bleed. 

The kid had to have a hole drilled into his skull so that the excess blood could be released and stop exerting pressure on his brain. Thank goodness it worked and he was ok.

We doubled down on our Covid-aversion measures. If we went anywhere at all it would be while re-breathing our own wet carbon dioxide, the mask digging into our cheeks and cutting into the backs of our ears. The alternative…the sheer idea of dropping the ball and letting something happen to him…just the possibility kept me up at night, even more so after this horrible virus sent my mother’s beloved sister--her person--to heaven far too early. And these kids? These amazing little imps were the only ones in their classes who stayed home then wore masks all day long for nearly THREE school years.   

Despite everything we did, in fall 2021 my brother stepped out to celebrate a close friend’s Very Important Day and BAM, it happened. He got Covid. And we had been right. It very nearly did kill him. 

I’m the one who had to call 911. To sit next to him for days in the overflowing ER when they couldn’t get a bed on a unit and bemoan the fact that the stubborn goat never signed a Power of Attorney so I couldn’t get him transferred to the hospital that actually knew five or three things about his complex medical history--and they were holding a bed for the guy. I had to relay all sorts of tenuous and terrifying information to my parents, going out of their minds at home; and to my husband, managing a fulltime job and two very small children (one of whom was still in diapers) at our house. Once my brother got a bed, my mother was at his side for the worst of it. And it was very bad. He was on the brink. The pandemic wasn’t anywhere near over for us. If I'm being very honest? It may never be over for us.

Somehow, he got through it. I’d be lying if I said he was ever going to be the same again (another myth about Covid—not everyone recovers 100%). I wish I could tell you some of the truly scary bits. But my brother doesn’t want me telling people his business. I’ve probably already said too much.

This is where I struggle: Yes. This happened to my brother, not me. His very supportive college roommates who live in different states, his revered colleagues and close high school buddies—who most decidedly are NOT receiving an average of 12 phone calls at any time of the day or night just to say whatcha doin' NOR are they dropping their spouses, children, work, obligations at a moment’s notice to sprint out the door because the call is coming from an emergency room—they are quick and loud to affirm: Yes! It’s HIS life. It’s HIS story! And if my brother doesn’t want anyone to know his business, then I need to respect that and keep my damn mouth shut.

I get it. I really do. He can't control anything about his health. So he keeps an iron fist around the information.

But…how am I supposed to continue being his emotional support animal on a need-to-know/need-to-tell basis? How am I supposed to jump off a conference call to answer the phone only to discover he’s bored or saw a funny meme or has a taste for Taco Bell or is craving Lemon Lime-flavored New York Seltzer brand soda we used to drink in the '90s that is no longer sold here or has a knot in his back or thinks he may be dying and doesn’t want to die or is tired of fighting and needs a pep talk…How am I supposed to manage that, while also trying to explain to everyone else in my life who has expectations of me that no, I'm not that lazy or scatterbrained, I'm just really tired and that pesky attention deficit disorder is probably to blame; no, melatonin does not work with my anxiety; I HAVE tried to meal plan--believe me--it fails when you can't follow through this evening, let alone know what might happen by the end of the week; I try to make sure the fridge is stocked and the undies are clean and the library books get returned and the kids' homework gets done and birthday party gifts are bought and the appointments are scheduled so at least my husband doesn't have to worry about those things, too...and I'm constantly failing...There's dishes in the sink and clutter piled on every flat surface in this house. How am I supposed to make anyone outside these walls understand when it's not my story to tell? This is not a week or a season. This is my actual life. And nobody gets it.

So I didn’t post at all. Because it isn't about me. It never has been.

What I can say is that I haven’t known any different since I was four years old. The guillotine that he could be snatched away has been over our heads since 1982, ready to drop with no notice. Every goodbye, every opportunity to give him something he wanted, every disagreement carried a silent “but what if this was the last…? Will you be able to live with yourself if THIS was the last…? It was hard for a kid to understand. I did grasp the severity of the situation, so I tried not to make a fuss. And especially now that I’m a parent myself, I don’t blame my folks for a single decision they made; they did and continue to do their very best, an amazing job considering what they have. Which is uncertainty and prayer.

I’m 45 years old. I have two exponentially rapidly growing small children who know that sometimes Mommy is gone for a long time without completely understanding why. This might go on for another decade and then I’ll have exponentially rapidly maturing teenagers who will leave this house and hopefully remember to call me on my birthday. Or it could all be over tomorrow. Then my exponentially rapidly growing kids might not look up from their devices long enough to see that I’m tangled up and lost in my guilt about what I could have done. They're accustomed to me going missing for stretches at a time. 

