Christmas - Only Ten More Days 'Til It's Gone

I know I should be grateful and filled with Christmas spirit - whatever the hell that is.  I'm not.  I'm annoyed, cranky, irritated.  I don't like Christmas.  I used to.  But I used to like bologna too.  And knock-knock jokes.  And Soupy Sales.    Well, I think I'd still watch his Black Tooth and White Fang.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNv3rVV1mfs&feature=related .  
I despised the family-of-origin Christmases - drunkfests that went on for decades.  Rough on the mutant nearly non-drinker, though my ex-husband loved them.  Then the real ruin of Christmas was the "death year".  My mother and my sister both died between Thanksgiving and Christmas one year - the sister of alcoholic cirrhosis at 51.   Slogged through heavy water that year.

And now,  I am cranky in the run-up to this, my third Christmas since the SCA, though I am glad to spend it at home - my first in this home.   I am glad not to be travelling,  happy to be hosting friends that day for dinner, but that's about it for happy.  The rest is pretty cranky.

So no, I am not filed with Christmas spirit.  I'm filled with irritation, annoyance, rancor, acid.  Whatever the noun is for peeved.  Pettily peeved, that's me.
I got a tree yesterday, but it's not standing up straight.  Today, I had to go back to where I bought it  -  I realized last night I'd forgotten to pay for it.  I expected them to be grateful and surprised that I had come back - perhaps just a little fawning.  Nada.  They said they knew I'd come back to pay.  I know I should like that - I don't.  I expected gratitude.  Compliments.  A halo perhaps.  See? - Pettily peeved.

I am sick of hearing people debate "Merry Christmas" v. "Happy Holidays".  I have considered de-friending or hiding from some Facebook friends who have posted those bizarre "put Christ back into Christmas" crap.  One said non-celebrators should go back where they came from.  What?  Go back where?  Do we now assume that everyone who doesn't say Merry Christmas is an illegal immigrant?  What the hell is the connection there?  Do these people have no friends who are Jewish, agnostic, seekers, Buddhists, miscellaneous?  How is that possible?
And what the hell is "put Christ back into Christmas" anyway - what does that mean?  Santa Claus's in mangers?  Baby Jesus' figures on candy canes?   Mistletoe in the shape of  the Star of Bethlehem?  Three Wise Men sliding down a chimney?  And now I'm irritating myself.

I am incredibly grateful for one thing this season ----- my radio station plays perhaps one Christmas song per hour.  If it's not the Band's Christmas Must be Tonight or John Lennon's So This is Christmas or Adeste Fideles, I don't want to hear it.  OK, maybe a really excellent rendition of Oh, Holy Night - but that is it.

As kids we count the days until Christmas.  Now, I count the days until the day after Christmas.

I'm full of Christmas rancor though I am faking it, trying to cover it up.  But the rancor is all over the place.  Annoyed at lack of fawning.  Annoyed my tree is not standing up straight.  Annoyed I have to find new places for Christmas decorations - we always put the things in the same places, and this is the first year in this house; I have to figure out new places.  Right now, the new place is "still in the box".  I may go with that.

I'm annoyed with my lost friend.  He missed me last year and I liked that.   I was on the beach today (75 and magnificent) with my unruly dog - whom I'm thinking of renaming Calamity.  The ocean was perfect - long intervals between slow, gentle, excellently formed waves. Impossible blue.  Perfect sky.  Again impossible blue. Warm, not hot.  Smelled perfect.  See forever on the horizon.  And I thought "You idiot. We could be boating.  You could be teaching me to fish".
  Tomorrow I'm going to Raleigh to watch Syracuse play some basketball.  I hope they beat the stuffing out of NC State.

Ah, the 26th - a mere 10 days away.  Then I can go back to being a happy person.

Devoid of Jewelry

Sometimes you encounter a phrase floating by - and then.... what?  What was that again?  Hold it.  Rewind, please.  A few weeks back, a dear friend told me a story that revolved around one such phrase.  It went by and then stopped.  It has rolled around with me ever since.  Seemingly innocuous, annoying as hell.  

A family member of my friend was in therapy.  During a session, the therapist left the room and the 'patient' snuck a peak at the notes on the desk.  I probably would do that.  Or at minimum, I would want  to do that.  And the notes the therapist had written went something like:  "She is completely devoid of jewelry".

