Autumn? Not always a fan...

To read social media, lots of people seem to be excited about the first day of fall. Colorful leaves, cooler weather, pumpkin spice everything... But I don’t always look forward to fall. 

Though it doesn’t happen every year, I sometimes encounter seasonal affective disorder as we lose daylight. I think that started for me the autumn after I was in a car accident in 1993. It happened again the fall and winter after we lost my wife’s dad in 2000. 

I’m expecting it again this fall. This time last year, we were in the middle of my mom’s second battle with cancer, and though we did our best to remain strong and hopeful, it was becoming clear we were going to lose her. (We did, November 6, 2019.) 

I tried hard last year to let myself grieve when I needed to, and to not push it off as I’ve done in years past, an effort to be strong for everyone else and not look after me. I have to remind myself of that again. 

I call it the “year of firsts.” We’ve been through the first Christmas without her, what would have been her 80th birthday and my parents’ 51st wedding anniversary, and so on. And now there are reminders of many tough days this time last year.

I will again make an effort to take care of myself during this time and to look for and work for the hopeful things. Despite all the stuff life has hurled our way the last couple years, there’s a lot of good stuff and good people out there, too.

And so it goes...

Look For the Candles

One of life's treasures is a good friendship. I have a friend I've known since my junior year in high school. She has always been wise beyond her years and a good sounding board for whatever is on one's mind.

Last fall was a tough time. My mom had been battling cancer for almost a year and it was clear the end was approaching. It was a tough new reality to come to grips with. It's natural for us to always think we have more time. Just in discussing the situation, she reminded me to "look for the candles." In other words, wherever we are in life, whatever situation, there are those bright spots we can identify. We may just have to look a little harder for them.

After my mom passed away and we got through the holidays, I thought, here's to 2020 being a nice smooth year for us all. And as they say on social media, 2020 has been like, "hold my beer."

There's a lot of craziness right now, but it does help to look for the candles. The late CBS newsman Charles Kuralt was quite good at that in his career. Two decades of his career were the 1960s and 1970s. If you read your history, there was a lot of insanity going on in those years: the assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, and more. I can't imagine what those years would have been like if social media had been around.

And yet, Kuralt had a brilliant ability to find the candles in our society. That's in evidence in this quote attributed to him:

If you haven't experienced any of Charles Kuralt's work, look for his book "A Life on the Road," written just a few years before he retired. There are some wonderful stories of humankind.

Grief Bombs

Last year was a difficult one. Three friends and I all lost parents in 2019. Another close friend is losing his dad as I write this.

One of my friends, who lost her dad in April of 2019, told me about the idea of "grief bombs." It's an excellent description. The idea is that the grieving process is not really linear. We're somewhat conditioned to think that it is. We should go from denial to anger, from depression to bargaining, and right onto acceptance. But grief in real life doesn't work in a textbook fashion, I'm learning.

My friend whose dad is in hospice now has been describing some of what he's been seeing and feeling the past week. I want to be a willing listener for him. He has shouldered the responsibility of caring for his dad for many years now, and he's been alone for a lot of it. (For reasons I don't know and don't understand, other relatives have pretty well left it to him and can't or won't help.)

He said it's been so tough to see his dad fading away, and it's as if he is starving him. He's not, and he knows it's not true. The natural dying process is taking its course, and the hospice people are doing what they do, helping keep his dad comfortable and as pain-free as possible. I told him I know what he's going through. I remember thinking the same thing last fall as my mom was in hospice. We may understand it's all part of a natural process, but it is very natural to also feel helpless when we have been so involved the rest of the time.

Not to sound selfish... but his descriptions provoked a grief bomb, and brought me back to some vivid recollections of my mom at the end, last November. It will soon be eight months since she's passed away, and in some respects, it still doesn't seem quite real. We went up to visit my dad for his birthday recently, and her absence is still so palpable. The sadness strikes at odd moments, sometimes when I least expect it.

But it is to be expected. Many of us are still within what I call that "year of firsts" - the first milestone days within the first year of one's passing. Birthdays, anniversaries, other holidays, etc.

I don't have any grand answers on any of this. But I am grateful for family and friends who are willing to listen when I need it.