My friends understand that I sometimes can’t attend events because I need to be elsewhere. They agree, it isn't my story to tell. I really should be more respectful of my brother's privacy, for goodness' sakes, look at all he's going through. The ones close enough to see my actual life know that mentioning it to him will result in unfortunate repercussions for me. Those friends hear more of the story. And H. That man. He is the only one who understands what it feels like to try and, how does he put it? Sprint a marathon. And he's the one left holding the bag and keeping this chaotic ship afloat, solo, more times than is fair. Sure, he had an idea of what he was signing up for. By no means did that make it any easier.

Three years. I should have come back and told both of you dear readers that he was ok. Forgive me. Blame it on my ADD. For what it's worth, there were way too many details that needed to be redacted.

#NaBloPoMo

“Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet” Fall Out Boy 

come down from your fences, open the gate

We moved to a new house two years ago, and location was the prime factor. Well, in the spring of 2021 get getting ANY home was the real prime factor, but we didn’t even look at anything that didn’t fall within the boundaries of the elementary school whose field backs up to my parents’s backyard fence. That way, I reasoned, when my folks retire, the children can walk to their house after school and have a wonderful time until we pick them up after work. 

But here we are, with a third-grader and first-grader…and these people are still working. So we pick them up from the bus. It’s fine, because we work from home and the bus stop is right on our corner. So much for plans. 

Another thing about this house? In order to jam as many single-family homes into what used to be a farm, they decided no one was going to get a yard—just communal green spaces over which the crotchety broad who lives next door will threaten to call the cops because 5yearolds have dared to laugh and have fun within 500 feet of her window. But that’s a story for another day. 

It sure does make me miss Sid and Bertha (RIP), our neighbors who put up this passive-aggressive fence because we weren’t timely enough with our leaf raking. 

#NaBloPoMo

“Desperado” The Eagles

as long as I’ve got my suit & tie imma leave it all on the floor tonight

Both H and I work from home fulltime these days…and just as I predicted back in 2005, we are often in our pajamas (7/10 times mine includes barcrawl t-shirts from the late ‘90s-early ‘00s). 

Sometimes I go out to the bus stop to pick up the children without bothering to change hoping none of the other parents are astute enough to see the year and do the math. For some reason they seem to think we are younger than we are, and I’d hate to spoil that illusion.

I did take great pleasure, however, in perusing the tie section when we went to buy H a new suit last month for cool cat’s wedding. He looked very dapper. Too bad that’s the last wedding I foresee attending for a long while.  

Even back in March 2005 I suspected I wasn’t going to get to pick out too many ties after I got married.

“no, this is in the big huge room where everyone sits and the cubicles only come up to the waist, so we're all together. later, when i'm at the satellite office fearing for my life, i am all alone. 

today, chatty was in his element. he somehow landed an important project and you could see how excited he was; it was like a little kid with his gameboy. 

he was irritating me today because he was second-guessing his superiors, who are clearly superior for a reason. 

but i liked his shirt. (well at least the back of it, anyway) a man in a shirt and tie gets me every time. and you know i'm going to end up with someone who works from home in his pajamas. christmas shopping is so much more fun if you get to pick out a couple of ties. what a tragedy. 

whoa, i'm getting way ahead of myself here.”

3/23/2005 1:17 AM

Chatty worked on reports for the next few years and like me, probably found himself doing something completely different when the dungeon industry imploded. I wonder if he gets to work from home in his pajamas, now, too.

#NaBloPoMo

“Suit & Tie (feat. JAY-Z)” Justin Timberlake

when it hasn't been your day, your week, your month or even your year

Highcon, Ri and C are invited and will likely attend the episode of Friends this weekend called "The one where Chandler Settles Down." Considering I was the Monica Geller at her most relentless to his avoidant Ms. Chanandler Bong (RIP Matthew Perry) for about 18 months two decades ago, I am certainly not on the guest list. But I do hope that Chandler’s new wife makes him happy. 

I've made this Friends reference in the past, and I kept it breezy, but this NaBloPoMo is all about the circleback with context, so I will go ahead and stretch this simile beyond its limits. What the hell, it's been 19 years (to the day, eerily) since we broke up.

