Tidings of Comfort and Joy

I have just finished writing our annual holiday letter to friends, and we will spend this snowy weekend getting our holiday cards addressed and mailed.  It's often the only contact we have with some friends, I'm ashamed to admit.  but after I finished the letter and printed it out it occurred to me that I have another set of friends, you - my virtual friends, whose real names and addresses I don't have.  So, I'm publishing the letter here in this journal.  I don't know if anyone ever visits, if this letter will get read by any of you for whom I will always keep a fond place in my heart.  So many of you were so kind during the immediate time of grief and pain of my sister's death, which I could share here in a way I really couldn't with friends at a distance.  Strange, but true.  Talking, either in person or by telephone was impossible, and letter or email writing was almost as hard.  Things are  better, as you will seefrom the letter, but though grief is no longer my constant companion, it is never far below the surface.  The baby I mention, and whose photo I have inserted, is my sister's grand-daughter, such a spark of grace and wonder in our lives.  In the letter I use our names:  I am Mary Ellen, and my partner is Gail. 

 

Dear Friends:

 

We are happy to begin by saying that 2007 was a far better year for us than its predecessor.  It was, in fact, a year of many enjoyable events.  The winter was a big surprise, as we had been led to believe that we would not experience serious snow here in the Rio Grande Valley.  As there is no longer any way to say “never” or “always” about weather anywhere, we will all have to get used to weather surprises, like our “fifty-year event” of multiple blizzards, snow piled on our flat roof, and us without a snow shovel! In which straits we were not alone…there was not asnow shovel to be found in the city.  We ordered one online from Vermont Country Store and felt quite smug.

           We had many delightful visits with both families throughout the spring and summer.  Then, in August Mary Ellen pulled herself together sufficiently to trot her resumé around the town, and as a result had two part-time ESL teaching positions during the fall semester.  She loved them both, but is taking on more work with UNM for the coming term, dropping the Catholic Charities class.  Gail continues to work for the Jewish Community Center’s childcare center, although in the new year she plans to cut down somewhat on her hours.

 We returned to the Mid-Atlantic in October, to attend a family wedding in PA, then for a week in Delaware visiting friends, as well as our favorite beaches, birding spots and seafood restaurants. In November we took another short saltwater vacation on the Texas Gulf coast, for more beachwalking, birding and seafood.  Gail wants you to know that our excursion in a boat called The Skimmer (birding by birders for birders) out into the waters off Aransas National Wildlife Refuge to see the whooping cranes (and many many other birds we never even expected) was the highlight of her year.  It was pretty close to the top for Mary Ellen also, but she’d have to assign highlight of the year to the birth of her niece Jessica’s daughter Penelope, a gift of hope and joy to the entire family.  From the Gulf Coast we drove up to Dallas for Thanksgiving with family and friends, and just two weeks ago Gail flew to Denver for Hanukkah with sons and grandchildren.  So, we are grateful for the gifts of family, friends and health, posole bubbling on the stove, piñon in the fireplace, and for the fact that the endof this administration is within sight.  May the force be with us all in the coming year, la lucha continua.  With love and hope,

The Emotional Heart of Global Warming

When I first read this, Climate Change More Extensive than thought, in Spiegel online last week, I began writing a post I could only, in my despair, title "Totally Fucked with Global Warming." The Spiegel article was the first place that the news from the second part of four IPCC reports, due to be published from Belgium sometime next month, was announced. The first section of the report was published from the international meeting of world scientists in Paris in January, and was scary enough.

This second part, however, will focus more on the results, the effects, of the fact of global climate change. and is so extremely scary that his morning we have the mainstream media, even unto the front page of AOL, getting down with this sort of headline: Climate Report Warns of Drought, Disease :

This report - considered by some scientists the "emotional heart" of climate change research - focuses on how global warming alters the planet and life here, as opposedto the more science-focused report by the same group last month.

