A Few Good Memes

A little over a year ago, Christine suggested that for our second date, we go and tromp through a field near my work looking for monarch caterpillars that we could take home and grow into monarch butterflies. Needless to say, being the romantic I am, I was I completely smitten with this idea and with her. I still am. Being a city boy from the ‘burbs of Chicago, this was a new experience for me.

We didn’t find any caterpillars in the field (this did not affect me melting into her being and falling head over heels for her), but she did find 3 of them near a garage sale she was at the next week. They all spun chrysalises, one died, and 2 hatched out, much to my and my kids’ delight. What an electric experience for us.

Monarch caterpillars eat and live on milkweed plants. I have a bunch of milkweed plants in my backyard, so I figured finding caterpillars this year would be a cinch. My neighbor came by a few weeks ago and offered to clear out a few weeds along the fence between us, and it turns out he pulled most of my milkweed. So I did not end up with any monarch caterpillars in my backyard, but Christine being the super-nature-wonderkind that she is, found a single monarch caterpillar on some weedy vines growing in my front yard a few weeks ago. We brought it in and put it in a jar with some milkweed leaves (I did still have a few small plants in my tomato beds). It spun itself into a chrysalis in a day or two. We’ve been keeping our eye on it every day and this morning the chrysalis was completely transparent (except for the amazing gold beads on it). So I put my camera on time-lapse when I went to work and caught it coming out on video. It runs at 15x normal speed (it shot one photo every second and runs at 15fps). I think it’s pretty cool and want to just watch it come out in person next year. What a gorgeous animal. Chris and I came here over lunch and released it into my backyard on some mums. Thank you Christine for introducing me to this beautiful and awe-inspiring process. I can’t wait to do it again next year.

The opposum laid there, struggling to move, limbs akimbo, unobeying.

Thursday evening I went out for some last minute groceries, getting ready for the long road trip Saturday morning. It wasn’t going to be an easy trip. Alyssa was 8, Ian just 3. Emma’s age still measured in months. Anna and the kids had been in Charleston for the whole month of July, enjoying family, beach trips, ferries, turtle rescues, crabbing, surfing, movies, aquarium trips, and more. I had driven everyone out at the beginning of the month, stayed a week, and then had flown back to Indiana to work for a week and a half. When we arrived, Anna was feeling pretty good. Perhaps the best she had felt in the 16 months since her cancer diagnosis. It had stopped progressing for several months and her energy level and mood were way up. Despite the anvil still hovering inches above her head and the heads of all of us, there was a certain live-in-the-moment, cancer-be-damned ease about it all. A month at the beach was exactly what everyone needed.

While I was home mid-month, the call came in that Anna was experiencing some new abdominal pain. A trip to the ER brought the anvil down hard. Her cancer had spread all through her abdomen. It had finally outwitted the $3000/month molecular chemotherapy wonderdrug. There was still one bullet left in the gun, one more drug she could try once we got her home. We had to get packed and get home quickly.

On the trip home from the grocery store, I saw the oppossum. It had been hit. Its eyes were full of fear. I passed it and pulled over. Unsure what to do (could it be rescued?), I called my sister-in-law that we had been staying with, a naturalist. Her advice was to do the humane thing and put it out of its misery. There would be no way to save it or to rescue it. I steeled my will and went back. I drove slowly, feeling the crunch of its skull under my wheel. It was the right thing to do and the only thing to do.

Friday was spent packing. Feed and entertain kids. Anna’s pain was becoming quite severe. Despite a dramatic increase in her pain meds - morphine - she was really struggling. She spent the whole day in bed. Didn’t eat anything. Drank a bit of Boost was all. I sent the kids to the pool with my sister-in-law so I could just focus on packing up a month’s worth of living and get us home. Just had to get us home. Just had to get to her rockstar oncologist. Buy a little more time. A thimbleful more hope.

