Top 5 Favorite Words

1. flibbertigibbet
2. serendipity
3. y’all
4. aperture
5. viognier (this isn’t really in my top five. I don’t know that I really have favorite words…but doesn’t a glass of wine sound good? See. You get my point.)

Top 5 Favorite Avon Walk Memories

1. Meeting Debbie & Barbara for the first time
2. Walking across the Golden Gate Bridge – SO SCARY!
3. Debbie in a shopping cart in Boston
4. Crossing the finish line, every time
5. Dancing while walking, San Francisco walk

Top 5 Favorite Places

1. San Francisco/Bay Area
2. Chicago
3. New York City
4. with the people I love
5. curled up on the couch

Top 5 Dream Vacations

1. Spain (I’m drawn to the sunflowers in Andalucia – and have the bulk of a board on Pinterest devoted to ’em)
2. Australia
3. NYC (I know. I’ve been there, but I love it and I wanna go back)
4. Austin, Texas (maybe during SXSW? Just how weird is Austin, anyway?
5. Amalfi Coast, Italy

Top 5 Favorite Flowers

1. Sunflowers
2. Yellow roses
3. Dendrobium orchid
4. Gerbera daisy
5. Tulips

Top 5 Favorite Amusement Park Rides

1. Millenium Force (Cedar Point)
2. Raptor (Cedar Point)
3. The Grizzly (Great America, Santa Clara – bumpy as hell but the first roller coaster I ever rode)
4. Rides that spin and make you feel like you’re gonna puke
5. ANYTHING BUT THE FERRIS WHEEL

Top 5 Favorite Smells

1. Bread baking
2. Lemon
3. Cilantro
4. Cookies baking (oh, I detect a theme)
5. Chris

Top 5 Favorite Things I’ve Photographed

1. Though drenched in sadness, the picture of my grandma at my grandpa’s side in his last days is one I’m grateful I have
2. An amazing sunrise on my drive to work
3. Graffiti in Chicago during Avon Walk
4. Photographs of my children
5. The birth of my niece – no, not THAT part

Top 5 Favorite Little Things I’ve Done For Others that Made Me Feel SuperGREAT

1. Buying coffee for the person behind me in the drive thru line at Starbucks
2. Lunch box notes
3. Sending cookies in the mail
4. Making dinner for family home with a new baby
5. (Speaking of babies…) I always buy infant gas drops for baby shower gifts. People always thank me later. I’m pretty proud of that.

Top 5 Guilty Pleasures

1. Cheeeeeeeesecake
2. Buying magazines
3. Buying books
4. Watching hours of HGTV (though I really feel very little guilt about that)
5. Pop music

Top 5 Favorite Ways to Shake a Bad Mood

1. Pretending I’m in a musical and singing everything I say
2. Exercise
3. Losing myself in a good book
4. Super hot bubble bath
5. Margaritas

Top 5 Slow Jams*
(Or rather, the first 5 to pop into my head)

1. Anytime – Brian McKnight
2. Freak Me – Silk
3. If I Ever Fall In Love – Shai
4. That’s the Way Love Goes – Janet Jackson
5. Alone With You – Ne-Yo

Dear Self:

Today you turn 37 and if the days and weeks leading up to today are any indication, this might be a difficult day for you. Turning 35 was hard for you, and last year was a bit of reprieve from that negative birthday emotion. Not sure why it’s back with a vengeance this year, but since it is, you’ll get through it.

Admittedly, it’s been quite a year.

Last night in the car, your iPod shuffle played a song that reminded you of a friend from high school and you started crying. You were driving in the rain, eyes wet with tears and this sad country song playing in the background. Self: You should know to just move on to the next song when it’s raining and country comes on. But this song made you cry and made you reflect and sometimes that’s okay, but sometimes I think it’s time to pause on the reflection and just keep moving one foot in front of the other.

This was 36.

Looking back on all of the ways that this year was a difficult one won’t help anything. It was sad to get a birthday card from grandma, and see grandpa’s name on the return address label. Losing him little by little over the course of this year was heartbreaking, awful. And time hasn’t made it any less heartbreaking and any less awful.