"This is the story. This is the whole play. This is how it's going to affect people. The science is one thing. This is how it affects me, you and the person next door," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver

So, even though it's a beautiful early spring morning, and I've spent the last half-hour watching a ladderback woodpecker in the cottonwood outside the kitchen window, by now I would usually be contemplating swallowing ground glass after reading the above-linked news, I'm actually not having any such contemplation. No, I'm not, even despite other headlines I've collected over the past week, like this one: Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study, or this one: Bush Climate Report Shows U.S. Greenhouse Gases Skyrocketing, or my absolute favorite, showing as it does, the blind forces of denial that seem to be governing this debate in this country: US Urges Scientists to block out sun.

And why not, pray tell? The suicidal cynic has not suddenly become a cockeyed optimist, has she? Well, no. Probably not in the cards for this lifetime. What has happened is that for the past three days I've been attending a conference right here in Albuquerque, during which I have met, listened to, eaten lunch and drunk coffee, with like-minded everyday people, as well as big names in their fields. The focus of this conference was water, as it was held by the Xeriscape Council of NM, even more specifically the intersection of water and energy in our current world, and the world of our future. Global climate change entered the picture, or was often the main subject, with almost every speaker, every question from the audience, every article and report in our program book. Despite the enormous amount of doom and gloom in every speech, every report, every conversation among attendees, there was also an amazing spirit of positivity, nay optimism, about what can be done to change this horrible prognosis. . So, I'm deleting "Totally Fucked with Global Warming," and will be writing a series of posts from the information gleaned during the conference. Right now, however, this morning, I'm going to go out and work in my garden, turn over my compost heap, and qvell for a while in the glow of the main benefit gained from this conference: the feeling that I'm not alone, that there are many brave and determined souls out there thinking, working, actually DOING something positive and worthy because theybelieve in and care mightily about the future of this planet.

Cross-posted at The Blue Voice

New Year, New Hopes

So, we moved out of a big drafty Victorian farmhouse in Delaware to an far smaller adobe in New Mexico because we wanted to get away from the huge winter heating bills.  And in Delaware now it's in the seventies, no winter in sight.  In New Mexico, by contrast, we have had the worst snow storms in fifty years, along with some of the coldest temps we've experienced since we lived in Massachusetts.  (Where it's currently also springlike in temperature.)  Our heating bills for this winter promise to be world-class, as adobe walls produce an icecave effect in much of the house, unless we keep the heat at a far higher level than we are wont to, even in the drafty Delaware farmhouse.    The presence of over a foot of snow on the roof has revealed the fact that we're probably going to need a new roof.  This one has one spectacular leak from which we've spent much of the past weeks bailing water, as well as a smaller one we just discovered yesterday.  It's a high price to pay for Southwestern cuteness and charm, and we start right now looking for the neighborhood to which we will move in about a year and a half.  Not moving across the country this time, just across town...someplace far newer, less charming, and a good deal more watertight.  Global climate change  apparently means ferocious summer monsoons and winter blizzards for this part of the world.  We bought the first house that appealed to us and was affordable, buying long distance without time to really scope out neighborhoods and shop for a place that we could love longterm.  Now that we are here and have a home base, we can really shop for a living space that will make more sense.  There are so many areas we like better than the location of this house, with leisure to look and explore I know we'll find the right one for our retirement nest. 

Good news on the vision front...at my last doctor's visit she pronounced my corneas almost healed, and was able to refract me into a distance prescription.  With my new glasses I can see to drive, am not driven mad in grocery stores,  and feel much more confident outside the house, walking and so forth.  The next appointment is this coming Friday, when we hope to get me into a close vision prescription, making reading, writing, and computer  work no longer painful struggles.  This is all such cause for rejoicing,and I am.  I have been enjoying the landscapes of extraordinary beauty created by the snowstorms everywhere, as well as deeply welcome company:  

