Memories of Sisters Past and Future

Because my sister, Barbara, and I have a seven-plus year age difference (we were eight grades apart), we didn’t have many sisterly adventures in our youth. Ones that included our entire family, to be certain, but not a lot with just the two of us. Our sisterly memories are more recent and also ahead of us, I hope.

Barb had two knee replacement surgeries in 2016. I spent two weeks in Vermont with her each time, helping her through the initial rehab. One of my roles was to help in putting on and taking off the compression stocking, a workout for both of us. It took at least ten minutes to put it on. We had to position the toes just right and make sure the heel piece would wind up in the back and not on the side or in front. We joked that it was a bonding experience. I said I was glad she didn't have a third knee.

Barb and I made our first vacation trip together, just the two of us, this past September. We went to Puglia, Italy, one of the few areas that she had never visited. I’d been to the larger cities, but that was it, so I was willing to go anywhere. Barb did all the research and planning. She’d been studying Italian for a few years and it proved to be more useful than she anticipated.

We visited a wide variety of churches and ate many excellent meals. The towns on our planned itinerary were closer than we expected, so we tacked on some smaller ones. They proved to be delightful additions. We took turns driving, alternating days. The weather wasn’t fabulous, but the heaviest rains seemed to come overnight or while we were in museums or having a lengthy meal. We rarely opened our umbrellas.

The photos I took show me that we made some great memories to look back on in future years. They also tell me I need to practice taking selfies. Or get my arms stretched, or else buy a selfie stick.

The notion of future memories took on new meaning for me recently as I looked at Facebook posts of some of my female friends. A college classmate posted a photo of a wedding party she was in a week after we graduated (fifty years ago). She’s a native of Hawaii and that’s where the ceremony took place. One of her other FB friends commented on how beautiful my friend’s sister looked in the photo. It brought tears to my eyes because I knew that her sister, with whom she was very close, died fourteen years ago.

Another friend posted some photos this fall of a trip to her family’s lake cottage in Michigan, where she’d spent summers with her twin sister. The property was being sold, which meant all the childhood treasures—birds’ nests and such—had to be disposed of. It was a bittersweet task, especially because her twin died unexpectedly ten years ago. She was discarding not just her own memories, but her sister’s as well. The two were as close as sisters could possibly be, even though they lived on opposite sides of the country. The nests may be gone, but many wonderful  experiences remain to be cherished and shared on Facebook.

These Facebook posts from my friends merged in my mind and I had a realization. It’s true that when we lose someone we love, especially a sister, we still have our memories to sustain us. But what we lose is not just the person who helped us make those memories and could have shared them with us. We’re also being deprived of the chance to make future ones. That’s a loss that cannot be measured. As much as we cherish the past, we’ll never know what we might have done together in the future.

I’m fortunate to still have my sister in my life and to be able to look forward to making more trips with her to reminisce about in the years to come. I plan to take advantage of this as much as she’ll allow me to. I just hope that none of the new adventures involve compression stockings.

Copyright 2018 Elaine M. Decker

Obituary Overload

When I put this year’s list of banned words and phrases together, I wanted very much to include “obituary.” It was a fool’s errand to consider that, since there is no way we can get through 2017 without seeing that word again. But it did get me to thinking about some specific obituaries from 2016 and obituaries in general.

Last year began with the death of my former significant other, Charlie Schneider. We co-owned a home for about eight years and remained close after he bought out my half. I visited him a few times back in New Jersey after I married Jagdish and moved to Rhode Island. In his last years, Charlie suffered from dementia. I kept abreast of his condition through his daughter. He was bed-ridden at the end, which would have devastated him if he’d been aware enough to fully appreciate what limitations that had put on him.

Several months later, my sister’s husband, Bob, passed away. It was one of those deaths that we call a blessing. He’d been diagnosed with a stage-three brain tumor coming up on six years earlier. High-end survival is pegged at five years, so he was on borrowed time. He was bed-ridden in a nursing home for over two years at the end, and wheelchair bound at home for a considerable time before that. So, yes, his death truly was a blessing. Of course, his obituary didn’t say that. It was filled with the many good things about his life.

I’m so tired of reading those final accounts. Tired of hearing who died this week. It seemed like 2016 had more deaths of celebrities than usual. For some reason, the loss of Gwen Ifill hit me hard, probably because I didn’t realize she was ill. I accepted PBS’s simple explanation that she was “away.” The end-of-year summaries always include the video montage of who has left us. Singers, actors, sports legends, notables in the field of science. As I watched one of these recently I realized something that made obituaries even more depressing for me.

