Tag Archives: hurting

how am I doing?

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This is a different question to ask but an excellent one. The funny thing about being ourselves is that we have a terrible time with objectivity on how we ourselves are doing.

Truth be known, in times of stress,distress, challenge or even good fortune, we must ask this question. Advice must never be requested by someone we do not admire or someone who does not know us really really well. They must be good people who only want what is best for us but who will not beat around the bush. Tell me what I don’t want to hear, is a good place to start.

Asking “how am I doing?” is not a grab for flattery from a lack of self confidence, but rather a sign of  great confidence. By opening  ourselves up to criticism, we are affirming we want to be our best and check ourselves at every difficulty or change of staus quo.

Tiger and Brittany can’t ever seem to get the straight goods on themselves. They likely don’t ask and their people are loathe to tell the costly truth.

I learned about this question from one of my leading mentors-my mom. When my father was diagnosed with Dementia 11 years ago, they decided together, his faculties, self respect  and ego very intact at that point, to not tell anyone. He did not want to be enabled or pitied. With  time it became her lonely burden carrying an emotional and physical strain. She was impossibly graceful, strong, hopeful and joyful.

Earlier this month, on his 77th birthday to be exact, he was moved into a long term care facility. He will not go home.

She was a daughter and then  with a wedding and  a short car ride, a  wife of 50 years, with dogs (unwanted), children (wanted-mainly), grandchildren (extremely wanted), goldfish, turtles, hamsters and a winter of mice.

She has never once lived by herself until now.

She frequently asks “how am I doing?”

Spectacularly beautifully.

check out my other blog post on COMING HOME  by clicking on this.

the zoo

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One day on a family outing to a zoo, she glances over his shoulder and sees he is  texting “Hi Beautiful”. How odd, she thinks, we are here together and that is his name for me. The bottom falls out of her stomach as the surreal nonsensical morphs into the  real.  Questions flood her bloodstream, racing through her system, searching for how this could be, poisoning her life immediately and irrevocably.

She tells me later that she waited to confront him  at home,when the children were in their rooms, reading after a long day at the zoo. It is in those waiting moments that I admire her maturity or patience or I am not sure what it was. When she confronts, he denies, looking deep into her eyes with reassurance. This is our human trusting thread- we all share it on some level before we separate. It is our longing to believe and trust, regardless of the evidence shoved in front of our faces, over and over. Often it is  presented only  once , backlit, neon, dramatic and  forensically verifiable and  obvious. We can stare it down, push it back and kill it. We are dying to not lose the  ground that we know. It is shaky, the richter can’t count that high, but we have normalised it. We tell ourselves it is solid.

His words finally gave way to the truth. “I’m done” , he says.  This is what we said impolitely as kids, when we were full. He pushes his marriage away with the same insouciance as a plate after dinner. She begged for a month, they sought counselling, she confronted his lover, had public tea with her no less, and they even made love again. But he was done.

24 short months later after his life with this woman was made public,  they split up. They had moved half way across the country together, bought and renovated a house, started new traditions, took trips together and created a new life. Soon he was done again.

This was a secondary loss for the ex wife- the marriage broke from this relationship and then this relationship broke. Although possibly  just the catalyst for them to split, it feels wasteful in a way that is unbearable. It is barren and empty  and she has to revisit all that is still sore and open.

click here to read my latest post on Urban moms called DEEP POCKETS