Trying in 2014—From Barf Tunnel Blindness to New Point of View

About a year after my mother’s death, Julius, Skyla, Rowena and I attended another funeral.

And it was at that memorial service, for San Francisco artist and teacher Dwayne Calizo, that I saw clearly how good our life had become.

How we’d made it through the barf tunnel.

The barf tunnel is a phrase I learned from Leslie Cooper, the mother of Rowena’s and my friend, Sean Riley. Some 15 years ago, she explained to Rowena and me that yucky stretches of life such as break-ups, personal reckonings and losses of loved ones are like crawling through a tunnel lined with vomit. Completely unpleasant paths dripping with emotional stink that seem to have no end and yet do not allow U-turns. You just have to keep moving through them blindly.

From mid-2014 to mid-2015, our path was defined by the sadness of my mother’s dying, Rowena’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, financial insecurity and other troubles. Lots of dark and dank.

But we’re through it.

That’s not to say things are perfect now. Take my mom’s death. I continue to miss her. But like Obi Wan Kenobi, my mom is in a way more powerful to me than she was before she died. Her portrait photo on my desk at home, placed there after her death, frequently reminds me of her principles of love, joy and service.

And while my father has had a rough time adjusting to life without her, little by little he has come around. A big break came around Christmas last year. My father had been despondent to the point of wishing he were dead and with my mom in the weeks and months following her death last July. But while spending time with old friends the Battaglias in his home town of Buffalo, a light flickered on. “For the first time since mom died, I actually had a feeling of happiness,” he told me at the time.

My dad now lives in St. Paul, pursues business projects and grocery shops with my brother Kirk every Saturday. He also cooks big dinners for Kirk’s family every Sunday night. He recently told me how pleased he was that his granddaughter Tigist enjoyed a Greek chicken dish he’d prepared. “And she’s my toughest critic,” he said proudly.

Rowena, meanwhile, is out of the breast cancer and treatment woods. Her early-stage tumor was removed, she completed chemotherapy in February and finished radiation treatments in April.

To be sure, cancer took something out of her. Or things. For starters, her sense of certainty around knowing her own body and her ability to heal herself. Then there was the sapping of her energy and physical wellbeing, as chemo poisons infiltrated her whole physique and radiation blasted her breast. Every tissue was touched. My famously flexible dancer wife could barely touch her toes, so tight were her hamstrings after the toxic tonic.

The loss of her hair was surprisingly tough on both of us. Rowena had a mane of wire. Rain could barely penetrate those thick strands. But chemo strafed her follicles, and clumps of hair began to fall out over Christmas. She reluctantly agreed to shave the rest off. And it didn’t come back quickly. I wondered if baldness might be her new normal. Whether she might be suffering a Samson-like fate—that with the hair went some of her power on a permanent basis.

But this summer she sprouted a new head of baby-soft hair. Grayer, maybe, but chic and a surprising new texture for her. Rowena’s physical strength also has recovered. And perhaps most importantly so has her artistic oomph. I think she has three projects in the works at the moment, including a reading soon on the “Dirty Laundry” of cancer.

It’s a similar, better story on other fronts. Last December, I got a full-time position with research and consulting firm Great Place to Work, resolving my fears about financial security. And although I’ve experienced some job uncertainty amid changes at the company this year, I’m excited about my role at Great Place to Work heading into the future.

Meanwhile, things are going swimmingly with my body. I mean that quite literally, in that I’ve made a regular practice of swimming. Front-crawling a mile or more two to three times a week not only is easing aches and increasing fitness, but marks a triumph over long-held swimming anxieties. In two weeks I will do something I once thought impossible for me: swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco.

My back is back as well. Despite some reservations, I had a nerve-burning procedure on my lower back in June. It succeeded in killing 60-80 percent of my pain, and alleviated a lot of my stiffness. I started playing soccer on a weekly basis, returned to yoga classes and am imagining triathlons. I can even see attempting a comeback in my beloved sport of basketball. For the first time in a long time I’m feeling hopeful about my body and athleticism.

And the new hope is more general. A widely applied sense of appreciation. Gratitude about the goodness all around me.

My sister-in-law Melanie Danke captured this feeling in a blog earlier this year:

“Every damn day I should be "AAAAAH! My freaking fabulous, fortunate life!!!!!" But for whatever reason, we humans don't seem to be wired that way. Probably there is a good reason. If we allowed ourselves to be overcome with the tender fragility and miraculousness of our lives we probably couldn't get on much with our days. Undoubtedly bills would not get paid. Very possibly commerce would grind to a halt. There is a chance our hearts would flat-out explode. I guess the best we can hope for are these periodic moments of lucidness, when we are filled both with an overpowering love and a profound sense of loss, reminding us, just for a second, that amidst the toast crumbs and lost mittens and bank statements, something fairly wonderful is going on.”

Melanie titled that blog item “Sentimental Horsetwaddle.” And it is hard to avoid sounding sentimental about this stuff. But the truth is the curses of the past year came with blessings tucked inside. Not just a sense of wonder but some gems of wisdom. The old saws about patience and persistence paying off. About what doesn’t kill you making you stronger. I believe those adages more than ever. And I think I’m better prepared to teach them to my kids.

I also think our family’s little story is part of a bigger, human family one. The ancient one of getting through trials and tribulations with courage, perseverance and community support. And a contemporary, hopeful tale as well. Of potentially greater enlightenment and kindness as a species. I’ve been reading a book with the claim that humanity is headed to better and better days. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, by Robert Wright, argues that things have been moving in a generally positive direction since life began. Although human nature contains the capacity for cruelty and selfishness along with goodness and generosity, the benefits of “non-zero-sum,” win-win exchanges keep pushing people to greater levels of cooperation and interdependence.

“More souls are crammed onto this planet than ever, and there is the real prospect of commensurately great peril,” he writes. “At the same time, there is the prospect of building the infrastructure for a planetary first: enduring global concord.”

Despite all the bad news in the world today, promising signs that Wright was basically right can be found in plenty of places. From what we at Great Place to Work see as the beginnings of a new era of better working environments, to the rapid progress America has made in recent years in terms of treating gays and lesbians with dignity, to the Iran nuclear deal that carries the seeds of greater Middle East peace.

Julius, Skyla, Rowena and I aren’t always paragons of peace these days. Our tempers flare. We can be unkind. Maybe some of the animosity is a product of the past year, when all the stress strained our ties and made us wobble at times. But overall I think we’re closer, sturdier than ever. That’s partly because we have tighter bonds with friends and family. We know we can lean on them, as well as turn to mental health pros if things get too overwhelming. And we are committed to spiritual practices that sustain us.

Like funerals. This July, we went as a family to the memorial service for Dwayne Calizo, a long-time artistic collaborator of Rowena’s. And I noticed parallels between Dwayne and my mother. That comparison is ludicrous on the surface. My mom was a conservative Catholic educator, while Dwayne was a radical, queer musician. But like my mom, Dwayne brought out the best in people. Especially when it came to their voices, and his work with them as a musical coach. Dwayne was sometimes penniless and wrestled with addiction, but hundreds of people came to the memorial service and told of the profound impact he had on them by believing they could sing.

Singing, in fact, also linked these memorials. My mother’s in St. Gertrude’s Church in Chicago included “On Eagle’s Wings”—a spiritual song deep in my bones from childhood. At Dwayne’s service, in a San Francisco theater space, Rowena and other former collaborators sang “In This Heart”—a Sinead O’Connor acapella tune that I have sung as a lullaby to Julius and Skyla for many years.

