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.”

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.

***

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.

*** 

Trying in 2014--Introduction

Over the next several weeks, FrauenTimes is publishing a series of blog items about 2014, a trying year.

Trying in 2014--Introduction

It was a trying year for us.

My mom died, Rowena got diagnosed with breast cancer and we ran into financial troubles. We had car problems, worries about job security, and body aches I couldn’t seem to shake.

People around the world face much worse than our little San Francisco family did in 2014.

Still, this year was one of the hardest I’ve ever faced. I wondered at times how I, how we as a family, would hold it together.

The answer was at once timeless and surprising. We did our best to stay on our feet, people around us propped us up and faith fueled and fortified us.

Ultimately, we not only avoided falling to pieces but came away more durable and more connected. 

What often felt like a cursed year left us feeling blessed.