Like all office buildings, the one where I work sports a selection of restrooms. Being male I am subjected to the often times curious, often times crude habits of my fellow man in this hallowed space. The comedian Elaine Boosler had a line in her act that went something like, “Men are just bears with furniture. [In the bathroom] it seems they are happy as long as they hit something.” This is a frighteningly true statement.
One aspect of men’s room that kills me is the amount of water left on the counter around the sinks after hands are washed. You have to be careful not to lean up against the edge of the counter, lest you walk away with a waist high water stain on your pants.
What’s worse (at least for me) is the dental hygiene that occurs in the public restroom. There are several men who frequent the restroom nearest to where I sit who all brush and floss in full view of anyone and everyone in the room. Now I think good dental hygiene is a good idea, but, due to some warped Midwestern sensibility I’m sure, I find the visual images of other people brushing disturbing, and as for the sounds of flossing… blech.
Guys, your teeth aren’t going to rot if you wait until arriving at home to brush, floss, and pick at your teeth. Get it out of the public restrooms.
While my mother’s condition hasn’t worsened any in the last week or so, it hasn’t gotten any better either. The lung cancer diagnoses has been confirmed and she has begun a course of treatment designed to make her comfortable. In the doctor’s opinion there is no hope of eradicating the cancer, and an aggressive course of treatment will only make her sicker. All medicine can provide for her now is comfort, the end result is the same. What we don’t know is how long it will be before she dies.
My father has been sending me daily emails with information about her condition and the activities regarding her treatment. I spoke to him briefly last night, and to my mother as well. Today she is entering the hospital to have a drain installed to allow removal of the fluid that is building up in the diseased lung. The expectation is that she will be in the hospital for two or three days. Her sister, my aunt, is coming on Friday for the weekend to visit her. In all likelihood this will be the last time Helen and Mary are together. As far back as I can remember the two of them have always made each other laugh. Put them in a room together and giggling will soon commence. I am very happy they will get one more weekend with each other.
For myself I am planning a trip there next weekend. My mother and niece share a birthday and I’ll be there for that celebration. I know that seeing her will be an emotional experience, and the leaving will be even more difficult. I vividly recall the struggles Michele had every time we would see her mom, especially when it came time to leave. She knew that one of those goodbyes would be the last. Since we moved to Washington I have been aware that the number of times I’d see my parents alive again was finite and diminishing. My hope is that I can find a quiet moment alone with my mom, to tell her I love her, to tell her that I am proud to be her son, that I will be okay, and that she needn’t stay any long than she wants.
Our relationships with people in any lifetime are limited by time. Now that my time with mom is drawing to a close my need is to be at peace with her so I have no regrets after her death.
One casualty of the move from Illinois to Washington in the Spring of 1998 was the printer. At the time we had a HP Color Ink Jet, maybe a 620c. Upon arrival in Vancouver it refused to work. Replacing the ink cartridge didn’t help, cleaning the heads didn’t work either. So we tossed it and bought a new HP.
With two computers it was always a pain to print anything. Windows 95 and later Windows 98 didn’t really master printer sharing, so I bought a switch that would allow both computers to be plugged into the printer at the same time. The switch was electronic and could choose between computers based on the signal coming from them. Of course HP made this as difficult as possible. Their print driver had some diagnostic bits that wanted to maintain constant contact with the printer. Having the switch in the loop prevented this from occurring and the software complained. Thankfully on the Internet I was able to find a workaround that disabled the continuous connection feature. We used this printer quite happily for several years.
Eventually however it too gave up the ghost and we went in search of a new printer. Yet another HP was purchased, this time an “All-in-One” model that did faxing, copying, and scanning, in addition to light housework and Windows. This time the driver was very intrusive, but at least we could print. The first all-in-one wonder proved to be be reliable but once we switched to the Macintoshes it was dated. It had no USB port and therefore couldn’t be plugged directly into either of our beautiful new computers. So off to Staples we went.
The USB printer was another All-in-One machine from HP; a 6110 in fact. Since HP insisted on installing a virtual suite of applications on the host computer, to aid with scanning, faxing, et cetera, it was plugged into Michele’s iMac. We set her computer to share and I could print from my Powerbook. However scanning to my machine was out - the HP driver refused to install on my machine since the printer wasn’t hooked directly to the computer.