Devoid of jewelry.   Those words just sit there.  The therapist wrote those words on a page, to put in a file.  There is something so offensive about it.  I like jewelry as much as the next woman. But that little phrase bothered me, and it's been bothering me for weeks.   Devoid of jewelry.  In a therapist's file.   (It reminded me of an old-fashioned doctor's referring to the "lipstick effect" - he thought he was so insightful by commenting that if a female hospital patient donned lipstick, she was on the mend or showing good mental health.  Trite.  Throwback to my parents' generation). 

But this therapist is not of my parent's generation, and I continue to be annoyed and irritated and insulted by the comment.  "Devoid of jewelry".  Was there supposed to be some genuine insight there?  A diagnosis?   It trivializes a woman; it trivializes a patient.  (And does the therapist note when a man is over- or under-   adorned with jewelry?  Do we make accomodations in the amount of 'acceptable' jewelry a man wears - do we allow more for men from New Jersey?)

I was devoid of jewelry today.  I went out and made several stops; so alas and alack - I was seen in public being devoid of jewelry.  And no lipstick either.   Horrors.

And why was I devoid of jewelry?  Was I having a breakdown?  Was I depressed?  Withdrawing from civilized society?  Sinking into despair?  Lashing out or acting out against some unknown therapist somewhere?  Succumbing to darkness of mental illness?

No.  No to the unknown shallow therapist out there.  No.  I was devoid of jewelry because I had dropped one earring somewhere along the way today.  Instead of walking around with only the other earring, I made the deep decision to yank out the survivor.  Oh - and the 'spare pair' that many of us keep in the car (like a spare tire) had already been used.  Whoopsie.  Perhaps in "smug, trite therapist school" there is a separate category for being devoid of jewelry and devoid of the spare pair).

So there I was.  Devoid.  

Here is what I would like to say to the therapist.  Go to hell.  Wear as much or as little jewelry as you would like, but begone with your shallow self. 

Back to the business of life.

Dammit - SCA Claims One of Our Own

We survivors of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) meet one another on various websites - much like 'survivors' of anything in this age.   On one of these sites, I have 'met' some friends and people I care deeply about.  We exchange our stories, our experience, our fear, our hope, our successes and at times, the despair of loss or impending loss.

I am an incredibly lucky survivor.  I had my SCA inches away from defibrillator paddles and a few feet from people trained to use them.  My heart - which had stopped without warning -  was restarted after three shocks from the paddles - in a matter of moments.  In less than a couple minutes.  In other words, I recovered without heart damage and without brain damage.  Lucky beyond lucky.  Unlucky that my heart has taken to stopping, but incredibly lucky about where I was when it first happened.  My heart stopped and I didn't die.

So we find one another.  Survivors, those whose loved ones did not survive, and the ones that make your beating heart ache - the loved ones of those who are hanging on, who are battling against devastating brain injury.  Their victims are often young (SCA doesn't discriminate by age) - their loved ones are 25, 32, 47.  Their screen names are both proud and plaintive statements - these people want some help, they want miracles beyond what we survivors can offer.    They are Mike's Mom, Jim's Mom, Jenny's Sister, Dee's Mom.

Mike's Mom suffered her final loss this month; Mike who had survived with extensive brain damage; Mike gave up his ghost. When Mike's heart stopped the first time, with his SCA, he was 47 and just passed a physical with flying colors.  This is the tyranny of SCA.

I ache for Mike's Mom and for all the others.  I am again so humbled and grateful for the SCA experience I had - brain and heart intact - with the welcome addition of Skippy the implanted defibrillator.
Mike could have been me.  It could be you.  It could be someone you love.  You could be Mike;  we could all be Mike's Mom.

Today I regret every trite, whiny post I've put on this blog.  Every post about my alcoholic-addict men/boys,  the disappointing buena man,  each post about my SCA fears, every post bitching about having to give up scuba diving.  Shut me the hell up.

Today belongs to Mike's Mom and all the others who battle through those post-SCA injuries that I somehow skated away from.  Please accept my deepest, most heartfelt condolences.

Cranky: Shingles Belong Only on Roofs

OK, I'm not in a good mood.  Could even be called a rotten mood.  I don't run in the direction of self-pity very often, but today, I may indulge it.  Well, maybe for 60 minutes.