I cried like a baby as we sang the song at the memorial. Tears for the loss of Dwayne. Maybe also for the loss of my mom. But also joyful tears. I am grateful for both Dwayne and my mom. Inspired by both. Informed by their spirits.

Dwayne’s memorial service concluded the following day, with a dozen of us taking handfuls of his ashes and carrying them into the surf at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach. I could feel what seemed like grains of bone between my fingertips. As a wave crashed into me, I dunked my head, let go of Dwayne and prayed my glasses would stay on.

They did. And I now see that Dwayne’s funeral was a kind of bookend to the year. An emergence from the barf tunnel, complete with an ocean cleansing of crud and bile. I hadn’t quite noticed we were out until that moment. The worry and sense of foreboding had lingered after we’d made it through the worst. In fact, the insight that we’d been in a barf tunnel and had crawled clear came to me as I saw Sean Riley at the memorial service. I hadn’t seen him for perhaps a year or more, and I summed up how we were doing with the metaphor his mother had given me. “Suddenly, it seems like we’re out,” I told him.

“That’s the thing about barf tunnels,” he responded. “You don’t see the end until you’re through.”

But once you’re through, life smells and looks so much sweeter. The view opens wide. At least it has for me.

So yes, this past year was trying. But it gave me new eyes with which to see the world. I’m not sure I can hold on to this gift as life gets easier. But I'm going to try.

Trying in 2014—The Hand of God

When I couldn’t sleep over the past year, I sometimes said this prayer: “God, please hold me in the palm of your hand.”

And I had a vision of a particular hand. A thick, soft, warm hand. With pillow-y finger tips and pads at the base near the wrist. A hand like my father’s hands. But a giant, 10-foot long version. Its fingers would curl slightly to make a kind of hammock, in which I lay safe and comforted. 

With that plea and that image I would try to let go of the worry gripping my mind, the thought loops around the aftermath of my mother’s death, my wife’s cancer, financial insecurity and other troubles. I would try to put things in God’s hands for a while.

And this spiritual sleep-aid gets at the way faith is the final piece in the puzzle for how my family and I got through a tough year. 

Thank God for the help. But that’s not to say my relationship with God has been a simple, purely positive one. And spirituality for my wife Rowena and kids Julius and Skyla likewise is complicated.

I was raised a Catholic, by a mother who had a lifelong career in Catholic education and a father whose family had a building named after it at the local Jesuit high school. There is a lot I cherish about growing up Catholic and going to Christ the King church every Sunday. God loved me and all people. And I loved God back, especially through singing.

One of my earliest memories is standing on the blond wooden church pews of Christ the King’s lower, less formal chapel. Standing so I could see the front of the church better, and singing with joy. Folk songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and contemporary religious tunes like “On Eagle’s Wings.” That song gave me the image of being held in God's hand:

And he will raise you up, on eagle's wings
Bear you on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun
And hold you in the palm of his hand

Part of what I loved about singing that song and others in church was harmonizing. Finding notes above or below the melody that somehow fit with it. There has always been something mystical, something sacred, about harmony to me. About two or more notes that are distinct but belong together. Maybe it captures something about the human condition, of us being social yet separate creatures. Or about our relationship with the divine—familiar yet apart.

So Catholicism enriched me with spirituality. But it also took away some of my sense of self. Limited me with the weight of its martyr message. The Jesus-sacrificing-himself-for-us story was something I took deeply to heart. So did my mother. I learned only after my mom died that she spent much of her adult life eating pizza with our family even though she disliked cheese! As she got older, my mom got better at setting boundaries and getting what she wanted. But with her as a role model, and Catholicism as a guiding philosophy, I had trouble as a young person knowing my own mind and acting accordingly.

In the years after college, for example, I applied to and got into law school as well as PhD programs in history and education. I ended up deciding not to go to any of them. And while I grew in vital ways through my first marriage, the fact that it ended in divorce had something to do with that same self-sacrificing impulse—of putting other people’s interests above my own.

Fortunately, I found a counter-weight to Catholicism in the spiritual traditions of the East. This started by distancing myself from Catholicism. Beginning in college, I grew critical of the sexism and hierarchy of the church, and of the intolerance of other religions by much of Christianity. I also was drawn to the notion that I could wrestle with God and find my own version of the sacred. Inspired by the Gnostics of early Christianity, I came to believe I had an important divine spark and could determine the God I wanted to respect and serve rather than just accept the deity that came with my upbringing.

And then I came to choose elements of Buddhism and Hinduism, largely through the yoga classes I began taking in San Francisco in the mid-1990s. On some level, I see the chanting during yoga and calls for inner peace during the final, shavasana, pose as superficial. But over the course of some 20 years of yoga, those religious, New Age-y overlays have worked for me. Especially from some of the wiser teachers, the spiritual commentaries have stretched, relaxed and elevated my spirit as much as the poses have done these things for my body.

Over the past several years, I have found a way to bridge this West Coast, Eastern spirituality with my childhood Western, Midwest faith. A foundation of the bridge is Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. Old First and its Pastor, Maggi Henderson, reconnected Rowena and me to the Christian tradition. And over the past, difficult year, Maggi’s sermons and the church community have strengthened our spirits and provided welcome practical help.

I like to say Maggi’s “got the spirit”—not only an abiding faith in a loving God but an ability to exude that soulfulness in ways that comfort and inspire and provoke. Without smothering, losing touch with reality or getting “preachy.”

I especially like the way she makes the Holy Spirit feel nearly tangible. This third leg of the Christian trinity has long appealed to me—I have grafted onto it the “Goddess” that is found in many pagan spiritual traditions. Maggi doesn’t typically talk about the Holy Spirit as a “She,” but she portrays it as a constant, caring, nearly maternal presence. She often ends Sunday morning services at Old First by charging us to go “knowing that you are not alone—the Holy Spirit goes with you always and may lead you to places you never expected.”

One place I never expected to make a holy sanctuary is my bathroom. But given the lack of privacy in our one-room apartment, that is where I practice a morning mix of meditation, Christian prayer and Eastern chanting. Toward the end of it,

I say this: “Ommm-men”

It’s a blend of Ommm and Amen, my attempt to stitch together East and West in a word.

This personal practice may seem batty or the equivalent of flushing a “real” religion down the toilet. But I’m not alone in having found my own way in the realm of the spiritual. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans calls themselves spiritual but not religious, and Christians have dropped from 78 percent of the U.S. population in 2007 to 71 percent in 2014.

A blend of religious traditions also helped me make it through my mother’s death last July.

At my mom’s funeral, I knew I wanted to deliver a eulogy. One that did her justice and honored her strong Catholic faith while also staying true to my own understanding of what her death meant. I was nervous. Worried I couldn’t pull it off, especially in the company of my extended Catholic family. But I think I did a decent job. I hinted at the Eastern stuff in noting my mom’s recognition of the importance of relaxation and of a positive attitude before those things got such a big mindshare in our society. And while I have at times doubted the Jesus resurrection story, Old First has over time restored my faith in a God that does bring us home. I was able, then, to end with these words:

Martha Frances Frauenheim died in the arms of her beloved husband Ed Frauenheim. At St. Frances hospital. Right at the feast of St. Martha—who prompted Jesus to say “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live a new life.”

My mom used to say—usually over a chocolate chip cookie—“It’s like dying and going to heaven.” Mom, I trust you are there. As your friend Elena White put it, “If Marty isn’t in heaven, the rest of us are big trouble.”

