Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, each of us has a finite number of days here on Earth. The metaphysics of reincarnation aside we all will come to the end sooner or later. For my mother the end is now sooner. She herself told me in an email last weekend that she felt her days were numbered. My father tells me she is eating less and sleeping more. Oxygen is required for all but the most idle of activities, and her blood counts have been too low two weeks running for any chemotherapy.
For the weekend I am traveling to Decatur to see my mom one more time. Maybe for the last time. Even with the impact of Michele’s death still reverberating in my life, and with the reality of what death means figure in my thoughts, it is hard to believe that my mom is really going to die. Intellectually I understand what is happening and I can quantify the awful eventuality headed my way. Emotionally I can’t yet grasp what is coming. Someday soon I’ll travel to Decatur to attend her funeral, and then I won’t be able to talk to her again. She’ll never again make turkey stuffing with Bell’s Poultry Seasoning, or tell me about a new author, or share for the millionth time a story from her childhood.
Last summer, after Michele’s mother died, she found it very difficult to put into words what it truly meant. Mothers are such a part of their children, intertwined and yet separate. I am my own man, and I am my mother’s son. In the weeks the followed Michele’s death I experience some disassociation with part of my personality. I felt cut off from the bits of my personality that she brought to the fore. Most of those have returned to me, but I know a part of me is forever gone. the coming days will see me lose touch with another set of my personality aspects. Once again I will have to travel through my grief to recover myself. The man who will emerge on the other side will be forever altered by the loss.
As I look towards the future my thoughts include questions about whether I’ll ever be in another relationship. Obviously I am in no shape now to entertain such an undertaking, but someday I will be, and I wonder what that day holds for me. As I ponder that future self it occurs to me that one step I must complete is rediscovering my true self image.
Each of us has an image in his or her head of who and what they are. Our physical, mental, and emotional internal images may have little or no resemblance to our outward appearance, acumen, or lucidity. (Just look at all the anorexia sufferers if you don’t believe me.) What’s more, I believe, our internal self image becomes dependent in part on the affirmations we receive from those around us. Certainly the most powerful influence in anyone’s life is their chosen partner. Initially, in my relationship with Michele, she saw me differently than I saw myself. Over time I learned to see me through her eyes, as it were, and grew to appreciate that image of me. I saw her true beauty and as she incorporated it into her self image her appeal only increased. She saw in me things I couldn’t see on my own and over time I incorporated those aspects in to my self image.
Without her here to reenforce my self image I am starting to rediscover how I must appear to everyone else. Perhaps the assumption of how your loved one sees you to the exclusion of reality is what is really meant by “love is blind.” Now, I’m not saying that what she saw isn’t true, or is in any way wrong. However, I am aware that no one will ever see me quite that way again. As I examine myself and consider my future I realize that part of the journey will be to craft a new self image that aligns more closely with who I am now.
Ultimately who I am today, and who I will become tomorrow is up to me. No matter how strongly I may wish to see myself as someone else does, my truth is mine alone. My physicality, thoughts, and feelings can certainly be colored by an awareness of what people around me see; in the end however the man I become is up to me, and me alone.
Last September I participated in a meme about OS X applications. Ever since then the comment I placed on the originating site has garnered me perhaps four or eight visits a week. All of that changed on Monday.
In the last 48 hours my little site, way out on the tail of the power law curve of the World Wide Web, has had almost 300 visitors from that one comment. 159 on Monday, 101 Tuesday, and 37 today. 300 visitors is roughly what I get in two weeks normally.
One of the books I’m currently reading, Linked, talks about the distribution of links and sites on the WWW, and points out that it isn’t a even playing field. A very few sites have most of the inbound links (sites that link to them), while a vast majority of sites and few, if any, incoming links. In other words, the graph of sites vs. incoming links is shaped by a power law, and not the usual bell-shaped curve. My experience this week and shown me what the power of just one incoming link can mean in terms of traffic to my site. As in the “real” world, it isn’t what you know as much as it is who you know. Or, who knows you.
After twenty-seven weeks and one day I finally couldn’t go through the motions any more. Usually on a week day I wake up between 4:30 and 5:00 am without using an alarm clock. Today I didn’t wake up until nearly 7:00 am. After taking a shower and getting dressed for work I just couldn’t bring myself to leave the apartment. I fiddled around with little chores and eventually managed to get my things out to the car. Once I did leave I only managed to get to the highway before turning around and heading back home.
I need a day for me. A day when I am “supposed” to do one thing but let myself not do anything. Weekends are nice and all, but allowing myself to stay home on a Tuesday for no reason other than I don’t want to go to work is good medicine. Call it a mental health day. Call it playing hooky. Call it whatever you want; I needed a day where I blew off responsibilities and just said FTW.
The coming weeks and months are going to be difficult, professionally, personally, spiritually, and emotionally. Today is a bit of in-country R&R before the next big offensive.
For some months now I have been debating whether to get a new cellphone or not. My current phone is several years old, and while it still works, I am suffering from tech-envy as it doesn’t play games, support bluetooth, or take pictures. Moreover, it is at least one transmission standard out of date, if not two, making it increasingly difficult to use.