I have shingles.  On my forehead and scalp.  Yes, I have been to the doctor, yes I am taking antiviral medication, yes I had chicken-pox as a kid  (I was one of 7 kids - we got everything).  Aside from the pain - which is nothing to sneeze at, here is why I am cranky---------

Today, I believe that if one gets Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) in your thirties and has Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) in your fifties, you should get a flipping bye on some of this other crap like shingles.  Yes, I know that RA raises the risk of shingles (compromised immune system and all that), yes, I know the medication for RA further raises the risk (more compromising), but still.  Should get a bye.  Certainly, all survivors of SCA should be able to skip this one.   Really --- just because I say so.  Well, I'll bet we would all say so.

Cranky, self-indulgent, irritated.  Don't like having to take pain medication during the workday.  Fretting about how to wash my hair.  To crawl out of this pity session, I will remind myself that generally, I don't care about infirmities that I know will be going away in a few days.  But screw it, I'm going to just be cranky for another 45 minutes or so.

This could be the most boring post I have ever put up there. Or I sure hope that it is.  Blessedly, it appears it will be short.  I can't seem to make shingles funny.
Welcome any help there is on that.

Lurking - I Have Become A Lurker

Guilty admission: I have been lurking in men's 12 step phone meetings.   I'm not a man, so I know it's weird, I know it's embarrassing - or should be.   Here's a few more effects of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA); 1) I've probably become more honest and 2) I don't give a rip about things that should embarrass me.  I think the motto of SCA survivors may well be "F__k it".  

So yes, I've lurked this week.  I'm a veteran 12 step program person - Alanon.  That's the one for people who supposedly don't have an addiction themselves, they/we just happen to love or care about or obsess about a person who does have one.  So I know the lingo, I know the ropes.   But this is different; I've been shocked by the men with whom I have lurked.

Alanon saved my life a few years back, it truly did.   I had surrounded myself with so much alcoholism, some I believed by unwitting choice, some by genetics.  I was a mess by the time I first stumbled in;  my dad had died of cirrhosis, a cousin lost by 40, my marriage unraveled, an understanding that my older sister was a way-down-the-line alcoholic.  She would be dead at 51, but we didn't know that quite yet; there was a little bit more blessed ignorance on that one.

So I became an Alanon devotee, and it worked.  You can regain your footing, you can let the alcoholics go, you don't let their disease/crap/'ism' dominate your life.  Then you can turn back to your crap.  Then something else happens, the dirty little secret.  There creeps in a smugness.  We are subtle about it, or we think we are - if we have any awareness of it at all, the creeping smugness. We wrap the smugness up in kindness, in sympathy,  in tolerance,  in coo-ing recovery type noises.  But it's there.  Smug.  They, the alcoholic/addict/gambler/eater - they are screwed up - I'm fine.   At the end of the day, when we are privately honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge our belief that our emotional health would have been intact had we not been forced to associate with the alcoholic/addict.

Of course, I had sought out some of them - not the sister or the father or the cousin, but the others; I had sought them.  I have come to understand  that this is my crap; they are symptoms of my mess.  This I learned from lurking in men's meetings.  Phone meetings; I figured they'd never know.  And there, on those lines, were healthy recovering men. Far healthier than me.  Far healthier than I had guessed men could be.

So I lurked. I stayed muted. They'd never know.  I was stunned.   With that latent smugness of mine, I have grown so accustomed to thinking of addicts/alcoholics as flawed, as less than.  These were the men who were the bane of my existence, the ones I tolerated, loved, hated.   These meeting men were different.  They were breathtakingly healthy.  Their spiritual life is on more solid ground, their emotional health stronger, more honest.  They had come to terms with their shortcomings and compulsions in ways I never had.  They are searingly introspective, deeply committed to living the fullest life possible, they have firmly put into the number one priority slot: their health and the health of their relationships.  These are not the men who pass through life just putting one foot in front of the other.  They aim higher, far higher.  They aim at happy, joyous, free.  They aim for a shame-free life,  eradication of self loathing and self destruction.  They choose health and they choose the work it takes to get there. They are heroes.

Lurking there - it was humbling, disturbing, inspiring, a little scary, slightly embarrassing, and I am going to do it again.  