By 3pm I knew something had gone very wrong. Anna’s extremeties had started turning a greenish-yellow. Anna’s brother, R, had come over and we decided we needed to take her to the ER. Somehow, someway get some help so we could get her home. I helped her out of bed and down the steps to the van. That short journey was a huge struggle for her. Her last steps. Her pain was intense and overwhelming. We drove quickly and in silence to the hospital. Anna just trying to rest and manage her pain. I tried not to make a sound as the tears just ran and ran and ran down my face. My normally inexhaustible supply of hope was running dry quickly. At the ER, we got her in a wheelchair and into triage. Her condition was obviously so desperate that they wheeled her right to a room. The nurse there quickly sprang into action, moving rapidly and efficiently. Summoning help from others on the floor with urgency. She tried and tried, but couldn’t get an IV started. I just wanted them to get some pain meds into Anna so she wasn’t suffering so badly. I held her hand or stroked her shoulder or rubbed her forehead as much as possible, trying not to interfere with the nurse’s important business. Anna’s blood pressure was dangerously low - like 60/40. Her pulse was stratospheric - like 170 bpm. They couldn’t give her pain meds until they got her blood pressure up and her heart rate down. She was fighting for life. She couldn’t get any air. They got her stabilized, but it took a while and it was tenuous. We were told she was being moved to the ICU, so we headed up to the waiting room, awaiting further news and consultation.

I think it was maybe 9pm or so at that point. We realized we’d gotten hungry and probably had a long night ahead of us, so Anna’s brother went out to pick us up some dinner. Just as he was returning, we found out they hadn’t moved her to the ICU, but that she had taken a turn for the worse in the ER after we left. They had been looking for us. We rushed back down and the room was packed with doctors and nurses. It wasn’t looking very promising at all. Despite Anna having a Do Not Resuscitate order, she was conscious and had agreed to be intubated when the doctor offered. In other words, she was put on a ventilator since she wasn’t able to breathe. Of course she would have agreed. No one would elect to suffocate. They anesthetized her so she could be intubated. I stood outside the room and was sobbing uncontrollably. Anna’s brother beside me, standing by steadfastly. The young guy in the next room came over and told me I had to stop crying and be strong. I didn’t know whether to agree with him, tell him to shut the fuck up, hug him, or just ignore him. He had no idea just how strong I was and how strong I had been for 17 months. I just mumbled something and hoped he went away.

They finally did move Anna to the ICU and the doctor came and consulted with us. She was kind and competent and didn’t give us false hope, but outlined possible scenarios for success. Her best guess was sepsis and they were going to try and get her stabilized and back to some reasonable shape based on that theory. We sat in the room, me throwing kleenex into a mound on the floor, unable to find or care about a trash can. At this point, it was maybe 1am and we decided it was going to be a long day Saturday making lots of decisions, so we should try and get some rest. Anna was unconscious, stable, and as good as she was going to get for the time being. I went in and said goodnight. She was heavily sedated, but not completely out. She had the breathing tube in and was struggling at some low low level to get it out by tossing her head back and forth. I couldn’t bear to see her like that. I squeezed her hand and told her I loved her and rubbed her head and had to go. We headed back in silence and laid down to rest.

The call came in at 3am, July 29, 2006. One year ago today. Bad news and we had to get in right away. They wouldn’t tell us on the phone what had happened. We got back in the van and headed back in silence to the hospital. Whatever it was, it was obvious that hope had run out for us. The drive took moments and hours at the same time. The city was quiet, peaceful.

When we arrived, the doctor sat us back down in the room with the red couches and the no garbage can and informed us that Anna’s heart had stopped. They were able to revive her, but it was likely that she suffered brain damage. There was no longer any hope at all. We had to make the call about whether to keep her on life support. I already knew that Anna did not want her life artificially prolonged. I told the doctor it was time to say goodbye. It was the right thing to do and the only thing to do.

We waited a few minutes while they removed the ventilator tube and took off the various wires and tubes. We were ushered in. She was still breathing, albeit laboriously. She wasn’t conscious, but her eyes were open. The nurse put one final injection into her IV. I sat by her bedside, just stroking her gorgeous red hair over and over and telling her how much I loved her and how much our kids loved her and how much I appreciated her and how great of a mom she had been. How I was grateful for our lives together. How I would take good good care of our babies. How very very much I’d miss her. I just did that over and over again until she took her last breath. I watched her take her very last breath. She finally stopped struggling. Her pupils dilated until her eyes were almost completely black. I told her it was okay and she could rest. No more pain and no more struggle. I sat there doing that for a long time after she stopped breathing. Kissing her forehead and rubbing her hand. Rubbing her cheek. I saw no machines, I heard no sound. I just felt the deep, deep connection and love we had and that I knew we’d always have.