When I was young—say in my twenties and perhaps thirties—there were always some people who had died whose names were unfamiliar to me. Those were the older ones, the actors and prominent names of my mother’s generation. Eventually, I reached an age where I seemed to know almost everyone in the montage, both young and old. I didn’t give this much thought. At least not until this year.

Once again there are faces that are unfamiliar. Oh, I’ve probably heard their names at some point. But if you asked me what type of music they sang, what was their signature song, I’d be clueless. George Michael is a good example. True, those luminaries died “before their time,” but not in their youth. They just moved on at the beginning of that phase where people start dying.

Where does that leave me? Recognizing all the older faces and names in those montages. Shedding a tear to think that no, we won’t see Debbie Reynolds in some new project in the future. Knowing that Zsa Zsa Gabor had a sister Eva and too many husbands to count on one hand. Aware of the health issues faced by the trail blazing women, Janet Reno and the much younger Pat Summitt. I’ll always remember Alan Rickman from Love Actually (I own the DVD), not the Harry Potter movies (never saw any of them). I even had a brief crush on George Kennedy when I was young.

If there’s a bell curve of obituaries, of deaths recognized, I’m now on the down slope. I may not be able to ban “obituary” for 2017, but I can certainly make a desperate plea to the powers that be, assuming there are such powers and that they’ll listen. “Please let us have Betty White for many more years, another gig or two hosting Saturday Night Live, and a few more cameo performances in a movie or TV show.” I cry enough when I watch reruns of The Golden Girls. I don’t think I could handle it if Betty were also gone.

It would be nice if we could also hold on to Robert Duvall (another of my former crushes) and Anthony Hopkins a bit longer, too. And if Jimmy Carter could build a few more houses before we lose him. Is all of that really so much to ask?

Thoughts On A Provocative Year

As this will be my last post in 2016, I’m compelled to write something that looks back on the year. Something philosophical. There’s certainly plenty of food for thought. And lots of thoughts that were food for bloggers of every persuasion. You’ll be happy to know I don’t intend to get into the weeds of the Presidential election. I’ll do that with my January post of my banned words and phrases for 2017.

However, in the abstract it’s impossible to write about 2016 without having that election in the back of one’s mind. By that I mean the year was nothing if not unpredictable and a break from tradition. On a personal level, that ended with me finally giving up on having a live Christmas tree. You may have read my earlier blog on my inner conflict on that front.

My loss was not just of a live tree at the end of the year, but of dear friends and family earlier on. Their deaths led to the realization that the roles each played in the traditions of my life were also inexorably gone. People move in and out of our lives, but as long as they are still living, there is the possibility that we’ll “catch up” with them again at some point. Reminisce about the good old days, the trips we took, the holidays we celebrated together. Death brings finality to that. Their book has closed.

Elections can also put the stamp of finality on hopes and expectations. Yes, I was able to vote for a woman to be President for the first time. But I might not see one inaugurated in my lifetime. I hope I live long enough to refute that, but for now, I feel a deep sense of loss.

On the brighter side, the events of 2016, both personal and public, remind me that change is part of being alive. How often do we hear the old saw: “Consider the alternative”? Technology puts so many new horizons within our reach. My sister had two knee replacements this year. The new parts were made on a 3D printer to exacting specifications that matched her body to perfection. We’re now looking forward to a trip to Italy together next October.

I’ve landed some new writing gigs with local publications. Beginning next year, my work will appear regularly in two newspapers and a magazine, and I’ll get paid for each article. I’ll also have one of my essays included in an anthology that will be published in 2017: Eighty Things To Do When You Turn Eighty. That milestone is a ways off for me, but I’m happy for the national exposure and they aren’t making me stop dying my gray hair.

My husband, Jagdish, travels to Providence every week for a few days to spend time in his store, Spectrum-India. He and his customers are happy to have him there and I have more than enough to keep me occupied while he’s gone. (Did I mention the senior cats we adopted in the spring?) I’m still playing the saxophone with a community jazz group. I haven’t practiced enough lately to make noticeable progress, so I’ve put my lessons on hiatus. I plan to reinvigorate that effort in 2017.

