Staying Connected — CMB Post

Originally posted on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog:

The older I get, the more people I know, the harder it is to stay connected — even to people I've known my entire life and love very much. It's hard to say exactly what happens: we get busy; our lives are crowded with people, activities, chores and events; we move far away; we have families of our own. Perhaps the biggest culprit is time, or lack of it. Recent scientific evidence proves that the older we get, the faster time passes (or so it seems so to our aging brains). With all that goes on in our day-to-day lives, it's easy to lose touch.

Then tragedy strikes — someone dies and we feel lost and guilty. When my aunt passed away last week, I drove to Michigan for the funeral. My parents came up from Florida. My brother flew in from California. The aunts, uncles and cousins gathered around to mourn our loss. Without exception, when I encountered someone I hadn't seen in a long time, we greeted each other with an awkward combination of joy at reconnecting and sadness that these were the circumstances that brought us back together.

My aunt died at an inconvenient time for most of us. I'm not being flip, simply honest. For my immediate family, it was not possible for anyone else to take time off from work or the final days of school to attend the funeral, so I went alone. In many ways, it was a blessing. I was able to spend time with my family of origin without the burdens of being a mom and attending to the immediate needs of children. I could focus completely on another part of my family that had not had my undivided attention in years. 

Funerals are strange rituals, to be sure. We laugh and we cry. We tell stories and sit in silence. We are reminded of our founding families. We treasure and relive old memories. And we regret. We regret that we don't seem to make the effort to get together more often, just because we're family and we don't want it always to be at a sad occasion. We regret that we didn't call or send that birthday card or even a simple e-mail. We regret being selfish and absorbed in other things. We regret the lost opportunities, the missed chances, the unsaid "I love yous". 

But I've come to have a new respect for and understanding of funeral traditions. My brother and I both commented that when we were younger, the whole idea of funerals was creepy and bizarre. As we got older, we understood that the funeral rites themselves provide comfort to many people, giving us concrete things to do in a time that seems chaotic and uncertain.

At my aunt's funeral, we came to understand that the ritual is more than just comforting to those who are mourning. We gather together at sad times to celebrate a life lived and the family that surrounded that life. Rather than dreading the occasion, I finally realized that life cycle events are what define families. Maybe we shouldn't feel guilty that we haven't seen each other since the last wedding or funeral, but rather we should celebrate that we still make time to gather as a family at these important, life-changing moments. That's what families do. 

We cried buckets of tears for my aunt, who led a difficult life, didn't always make the best choices, and who died too soon. We reflected on the gifts she gave us, we comforted the children she loved (and who loved her) and we said goodbye. We also thanked her for allowing us to reconnect in her name. It was her final gift to us.

Susan Bearman can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog, as well as freelancing at www.bearman.us and Twittering @2KoP. This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post.

Celebrity Passings Mark the Times of My Life — CMB Post

This was originally posted on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, died in 1977. I was a teenager at the time and his passing meant little to me. I had really only known the fat, drug-addicted, somewhat pathetic Elvis. Sure, I liked his music, but he was old (six years younger than I am now, yikes!)

In 1977, Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, was still flying high with his brothers, then known as the Jacksons, performing live at the Fourth Annual American Music Awards. He was about to launch his giant solo career. Everyone knew that Michael Jackson was way cooler than Donny Osmond, but not as cool as Led Zeppelin. Still, you never had to be embarrassed if you were caught dancing to a Jackson 5 record.

In 1977, Farrah Fawcett (then Farrah Fawcett-Majors) posed for her iconic poster, clad in nothing but a red bathing suit, big hair and an even bigger smile. Every boy of my generation hung that poster on his closet door or over his bed, and every girl spent hours in front of the mirror trying to get that hair.

In 1977, Ed McMahon was firmly ensconced as Johnny Carson's second banana on the Tonight Show. I wouldn't say I was a McMahon fan, or even a regular watcher of the Tonight Show. It's just that Ed and Johnny and Doc had always been there, my whole life, on NBC at 11:30, right after the news. It was a fact, something you could count on.

