For a specific segment of the population that short phrase speaks volumes. For the rest of you, click HERE to find the source.
This phrase has, for most of my life been a motto that I take seriously (pun intended). There are so many things that we have no control over in our lives that it just seemed prudent to accept that it would be better to determine what I should spend my time worrying about and let the rest fall to their own place.
Generally speaking, up until a few months ago, this philosophy worked quite well. Sure, there were times when I worried about certain things and there were times where I felt the cold clamp of depression . . . but I always worked my way out of those times in a generally acceptable manner.
Life has it’s ebbs and flows, it’s peaks and valleys and what I’ve experienced is well within any normal standards of what your average guy deals with. In fact, I’ve probably had a lot less to worry about than most folks. I’ve been incredibly blessed with good health, a job, friends, family, a roof over my head, food on the table a wife who loves me for who I am . . . seriously folks, when it comes to anguish and whatnot, I lead a “What, Me Worry?” life.
But then . . .
On April 1st 2009, things came to a crescendo. That it happened on April Fool’s day is just a cruel trick of timing. That morning, I woke up with the very ordinary feeling that my Dad was in the present. What’s not so ordinary is that my Dad died on February 22nd, 2000 . . .
This wasn’t one of those situations where you have a dream that your loved one is alive because even with a dream you understand that it was a dream. This was a scenario that transcended awareness of a dream in which you know something is not right. It was crushing when I finally began the process of realizing that something which I knew to be certain (that my Dad was in the present with me) was not so.
In essence, my Dad died all over again . . . and I began to grieve all over again.
On April 6th I was in a meeting. It was a Monday morning and one of my co-workers was telling a story about some situation that had upset him and how his small daughter came over to him and gently patted his cheek and said “It will be ok Daddy”.
Lisa and I don’t have children and we’ve never had regrets for not making the leap into parenthood. In some cases, I think we would have been great parents, but generally speaking it’s not something we ever had our heart’s desire set upon and we are both comfortable with that choice. We’ve talked about it at length at different points in our marriage (both of them) and we harbor no ill will towards the other for our choices. In fact, we both feel the same way about our decision.
But . . . as I listened to my friend describe the tenderness of his daughter towards him I realized that I had to fully reconcile that I would never experience such a relationship with a child, or a grandchild. It was something that I had to fully “put to bed”. I’m not sad about the choice I’ve made or even have second thoughts but I’ve never had to close the door on being a Father or Grandfather . . . . and I began to grieve over that closure.
During all this time, my Mom (who will be 87 this October) was getting more and more frail and less able to care for herself. I have two wonderful siblings who have opened up their homes and share the responsibility for providing a home to her. My mom splits her time with my sister in North Richland Hills and my brother in Denison. Their homes are both one level which makes it possible for my Mom to stay with them . . . our house is two levels and all the bedrooms are on the second level with stairs that make it very difficult for Mom to stay with us for any length of time. In fact, these days, if my Mom is at my Sister’s and they need to be out of town for the weekend, instead of Mom staying with us I go over to my sisters and spend the time there.
But a couple of weeks ago she fell at my sisters. She’s fallen before and has the bruises and scars to prove it. She is (by her own description) a tough old bird. She survived colon cancer over 42 years ago (resulting in colostomy), multiple heart bypass surgery 32 years ago and a fall that broke both of her elbows (they had to replace one entire elbow and half of the other) about 10 years ago. In addition, all three of her children had polio in the late 40’s (my oldest sister died, my other sister was disabled in her right arm and my brother had only minor issues) and of course my dad died of congestive heart failure a little over nine years ago.
The week after she fell at my sisters, she was at my brothers. I had the strangest impulse to call her on a Monday morning and my sister in law answered her cell phone in a bit of panic. Mom had fallen again in the bathroom and she had just got her back to bed. I spoke with Mom on the phone and she didn’t sound good.
I drove to Denison and spent part of the day with Mom. We think she may have taken an extra nighttime sleep aid and was just really groggy when she got up in the morning . . . that’s what we hope anyway. Still, watching your mom laying in bed struggling to make a coherent sentence is sobering. She’s been ok since then but she’s ready to go and be with Dad. I know the grieving for that time will come and I grieve a bit now for her loss of mobility and self. She’s still a “tough old bird” . . . for now.
Did I mention that my wife’s brother was recently divorced after 30 years of marriage? All the turmoil has been tough on him and almost as tough on Lisa. She and her brother (I’m very close to him and we go back even from before I met Lisa) are as close as two peas in a pod. The pain he has felt has taken a toll on Lisa. I’ve struggled with how to be a good partner, husband and friend to her as she deals with her own feelings about all this.
And then about a year and a half ago I changed careers - drastically. I left a VP of Operations position with a company that I had been with for eighteen years to go to work for my church. It’s a great job and one that I’ve been preparing for all of my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything . . . but #$%^&! it’s a lot different than what I’d grown accustomed to for the last thirty years.
So, between grieving all over again for my dad, grieving for the first time over parenting choices, my Mom’s declining health issues, my wife’s struggle with her brother’s divorce and my job change . . . I began a spiral that I could not correct.
One of the amazing things about my new job is that I work with people who care enough about me to call me out when they see a change. My boss (who is also a good friend) took me aside one day and bluntly asked “what’s the matter?”. He had noticed, other co-workers had noticed and they loved me enough to not sweep it under the rug and carry on as if nothing was the matter.
Another amazing thing about this job is that my employer provides counseling to staff free of charge. You might think that would be a matter of course for a church but this counseling is done by a third party, off site and is anonymous. The counselor notifies one person her at the church of how many visits were made by staff in any one month and then he’s reimbursed accordingly.
So, I had a visit with the Doctor and after going into much more detail than I’ve shared here, he concluded that there had been a “perfect storm” of issues and that I was experiencing moderate depression. He offered to continue the meetings and also offered the option of a prescription for an anti-depressant if I was open to the suggestion.
Have you ever seen the iPhone commercials where the narrator describes a certain situation and then declares “there’s an app for that”. That’s pretty much how my generation grew up with drugs. If there was a problem then “there’s a drug for that”. Some folks have issues with that and would rather explore any option possible before they run down the path to prescription drugs. I, however, see things a bit differently.
Last year about this time I had surgery on my right hand. Several months later I was having a terrible time with my right elbow. It seems that I had developed tennis elbow as a result of favoring my hand and arm as the scar healed. I had multiple physical therapy sessions on my right arm and elbow but what finally did the trick was a steroid shot right into my elbow. All the manipulation in the world wouldn’t solve the problem. It took a little bit of medicine directly into the elbow to jump start the healing process. It worked quite nicely.
So, today I visited my family doctor, reviewed the situation with her and walked out with a month’s worth of samples of something that is supposed to jack with my serotonin levels. I should see some improvement within a week or less and I will update my doctor when I go back in four weeks for my annual physical. The thinking now is that I will be on the anti-depressants for six to nine months till I work my way back to square one.
I’m wrestling a little bit with sharing all this personal information online in a public forum . . . but what the &%$#. If I’m ever going to err on one side or the other, I’m going to choose transparency, authenticity and “real” over the other choices. I don’t fault others for not making that choice. I mean, seriously that’s why it’s called “choice”.
I will post more as the weeks go by. It actually helps me to tell this story. It’s one way that I process the intangible and abstract and give it form and space. At some point I can go back to my motto, “What, Me Worry?”
More to come . . .
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