This All-in-One model proved to be very problematic. Right from the start Microsoft Word almost never printed on the first try. Eventually the driver was upgraded to where it worked most of the time. But we both grew weary of continually having to use the software to stop and start the printer. Having a seldom used fax and a rarely used scanner was nice, but not really worth the trouble.
Recently I have had nothing but grief from this pile of parts. Tonight I needed to print one of my tax returns to be mailed and the printer absolutely refused to work. Big mistake on its part. After hitting it with my fist several times I unplugged it from the wall and USB cord and dropped it from about five feet up. Very satisfying crunch. Hmm. This could be a good outlet. Off to the dumpster, printer and hammer in hand I went. Ten or twelve furious blows with the hammer reduced the HP to the pile of junk to which it had always aspired. Hearing the glass of the scanner/copier table shatter was most satisfying. A tremendous amount of energy that I had been bottling up was expressed at that printer. Even flinging it in to the dumpster as hard as I could felt good.
There’s nothing like beating up on an inanimate object to make you feel better.
After cooling off for a few minutes I set out to get a new printer. Just a printer, none of this driver intensive scanner/fax/copier crap. Just. A. Printer. Preferably one that was network aware. The HP model was color and $400. Too much. The Lexmark, while only black and white, was a mere $210. Much more in line with my thinking. Five minutes after un-crating it at home it was plugged into the router and had printed a test page declaring its DHCP assigned IP address. Exactly what I needed to see.
The tax return is printed in crisp laser toner ready to be mailed. And all three computers have a new network printer as their default. What can I smash and replace with next month’s spending money?
Recently I’ve been attending a support group for people who’ve lost someone to suicide. Group is an interesting experience; on one hand you are with people who’ve all have experiences similar to yours and have a better appreciation for what you are experiencing. On the other hand you are in a room full of a lot of pain. I’ve been to a total of three sessions at two different groups and last night’s was the most interesting by far.
One of the threads in our conversation was about the potential gift contained within the death of whomever. Having been a long time fan of Illusions by Richard Bach I’ve always understood that every situation bears a gift for us, and that we seek out those situations that contain the gifts we need. My relationship with Michele is filled with gifts. As hard as it seems to believe I am certain there is a gift contained in her death as well.
I think the gift may have something to do with control. I’ve already discovered that my grief, and the accompanying emotions, are triggered by changes in my perception of the amount of control I have in a given situation. Less control, or the feeling of less control, really sets me off these days. Whatever cushion I possessed for loss of control before her death is temporarily gone while I am overwhelmed by the flood of emotions grief has brought. In looking at the events leading up to Michele’s choice to end her own life I can see that she was feeling a loss of control as well.
Throughout her life there were situations beyond her control that she felt hugely threatened by: physical violence, the retrograde movement of our society due to neo-conservative/religious politics, the constant attack on women in the world, the financial chaos that follows me around like a puppy, and so on. When she learned that her cancer may have returned, that she might lose her leg, I think the loss of control was more than she could bear. Taking her own life was an emphatic retaking of control. It was a gesture of defiance in the face of insurmountable odds.
Through the comments of my fellow group members I saw for the first time that she was only reasserting herself to feel in control one last time. That she wanted to leave on her own terms, and not, out of control, on by another’s terms. I also see now that part of the gift of her death is that in my grief, in my desolation, I can feel the despair and helplessness that she felt. I can understand better how she arrived at a place where the only way forward was death by her own hand for, in my experience of the past four plus months, I too have struggled with a loss of control that makes everything around me see more dire and leaves me feeling out of control.