My grandmother used to say that celebrity deaths always come in threes. I guess that's true this week, unless you live in Chicago, where we are also mourning the loss of veteran newsman John Calloway. I was always bemused by my grandmother's addiction to the obituaries. "Oh, my, look who died. He was such a dreamboat," she'd say, pointing to the picture of some old movie star.

This week, I've heard myself calling my mom or my husband or my friends to say "Did you hear who died today?" My kids have asked "Who's Ed McMahon?" or "Who's Farrah Fawcett?" They all knew Michael Jackson, but only the weird, broken, somewhat pathetic Michael, not the beautiful young boy and man whose music we still like to dance to.

The gone-too-soon, tragic-story celebrity deaths, like Heath Ledger or River Phoenix are shocking to us, as we see young people eaten by fame. These recent deaths have been much more disconcerting to me in the sense that they are famous people who have died the way most of us will die: of cancer or cardiac arrest or the complicated combination of illnesses associated with old age. And no amount of money or fame will save you from it.

I find that I am feeling a bit hollow and sad in the wake of these deaths. In my head, I keep hearing that cheesy Paul Anka song of the '70s that served as Kodak's primary ad campaign. "Good morning, yesterday. You wake up and time has slipped away … ," Paul crooned as beautiful photos of idyllic families flashed across our television screens. It occurs to me now, that with each new passing, I will be ticking off the times of my life. Not my grandparents' lives, or my parents' lives, but my life. Do you remember? Remember the times of your life.

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog Post. When Susan Bearman isn't scanning obits, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.

Life's Not a Paragraph

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have already experienced profound loss and those who will.

I've been lucky so far in this life. My losses have been quiet goodbyes, gentle by most standards, the soft leavings of old age, cushioned by the generations between them and me. Secondhand losses. 

After my grandfather died, and my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, I asked her if she was afraid of death. "Oh, honey," she said. "At my age, death is almost a friend. It's a story I read about every day in the paper."

Death is not always a friend — sometimes it is a thief, robbing us of our dearest treasures. 

Earlier this month, I wrote about my greatest fear — a recurring nightmare I have that one of my children has died. I knew even as I wrote it that I was trampling on someone else's grief. Tragically, unbelievably, one of my fellow bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Group is living this nightmare right now, having lost her baby just two days after I posted my nightmares.

Madeline Alice Spohr 

(November 11, 2007 - April 7, 2009)

I've never met Maddie's family, but so much of her story is familiar — difficult conception and pregnancy, traumatic, premature birth, eating issues, growing issues — but more importantly:

joy,

fun, 

giggles, 

first teeth, 

first baths,

FIRSTS. 

Her story may not be a long one, but it is a story worth knowing.

This loss, like so many others, was not a quiet one. When a child dies, we roar with the pain, the grief, the missed opportunities of a story barely started. 

A writing friend, Cindy Fey, wrote beautifully about the sudden loss of her dear friend, a peer, a cohort, a man who was walking this life at the same time as her husband when his footsteps suddenly stopped. His premature death left a novella, not a full novel perhaps, but a story worth knowing. 

Death is not always a friend — sometimes it is the harshest of spotlights, the cruelest of mirrors, shining stark light on our own mortality, leaving us gasping and keening.

Another dear friend has experienced more deaths in her family than anyone I know, whittling her immediate family down to a precious few, leaving her clear-eyed and unsentimental. Her losses are a series of short-stories and tall tales, an epic saga — a story worth knowing.

Death is not always a friend — sometimes it's a relentless clock, ticking off the lives of those we know and love as surely as it counts off the seconds of our individual lives — a never-ending death knell.

I know I am lucky — death has brushed by so closely that the hairs on the back of my neck still rise and tremble at the memory. In grateful acknowledgement of those near misses, in tribute to Maddie and Eric and Jill's family, and in celebration of April as National Poetry Month, let's remember that no life is just a paragraph, but a full story worth telling:

since feeling is first

by ee cummings

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all the flowers. Don't cry

- the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

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