My sister from D.C. and her family were here for New Year's weekend, flying in on Friday night amidst great uncertainty, as they had a stopover in Denver.  It was touch and go whether they would be stuck in Denver, as both that airport and ours here in Albuquerque  were in danger of shutting down entirely.  As it was, they made it with long delays, but they made it.  And my ten year old niece is the person for whom snowstorms were invented.   She had a wonderful time making snow...balls, angels, and people, and tromping through snow up to her knees at the Rio Grande Nature Center on their last day here.  When she was not getting totally wet and snow-encrusted, she was sprawled on her bed reading a Harry Potter.  Oblivious to leaking roofs and the need to get to the grocery store in order to feed guests, she enjoyed every moment of what was a great inconvenience to most adults.  With my better eyes and new glasses, I was able to drive our guests to Santa Fe last Tuesday, where the streets and sidewalks were far worse than here.  They'd never been there, so even in its ice-encrusted form they had a great time.  And I never would have made it through "the holidays" without their visit.  I am trying to sound hopeful, trying to focus on what is improving in my life, but most of the time I just feel as if I have been flung from a high cliff onto jagged rocks:  broken, sad, and lost.  As soon as my close vision is taken care of I need to start looking for a job - something I both look forward to and a bhore.  I want to get out of this house, out of my own head and heart, but I really don't feel that I can function in any normal fashion.  Even though I'm not supposed to cry, because of the toxcicity of my tears and the possible damage to my eyes, it's all I really want to do,  and sometimes there is nothing else for it, I cry.

Now I am waiting for roofers to come offer diagnoses and estimates, while Gail goes off to work, and we move into a new year, with hope for much kinder and gentler times ahead.

Full Moon on the Rise

Robin states in a comment on a previous entry that there is nothing like looking at the blue New Mexico sky to lift one's spirits.  To which I'd like to add that watching the Full Cold Moon rise over the Sandias is pretty darned close.  The actual December full moon was on the fourth, but last night it was still immense, rising over the mountains, throwing its frosty light across the valley.  It's hard to concentrate on where the dog and I are going, because Ican't look at anything except that miraculous moonscape.  But last night, in the opposite direction, I discovered that the big Catholic church on the corner of Lomas and Tennessee was entirely adorned with luminarias...it's a truly huge church, built in the Mission style, lots of rooflines, porticos, strange little niches, all of which are now gleaming into the darkness with what must surely be electric luminarias.  So,there's much towards which to turn my vision, even after dark.  And today, for the first time since late October, I went for a good long walk all by myself.  I've been nervous and somewhat scared to do this, and our dog is too old, crippled and just plain goofy, to be of much practical value on a walk.  He can't see any better than I can, and he wouldn't scare a rabbit.  We are out of the deep freeze we were in for the past week and a half, so it was still warm in the sunshine, and I started at a small park in a beautiful residential area just below the mountains and walked for half an hour.  May not sound like much, but it's a big first step for me.  My eyes seem better to me, or else I'm just getting used to this level of vision.  I won't really know until next week, but I'm very hopeful.  I'm able to drive short distances, during the daylight also.  We are thinking of a day trip down to Bosque del Apache Wildlife Reserve near Socorro on Saturday, as the sandhill cranes have arrived for their winter sojourn.  Gail and I saw one on Sunday when we were walking at the Rio Grande Nature Center - it flew over the fields and headed towards the river.  Our friends who live not far from the Center in the North Valley say they saw them flying over their house all morning, in astounding numbers, crying as they went.

IMPROVEMENT TO REPORT

Once again I offer my gratitude for the kind comments left by friends on the previous entries.  They help more than you can know. 

I've been back home for about a month now, resting and healing.  This Tuesday was the first day I realized some real improvement in my vision.  And it occurs to me that I didn't previously mention that aspect of my disintegration...so, long story short:  Beginning in August when I returned from the first trip to RI, I experienced some loss of visual acuity.  I have terrible eyesight anyway, have been seriously nearsighted since I was seven years old, and have added difficulty with close vision as well as far, as I have grown older.  But this was something new.  A visit to the opthamologist brought the weird diagnosis of cornea damage due to copious crying of "toxic tears' in the weeks following my sister's death.  Apparently my tears of strong emotion are like bathing my eyes in acid, and I am an Olympic-level cryer at the best of times.  A second trip to the doctor earlier this month showed no improvement, not surprising, as I hadn't stopped crying at all.  After that visit, I realized I would have to find some other way of dealing with grief, crying myself blind was not an option I wanted to continue.  Thus, a month of meditation, Reiki healing, walks with my dog, cuddling on the couch with my cat, sleeping a lot, with a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday thrown in as a bonus.  Jamie and his family (Jamie is my partner's younger son) came from Denver, and grandchildren are the best therapy, I must say.  We also had friends andneighbors around the table, and the table was loaded with an amazing meal that I had spent the week before planning , shopping for, and cooking.  Cooking is also pretty good therapy.  Thanksgiving was the right holiday, as my Reiki practitioner advised me to do gratitude work, as part of my healing .