I was able to find some time that last Friday to talk to Anna. To reminisce a bit, to talk about what was to come. Despite not wanting to admit it at the time, we both knew it was the end. She told me I was a good father. She was grateful for the love we shared. Anna never swore. She looked at me and said “I’m fuckin sick, dude”. She wanted me to know, in my own language, that things weren’t right. I didn’t really say goodbye during that talk, but it was, in effect, our goodbye. I took a picture of her hand that day. It was intended for me to get a fingerprint for some pendants for the kids. It was the last photo I took of her.

The drive home from the hospital was surreal. 6am. The sun was rising. Everyone was going about their business. I could not understand, looking into every stranger’s eyes in their cars how they were not overcome with sadness and grief, not crying their eyes out. I was exhausted and overwhelmed. And my next task was about to be my hardest. Harder than everything that had come before. I had to go back and tell my children that their mommy had died. I had no idea. I mean, I figured the day would come. But today? Shouldn’t that still be in some tomorow? I called Cricket, my counselor. Our counselor Her wise advice shone through like it often does. She told me my job was now to lead the grief. To show the kids that it was ok to be sad. Really, really sad. But to also let them know that the world was still safe and that I would protect them. To let them see me grieve. To let them see me genuinely stricken. But not to let them see me completely break down. If at all possible, to save that for when they weren’t around. And that’s exactly what I did.

J had gathered them up while we drove home. They were already awake anyway. I sat them down in R&J’s bedroom, us, them, and their 3 kids. I just told them that mommy couldn’t fight the cancer any more and her body was too sick to stay alive any more. Alyssa was heartbroken and came up and sat and cried with me. Ian was confused and sad. He also sat with me. Emma was just too young to understand. We sat and talked and shared memories. After a couple minutes, Ian got up and quietly starting playing with a fire truck. It was his own way of channeling his sadness. Alyssa just sat quietly with me. We just stayed together for a long, long time, crying. Wishing it weren’t like it was. Alyssa wanted to know some of the logistics - what would happen to Anna’s body? How would we get her home? She was very sad that she didn’t get to see Anna one last time. She wanted to see her body once more. I told her she’d have a chance at the funeral, but that it wouldn’t be the same. And that mommy’s spirit would always live on with her no matter where she was. We spent the day cocooned. Eating some, resting some. My nieces, nephew, and R&J offering endless comfort to all of us. I could not have survived the day, the whole process, this whole year without them.

Anna was a wise woman. She was raised on the beach and always wanted to move back there. She had saltwater in her blood. A Seal Maiden, I believe. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she planned her own end so that she was on the beach. We had a small memorial service later the next day. We picked some flowers from R&J’s garden and took them to the Isle of Palms beach. We invited their minister. Said a few prayers. Kids and adults alike (and my father who had flown in for support and to help me with the drive home) tossed flower petals into the ocean, remembering Anna. We’ll be doing the same thing later today in the same place, just R&J and the kids and I.

Thank you Anna
Thank you for the love you gave me
Thank you for the 15 years of your life you shared with me
Thank you for the beautiful children you bore me, faces of God all
Thank you for your patience with me
Thank you for sharing your secrets with me
Thank you for sharing your body with me
Thank you for your wisdom
Thank you for your heart

I miss you dearly and will love you always.

Love,
Jase-o

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 Emma's Not Tired 1 [0:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Emma's Not Tired 2 [0:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Naptime in the Dufair household (click on “play now” below to see the 2nd video):

Transcript for video #1: Emma: “I’m not tired!” Me: “Well, what are you?” Emma: “I’m not peachy pie too.” (I call her peachy pie).
Transcript for video #2: Emma: “I’m not tired!” Me: “You’re not tired? You gotta take a nap.” Emma: “I’m not tired!!!” Me: “Ok” (which, in dad language, Ok translates to “tough luck, here’s your blankie and your ba-ba”

Alyssa and I watched Little Miss Sunshine. She really enjoyed it. I cringed, remembering just how many adult themes there are in that movie. But I enjoyed it anyway. We talked about those themes throughout the movie, i.e. “I really like the grandfather’s character. Too bad he chose to do drugs.” During the actual beauty pageant at the end of the movie, she looked at the contestants (other than Olive) and was saying things like “They look so fake!”

