Trying in 2014--A Good Start, A Big Loss

2014 started off smoothly enough. 

Julius and Skyla had great second-halves of 5^th and 3^rd grade. Skyla thrived on her Chica Cheetahs soccer team and in the classroom of Ms. DesBaillets, who reminds one of the magical Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus TV series. Julius took the spotlight at a school dance, rocked out with his band at the Fun Fest and enjoyed a sweet elementary school graduation.

Rowena found work she enjoyed: leading exercise classes for 55-and-older adults. Her classes at City College of San Francisco and a local assisted living facility blended her loves of improvisation, service and body mechanics—and she was often humbled and moved by her students. I, meanwhile, landed a gig as a contract editor and writer for the Great Place to Work Institute. This job, at the organization that does the research behind Fortune’s best companies to work for lists, not only gave me a chance to promote its mission of making the world better through better workplaces, but to travel to conferences in Miami, New Orleans and Rome.

Reveling in Roma

The Rome trip in May—with its inspirational work and lovely, jasmine-in-the-air fragrant setting—was a high point for me. And it came at a high point for our whole family. That same week, Rowena got a chance to visit our dear pals the Patent-Plums in Nanjing, China. And the kids got to stay with my parents, a.k.a. Grammie and Pop-pop, in Carmel, Calif. for several days.

Grammie and Skyla not long before Grammie and Pop-pop headed to Chicago.

Some other sweetness followed in June. We had a farewell lunch for Grammie and Pop-pop, who left California for Chicago and the prospect of a pleasant retirement for my mom after 40-plus years in Catholic education. The kids also flew to Arizona for 12 days with their other grandparents, Parris and Carl, as well as Rowena’s two brothers and their families. And Rowena and I had a glorious time without kinder, including two days at Orr Hot Springs and a walk amid some of the world’s oldest, largest redwood trees.

It was sublime. But sorrow soon followed.

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On July 27, my mother died of an apparent heart attack. In some ways, it was a perfect death. She collapsed at my Uncle Mike and Aunt Dorothea’s house, at the end of one of Uncle Mike’s semi-annual music bashes where locals sing and play jazz, rock and pop songs for hours. It may have been the happiest moment of my mom’s life, as I said in a eulogy at her funeral—finally relieved of work stress, surrounded by friends and family, in the arms of her beloved husband.

Still, it was blow to me and our broader clan. Immediately, my concern was for helping my dad function. My mom and he “lived within each other,” my dad said. And her death sucked a lot of the life out of him. Right after she died, he worried to the point of panic over whether he would be able to find my mother in heaven. Friends and family assured him that would not be a problem.

Julius, my dad, me, Skyla and Rowena, soon after my mother's funeral service in Chicago

But he remained out of sorts—unable to sleep and overwhelmed with all the work needed to settle my mom’s affairs and pack up the apartment they had just moved into. I stayed an extra week in Chicago to help him finish giving away belongings before he took off on a road trip with his old friend Tom Mino.

Given their similarly pushy personalities, we kidded that my dad and Tom’s excursion could be titled “The Overbearing Brothers Go West.” But I worried about my dad throughout the summer and fall. He struggled with loneliness and despair. A moving memorial mass for my mom in Carmel and some positive signs in his business pursuits lifted his spirits at times. But he often nosedived, longing to be reunited with my mom. As the year wore on, he would sometimes say to me, “I screwed up. I should have died right after her.”

With my brother, sister and other family and friends, I did my best to prop him up. But I was doing this without the one person best suited to support me. My mom was a source of enduring hope that I didn’t fully appreciate until she was gone. I remember one time getting off the phone with my dad when he was in a dark place. I had tried to point to a brighter future of family and meaningful work, but I emerged from the call in a funk of my own. One I couldn’t climb out of quickly. And in that shadow state, it struck me that my mom had always been there to encourage, to reassure, to see the positive possibilities.

“You sound good, Eddie,” she would often say to me at the end of our weekly or bi-weekly calls. Sometimes I didn’t feel good when she’d say this. And my mom’s glass-half-full take on my life or the world could irritate me as wishful thinking. But she made up for it with her willingness to listen and comfort. “Geeez, Eddie,” she would groan in empathy. And her voice would drop to a Karen Carpenter-like low register. “It’s Ok, Eddie.” Or “Don’t worry, dear.” And I would be transported to kidhood, when her soothing, deep voice calmed me as a highly anxious 5 year old.

But it wasn’t just her optimistic empathy and my nostalgia that allowed my mom to buoy me as an adult. She also had wise words for nearly all dilemmas, especially those involving parenting and education. And I watched her handle problems, including uncooperative grandchildren, with an unswerving blend of kindness and firmness. To top things off, she was quick to laugh and smile, with joy that was hard to resist. Her sunniness passed through phone networks at near-full strength.

Her dying was like losing an anchor to upbeat-ness. Or perhaps better said, a ladder to the light.

Losing that ladder-anchor made it all the harder to handle the other challenges that began to pile up in the second half of the year.

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