The job stress, the job search, the unemployment stuff, yeah… 36 was made to test you somehow, to show you what you’re made of and maybe you didn’t entirely like what you saw: that you’re softer than you thought, that you need help more than you’d ever have been willing to admit, that you are not made of steel. And all of that’s okay. You don’t have to be strong all the time, and maybe when all is said and done, you’ll be stronger because of it.

Maybe not.

That’s not for you to know right now.

And so I know it makes it harder right now. Having this birthday in the midst of a lot of uncertainty in your life, but don’t forget:

You are loved. You are cared about. You have people in your corner who want good things for you.

There is hair dye to cover up those grays.

And when you get a good job again, you can buy expensive lotion to make your eye wrinkles look less wrinkly.

This wasn’t just a year of sadness and stress, and I know that you don’t forget that there was a lot of joy to be found in your year. New beginnings. Love. Glasses of wine (I think you’d appreciate that I typed “whine” first). Copious amounts of tacos. Hugs. Coffee on the porch. Another 39.3. Your kids are beautiful and they’re doing well in all their stuff, and they adore you and your house is a lovely girl house where everything just kind of works now (by “everything” I mean the people. The appliances don’t all work. Let’s not talk about that right now. Oooh, look. Squirrel). Hours of HGTV watched and the knowledge that you don’t have a master bathroom, YOU HAVE AN EN SUITE (and that, as you know is clearly important, right up there with having an open concept). Photographs taken. A roof over your head – a roof that YOU are keeping over your head. You’re doing it. YOU ARE.

You might have realized this year that sometimes you need a little help but you know what? You’re still pretty badass. Sort of.

Last night, you started baking your birthday cake only to be joined by The Princess who didn’t want you to make your own cake. The two of you baked and sang and laughed. She talked about her school musical and you sang her the solo you sang your senior year of high school – singing “Danny Boy” standing next to the KitchenAid as the lemon pound cake batter whirled to perfection.

Your 36th year was filled with countless moments like that. And you can focus on the stresses – those are the huge pink elephants in the room – hard not to see them. But it is these moments that you will look back on. When the stress is a memory that you’ll look back at, it will barely register with you to remember the times you struggled so hard. Let’s hope.

It will always be those moments singing in the kitchen. Taking a Friday picture after doughnuts. The way the dog sniffs everyone’s hair after it’s just been washed, like he can’t get enough of the scent, he rubs his face repeatedly in your hair, and it makes everyone laugh so much. Messages with the kissy face emoji. Sunsets in the middle of nowhere because you needed peace and he brought you to peace. Savoring slices of deep dish Chicago pizza after walking a marathon and a half. Gougere on a Sunday morning.

Those are the things that matter. Those moments.

I get it, life is scary. You have no idea where you’re going and what you’re doing.

But… you’re not alone.

It’s your birthday. But you’ve reflected enough.

Stop reflecting.

Enjoy it. Embrace your day. Embrace your life.

AARP isn’t calling you yet. You’re not that old.

As Pumpkin said, “You’re not old! Stop lying! If you’re going to lie, lie about something that’s…true!” {And kids are brutally honest – if she thought you were old, you better believe she’d let you know}

Find the joy in the fact that you are here, you are healthy, and celebrate your day.

Seek joy.

Make 37 amazing.

<3,

You

On Monday, I walked past a framed picture of my grandparents that sits on the etagere in my living room. I stopped, picked up the frame and inspected my grandpa’s photographed face. The picture was taken in June – so after his health had started declining but before the beginning of the end (which seems a morbid way of describing those last few weeks, but that is indeed what they were). Looking at that photograph, it occurred to me: I’ll never see his face in person again. No more hugs. No more conversations.

It seems obvious, but this is a realization that I keep having, in different ways.

–

His funeral was well-attended, though it was not what I would have chosen, had anyone asked me for my opinion – too somber, too ritualistic, nearly completely ignoring the intricacies of his quirky and lovely personality. The mass left me gutted and sad and heart broken, but I found no comfort in the priest’s words, I found no familiarity in the hymns that had been chosen, and I all too distinctly remember the last time I sat in that church: I was a child,  I could hear my grandfather’s deep voice belting out the songs and he passed me a roll of LifeSavers to keep me entertained during a Sunday service. There were no LifeSavers and I couldn’t hear his voice.