Right now we are in the throes of a winter storm that blew down from the Torthwest, yesterday bringing snow, wind and rapidly plunging temps.  The negative ions that acccompany a storm like this have raised my spirits enormously...it's the same feeling one gets walking by crashing waves at the shore - something I miss hugely, by the way.  But watching it snow on the mountains, the birds at my feeders, while I spent the day making turkey-tortilla soup with the carcass of the Thanksgiving bird, felt like such a great gift.  It was ELEVEN for a temperature just now when I walked the dog, but the precip is over, and the air smells clean and fresh, the New Mexico sun is back, shining on the snow, and both Honey (goofy old ocker spaniel) and I had a spring in our step.

So,  I have better days and worse days with my vision, but I am trying to look ahead, in every way, and to spend as much time looking at beauty as I can.  I think this may be what "I lift up my eyes to the mountains" may actually mean, and I am trying to do it whenever possible.  Next opthamology appointment is Dec. 13, two weeks to continue the healing.

Later, the same life

First of all I want to thank the friends who left comments on my last post;  It is so heartening to hear from you, to know you are still there, and to feel your sympathy and caring so strongly.  I am home now fromMy second stay in Rhode Island, which, though well-intentioned,  was a complete disaster, and ended up being much shorter than I had intended.  My mental health is fragile at the best of times, and two days of going through my sister's house with my niece was all it took for my sanity to unhook and sail away like an icefloe.If my darling sister Katy from Dallas hadn't come up and worked with us for the rest of that week and then practically carried me onto a plane, Lord knows what might have happened.   .  The grief, anguish, and guilt we all feel is so  magnified by our realization of the circumstances of Peggy's last years, the fact that she was living in such squalor and wretchedness without ever reaching out to us, even repudiating any of our efforts to reach in to her with love and aid is so unfathomable in every way.  My inability to stay on for the rest of the month and continue to help her kidswith the settling of things only adds to my guilt and disgust with myself.   Katy and I also both became physically very ill while we were there, in all probability from over a week spent in that mold-filled colddamp dreadful house, and it's going to take a good while to recover from the whole thing as best we can.   We actually managed to accomplish quite a lot in the short time we were there, and hopefully the kids will be able to carry on with only our long-distance help.  I hope it will be possible to get my niece and nephews out to either Texas or New Mexico to visit their aunts at some point during the winter holidays.  These are going to be very difficult months for all of us, and for me it is only being with my sisters and their kids, and our boys and their kids, that gives me any solace and comfort or peace. 

BRINGING YOU UP TO DATE

As usual, it's been a long long time between postings here.  And a very hard long long time it has been.  Early in August my niece in Rhode Island called me one night, and just from her "hello" I could tell she was calling with bad news.  She is the daughter of my sister Peggy, the third sister in my birth family of six siblings.  This sister was widowed quite young, with three very small children, whom she brought up alone, often in dire poverty, and increasingly in ill physical and mental health.  While I lived in New England I was able to stay close to her and the kids, helping them all out in any way I could.  When I left the area over eight years ago, she began to shut me out of her life, as she had her other siblings for some time. 

The kids, grown by this time, remained close to me, or at least two of them did.  One of my nephews is developmentally delayed, and it's hard to have much emotional closeness with him, especially from a distance.  The other two often visited us in Delaware, and my niece and I drove across the country to Texas together one summer several years ago. From time to time I would get word from them about disturbing developments in their mother's life, although I had to pry most information out of them.  She had tyrannized them into paranoid secrecy about everything concerning her life, and it was only when they felt at the end of their ropes dealing with it alone that they would tell me anything.  She was diagnosed with diabetes about twelve years ago, and last winter had a heart attack and a procedure to place shunts in her heart.  She had had half of one foot removed after serious infection, and had broken the knee on the other leg, and it never healed right, causing her to be in a wheel chair or on crutches, unable to continue the walking that had kept her semi-sane for many years.  During all this time, listening now to my niece and nephew talk about their childhoods and adolescences with her, I am convinced that she also suffered from bi-polar disease, increasingly more so as she got older. 