Following my mom’s funeral and into Rowena’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, Old First continued to raise me up. If not on eagle’s wings, on the soaring melodies of the choir, on the reassuring, thoughtful sermons from Maggi, on the lavish generosity of Old First friends. When Rowena’s cancer became known, the church responded with expressions of concern, prayers and practical assistance. Meatballs, soup, a necklace with stones with supposed healing properties for Rowena, they all came our way from Old First folks.

Rowena has plenty of skepticism about religion, including Christianity. She also is drawn to the Gnostic notion of a divine spark in every person. “If I were to define God, it’s that light inside all of us, the collective light.” Neither Rowena or I feel comfortable officially joining Old First because of the creed members have to recite—a creed that feels paternalistic and smacks of intolerance toward other religions.  Still, Rowena attends Old First, well, religiously. She sings traditional Presbyterian hymns to the kids as lullabies. And she wore that necklace like a talisman throughout her cancer treatments.

Old First was a comfort to her this past year, mostly because of the people. “The idea of being prayed for by all those people is powerful,” she says. “Isn’t that what church is? The place to be loved and lifted up? You don’t go the gym to be loved and lifted up. Church is very unique that way.”

Church, or some version of spirituality, also bolstered the kids this past year. Skyla and Rowena have a ritual of singing the nightly prayer--“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Skyla told me she imagines God as a face made of clouds, with a bushy moustache and a goatee.

“I dream about him a lot,” Skyla said. “Once he said his name was George, another time he said his name was Fred. Apparently he doesn’t know his name.”

Vintage Skyla, a sometimes irreverent 10-year old. But she also told me she sometimes takes comfort in thinking of God looking down on her. Skyla also makes earnest, touching art during Sunday school. Like this poster Skyla produced during a lesson on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Julius, meanwhile, got interested in the Daoism he studied this year. He and his classmates wrote a play in which a wise Daoist emperor gives a beggar food and farm land, telling him “Yin and Yang won’t let you starve.” In other words, Julius explained to me, the forces of dark and light in the universe provide a balance, a harmony.

Whether we experienced moments of sacred grace through musical harmonies, sermons or art, spirituality sustained us amid struggles. Faith helped calm our fears.

Looking back at a sad, scary year, I also can say that I made a certain peace with the tension between accepting God’s will and determining my own destiny. Struck a better balance between letting go and not giving up. It had something to do with realizing the distinction between sacrificing one’s self and hearing the call to serve others. For me, that call sometimes took the form of helping out at monthly Old First dinners for local homeless people. It also meant helping Rowena give herself daily immune-boosting shots in the stomach for nearly a month despite my queasiness around needles.

As difficult as that was, my biggest burden over the past year has been helping my dad recover from my mom’s death. As he puts it, he and my mom were more than entwined—they “lived within each other.” Despite his own Catholic faith, my mom’s death left him despondent and struggling to find meaning and some sense of happiness. As the person who probably spoke with him most frequently right after my mom died and for months afterward, it was sometimes hard to help him see any brightness in the present or future.

But my dad himself—his body and his spirit—eased my burden. My dad can be a very affectionate and loving person. He recently told me he almost always held my mother’s hand or was physically in touch with her. I bet she loved that. I know I love holding my dad’s hand. Its warmth and softness make it the most pleasant, comforting, cozy hand I’ve ever held.

A few months ago, I held my dad’s hand. And I told him that I thought of his hand when I thought of God’s hand. He smiled. A bit of comfort back to him.

And for me as well. When I pictured the dad-inspired hand of God holding me during boughts of insomnia, it usually worked. My mind would take a break from worrying, my body would relax and I would fall asleep.

Trying in 2014--Life Support from Killer Counselors

I’ve written about a range of ingredients that went into our family keeping it together during a trying2014. Our own resilience, the aid of relatives, the power of pals.

We also had professional help. And the assistance from mental health experts proved vital.

First was the family counseling: Hanna and Anna, the two counselors who’d been working with our family since fall of 2013.

In essence, Rowena and I had developed some “clogged pipes” when it came to communication. By the middle of 2014, after about nine months of working with Hanna and Anna, we’d made a lot of progress. But then we took a few steps backwards. The strains of my mother dying, Rowena’s cancer diagnosis, job insecurity and other troubles made me, at least, revert to some unhelpful behaviors and positions. Especially right after my mother died in late July, I found myself losing my cool with Rowena and feeling like we might never agree on how to raise our kids.

Hanna and Anna to the rescue.

Not only did they give us a weekly forum to flesh out our emotions, but they equipped us with a ritual to find common ground on our own. It was simple but effective: let the other person talk for five minutes straight, and then paraphrase their words and your own emotional reaction to them. Only after this active listening to your partner do you get to say your piece for five minutes.

Rowena and I added a physical routine to this communication tactic. Our one-bedroom apartment makes it nearly impossible to have a conversation without our kids hearing us, and Hanna and Anna strongly suggested we not hash out conflicts in front of Julius and Skyla. So we would talk while taking a walk around the block. These mobile conflict-conversations almost invariably put us back in rhythm. Reconnected us. 

I still chuckle at the names of our family counselors. You can’t help but think they are an act out of Vaudeville or the Muppet Show. Hanna and Anna, the amazing twins of talk therapy! Or Hanna and Anny, the dynamic duo of family counseling!

But they were real-life superheroes to us.

And they weren’t alone. By late fall, after Rowena’s cancer diagnosis in September and growing worries about whether I’d have a job come the new year, I found myself in a state of high anxiety. I knew the aches and pains I was feeling in my back, feet and other body parts had something to do stress. So I turned to another mental health pro: Dr. Robert Foster.

I’d seen Dr. Foster a few years earlier for another bout of anxiety. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wrestled with excessive worry and fear. My anxiety probably isn’t quite at the level that Atlantic editor Scott Stossel experiences. He bravely describes the nearly debilitating way phobias affect him as well as his response, which includes finely calibrated use of alcohol and sedatives to make it through public speaking events. I haven’t faced such consistent, extreme anxiety. But I’ve had awful enough episodes of worry and corresponding psychosomatic troubles. These include during my first college final exams, when I was beset by hives, and on the eve of my son’s birth, when I was convinced I’d become incontinent.

Thankfully, my mind wasn’t trying to play that trick on me this time around. But I was hopeful Dr. Foster could ease that troubled mind of mine. And he didn’t disappoint. Dr. Foster had introduced me to meditation the previous time I’d seen him. And I had continued to meditate several times a week.

But now he added a twist—quite literally. He suggested I try a more active, Tai Chi style of mediation, and that I start shaking.

Shaking?

Yes, he said, citing a book by stress expert Peter Levine that highlights the way animals recover from trauma by shaking their bodies. My initial skepticism soon gave rise to curiosity and a connection to dancing—something I’ve always loved and found I could do no matter how much my back seemed to hurt. Rihanna’s words from “Please Don’t Stop the Music” came to mind: “I gotta get my body moving. Shake the stress away.”

So I took to shaking. A full body shimmy, usually coming just after a series of back stretches during my morning shower.

And it seemed to help. Dr. Foster’s primal detoxification joining forces with the relationship repair services of Hanna and Anna to ease my mind and mend my marriage. To make life much better.

During a year marred by one death and the threat of another, our counselors were killer.

Trying in 2014--Friends Stand Us Up, Cheer Us Up

Our friends sidled up so close to us during a difficult year that we didn’t have much room to fall or fall apart.

Yes, we had to work to keep our balance in the center of the mother-mourning, cancer-battling, job-securityseeking and other challenges. But every time we tipped to one side, started to splinter, pals showed up to shore us up. And more than just steady us, they made us smile.