At the private graveside service, we were encouraged to share memories but hardly anyone did and it seemed then that the moment for such sharing was gone and that by then, in the heat of a summer afternoon, we were all weary, full of church lady luncheon food, and ready to just stop feeling. I was grateful to those who did share kindnesses, wished more had.

I saw where his ashes would be interred. I was given a rose from the floral arrangement.

–

My grandmother is lonely. My sister and I took my daughters to visit last night and my grandmother is lonely. “We had no happy memories of this place,” she told us. “He’s not here. I don’t feel him.”

I had never given much thought to her beliefs beyond the fact that she, like my grandfather was, is strongly rooted in her faith and that she believes in heaven and believed there would be something…more. I didn’t realize she was expecting his presence, or that she’d be so profoundly disappointed when his presence couldn’t be felt.

“He went back to the house,” she said, referring to the home she and my grandpa purchased what was probably light years ago for $10,000 and a mortgage payment of $75 a month. They raised four children in that house. Grandchildren spent time under that roof. That’s where the memories are and so, says my grandma, that is where grandpa is – his spirit is in the home he loved and not the nursing home he hated.

My mom says we need to tell her that she carries him in her heart always – that he’s there whether she can feel it or not.

Who am I to say?

–

I was worried about how it’d look when I left town Friday afternoon after the funeral, as though I was fleeing for some umbrella-drink vacation where I would be kicking up my heels and celebrating and disrespecting so soon the loss that I have been feeling.

I am grateful, though, to have been taken away for the weekend. To be wrapped in hugs and warmth and love and to be shown peace and glimpses of normalcy away from the scene of such recent loss. To be in a place with no memories attached gave me a chance to let go of some of my grief for a few days – to breathe in air, to watch sunsets, to spy on deer playing in a field, to pet dogs, cook tacos, spend time on a lake with sun smiling on my face, drink wine from red Solo cups. I am glad that I didn’t surrender to the guilt telling me I shouldn’t go.

And when I came home and walked into my house, the sadness hit me in the face once more, still like a ton of bricks.

–

I am loved. I love.

And those are things that are helpful to me when I am hurting.

–

“I love you as much as he did, you know?” my grandma said last night.

–

There are moments when I feel completely normal and I can lose myself in HGTV or lament the 80 degree weather with 90% humidity. Where I can watch my daughter touring middle school for the first time and meet teachers and try to remember to pick up dog food on the way home.

And it makes me sad but this is a new normal and this is how it will be and he’s not going to be here again and I’ll never hear his voice again and why didn’t we make video of him talking, why didn’t we? We could have, it’d have been so easy. And I don’t expect his presence, I can’t imagine a tangible feeling that he’s there, but I do carry him in my heart and I will always and it’s really an awful thing, grief. But I know he’d hate it.

–

My cousin posted a picture on Facebook – a cabinet front and duct tape – “Grandpa approved!” he said. And I laughed, how I laughed. I need more of those moments, the moments of celebration. Joy in what was amazing will be what gets us all through this.

After I wrote this morning’s post, I received an email from my mother that hospice doesn’t think my grandpa will make it until his birthday. I was at work when I got her email, and tears instantly rushed into my eyes and my brain kind of went on auto-pilot sorting through the things I needed to do so I could be with my family. I checked with HR, do I have any PTO? Yes, they confirmed that I did.

I quickly went through my to-do list, completing urgent tasks, sending an email to the department letting them know I’d be out.

I hit the drive through of an atrocious fast food restaurant, picked up a bucket of diet Coke and went to the nursing home. I sat in the parking lot for over five minutes, steeling myself to walk in, to keep my face calm, to not cry.

My grandmother and I were in tears together within five minutes of my walking in the room.

—

At first, it was just me and my grandmother. Then my aunt arrived. Then my sister and my niece. Then my mother. Later a neighbor. My uncle and cousin. My aunt. Another uncle. It was a full house.