During our Friday lunch the next day, I asked Alyssa if the movie made her want to be in a beauty pageant more, less, or about the same. “Less.” Body language indicated that was about all she wanted to talk about it. Good enough for me. I think a bullet has been sufficiently dodged. None too soon, either. My friend Liz pointed out to me that many of these things are pyramid schemes that play heavily on kids’ and parents’ insecurities.

By the way, she said her favorite character in the movie was Dwayne (the brother). How he held to his convictions via a vow of silence. How he set a goal and didn’t let anything get in his way. That’s my Alyssa, for sure. I think she wants to read Nietzsche now.

No, I’m not dead, I’m just on vacation in Tucson, AZ, visiting Anna’s mom and sister. We’re on dialup out here (AOL dialup, no less), so it’s like being in a time machine set for the early 90s. Guess I need to crank up Nirvana’s Nevermind, imagine I’m driving my $200 Subaru wagon painted with smiley faces and peace signs instead of my mother-in-law’s late-model Toyota Sienna, get that long-on-top in a ponytail, shaved-on-the-sides haircut again and imagine basking in the safe glow of President Bill Clinton.

Being in Tucson is great. Went for a nice hike with Ian and my sister-in-law this morning. 2.3 miles through the desert and a rocky riverbed. I love hiking in a big way. Ian complained very loudly and staged several strikes the first half of the trip and then by the end told me he wants to go hiking a hundred times this week.

It was pretty tough arriving here yesterday. I’ve only ever been here with Anna. Walked in the house and lost it. I was bringing suitcases in the house and just had to lean against the wall and cry for a few minutes. I mean, we’ve done a ton of fun stuff here. Anna was the one who introduced me to this awesome city. I remember the first time we came here, I got off the plane and it seemed like we had landed on another planet. The flora (and fauna) are so different here. Cacti and scrub and red dirt and Palo Verde and Road Runners and Javelinas in the back yard and glorious brown mountains. The bedroom I’m staying in is the room Emma was probably conceived in. So that’s just hard and sad. I’m doing better today, but I sure wish Anna was here. She sure would have been proud of Ian climbing rocks and crossing riverbeds.

So, I’ll probably be a bit sparse this week between the opportunity to be outdoors a lot and the pain of dialup. I’ll try to catch up on everyone’s posts next week. We’re renting a convertible and heading to Phoenix on Thursday to visit my Gram, so that should be fun.

Have a great week everyone!

Update: Looks like one of the neighbors has an open WiFi access point, so I guess it’s time to sell the Subaru and put on the Panic! at the Disco.  Perhaps I’ll be around more than I thought this week

Alyssa lost a tooth tonight. I imagine she was thinking about the tooth fairy because she brought up Santa Claus while getting ready for bed. She wanted to know once and for all if he was real. She really pressed the issue. She had been suspicious for a good while and did all kinds of investigative work this past Christmas with her cousin who is the same age. I finally had to break the news to her. I didn’t feel it was fair to leave her hanging when she had a laundry list of evidence against the defendant.

It led to a long discussion of how Santa is the spirit of Christmas. And how having stories and myths that pass from generation to generation makes us truly human. She was pretty despondent nonetheless. Some of it was pretty clearly spillover grief about Anna. She had really hoped she’d get a chance to ride in Santa’s sleigh one day. Learning about Santa Claus is a loss of innocence. And she’s had plenty of lost innocence over the last 2 years. She’s had to grow up way too fast. I hated to tell her, but I really had to. She was going to figure it out (or had already) and I didn’t want it to end up being swept under the rug with a patina of distrust left behind.

I told her she could be in on the tradition with her younger siblings and that helped some. I told her that, in discussions with Anna when she was born, I didn’t want to perpetuate the Santa Claus myth but ended up convinced that it would be a mistake not to carry it on because we all need stories like these. I told her there were parallels with the story of Jesus and Johnny Appleseed and John Henry (ok, throw me a bone folks - I was caught a bit off guard tonight). I told her about the story of the real St. Nicholas.