Rowena’s diagnosis of breast cancer in the fall pulled a rug out from under us. But as we tottered in fear, a sudden host of medical procedures and outright pain in Rowena’s case, a community of saint-like friends rushed in to brace us—in ways that took our breath away. Our refrigerator was never so filled with yummy food, much of it homemade. We had more child-care offers than we knew what to do with. Friends—both close and less-intimate—gave us wigs, hats, helpful books. Our pal Art, who owns SF Wash, stunned us by announcing he was providing six months of free laundry service.

Rowena and I came to feel embarrassed by the wealth of help. We knew a couple splitting up. Did this less-visible trouble—no loss of hair, no chemotherapy appointments requiring childcare—trigger as much support? I asked the wife of that couple, as she gave me a bag of food, if she had enough assistance in her own struggle. She assured me she did, that plenty of people were propping her up.

That conversation reinforced a realization I had about the friend-aid fest. People can be extraordinarily good. They come to each other’s side during hard times. Lean-on-me, trouble-me talk often isn’t lip service. And this lesson made all the help a kind of double gift. First, the food, the childcare, the flowers themselves. And second, the booster shot of hope in humanity.

Who doesn’t need that? In recent years, I have found myself less and less eager to learn about the news. This is despite the fact that I was a journalist myself. And that for the past year I’ve worked for an organization with profoundly hopeful vision. But as you grow older and see so much strife in the world, humanity’s dark side looms large. ISIS killings, free-speech suppression in China, Russia’s effective invasion of Ukraine. It all can be deeply depressing. At times, it has left me less optimistic about our species.

But maybe that gloomy sentiment comes from paying too much attention to headlines. Or not seeking out the positive. Indeed, this is a finding of much research on happiness in recent years. The brain can be trained to notice better, more encouraging patterns. That’s why positive psychologists—and spiritual leaders from many traditions—focus on practicing gratitude.

I knew about this research. Wrote about it, in fact. But the point came to life this fall. A positive pattern about human nature was all but tattooed on our brains and hearts by friends and family giving so much. We had daily reminders that people are good. Or at least have better angels that are real. That slip from shoulders into ears, inhabit human souls and steer them to do amazing things.

Amazing things like making us see the world more brightly at a time I least expected it. During a year that on the surface was defined by the dark news of death and disease, the goodness of friends not only lightened our days but often made them feel glorious.

Among the radiant moments was the time we got a mud-colored smoothie. Our friend Martina Jones had whipped up two highly healthy smoothies, and her husband Chris arranged to drop them off to me as I was finishing up work one day. These acts of kindness came on top of others from their family—they’d given us a lovely orchid, hosted band practice at their home every week for our son Julius and his two band-mates, and welcomed Julius into their Tahoe home to celebrate his birthday. And while you might think it would be hard to keep up with the Jones’ on the generosity front, plenty of other pals were! Food gifts especially flew in on a weekly basis from multiple people—women in particular, it should be noted.

So I already was in a state of It’s-a-Wonderful-Life awe at our friends when Martina’s brown smoothie arrived. And its color said something to me about the depth of Martina’s care for Rowena. I think of Martina as having a strong sense of style—her home is beautiful and she’s always put together, even when she’s coaching soccer or cooking up a dinner. A muddy smoothie did not seem to fit her aesthetic. But it showed that she put Rowena’s recovery above any superficial concerns about appearances.

That smoothie made me giddy. Made my cup overflow with gratitude and faith in people.

When I told Rowena my thoughts about Martina and the muddy smoothie, she pointed out a flaw in my theory. Martina, Rowena noted, is super health-conscious. In that sense, it’s not surprising that the former Stanford cyclist and current biathlon practitioner would place nutrition over presentation. But before I could get too down over my faulty epiphany, Rowena added some tidbits that made the story even better.

Martina, it turns out, had researched exactly what smoothie ingredients mixed well with Rowena’s particular cancer drugs. She’d taped a list of those promising plants on the wall of her kitchen to make sure she’d do Rowena right.

So that muddy concoction was an even clearer sign of how true our friends were. Truly being there for us, and reminding us about the truth of human kindness.

Friends can be tricky. They can smother you and get on your nerves. Or they also can abandon you at a crucial time. Stand you up.

Ours, though, stood us up by showing up. By surrounding us, steadying us, they helped us from collapsing amid crises. And their charity cheered us in a way I never would have thought possible. 

Trying in 2014--A Family Affair

I didn’t recognize the power and beauty of extended family bonds until my own, immediate family unraveled some.

Families aren’t perfect. They’re full of complex relationships that can be maddening and mean. Mine is no different. But mine, like others, also can be miraculous, kind and heroic. It was last year.

The death of my mom in July, followed by Rowena’s cancer diagnosis and other challenges this past fall, prompted our relatives to spring into action.

For one thing, all three of my cousins on my dad’s side flew to Chicago from Western New York for my mom’s memorial mass. This despite the fact that we have not been in great touch for years. And the presence of Jamie, Jill and Julie lifted my spirits at the funeral.

Then there are the Tobins. My mom, born Martha Frances Tobin, was one of eight kids. And after she died, the Tobin clan proved to be a life-saver to me, my brother, my sister and my father. Even as they mourned the loss of their own sister or sister-in-law, my aunts and uncles helped us take care of funeral arrangements, pitched in with my dad’s apartment packing and comforted us generously in those early days.

During the extra week I stayed in Chicago, for example, I took my dad to the “Prayer Porch” at my Uncle Mike and Aunt Dorothea’s house. This remarkable ritual dates back to the summer of 2012, when my cousin—and Mike and Dorothea’s youngest son—Billy Tobin died in a freak accident at the age of 19. The morning after his death, Dorothea’s sister Peggy showed up at Mike and Dorothea’s to pray with them. In the days and weeks that followed, up to 20 people would gather each morning on the porch and pray.

The original purpose was to prop up Dorothea, keep her from collapsing from the grief of losing Billy. But even when she regained her footing in the months that followed, the Prayer Porch continued. The group would meet even on freezing, dark winter mornings, warmed some by restaurant-style kerosene heaters Mike bought, and its scope expanded to petition God to aid others.

I’d been moved by the idea of the Prayer Porch, and had attended it during visits to Chicago. Now I was benefitting from it directly. My dad and I added my mom’s laminated prayer card to the half-dozen or so held on a wire stand. And I read aloud the prayer on the back: the one attributed to St. Frances that begins, “Make me a channel of your peace.”

Dorothea and the rest of my relatives have been that channel for me as I wrestled with the loss of my mom. My sister Kate graciously invited my dad to live with her and her husband in Alabama, and my brother Kirk agreed to handle the bulk of the logistical duties related to the death, including helping to sell my parents’ car. The three of us checked in with each other throughout the fall about our emotional state—and about our dad’s.

What’s more, when my dad moved back to Chicago in November to try to restart his personal and professional life, Mike and Dorothea, as well as my aunt Patti and uncle Pete—who live just outside Chicago—regularly got together with him and sent me dispatches.  

Our family circle also steadied, cared for us four San Francisco Frauenheims amid the upheaval of cancer and other shocks this fall.

Rowena’s family, centered in Scottsdale, rushed to our aid upon learning she had breast cancer. Her brother Carty and sister-in-law Bunnie are both doctors, and offered medical advice as well as moral support. When Rowena began losing her hair, for example, Carty shaved his head in solidarity. Even though the dude looks good bald, it was still touching to have him there with us. Prayers flowed from Rowena’s younger brother Steve and his wife Abbie. And Rowena’s parents Carl and Parris combined prayers with acts of generosity.