Aren't I ridiculous.

photo by daustin@sandcarveddesigns.com  

Jurgensen - Be Still My Heart

Believe me; I understand this seems nuts.   I can blame the Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA), but truth be told, this long pre-dates that 2009 event.  More truth - I don't care.

Sonny Jurgensen was my first crush.  I know, I know.  Yes, this was the start of my long, dark road of exceptionally poor taste in men.  Sonny was an intermittent attender of my childhood Philadelphia church - St. Matthias. (That's a post for another day; Matthias was the apostle who replaced Judas in the lineup).
Sonny would show up  from time to time during the Eagles football season with his pal, favorite receiver and co-future-inductee into the Hall of Fame - Tommy McDonald.

Sonny was an adorable, dynamic, charismatic, witty, sharp-edged, full-of-vortex, jagged,  tortured  heavy drinker.  Just my kind of guy.  Sonny was magnificent on the field, and a bit spotty off the field.  I adored him.  In college, the only photo I had in my room was one of him and my beloved godfather Bill J.   Well, I might have  had one of the dog.  Like I said, I understand this is nuts.

I was shocked in 2009 when I moved here (no pun intended re: Skippy the implanted defibrillator) - he grew up in my adopted home town of Wilmington, NC.  Went to high school here.  The city field is named for him; I begged a photographer friend to take a photo of the Jurgensen scoreboard last year; it's enlarged, framed and inside my back door.

This week, Sonny was honored at his high school by the NFL Hall of Fame "hometown heroes" program, whatever the hell that is.  I saw a small announcement in the paper of the upcoming ceremony and had to go.   Just had to.  Wilmington is a big small town, unlike any place I have lived.  So when I called the school to find out what I had to do to be able to attend - the Athletic Director called me back and welcomed me in.

Sonny was charming, gracious, humble, and talked to his true audience - the high school football team assembled on stage that morning.   He talked about promise and possibility, as all speakers at a High School do.  But then he also told them he was far from the best athlete in his class.  He told them he had been a member of the boy's chorus, had played a role in the Mikado.  He then burst into song, mimicking his performance with the fan.  Seriously.
I fell in love with him all over again.  He was a delight.

I met Sonny Jurgensen this week.  I shook his hand; he shook mine.  I got a demi-hug.

Life is to be gobbled.  I don't give a damn if I looked like an ass.  I met Sonny.

How Things Should Be

"He was meant to be a photographer; he had that sense of  how something  should  look".  I love that sentence.  It's not mine.  It belongs to David Nicholls who wrote "One Day", a clever novel.  It's a wonderful sentence that reminds me of someone.

I am not an excellent photographer, though occasionally I take a picture I like.  And more rarely, I may take one I like enough to keep carefully, maybe print.  I don't have Nicholls' sense - my good photos are happy accidents.

There is 'how things should look' and then there is 'how things should be'.  When he started taking photos, he didn't trust or rely on his sense of how something should look;  he wanted only to capture the image.  In any way.  He's learned; he's learned to count on it.  Now it's clear - he heeds his strong sense of how it should look.  His outstanding photos reflect that.

His photos show he's grown so far past just getting the action shot, just getting the image.  He's learned that big, burly boys being sweet to a mom or girlfriend or being nearly ill with game anxiety or sitting with their pure love of a sport - these are better photos than big, burly boys crashing into one another.

I don't know if he's yet learned how things should be. There is magic in one's camera snagging that perfect second where something looks exactly as it should.  How things should be is something else entirely.

Hearts should not stop without warning, no one should have to come up with a cute name for an implanted defibrillator so that it's less terrifying,  kids' bones should not break,  children shouldn't get ill, friends should be kind to one another.  That is how things should be.  We should be kinder to people we care about than we are to near-strangers.  Though admittedly, sometimes it is safer to show the kindness to those mere acquaintances.   It's just as true for me as for him;  there is far greater risk in kindness with people we are coming to care for.  Kindness with near-strangers is just a pleasantry;  kindness with loved ones creates vulnerability.

With friends and people we cherish, there is magic in unexpected kindness.  And there is brutality in unexpected harshness.

Pictures are lovely.   Life is messy.

PS I took this photo.  A happy accident.  Click on it to see it full-size.