She asked what it was like when I found out. That launched us into a pretty long discussion about what life was like when I was 9 and how I lived with a stepfather that was unkind and violent. That I never felt safe at her age. That I didn’t specifically remember finding out about Santa Claus.

After all of this, as I was leaving her room, turning the lights off, she asked me about whether the tooth fairy was real. With the tooth under her pillow. I had done enough damage for the night. I told her we’d find out in the morning. I’m off to wipe my eyes and put one Susan B. Anthony dollar and one Sacagawea dollar each under her pillow. Perhaps a tiny bit of innocence remains. Please, let it remain.

I’m sick. Had a 102.7 feber (Emma’s word). Aches, chills, sore throat. Sucks to be sick as a single parent. Thankfully one of my two babysitters totally picked up the slack tonight. I have two awesome babysitters. This is something I am constantly grateful for.

Had some great fever dreams. More like fever introspection. There’s a lot of shit I just couldn’t or wouldn’t blog about. But I was deep down in that shit, working it out tonight. Another case of a few hours of introspection while I’m sick. I should start an anonymous blog and get a few of my demons out.

The kids get really anxious when I’m sick. They are worried that I’m going to leave them too. It’s all over their body language and their general anxiety. I’ve reassured them I’m just regular sick, not sick like mommy was. As my fever started breaking tonight, Ian had me check it every 5 minutes or so to make sure I was ok. I think my reassurances helped some.

After digging up some old bad choices and some old bad times tonight, I’m even more grateful that I have my kids and that I’m raising them in a way that they won’t likely have as many demons as I do.

(and I think it’s time for a theme change)

Another fun Emma-ism: When she’s exerting her independence: “My do it!”

After being asked to dance at the New Year’s Eve Umphrey’s show, something lit up inside me after quite a while of having been extinguished. 17 months of sickness and 6 months of loss didn’t leave much room for romance between Anna and I. Not to say there was none during that time. We spent a weekend in Chicago for Anna’s 44th birthday and it was very romantic and sweet and one of the finest weekends I’ve ever spent in my life. Going to the theatre. High tea. Going to the Art Institute (even though she only had the energy for about 45 minutes). Making sweet love for one of the last times.

But that New Year’s dance left me with the embryonic hope that maybe, in some way, I would be able to love someone again.

We had that talk when Anna was sick. She wanted me to find someone else and to be happy. I told her I wasn’t interested. That I was planning on her being around for a long time. I was. I had to have that hope. And I did. There were people that lived more than 5 years after a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. Anna could be one of them. My friend and neighbor, Alan, lost his wife about 6 months before I did. She told him to grieve for a year and then remarry. Anna wasn’t quite so specific with her directive. But I think I understand. If I were the one to be going, I would definitely want her to remarry if it was what she wanted.

I’m now at the point where, occasionally, I can imagine spending my time with someone else. What I can’t possibly imagine is someone else being a step-parent to my kids. One of the driving forces in my life has been the very unpleasant relationship I’ve had with my stepmother. She’s a very unhealthy woman who has seen her share of suffering but has never faced it head-on. Thus, she was pretty efficient at passing that suffering on to my brother and to me (and to my dad) growing up. My mom’s second husband was also an angry, violent man. He treated us all - my mom, my brother, my stepsisters, even my Dad - very poorly.

I told myself that when I got married, I would never divorce. I would do whatever it took to make the relationship successful so that my kids would not have to go through what I went through growing up in terms of stepparents. Now, without having chosen it, I have the Faustian bargain of potentially trading the companionship of another friend, partner, lover, confidant, dreamer, see-er of visions, traveler, and sufferer for the risk of my kids living through my former hell. Yes, I understand that it’s much more complicated than that and there are a million reasons why things were the way they were in my family of origin. But that’s the bargain my monkey mind faces anyway.

So, despite all that, I decided to throw caution to the wind and at least dip my toe in the waters of dating. Being a netizen since the days of 300 baud modems and dialing long distance from Allston, MA to San Francisco to find good conversations on The WELL, it only made sense to check out online personals.