With Richie Clan members in Phoenix over Christmas

Parris came to stay with us when Rowena had her lumpectomy in November. And then when we visited all the Richies in Scottsdale for Christmas, Carl and Parris treated Rowena and me to a night at a Tucson spa. That time away from kids served as one of the “quarterly retreats” that Rowena and I have tried to observe for many years now. And this Tucson excursion, including a desert hike, luxury hotel room and exploration of the city’s hip/hippie downtown, did more than usual to refresh our relationship. It gave us a chance to take stock of a topsy-turvy year and recharge for the chemo and radiation challenges ahead.

Although all these family members tended to our spirits in the second half of 2014, my aunts Dorothea and Patti in particular held me up. Dorothea is my adopted godmother. That is, I asked her to be my godmother when my original godmother, my Aunt Gretchen, died many years ago. It made sense in a way, because Uncle Mike is my godfather. But I’ve also always been drawn to Dorothea, amazed at how she has managed to raise seven kids, teach in inspiring ways to troubled Chicago students and still find time to make me and others feel like we are worthy of her undivided attention. Her Catholic faith has bolstered my own beliefs, in part because she is brutally honest about how much death hurts.

Uncle Mike and Aunt Dorothea on a recent visit to SF

 When I texted her on New Year’s Day that my mom died in a “perfect way,” Dorothea kept it real: “Good for her. Not so good for you.”

Patti, meanwhile, has been a much-needed pep squad leader. She and Pete hosted my dad at their Naperville home just before he drove off across country with his friend Tom Mino, and it was on their patio that we all laughed about the “Overbearing Brothers” and their journey. When Rowena and the kids were still in Chicago, Patti noticed Skyla playing with their big “bernedoodle” dog Murphy. Soon after we were all back in San Francisco, Patti texted a photo of Murphy with a new haircut.

Patti sent this photo via text: "This pic is for Skyla...wishing 
you were here to throw my green ring!"

Patti’s positivity also has taken more sober forms. She made sure to remind my dad to remember the suffering of his children amidst his own grief—and he immediately responded with much greater empathy for Kirk, Kate and myself. And late one night in her kitchen, Patti taught my father and me a simple prayer to repeat again and again during the darkest moments: “Lord, have mercy on me.”

I have been surprised by the ability of Patti’s prayer to bring me peace, to keep me from unraveling. Here it was again: family coming to my aid, to our aid, in a powerful, unexpected way.

I didn’t know what a family affair this fall would be. In trying, tough times, our relatives were tenaciously present and persistently tender.

Even as I mourned the loss of my mom and worried about losing my wife, I fell in love with my family. 

Trying in 2014--Love Lengths, Life Lines

The lengths of love holding our family together on that dreary day in December had strands of patience, persistence and faith. Not just from us—but from the people around us, ranging from the gritty, caring educators at Grattan Elementary to all the friends and family who have helped raise Skyla to be independent and resourceful to the bus driver who brought her safely home.

And that formula of self-help, dogged hope and community support is largely how we held it together during the hellishness of 2014 overall.

It isn’t a new recipe for resilience. But the components have nonetheless amazed me with their intensity. As difficult, as dark as the days have been this past six months, they have met their match in moments of grace, generosity and courage.

Those start with Rowena. With her immediate plunge into the science of breast cancer and the range of possible therapies. I had an escapist streak this fall, wanting to cancel the reality of cancer by immersing myself in Lord of the Rings Movies and a Dan Brown thriller novel. But Rowena faced the scary facets of breast cancer head on, often sharing with me gruesome statistics and side effects of drug therapies.

Nor did she blink much when it came to the medical treatments. Despite some tears, she pushed through her fears of surgery and the pain associated with pre-operation procedures, post-operation recovery and chemo drugs.

Some of the procedures, by the way, were highly medieval, despite their modern technological trappings. For one biopsy, she was strapped to a table, faced-down, with her breast exposed through a hole. The entire contraption was then lifted into the air as the doctor walked under her and jabbed in a long needle. 

Even mammograms, whose name suggests a maternal, perhaps comforting activity, can be tortuous. I had no idea these images involved squeezing the breast tightly between two plates. To make sure Rowena’s tumor site was perfectly pinpointed, one mammogram meant compressing the breast to the point that fluid oozed out of her nipple—fluid that was a sign of cancer.

Rowena not only soldiered through all these physical and mental difficulties, but artist-ed her way through them as well. Our friend Joel once described Rowena as having “no left field.” And she applied that seemingly limitless sense of creativity to cancer.

In her journal, cancer became “Kancer Karl,” which also is a graffiti tag found in our Mission neighborhood. Kancer Karl had tagged our back door with his moniker some years ago, and Rowena now imagined that Kancer Karl—the breast disease—had come knocking. Rather than wear a wig as her hair thinned, Rowena opted for a black fuzzy bear hat that somehow provided the perfect accent to her fancy holiday outfit. And Rowena’s wordplay around cancer has kept us laughing with little gems like Chem’owena and “terribald” for how her patchy head looked.

The kids stepped it up as well. Julius threw some tantrums at the start of middle school, with its heightened academic and social pressures. But he found some sweet new friends and within weeks he was doing his homework and tracking his class progress online without parental prodding. He fit into a new, higher-powered soccer team and surprised me at times with his big heart. During dinner one night this fall, he declared, “If mom dies, I’m going to devote my life to finding a cure for cancer.”

Skyla willingly took on the ride-the-bus-home-by-herself challenge. She was voted a soccer co-captain and helped lead her team to a second-place finish. And she gave her mama lots of love. She asked Rowena for a cuddle in her bed every night, crocheted a wrist-warmer and necklace for Rowena for Christmas and after the lumpectomy and all-clear test results, made sure we all knew cancer’s place. That is to say, gone from Rowena’s body. “You don’t have cancer,” she said once. “You have chemo.”

Skyla’s hopeful comment was like a fiber spun into the yarn she was crotcheting into gifts for Rowena. Just a few words, but taken together with the other ways she cared for her mom, they cinched up our spirits. And that moment was woven into a longer, thicker rope of generosity and help, and many rope-lengths of love intertwined into a fabric that bound us up as the year drew to a close.

Fiber, thread, rope, fabric are miracles of nature and human capacity. How is it that soft, unsubstantial tufts of cotton or blades of grass can be transformed into strong cords, tough sails, sturdy bridges?

By twisting together, the single fibers form a strand, which can itself can be entwined with other strands. The fibers, it seems, have a natural affinity for each other. Long to wrap themselves around each other. And with a bit of prodding and plaiting they do so, growing stouter, longer, more resilient as they unite.

Just so, our family and the people around us spun their love into life lines last year. And the lines held. 

Trying in 2014--Cracking Under Pressure, Holding Ourselves Together

A sense of dread sunk in for much of the fall. After my mom’s death and Rowena’s cancer, after the car troubles, money worries and physical aches and pains, what would the next test be? Because surely it was coming.

The problems combined to form a heavy weight pressing down on me and our entire family. Cracks surfaced in our psyches and our bodies. Julius experienced a series of ankle sprains in the fall—the first time he’d complained of extended joint difficulties. Could these have had something to do with the overall tension? I, meanwhile, am pretty certain that the stress in the rest of my life contributed to a gloomy view of my health. That some of my back, knee and foot ailments had a psychosomatic component—at times I could feel my back pain intensifying as I confronted an ill-behaving kid or fretted about a job in the new year. Body discomfort as barometer of overall wellbeing.

And collectively, Julius, Skyla, Rowena and I grew shorter-tempered. We knew this was a time to pull together and treat Rowena especially with greater tenderness. But conflicts as minor as dinner table manner slips could explode into one or more of us storming out of the kitchen.