We’ve cried a lot today. Grandpa’s done a lot of sleeping. I’m grateful that he woke up enough when the nurses moved him to a hospital bed in his living room to say my name and to respond, “Love you, too,” when I told him I love him.

We all want a piece of this, the recognition, the seeing him see us. We want more of it, because if it doesn’t happen now, how will we ever remember just what it was that he said when he spoke to us for the last time? It’s selfish, I know, and my dad said to me tonight, “Sarah, he’s tired. Let him sleep.” But the family – myself included – just want a glimpse of the man he was, the one who loves us, the one who sees us, the one we know.

My grandpa has always been the king of “I booped your nose” – touching a great-grandkid’s nose with his pointer finger. My niece, wrapped in my sister’s arms, leaned to touch my grandpa’s nose. “Boop!” she said. He lifted his hand, shaking and unprecise, eventually finding her nose with his finger to boop back.

And then he fell asleep and mostly stayed asleep. We encouraged grandma to sit by him – “But he won’t know I’m here!” she argued. He will, we said. And he did. Though he didn’t speak, you could see his face react when she spoke. She leaned closely, her forehead pressed to his, saying things we could not hear.

My heart is breaking, it is. All of us are having a hard time. We know his body is tired. We know, we know, we know. But we’re going to miss him so much that letting go feels impossible.

My grandpa’s birthday is on Sunday. I’ve been watching the calendar and watching the date come closer and have been wondering how, how we recognize this day. It is, most likely, going to be his last birthday.

I wonder how often it is that you know that everything is the “last” of something. As much as I hate it, as difficult as it is to see his health and mental facilities decline, I often feel that our family is lucky to know that this time is finite. We’re coming to an end. We need to embrace the time we have and do our best to make it special.

Some people don’t have that opportunity.

People walk out of their houses on seemingly normal days and get hit by buses and it’s over. They never see it coming. No one gets a chance to say goodbye. It’s just…over.

But we see it coming and I guess there’s something to be said for that, having the opportunity to brace ourselves.

–

The other day, my dad was telling me about his mother’s death. She had lived in Florida and so I wasn’t close to her. My dad tells me that he’d read articles about hospice and the last days of the dying, and was grateful for how it prepared him to deal with things in my grandmother’s final days, things he’d have never expected and wouldn’t have known how to handle. He tells me we should read these articles.
Maybe we should.

–

My grandmother is acting out, being quite awful to people. She’s scared and you can tell. I could see that fear when my grandpa got confused and insisted I was Kathleen, the nurse. After a few minutes that felt like hours he called me by my name. Was a relief to hear “Sarah.”

My aunt says that my grandmother is already grieving him as he slips away and that’s why she’s behaving this way. It’s taken her awhile to see this, though my sister and I have been telling our mom this for awhile. She’s SCARED. He’s NOT who he was. So, in a sense, she’s already grieving in anticipation, but she’s also grieving the parts of him that are gone already. He’s not the man she’s spent over sixty years of her life married to.

–

On Sunday we will gather for my grandpa’s birthday in a two hour celebration on the patio of his nursing home. We will likely be eating Costco cake and I can’t imagine what the mood will be like. His nurse has said that he’s getting weaker, that he may not be able to sit through the entire two hours. I’m pretty sure they’re underestimating his determination – but we’ll see.

I don’t know what the day will be like, only that I hope if anything, he realizes just how loved he is. That we’re all grateful for all of his years with us and that his birthday, even in this sadness, is a celebration of the day that someone we love so much was born.

I missed writing my Thursday Ten post this week. I missed writing it and I missed writing it. It’s the post I look forward to most each week – partly because I don’t have to be coherent or even have a point, and partly because it’s my way of catching up with y’all who read, and giving myself something to look back on – oh, that’s what I was doing then.

But. I just couldn’t.

I got back from Chicago, got back from 39.3 miles for the Avon Walk. I came home feeling not so fabulous. I got sick this year – and I’mma chalk it up to allergies a bit and walking in the rain a bit (like, 15 miles “a bit”). Then I found out my family was meeting with hospice about my grandfather. It feels like there’s been a lot going on all at once and I spent the entire week feeling like I couldn’t get ahead of myself, not even if I tried.

So…

I didn’t try.