Back to the night in early August and my niece Jessica's phone call - she was calling to tell me that she and her brother Tom had found their mother in a glycemic coma (an event that had happened numerous times over the years, though usually they were able to revive her or call the EMTs who either revived her or took her to the ER where she was revived) from which they could not wake her.  She was taken to RI Hospital, and continued in a coma - by this time it had been four or five days - from which she could not be woken.  The doctors could not figure out why she remained in the coma, and insisted that it was just a waiting game, and soon she would surely wake up.  I flew to Baltimore, then drove up to RI with my youngest sister who lives in DC and her 8 year old daughter.  We were joined in RI after a few days by another sister, from Dallas.

After a week of watching at her bedside, talking to doctors (who appeared to be completely mystified by her case), my nephew suddenly remembered that maybe she had made a living will back in the winter when she'd had the heart procedure.  We trooped in for a meeting with her lawyer, to find that indeed she had done a medical POA as well as a durable POA.  She had a very specific DNR order written, which had already been extremely countermanded by the presence of breathing and feeding tubes, though by the time we found it she was breathing on her own.  Evidence of neurological damage was growing, and though the doctors still seemed utterly baffled, they acknowledged that they were not acting according to her wishes.  She had told her kids many times not to revive her, not to call for an ambulance, just to let her die, every time she had previously had such an episode.  After another week of waiting, watching her grow more and more agitated, though still not fully conscious or able to speak or see, the doctors agreed that her orders should be obeyed.  Once the IV insulin and the feeding tube were discontinued, and she was on only a morphine and atavan drip, she relaxed into a deep sleep, and died in ten hours (instead of the three days the medical staff had warned us it might take) holding Jessica's hand.  Her son Tom had been there with her all night, and my sister Rosie and I had been there the afternoon before he came in.  They had brought my other nephew, Charles, in to say goodbye that afternoon as well, once the tubes were removed and she was peaceful. 

I have always dreaded the loss of a sibling, and now it has come to pass.  This sister had estranged herself from the rest of us for many years, she was lost to us long before she actually died.  I did see her four years ago, but have had little contact after that.  Her life was a tragedy, and her death was the tragic outcome of it. 

All of us are now filled with not just the grief of losing a sister, or a mother, but the guilt of wondering how we could have helped her want to live, to take care of herself, how we could have reached her through the layers of depression and illness.  I stayed on to help the kids (I say kids, although they are really adults in their late twenties, early thirties) with her final arrangements and some other practical things.  There is so much that will have to be done to clean up the mess she left behind, in so many ways.  I'll be going back to RI probably the end of this month to help with it all. 

This will be very hard for me, as the past month has been.  Leaving our new home and life here, so soon after such a big move, with all its attendant stress and exhaustion.  My DC sister will help out financially, if I can help with time, and amongst us all we'll get it figured out.  Hopefully as quickly as possible, for the sakes of my niece and nephews.  I haven't been posting at The Blue Voice, either, and don't know if I even will return there.  I just can't find it in me to write about political and environmental subjects, while my family is in such grief and turmoil.  Of course I know it all still matters, but it will all go on without me.

Right now, since getting back from RI last week, I've been working as a paid staffer on Bill Richardson's re-election campaign, and Gail has been working for ACORN on voter registration.  It  will bring in a few dollars, to help with all the dollars that have flowed out in the past month while I've been away from home, travel expenses, motels, eating out, paying for groceries for my niece's household, and so on.  Those kids live on the thin edge financially, and my sister's estate is more bills than anything else - so these part-time jobs of a defined duration are a godsend. 

I just wanted to bring my online friends up to date on the events of my life, and let you know where I've been while I've not been online.  I don't read your journals or blogs, haven't for a long time,  for which I ask your forgiveness and patience.  Perhaps some day I will be back to a normal life - it seems like a very long time since it's been normal - and able to catch up with all of you.  I hope you are well, that your lives are "normal," and that for you "normal" means wonderful, or simply...good.  Thank you for all the love and friendship you have brought into my life.  At a time like this friends take on a whole new meaning.  I couldn't function without them, without you.  May the force be with you all.      Mary Ellen