A low point came December 19^th, the Friday before the school winter holiday. Rowena was still recovering from her first chemo treatment, so I drove with her to pick Skyla up from school. Grattan Elementary was festive, but my mood grew foul quickly when I couldn’t find Skyla. It was raining and we were eager to give her a ride in the car so she didn’t have to get wet en route to catch a nearby bus—which she usually took home.

Even though I hopped out of the car and arrived on the school yard right at dismissal time, I didn’t see Skyla among the throngs of happy kids. Her classroom was empty when I tried to find her there. And she wasn’t answering her phone—something she normally was sure to do just after school.

I made small talk about holiday plans with a few parents and teachers as I looked for our nine-year daughter. But my fears and frustration were growing larger, my reservoirs of resilience draining by the minute. I was angry at Skyla for not taking the path she normally did through the school yard, and for not answering her phone or charging it in the first place.  I started imagining the nightmare of Skyla being abducted on her way to the bus stop—even though I knew the odds of that were miniscule.

I returned to the car to tell Rowena we should head to Skyla’s bus stop. Amid the school pick-up congestion, Rowena drove us very close to a parked car and our side-view mirror brushed against the other car’s mirror. I have a long-running concern that Rowena takes too many risks. Normally, I recognize pretty quickly that I’m just being paranoid: Rowena can be a daredevil, but I can be “safety-first” to a fault. On this particular Friday afternoon, however, in the wake of the Skyla anxiety, in the wake of months of sadness, bad news and mounting worries, the minor scrape triggered a major explosion.

“You hit that car!” I yelled. And I twisted concern about Rowena’s cancer state into a cruel attack. “I can’t believe it. You cannot drive right now.”

“Calm down, Ed. I can handle it,” Rowena responded.

“Clearly you can’t!” I yelled back.

Rowena began to cry. Now we both felt overwhelmed.

We drove to Skyla’s bus stop, and didn’t find her there. So we proceeded home, hoping and expecting that she had gotten on the bus for the 20-minute ride home. On the way back to our neighborhood, my anger and panic were already ebbing into regret and empathy. And there was Skyla as we walked in the door. “Little lady!” I called to her. Rowena and I embraced her at the same time, surrounding her in a hug. “We love you soooo much,” I said, a term of endearment I get from my dad.

Skyla and I have butted heads over the past year, as she has grown more assertive and I have struggled to adjust to her emerging tween-ness. But at that reunion moment I felt nothing but tenderness for her. She seemed surprised and a bit bewildered by our sudden circle of affection. But she let us give her a big long squeeze.

We stood there holding ourselves together. As if lashed to some imagined mast in the middle of our family. With lengths of love strong enough to handle what 2014 was throwing at us so far.

Trying in 2014--Minor Torture

Along with its major problems of a death and breast cancer, 2014 also contained a slow drip of less existential pressures.

The first of these was a cancer of sorts in our car.

Starting in the spring, sometimes you would step on the accelerator of our 2012 Ford Fiesta and nothing would happen. Not a stall, but no acceleration. No reaction at all. It didn’t happen consistently—probably 3 percent or less of the time. But it was a scary thing on San Francisco’s hills. And a potentially lethal danger when taking left turns against oncoming traffic.

By fall, we’d asked a Ford dealership to fix the problem three separate times. But it kept happening. So we asked Ford to buy the car back under the California Lemon law. Even though Ford had extended the warranty on Fiestas from 2012 related to the transmission, the company refused. With the Fiesta—party in Spanish—Ford proved to be a party pooper.

Finally, we sued Ford under the lemon law. I don’t apologize for the suit. But I’m not exactly proud of it either. I’ve never sued anyone. Never joined a class action suit. And in our litigious society, I take a small measure of pride in never having resorted to dragging someone into court.

What’s more, Ford had a place in our family’s heart. The first car Rowena and I bought just before Julius was born in 2003 was a Ford Escort. And we grew to love that car. Our little “Escorter” took care of us. Lived up to its high Consumer Reports score, even if it didn’t have a great popular reputation. Good gas mileage. Reliable over 10 years of service. It was the underdog that could. Kind of the way I saw our family—living as we do in a small one-bedroom apartment, earning a modest living as an artist and a writer in a city full of tech tycoons, having slender builds but playing tough in our sports of soccer (Skyla and Julius), flag football (Julius) and basketball (Skyla and me).

The Fiesta at first was more of the same. But also sleek and stylish. Not sure those are words that describe me, but they do capture Rowena. And we loved that it was even smaller than the Escort—easier still to park in our space-scarce neighborhood. We loved the Fiesta too.

Julius, Skyla and I when we bought our Ford  Fiesta.

So it felt like a personal betrayal when Ford refused to buy it back. Ford couldn’t reproduce the no-acceleration problem in the shop, and wasn’t willing to drive it for an extended period to try to experience it. Understandable, but then they wouldn’t take us at our word. Wouldn't trust us. Even though neither Rowena nor I have any history of suing companies, of crime, or trying to scam anyone.

More galling still, I had just praised Ford in my work as a writer. Had proclaimed them as one of the three top “Good Companies” in America, when it comes to behavior as an employer, a seller and a steward of the community. 

So I felt like a fool besides a jilted lover. Ford left me a broken-hearted fool.

We continue to drive the car, avoiding left turns onto onrushing traffic. Our attorneys are confident we’ll win, but warn us the lawsuit could extend well into 2015. More uncertainty. More anxiety.

About the only certain thing about the car trouble is that it has been expensive. We spent something in the order of $1,000 on rental car fees to avoid driving the Fiesta while Ford decided whether to buy it back.

And those fees added to a broader financial squeeze. The sudden trip to Chicago for my mother’s funeral set us back. As did adjusting my ticket and staying longer in Chicago to help my dad get his feet under him. And then came the cancer bills. It turns out I picked a bad year to put Rowena on a low-premium, low-benefit plan. The insurance—obtained under California’s version of Obamacare--is saving us a bundle. The surgery alone would have cost close to $25,000. But we still face medical bills in the thousands.

In addition, I got behind with my quarterly tax payments as an independent contractor. 2014 was the first year in more than a decade that I was fully self-employed. And I knew I had to set aside money to pay for taxes. But I didn’t do so consistently. My mother’s death, car trouble and cancer probably explain this oversight to some extent. But I’m embarrassed nonetheless. I feel irresponsible. A tax cheat light. We’re probably going to have to set up a payment plan to pay off the taxes—something I’ve never had to do before.

Exactly how I was going to make money in 2015 to pay Uncle Sam—let alone keep a roof over our heads—wasn’t clear as 2014 drew to an end. My contract with Great Place to Work concluded December 19. And although I was talking with some of my bosses at Great Place to Work about getting a regular job at the organization, nothing had been finalized by early December.

On top of it all, my body was aching and seemed to be permanently messed up. Back pain that had begun in mid-2013 persisted throughout this year. This despite work with a Kaiser physical therapist and a lunch-time exercise class I went to a couple of times a week. And then when we were in Chicago for the funeral services, I developed shooting pains in my right foot. The foot improved some by the time I was to help coach Skyla’s soccer team in the fall. But then I tweaked my left knee after one of the Chica Cheetahs games. Perhaps because I began to favor that knee, the other one started hurting as well in the weeks that followed.