And then I got a little hormonal (PMS can die in a fire. Or not. But I wish it could because YUCK YUCK YUCK I HATE EVERYTHING AND I’M RETAINING ALL THE WATER) and a little sad and a little tired and a little grumpy.

And in my head, when I’m feeling like this, in my head I am still composing posts and thinking of all the things I would say if I would just come here and say those things… and then I don’t.

I don’t know what my point is.

So I’ve included a pretty picture of Lake Michigan from the first mile of the Avon Walk.

It’s Sunday evening and there’s a new week in front of me. A new week where at one point, I’ll get to get dressed up and be a grownup for a little while. I’m kind of looking forward to that. A week where hopefully I can shake some of the fog from last week off and find a new beginning and feel a little less grouchy and a little more like putting one foot in front of the other.

Let’s see where it goes, shall we?

Playoff games that start at ten p.m. should be against some cosmic life rule. With just under five hours of sleep, I woke this morning groggy, but managed to drag myself out of bed without playing my usual game of just how long can I stay buried under the covers before getting up. I’ve turned my heat back on, a disappointment after the warmth of last week, and getting out of the shower is dismal, cold, and like winter has landed again.

I hate winter.

Frozen waffles in the toaster, lunches packed. It’s Monday and I tell the kids, “I’m off to the salt mines…” when my stepfather arrives to get them on the bus.

—

There was a gray day in seventh grade – surely more than one – but there was a day that was gray and it sticks in my head that day. I was walking from the band room to my next class, PE. Down a small cement hill. From behind a hand grabbed a hank of my hair and pulled. And then she reached around and hit me, smacking my cheek with her hand.

She thought I was someone else.

Have you ever accidentally been hit in the face? Because someone thought you were someone else that they were pissed off with?

Freaking sucks.

—

I was thinking of it today, that accidental assault. I’ve forgotten the girl’s name. I held on to it for so long, her name, that the fact that I no longer remember the girl who was so angry at someone that she swung without confirmation, her name is gone. Wiped free from my brain. It’s a relief to me that I may one day forget cruelty and unkindness and bullying in its nonsensical, lacking-in-reason ways.

I hope it doesn’t take me twenty years to forget every unkindness.

—

There are two basic rules to life.

Rule #1: Don’t be a jerk.
Rule #2: See rule #1.

—

This afternoon I was crazed, trying to get from work to the gas station. From the gas station to the house. From the house to the gymnastics studio. From the gymnastics studio to the school for an orientation. I didn’t leave enough time for myself and it seemed like little obstacles kept inserting them in my path. The slowed, then stopped, line of vehicles on the highway. The call from The Princess that she forgot a snack, was feeling light headed. The meltdown from Pumpkin, how she wished she had a snack. How The Princess was then too ill to stay at the gym, how I ended up taking her with me. An orientation, an hour spent in uncomfortable plastic chairs listening to what to expect when my child moves on to sixth grade – a presentation tailored for our fifth graders and not their parents. Me, clicking my phone to check the time. I’m watching the clock a lot these days.

A quick dash to the grocery store – a frozen pizza, a half gallon of skim milk, children’s ibuprofen and peanut butter because peanut butter makes my world go round.

Home to a child too ill to eat pizza, tears, bona fide tears over a pizza.

—

A bowl filled with oranges on the back deck.

—

I am not used to those who do not wish well for others and those who wish so desperately for someone to fail, hoping to catch their blunder and then flaunt the imperfection, or worse, to see imperfection where there is not. It shakes my confidence, this feeling of being examined under a magnifying glass, because always if you are looking for flaws you’ll see them whether they exist or not. The reflection of my thighs in a mirror and I can attest to that.

—

A child wrapped in fleece on the couch, eyes heavy, HGTV blaring in the background, the room dim. The other waiting for me to tuck her in for the third time. Good night, sweet children. Mom loves you.

—

A video on YouTube that made me cry. And cry. And cry. And cry until I didn’t know if I was crying about the video or the day. My head finding its calm with the distance from the chaos, with its distance from the hate and the negativity – with distance my brain hears reason. This is what you must do… And so I do. I look for solutions, and I wipe tears with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.