As I look back on 2016, I could easily become disheartened and bitter. So many of my friends have headed down that road. But I prefer to end the year—and this post—on an upbeat note. We rarely know where the year ahead is going to take us. Events outside our control may or may not impact us personally. But the ones within our control certainly will influence our lives. The year 2017 may surprise us all. I hope that if it surprises you, it’s in a good way. I’m determined to have it turn out that way for me!

Happy Holidays and a healthy and joyful 2017 to all of you.

The Age of Final Goodbyes

This week we buried my dear friend Charlie Schneider. His death was expected. Given the cocktail of ailments that plagued his final months, it was one of those passings that truly was a blessing.

Charlie’s funeral was the third that I learned of from a friend or colleague in as many days. The burial itself brought home the fact that I was saying my final goodbye to my friend of forty-five years. It occurred to me that when I entered my seventh decade, I also entered the age of final goodbyes. Charlie was the third one of my Colgate MIS colleagues who died within the past year.

That number three again. One often hears that death comes in threes, but of course it comes in much larger numbers, depending on the time span covered. Some consider three to be a mystical or sacred number—The Holy Trinity, for instance. Or a lucky one—three coffee beans in a glass of Sambuca Romana after dinner. Not one, not two; always three, if you want good luck. Third time’s the charm and all that. My mind fixated less on the number than on the finality of the parting.

For me the process of saying goodbye to Charlie included going through old photo albums. I was looking for pictures that I could post in the guestbook for his obituary on legacy.com. So sad to see his smile again, and to remember where the photos were taken. At my parents’ fiftieth anniversary party, for instance. My father and mother have been gone for 32 and 20 years respectively.

A photo of Charlie and me with my mother between us, taken one summer at the home where I grew up in Green Pond, was especially painful. Charlie had his summer tan and we were all smiling and happy. We sold the house after my mother died and it has since been remodeled. Green Pond has changed. Some of my summer friends still gather for lunch now and then, but not at the lake. Not anymore. The intersection of all that loss increased my grief geometrically.

I was forced to look at the faces in those pictures for quite awhile. They needed to be scanned into my computer, shading and resolution adjusted in Photoshop. I decided to crop myself out to focus on Charlie. Then they had to be put on a thumb drive and transferred to the computer with an Internet connection. Then uploaded to legacy.com. It sounds mechanical and robotic, but when I looked at the faces, it was anything but. Many tissues, red nose and puffy eyes later, I was finished.

At the luncheon after Charlie’s funeral, that final goodbye behind us, it was time to share memories of what made Charlie special. Some of those memories were similar, even though they came from different pockets in his life. We all knew about his love for trains, for example, reflected in his extensive model train collection. And most knew that he grew to love trains by watching them on the track behind his grandmother’s house. She took care of him while his mother was at work.

I thought about that on our drive home. A seldom-used freight track runs through the wooded area on the opposite side of the fairway behind our condominium. A train makes one trip some weekday mornings, going in and coming out. The engine rumbles so deeply that I hear it well before it comes into view. I call out: “Here comes the train!” and run to our porch to watch it go by.

My joyful routine makes my husband laugh. Even before Charlie died, I would say to Jagdish: “Now I understand why Charlie loves trains so much.” And so, despite the final goodbye having been said, I will remember my dear friend fondly whenever I hear a train roll by. I will smile and perhaps wipe away a tear. Then I’ll get back to whatever it is those of left behind do with the days we have left.

Luke the Magnificent Is Gone

Luke the Magnificent is gone. He went downhill fast his last two days. He would have been 18 in two months. We took him to the vet Thursday afternoon and said goodbye. He's now at the Rainbow Bridge with his sisters, Pansy Gardenia and Lily Magnolia.

Luke was our first and only little boy; all our other cats were girls. He’s also our only cat who picked me, rather than having me pick him. I never wanted a boy. Thought they’d be too much trouble. All that spraying and, well—catting around. But Luke wanted me and it didn’t take long for me to realize that I wanted him, too.

Luke came to us from a neighbor who had forced him to fend for himself as an outdoor cat. He migrated down the block to our front porch and settled in there about ten years ago. He was so thin that he looked ill. I started giving him the leftovers from my girls’ meals. (That would be Pansy and Lily.) Luke had been starving, so he filled out quickly. I treated his battle wounds with antibiotic creams and they gradually healed.

The next phase of his assimilation into our family was bringing him into the house overnight and in bad weather. I wanted to be sure he had all his shots. Since there are HIPA laws (Health Information Privacy Act) for pets as well as for humans, the only way I could get his history was to own him. In 2007 I formally adopted him from his original owners.