Last week my father acquired a cellphone from Cingular largely to allow him some freedom of movement in the final days in my mom’s life. Running errands or just getting away from it all will be easier with a line of communication at their disposal. He choose Cingular since that is my carrier and in-network calls are free. Having seen a Sony-Ericsson model I really liked late last year in Best Buy, and with assurances from a co-worker that his Cingular reception inside our building has improved considerably, I decided to get a new phone.
Being a big dopey at times I managed to get two new phones within a matter of hours last Friday. On the Cingular “upgrade your phone” site the Sony-Ericsson W600i was listed for $299. With a two-year service agreement and through an online order I would get an immediate $100 discount plus a $100 mail in rebate. The cost for the phone then would be $99. Cool. At Amazon the same phone lists for $199, and their incentives included a $50 Cingular rebate plus a $150 Amazon rebate. In other words the phone was free from Amazon. So I ordered the phone from Amazon and started counting the days until delivery.
Friday afternoon I got an email from Amazon indicating that my new service with Cingular had been established and my new phone number would be 913..*. Oops. I’ve already got a phone number, I don’t need or want a new one. Calling Cingular Customer Service I learned that number portability has some limits. Namely, phones sold at discount prices for new service can’t have numbers from existing service transferred to them.
Since I was getting a better deal from Amazon, and since I expressed my unhappiness to the service representative, they did agree to credit my account $50 and waive the one-time setup fee, an additional $36 savings. This made the Cingular deal only $12 more than the Amazon one, and I got to keep my current cellphone number. So I placed the second phone order Friday afternoon.
So now I have two UPS tracking numbers, and two packages due to arrive tomorrow, each containing an identical phone to the other. The plan is to immediately return under the “buyers remorse” clause the Amazon phone and only activate the Cingular one.
The moral (or marble for you Eddie Izzard fans) of the story is: read all the fine print, or you too can spend $415 in one day one two identical phones from two sources just so you can send one back and wait for a refund.
The HBO movie 61* is about the summer of 1961 when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris chased after Babe Ruth’s 60 home run record. Mantle was the favorite while fans and the press considered Maris an interloper. The movie is a wonderful baseball story, especially in light of the questions around drug usage by today’s greatest hitters.
If the record set in 1961 had an asterisk behind it for over thirty years, then the records being set today should have at least that much.
Rating: One of the best baseball movies I’ve seen
I feel so isolated. So terribly alone and isolated.
I’ve always felt different, felt like I didn’t fit in with the group. Belonging has always meant hiding or submerging some part of myself so I don’t stand out from the group. Emotional camouflage is my forte and my refuge. In the weeks and months since Michele died I have felt more acutely than ever my disassociation with the people around me. I am like an orphan wandering the streets on a cold, snowy evening peering into the windows of homes at the families inside, together and warm. I can see the connections between people, and I understand that I have connections with people, but they don’t seem real, they don’t seem to have any substance.
It is embarrassing to me to have to rely on the courtesy of others in order to be okay. While I am forever indebted to all the people in my life who have reached out and given me a place to just be, I chafe at the imagined obligation this places me under in return. My uneasiness grows only stronger when I realize that having successfully navigated this far in the turbulent waters caused by Michele’s death, I am faced with a new set of rapids to survive - those of my mother’s death.
How can I return to the same people who, to my eye, have extended themselves time and time again while I flail away at the elephant of grief camped in the middle of my life only to say to them, I’m back, and I have more grief, more sorrow, more need. It pains me greatly to feel so helpless and adrift. To be lost without the largesse of others, and to now, so soon after overstaying my welcome, to return needing more of the same.
And so I sit here today, alone, isolated and bereft of sanctuary. I can’t escape the reality of Michele’s being gone from the rest of my life. And I don’t want to accept the impending death of my mother. And I can’t bring myself to burden the people around me with my pain and sorrow.
I am alone. So terribly alone and isolated.
Unleashed is a rather startling little film about a young man who has been raised violently by a petty criminal, but who ultimately finds redemption and salvation in music. Co-staring Bob Hoskins, Morgan Freeman, and Jet Li, Unleashed was surprisingly good.
Rating: Worth a place in your Netflix queue
An email from my mother left me crying uncontrollably this afternoon. In it she related that she is less and less able to do with out oxygen; that she is more and more aware that her days are numbered.
In the past few weeks she has had visits from her sister and surviving brother, as well as from nieces and nephews. There have been trips to Normal to see her grandchildren, and they have come to see her as well. I have been able to get over to Illinois twice, and I cherish that time spent with my mom.
Next weekend I will return to my childhood home again, to see my mom and continue the long gentle goodbye we have been sharing since she learned her cancer had returned and was terminal. In a letter I sent to her shortly after her birthday I shared some of my memories of her, and in her email and our conversations she has shared some of her memories and thoughts as well.
I know much has been made throughout history of a boys love for his mother. Not nearly enough has been made of the impact a mother’s loss has on her children. Even with daily juxtapositions between my desire to see and talk to Michele again against the reality of her death; I am unable to comprehend even for a moment what the world will be like when I can’t call home and talk to my mom.