Let's imagine that:

• Chandler and Monica are humans instead of sitcom puppets at the mercy of ratings and writers. 
• After a decade of membership in a tight-knit friend group and a benign personal connection, they bumped elbows one afternoon when they were both single and found it created an electric spark worth investigating.
• Mapping out the implications of a potential breakup and swearing upon a swing set that they would not let things get weird, they hesitatingly gave it a shot.
• The Friends eventually found out and were happy! One was especially over the moon at the idea that this best friend and that best friend were now BESTEST best friends, and announced to every patron of Side Tracks that he'd known it all along.
• They were deliriously happy until Chandler began acting kinda shady, ain't callin' her baby, why the sudden change...this trifling behavior seemed to crop up whenever Janice's laugh could be heard in the background.
• Monica's attention to detail made her suspicious, especially when stories didn't add up. This grilling made Chandler more avoidant. Which made Monica double down and catch more inconsistencies, which made her panic. 
• At Central Perk, Monica crossed her arms and glowered in an armchair, but Chandler was all jokes. He turned to the others, raised his eyebrow and circled a finger around his ear. "Could she BE more paranoid?" Everyone laughed, even Gunther.
• Monica had enough and they broke up.
• It was easier for the Friends to hang out with Chandler. He remained funny and normal. Monica cried a lot in her apartment and kept trying to get them to agree Chandler was at the very least being dishonorable and untrustworthy. If he's lying about hanging out with Janice, what else is he hiding? She was getting to be a real drag. Come on, it's Chandler. He would never! Get a grip, Monica.
• Then Monica kind of disappeared. She got an off-hours job in some dungeon in the city where she was up all night, worked all weekend and didn't see any friends at all. Supposedly she started one of those blog things.
• At the 20-year high school reunion over a decade later, Monica and Chandler had a nice chat about how he was really into the woman he was dating but she was angling for a ring and he wasn't about that life. They inquired about each other's families and Monica showed him photos of her children. 
• The group got together a handful of times but it was never the same. The Friends haven't all been in one room together since 2019, and even then they were sprinkled among 25 mutual friends and acquaintances at a going-away party. They exchanged pleasantries and raised a toast to old times.

That relationship very nearly turned me to ash. People who saw the mess that was me in the following months or caught a glimpse of the bitterness simmering under the surface for years afterward assumed I must've been so desperately in love with Chandler that I couldn't get over the heartbreak. Sure, being unable to make it work with him was a crushing disappointment. But it wasn’t just him that I lost. 

The fact that not a single one of them took my side and their refusal to acknowledge my hurt as anything beyond a crackpot theory—essentially gaslighting me into thinking I ruined the group by being extra? That's the blade that caused the festering wound.

When I was trying to explain the distinction (as recently as last year) one of them turned to me and said, "Cadiz. You have to understand. If it were ANYONE else, I would have so been in your corner, all the way. But it's Chandler! We love that guy! How could we possibly be mad at him?" 

Within a year of the breakup I had met and fallen in love with the man who would hold my hand throughout my failed attempt at “and that, my friend, is what they call closure” a few years later. I didn’t get it. What happened instead was me going full-scale Hysterical Monica on the whole group in actual Central Park. This man stayed by my side when there were two airports full of flights out of New York just a cab ride away. That is precisely when I realized I would marry H someday. Later, when asked about that bizarre confrontation, all he had to say was "Who, Chandler? I don't have a problem with the guy. Besides, he left the door open for me."

If my ex has managed to find someone as well-suited to him as I caught for myself, then he is a truly lucky fellow who deserves every happiness in the world.

#NaBloPoMo

"I'll Be There for You" The Rembrandts

i woke up in between a memory and a dream

When I started this little experiment, Ale was the only one who saw potential in what I was doing. And she joined me. Without her consistent support and comments (not to mention the off-blog running commentary between us*), none of this may have ever happened. But Ale has always been a visionary. Take this comment she made in March 2005 on my post about "Only You," a pretty bad movie that I loved anyway because Italy, truuue looove and (let's be honest) Robert Downey, Jr. (Keep in mind that at this time Ale was fluent in four languages and English was not the first one. She's likely fluent in a dozen by now.):

"wahahhaha, i'm was totaly laughing, my work people were looking at me funny. 

yep, i know that movie. I also to this day have problems with movies, pictures, posters...etc... dipicting eurpean seens. (yes, depressing topic for another day) I resigned to the fact that the only way I'll be able to handle "europe stuff" is if I am strongly connected to it where I MUST travel there more than on a quarterly basis. EX: marrying a european and bringing my childrenses to visit with their granmamas. or work... or having so much money that I must shop there every season... Until than, we cant talk, discuss, see it--- nothing.
one thing that's not clear, i like marissa tomei-- even when she is being annoying--?? you don't?"

Ale lived in New York in the early aughts. She worked for an international company and made a legitimate truuue looove connection with a colleague based in The Netherlands. She moved there. They got married, have two beautiful sons and she continues to forge her way toward world domination. If you read her comments on this blog (sadly, it looks like she's deleted hers), she told us all exactly how it was going to go down. And it did. 

*Apparently during the heyday of this blog, I spent most of my time with folks in other time zones.

#NaBloPoMo

"You Don't Know How it Feels" Tom Petty