By year’s end, all of these problems continued to nag me. I have wrestled with many injuries as an adult in the course of playing basketball, running and doing yoga. But most of these healed over time. With my back especially, I began to believe I’d crossed over into a new category. Into having a “bad back.” As being chronically injured. Only 5 years ago, around the time of my 25^th year high school reunion, I felt more physically fit, stronger, than I’d ever been in my life. Now it had become hard to avoid the feeling that my body was doomed. Sliding down a slope of increasing pain and decreasing mobility.

I know car trouble, money trouble and body trouble are common. Know people are supposed to rise above the pain of these non-emergencies. And in prior years, I have been better at bouncing back from set-backs like a divorce, being laid off and both bones in my arm snapping at once in a soccer game. But this year was different. Start with my sunshiny mom dying and my free-spirit wife getting snagged by cancer, and the smaller rainclouds seemed bigger, stormier. The drips of trouble—a Ford rejection letter, a stalled conversation about a permanent job, another morning with a stiff, ouchy back—felt like a kind of cosmic torture.

***

Trying in 2014--Cancer Dancer

In September, Rowena had a mammogram with a question mark. That led to an ultrasound, a biopsy and ultimately the finding of a malignant tumor in her right breast.

“I have cancer,” Rowena told me with a brave smile that still contained fear and disbelief.

The diagnosis shocked us, I imagine more than it would many people, because of how in-touch Rowena is with her body. As a dancer, a mover, and a student of anatomy, she’s prided herself on knowing herself physically. And medical professionals have on multiple occasions over the years suspected problems with her “dense breast tissue”—only for those suspicions to prove false. Rowena was confident this latest scare was more of the same. And I trusted her intuition as well.

But the docs were right this time. We sent a sample of the tissue to Arizona, where a physician pal of Rowena’s doctor brother Carty confirmed the cancer.

It was “a good find,” according to the Kaiser docs—meaning that they’d discovered the tumor when it was small and that the prognosis was likely to be good. And indeed, Rowena’s situation proved to be about as good a version of bad news as you can get when it comes to cancer. “Grade 1” cancer cells that tend to grow slowly. An MRI that showed no other cancer in the breasts. A “lumpectomy”—what has to be one of the least scientific-sounding medical terms, if one of the most descriptive—to remove the tumor that succeeded. No cancer found in the surrounding breast tissue or lymph nodes.

But there was plenty of strain along the way. Part of it was fearing that Rowena would die. But given the relatively hopeful prognosis from the start, worry that I would soon be a widower was less pronounced than anxiety about uncertainty itself—a known source of great discomfort for human beings generally.

The doubts included our decision to have surgery. For years, Rowena has criticized Western medicine as overly invasive and blind to other options. And we discovered descriptions of natural treatment alternatives—primarily focused on nutrition—that had us wondering if the conventional route with surgery was right for us.

In the end, we went the Western medicine way.  And we’ve been very happy with the skilled, kind, funny doctors and nurses at Kaiser. But we fit into what one study called the “deliberator” category of breast cancer decision-making, given the abundance of information we considered before choosing a course. And the study noted that “deliberators experienced lingering doubts about their long-term outcomes—none was absolutely certain there was a best choice.”

Our reservations reached a peak the day of the surgery. To prepare for the operation, Rowena had to have an intravenous line inserted into her arm, and the saline dripping into her made her chilly. Then, because of congestion in the surgery room, her hour on a gurney in the pre-operation room lengthened into two hours.

Rowena gave birth to both of our kids at home without any medications. Dancers like her have the greatest pain-tolerance of any professionals. But here in the hospital, she felt cold, powerless and afraid. Despite efforts by nurses to bring warm blankets and connect with us, it felt like Rowena was on a conveyor belt to be sliced up. She began to cry. “I’m scared,” she said. I held her hand, brushed aside the tears. But it was hard for me to see her so vulnerable.

It was a great relief that the surgery went well. And I was surprised by how elated I was the following week when we heard that the “margins were clear”—meaning no cancer cells in tissue surrounding the tumor and that the lymph nodes also were cancer-free. Rowena, still recovering from operation, wasn’t in a mood to celebrate that night. But I had too much energy for a quiet night at home. I opted to take BART to my friend Jason’s home in the East Bay and a night out playing Frisbee golf.

But we weren’t out of the woods with cancer qualms. Rowena and I hoped she might be able to avoid chemotherapy—especially given the small size of the tumor and all the tests showing no cancer anywhere else. But an analysis of the tumor’s genetic makeup—the Oncotype Dx test—indicated there was a relatively high risk of cancer recurrence: 20 percent within 5 years. Chemotherapy would reduce that risk by 7 or more percentage points. The survival rate of recurrence, meanwhile, was a not-very-reassuring 50 percent.

In effect, chemo would be an insurance policy. A carpet bombing campaign of poisons in case one or more cancer cells from that tumor in her breast somehow slipped past the lymph nodes and were going to cause mayhem in her spine, liver or somewhere else.

We were in a gray zone—the oncologist said she wouldn’t think Rowena was crazy if she opted not to have chemo. But after much deliberation and the counsel of physician friends, Rowena opted for it. I was glad she did.

But it hasn’t been easy. I’d heard that chemo is hell, and I knew my mother went through it herself some 20 years ago. But the day-to-day reality nonetheless knocked me off balance. Multiple drugs are given to mitigate the worst side effects of the two anti-cancer drugs—Taxotere and Cytoxan—injected into Rowena. Drugs to prevent nausea and avoid vomiting and to boost the immune system and avoid potentially serious infections.

But this toxic cocktail—however well-intentioned—takes a toll. Rowena seemed fine the first few days after her first chemo infusion on a Thursday in mid-December. But by Monday, she could barely finish one of her fitness classes. And that night she had a headache that she described as “skull-crushing.” She cried as she sat in the couch, cuddling with Skyla. The headache eased a bit by the next morning, but it persisted for three days in total.

Labor was worse, Rowena says. But at least when she’d weathered the pains of childbirth, a newborn baby was the result. To me, the chemo trauma was harder to witness, given the lack of clear, tangible payoff. The tears from Taxotere and the rest could be in vain—what if cancer were to come back nonetheless? If the 7 percentage point benefit wasn’t quite enough? Or what if we were going to be fine without chemo in the first place--safely within the 80 percent non-recurrence population? 

Could we be wasting precious weeks of life trying to avoid dying rather than living?

Eulogy for my mom--Martha Frances Frauenheim

I gave this eulogy at my mom's funeral mass, July 30, 2014, at St. Gertrude's Church in Chicago

Hi everyone,

Thanks for being here today to remember my mom; to celebrate her. To say goodbye to her.

We’re so grateful that people dear to my mom have come here from the places dear to my mom’s heart—Syracuse; Buffalo; Minneapolis and St. Paul; the Carmel/Monterey area of California. And of course Chicago—the place where she felt most at home.

As people have sent condolence notes in the past several days, a common theme has been remembering my mom’s smile. Her beaming, sweet smile. And her laughter. My mom was quick to laugh, and it could become this whooping thing—especially when she told stories about her sister Monica getting into trouble; and my mom staying on the right side of the law in the Tobin household.

People also talk about how my mom always saw the best in people.

I think there’s a simple explanation for all her smiling and laughing and seeing people in a positive light.

My mom saw everyone as a child of God. Including herself.

That perspective has much to do with her mom. Anne Tobin, or Nanny to the wider Tobin family. You can’t really talk about any Tobin clan member without talking about Nanny.

Nanny was all about “Joy” with an exclamation point. It’s the word she put in all her letters. Like, “Martha, Chip and the kids came for Thanksgiving and we had chocolate cream pie. Joy!” Nanny also was all about service. To the poor and the old and the sick.