Ever since being introduced to Evanescence a few weeks ago I have been listening to them pretty much non-stop. All of their lyrics speak to me, but this song in particular has been meaningful.
my immortal
my immortal i’m so tired of being here suppressed by all of my childish fears and if you have to leave i wish that you would just leave because your presence still lingers here and it won’t leave me alone
these wounds won’t seem to heal this pain is just too real there’s just too much that time cannot erase
when you cried i’d wipe away all of your tears when you’d scream i’d fight away all of your fears and i’ve held your hand through all of these years but you still have all of me
you used to captivate me by your resonating light but now i’m bound by the life you left behind your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams your voice it chased away all the sanity in me
these wounds won’t seem to heal this pain is just too real there’s just too much that time cannot erase
when you cried i’d wipe away all of your tears when you’d scream i’d fight away all of your fears and i’ve held your hand through all of these years but you still have all of me
i’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone and though you’re still with me i’ve been alone all along
© 2003 Wind-Up Records
Okay, so Godzilla is a bit campy, entirely predictable, and left wide open for a sequel; it’s still a fun movie ride. Matthew Broderick’s off-beat everyman comedy is a perfect foil to the larger than life monster.
Rating: “Oh no, there goes Tokyo!”
A long time ago I learned a simple exercise to help put a bad day into perspective. Having just had a pretty awful day I thought I give it a try.
It was a balmy 70 degrees this afternoon, so I opened the windows when I got home. Each window has sprouted a very happy cat.
I have enough leftovers from the last round of “I’m-feeling-good-so-lets-cook” a couple of weekends ago, so I’m eating good food tonight.
…
Hmm
Given that I am still deep into depression over Michele’s death and that I am now anticipating a call from Decatur to tell my of my mom’s death (any time between now and, oh, say six months? eight months? three months?) I am stretched extremely thin right now. Having a sudden escalation in my work responsibilities could not come at a worse time. But come they have.
The overall project is on the hook for delivering the complete design for a major release in just nine more working days. In order to meet that deadline six members of the next major release were pulled and reassigned. As one of the few people left on the next major release I picked up management responsibilities for the entire release. Aren’t I the lucky one. Second prize was management duties for both releases.
Today the added pressure on top of my already shaking grasp on “normal” behavior made for a very ugly and tense afternoon. I came unhinged and was ready to quit and just walk out. I wanted to charge up to my immediate project manager and ask him point blank, “Do you not get that I am struggling just to make it to work everyday? Do you not get that I don’t really give a flying fuck at a rolling donut whether this project succeeds or fails right now? Could you possibly assign this responsibility to someone else?” However, given that two vendor employees (not sub-contractors) were walked out of the building just two weeks ago, I managed to contain myself. It adds more pressure still, but I don’t feel safe trying to pass this buck right now.
I know that the root cause of my meltdown today was feeling out of control. I discovered my new duties in a public meeting where I was told, at the same time as everyone else, that I was now in charge of the team. Hard to turn it down in front a room full of your peers. I felt extremely blind-sided by the manner this announcement was handled. One of the first extra tasks was calculating a level of effort (LOE) for all the outstanding change requests (CR) tagged for our application. As soon as possible. After spending a day and a half struggling to get a handle on the 27 open CR I learned that only THREE were not already in the plan. Gee, could you have told me that TWO DAYS AGO!? All of which only added to my feeling of being out of control.
35 minutes until I can go home and hide under the bed.
Behind Enemy Lines is an excellent action movie, that it is loosely based on the truth only adds to its verisimilitude.
Rating: Worth owning
Ever since getting the news that my mother’s cancer is back, and will likely kill her this time, I have been searching for a path that will lead me through her death. I’ve been aware for several years now that both of my parents were getting older and that their health was becoming an increasing factor in their lives. When Michele and I moved to Vancouver one of the big issues for me was realizing that I was limiting the number of times I would see my parents again simply by living so far away.
Living 450 miles away is a good distance for a lot of reasons for me. I am close enough to get home should the need arise, but far enough away to feel like I am out of their sphere of influence. Planning my next visits, and preparing to talk to her is proving to be as difficult as you would imagine. The possibility that a given visit could well be the last one adds tremendous emotional spin. Especially when you factor in the determination my parents have towards living as emotionless a life as possible.
In two weeks I am headed over for her birthday and that of my niece Riley. And two weeks after that I’ll pass through town on my way to a friend’s wedding in Chicago. I am hoping that in these two visits I can determine for myself what I think her life expectancy is; three months, six, and year. My gut feeling today is that she will likely not see her next birthday. I don’t know yet what, if anything, I need to say to her before she dies. As an adult I can see her as an adult and accept who she is and how she conducts her life. As her child I can’t begin to imagine a world without her. And I don’t want to see her, especially if I know it is for the last time.