I don’t know how many of you have seen these, but let me tell you, it’s quite an experience. I wanted to see who was out there, but you really can’t do much lurking without setting up your own profile. So I put one up on Yahoo! Personals, just a few words to get started. The way these things work is you enter your gender and zipcode and you specify your potential mate’s age range (I went with 32-42), gender (I went with female - I’m curious about, but probably not looking to get serious with men), and you’re presented with a list of possible matches. Everyone provides a tagline or headline and then some verbiage about themselves. They also specify biographical stuff like never married/divorced/widowed, how many kids, education level, smoking/drinking preferences, etc. And they normally upload a few photos.

After reading through a few hundred of these profiles now, let me tell you - it’s a hell of an insight into the human condition. First, most people can’t write a coherent sentence to save their souls. Not that we all have to be Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Thordora, but geez. And can someone please point more than half of these folks to a spell checker? Now, my wife was dyslexic and several other people I love dearly have mild to severe dyslexia. So you can’t judge someone on their spelling. But if you’re going to try to attract the best person out there, wouldn’t you run your profile by someone you trust? And wouldn’t you spend more than 10 minutes writing it?

And then there are the pictures. Some of the pictures are so blurry or dark it’s impossible to tell what the person looks like or they’re sort of frowning or they have their ex-husband’s arm still around them. And this is not just a few. My photos aren’t winning any awards, but they’re at least not underexposed. So once you rule out the half that smoke, then the half of those that are unintelligible, then the half of those that are inscrutable, then the half of those that are trite (I mean who the heck doesn’t like long walks on the beach at sunset and cuddling by the fireplace?), then the half of those that listen to country music and what are you left with? Pretty much squat.

I’ve found exactly one profile on Yahoo! Personals that makes me inclined to put finger to keyboard and make contact. Someone who seems to know how shine some light on the prism of her self and to radiate some of the resultant color to her profile. But she smokes. For me, that’s a deal killer. I lost one beautiful soul through lung cancer and couldn’t do it again.

I’ve found that if I widen the distance of my search, I can find all sorts of potentially interesting people in Indianapolis and Chicago, but I’m not leaving this area and I wouldn’t expect anyone else to relocate. Not to mention, how the heck would you date someone 60+ miles away when you have about 4 free hours a week? Yeah, there’s that whole interwebs thing, but, well, Indy is just too far.

So then I decided to check out match.com. I had seen ads and wondered if it maybe attracted people who were more, perhaps, dedicated to actually finding a date? I had put together a decent profile on Yahoo! by this time and copied it over to match.com (where you get to add a few more blurbs). It’s really about the same, as far as I can tell. The site’s more user-friendly, so that helps. And you can do reverse and mutual matches (i.e. you meet their criteria and/or you both meet each other’s criteria). So that saves time and the effort of looking through dozens of NASCAR fans.

I found one profile on match.com pretty quickly that was rather intriguing. Her headline was a Jack Kerouac quote I’d always liked about living a passionate life. She likes The Grateful Dead and Tom Robbins and Van Morrison (all big, big faves of mine). She has a young daughter she’s very dedicated to. She’s an english teacher. The Kerouac alone probably would have been enough. So I wrote to her, putting my best foot forward. She wrote a relatively short, but pleasant reply. I suggested we IM or get coffee or whatever she was comfortable with. This was almost 2 weeks ago and I never heard back. I suspect I won’t at this point.

The last few weeks have found me at relatively low tide on grief beach. But I did find myself stopping a couple days ago and just staring at a picture of Anna in the hall. One we had done with my dad and brother and all of our families in matching white polo shirts. She looked so gorgeous in her bushy red hair against that white shirt. And I remembered so many plans and so many dreams. And I realized that I’m really probably not ready for dating at this point. I think the online personals may have been a bit of a shiney thing. I do miss having someone to kiss on the neck, right between their jawbone and their ear. And I do miss having someone with whom I can share the joy and rage of the day. And I do miss having someone to fuel the fire of my ideas and fueling their fire too. And I do miss looking into someone’s eyes and making that instantaneous, deep, real connection that says “we were thrust here, unwilling, unwilled, and unprepared, but let us face it all together because it’s sure as hell better than facing it alone”. But I think the time is not yet.