I think you could look at my mom’s life as taking Nanny’s Joyful service and amplifying it. Bringing it to the institution of Catholic education—such that she ultimately touched tens of thousands of children and their families and communities.

As a first grade teacher, as a principal, and ultimately as associate superintendent in Chicago Catholic Schools and superintendent of the St. Paul and Minnesota Catholic Schools, my mom brought it. These were tough jobs. Requiring patience, smarts and perseverance. My mom brought all those qualities, along with kindness. She cared about and listened closely to everyone from kindergarteners to veteran teachers, parents and bishops. Made each feel special.

But she also had high standards. She didn’t cave to pleading or pressure. In fact, the high standards came from the same place as the kindness—she was a steward of minds of souls.

This fierce kindness had a remarkable effect. It allowed her to coax first graders to read, to raise the performance of teachers, to navigate the tricky waters of school consolidation.

One family with something like 7 kids had had my mom as a first grade teacher for a bunch of them when she said she was leaving to become principal at Corpus Christi school in Colorado Springs. The mother and father were distraught—they had a few more kids for mom to teach! They offered to single-handedly pay more than what she’d be making at the new school to keep her in first grade.

But it wasn’t about the money for my mom. It was about the people—and teachers and colleagues understood this. Dozens of them over the years told my mom she was the best boss they ever had.

Just yesterday, I asked my dad why my mom first decided to become a principle. Because she’d never talked about it. Or about setting her sights on a superintendent role. She didn’t seem to have an ambitious bone in her body. Didn’t seem to care when the rest of us in the family would bask in the way she had become what we called a “power person.” My dad said it had to do with her father, my Grandpa Tobin, and his philosophy: if you can do something well, do it. In other words: serve.

So building on her parent’s wisdom and guidance, my mom served. With Joy. Exclamation point.

And that’s what she was like at home, too. Even as she progressed through an ever more demanding career, she was a rock as a mother. She wasn’t the kind of mom who made cookies—she was more the kind who ate them. But she made sure we had them. And enough for all the kids in the neighborhood. Plus the warmth to make everyone feel welcome—as we played basketball and street hockey and dungeons and dragons. Our neighbor Scott “Otter” Waggoner wrote to say my mom was like a second mom to him. My dear friend Paul Rudnick says we basically adopted him when his family struggled when we were in middle school.

My mom had the same high standards for our behavior as she did for her students and later her teachers. But she never really had to punish us much. Kirk, Katie and I just didn’t want to get in trouble much—my gosh, we’d be letting her down. This Saint of a mother. I could maybe complain that she was such a good person that my brother and sister and I never got to have a decent rebellious period.

When I think of my mother’s love, I think of this one time from my early teens. The guys were all going golfing on our municipal golf course, and I somehow got lost in the phone tree planning. They went without me. I was sad and hurt, so my mom offered to drive me to the course. Miraculously, we found the gang on the 3^rd hole, and I said: “I’ll jump the fence with my clubs and join you guys.”  

But Billy Cleary, a great guy generally, broke my heart that day. He said, “We’ve already got a foursome. Go back to the first tee.” In other words, join any old strangers. Thanks, Billy. 

Mom and I drove home. And I think I shed a tear or two. But my tears were nothing compared to my mom’s – she  sobbed for me, with me. Billy broke her heart that day too. She empathized, loved that deeply.

Sometimes I think she loved us too much. Sacrificed more than is healthy. Kirk just told me that it was only when we were in college that mom told him she didn’t like pizza. Or melted cheese in most forms. You’re talking about a family that probably had pizza once a week. Then I asked my dad whether he made her omelettes without cheese—“omelettes need cheese” he responded. But he added that she came to like a minimal amount of cheese. Their cheese compromise, I guess.

On the subject of recipes, I wanted to think about my mom’s recipe for happiness. Because I think she was truly happy. Happiness is big these days. It’s a movement/an industry even. But I think my mom was ahead of the curve in knowing how to get there. And here’s what I think her seven-part, secret formula included.

I mentioned service. I’ve mentioned family and friends. I mentioned faith—and here I would say that besides going to church regularly, mom had her prayer list. Here in Chicago, she and my dad would walk along Lake Michigan in the morning, and stop at a bench for prayers. Her list of prayers was carefully prioritized. The family member or friend in most trouble went at the top. Kirk says he occasionally prompted recalibrations himself, “feeling good mom—lower me down; or having some problems, can you raise me up a little higher?”

By the way, my dad was either much more efficient or somewhat less holy. While my mom prayed away for 4 or 5 minutes, his prayers lasted about 30 seconds.

But my dad is the next ingredient to my mom’s happiness. They were married for 47 years. They epitomized all the “in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad” stuff. My dad cared for her when she had breast cancer. He was her supportive partner throughout her career—doing her PowerPoints, fixing her computer. She did the same for him—supporting him in his career. And they loved their life together—hanging out in piano bars, throwing dinner parties, spending time with family and friends, taking those walks along Lake Michigan.

Many of you know—and my father admits—he can be a difficult personality at times. Shall we say a bit overbearing. But my mother saw mainly his wonderful qualities—considered him the prickly but noble Yul Brenner in the King and I. Wanted to dance with him as long as she could.

And dance is another piece of my mom’s puzzle. Ingredient number five is that my mom was a mover. Not a marathoner or yoga maven or golfer. But she loved to move, to dance to Motown and Jazz and I think she was even grooving to Daft Punk at Carmel and Keller’s wedding last summer. Her walks and her dancing and her hugs were about the joy of the human body in motion.

But she also understood the importance of rest. Ingredient number 6 is the way my mom took it easy. Removed herself even from the world and pressures around her. When we were kids this often took the form of Harlequin romances. This might sound crazy for someone with the intellect needed to run a 30,000-student school district and who could hold forth on all manner of public debates. But my mom loved trashy romance novels. We had stacks of them in our closets. Later, she could be found spending significant amounts of time in front of Entertainment Tonight.

But I think all this low-brow escaping reflected a high level of wisdom. About the need to recharge. To unplug. There’s a wellness and wellbeing movement these days as people feel their lives are too packed. My mom had the wellbeing thing down ages ago. Especially after she went through chemo 20 years ago with breast cancer, she knew she had to pace herself. Knew, in a way, how to make her sweetness sustainable.

That also had something to do with actually eating plenty of sweets. Chocolate chip cookies with lots of milk. Half moons. Ice cream.

She loved the sweetness of life, and she saw it all around her. This is the final ingredient. A positive outlook. Literally, eyes open to wonder and light. And acting as a mirror to show others all the beauty and joy around them. That’s what her bright-eyed smile did for us throughout her life.

Did even the night before she died. People at Mike and Dorothea’s party Saturday said she was beaming. And she was happy. Those ingredients were all mixing together. Relaxing, finally, having retired from a lifetime of service. Moving to music. With dear family and friends. With my dad. Appreciating the joy all around her.

And then faith. Because I believe my mom’s sudden death at perhaps the highest point in her life was a kind of gift from God. As hard as it is for all of us who now miss her, especially my dad, there is something perfect in the way she died. Without pain. Without a drawn-out decline that would have burdened those she loved. Having finished a life of good works. Having raised all her children to good places.

Martha Frances Frauenheim died in the arms of her beloved husband Ed Frauenheim. At St. Frances hospital. Right at the feast of St. Martha—who prompted Jesus to say “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live a new life.”

My mom used to say—usually over a chocolate chip cookie—“It’s like dying and going to heaven.” Mom, I trust you are there. As your friend Elena White put it, “If Marty isn’t in heaven, the rest of us are big trouble.”