I learned that the neighbor had adopted Luke from the same shelter as my twin girls one month to the day before I took them home. I knew that other kittens in Pansy and Lily’s litter had found homes ahead of them. I like to think that Luke was their actual brother and that he recognized them through the windows on our front porch.

Luke appreciated having a roof over his head, two squares a day and two sisters to chase around the house. Well, really more like one. Pansy was a tough cookie. She’d been the alpha cat before Luke came along and she wasn’t about to step aside, no matter how much more muscular he was. We had a good run together, all of us.

Despite his hardscrabble early years, Luke outlived Pansy by over four years and Lily by over two. He enjoyed his five months in our condo with lots of light and open space. He especially liked finally having his mommy all to himself.

Luke would jump up on the bed after I’d settled in for the night. He’d perch on my chest in meatloaf position and wait for me to pet him and stroke his chin. I told him how much I loved him. He purred back how much he loved me, too. “Luke the Magnificent. Luke the Lion Hearted. Luke of Oriole.” All the while petting and stroking, while he purred.

“You’re so handsome and brave and strong. And did I mention handsome?” Still petting and stroking. And still purring. “You protect us. You patrol the perimeter. You chase away the interlopers and keep us safe.” Followed by more purrs of agreement. And so on, until I fell asleep or he got bored and moved down to curl up next to my feet.

At his checkup two years ago, tests showed he was suffering from several chronic ailments. I had decided there would be no heroics, no surgeries, no heavy-duty treatments that would make him miserable. We took him home expecting to have a few more good months with him. At his checkup 12 months later, he was only a little worse than the previous year. We considered every month a gift, and we had him almost another full year.

He was having problems just before Christmas, but he rallied so we could go to my sister’s for two days while someone checked in on him. He rallied even more at yearend, having a reasonably good January with surprising spurts of vitality. He wanted to go out last week and I had trouble following him around the yard. But time, his kidney problems and other unnamed ailments caught up with him this week. I knew when he stopped eating that there would not be one more blessed rally for him.

It’s strange to come home to an empty house after years of loving creatures there to greet us. The space where Luke’s food station used to be is achingly bare now. I will mourn my Luke for a long time. After a year or two it will get less painful, but the empty place in my heart will never be filled. I still cry for Tulip Wisteria and Daisy Hyacinth and they’ve been gone about 20 years. The losses of Pansy Gardenia and Lily Magnolia still feel fresh at four plus and two plus years.

Luke the Magnificent, who chose me because he knew I would love him dearly, will be his mommy’s boy forever.

Retirement Realities—Losing Friends

Several times over the past few days I’ve sat down with the intention of working on this week’s post. Each time my thought process was sidetracked by the reality that one of my most devoted followers will no longer be out there to read my blog. I decided to dedicate this post to him.

I first met H. Peter Olsen, III when I began working as the Executive Director for a nonprofit about five years ago. He was one of about thirty board members and it was clear from the start that we would become friends.

Peter and I had both spent much of our careers working at large companies—he at a prestigious law firm, I at a Fortune 500 corporation. We looked at philanthropy as serious business, but we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. At his funeral service last week, the priest referred to Peter’s sage advice and his wit, qualities that I especially appreciated.

Even after I retired, we stayed in contact, mostly through email. When I decided to publish my first year of RetirementSparks posts, I realized that I would need some extra eyes to proof the pages. Peter was one of a handful of friends that I contacted and he readily agreed to help. He actually seemed honored that I had asked him.

Peter had retired shortly before I did. He was dealing with some serious health issues, but he was doing remarkably well. In an ironic twist of fate, it was an accident—a fall—that led to his untimely passing.

This sad event brought me full circle to what led me to blog in the first place. My dear friend Sheryl died unexpectedly about three years ago. Her death made me realize that we never know when the moving finger of fate will write our name in the sand. I decided to retire as soon as the numbers made sense, which was shortly after I was eligible for Medicare.

My secret ambition had always been to be a writer. The absurdity of the Medicare paperwork and process were the impetus to start blogging. The rest, as they say, is history.

Thank you for allowing me this indulgence of remembering not just one, but two dear friends who have gone on before us. If you’re out there trying to decide if it’s time for you to retire, I offer this advice. If you can do it, you should do it.

None of us knows how long we’ll have to pursue our passions, to chase our dreams. In the movies and on Broadway, there’s always tomorrow, just a day away. In real life, sadly, we can never be sure.