Midriff Muse

Grief doesn’t keep a schedule. It doesn’t look in and ask: “is this an okay day for you? Cuz if it isn’t, I can come back another time.” Grief pretty much comes by when it needs to. I guess.

I knew this was coming and I thought I had it worked out. My plan was to finish my Sedona Series (the travelogue of our adult sibling vacation in Arizona last summer) before Thanksgiving. I was going to throw in a few more coffee pot pieces and on December 3rd, the one year anniversary, I was going to repost “We Lost One”.

Well, as it stands, I only have Parts 1 and 2 of the Sedona Series posted. Parts 3 and 4 are in my head and a jumble of notes here and there. Yesterday I did a coffee pot piece that didn’t require a lot of description. It was more about sentiment than vintage craftsmanship, but this particular coffee pot happens to reside on a little table in my living room sharing space with the picture of my brother Timmy, as a young man, that was resurrected for his memorial service. I included a picture of that little shrine in my piece. This morning there was a comment from Tricia, saying that Tim had been in her thoughts a lot lately. I echoed that and then Mary dropped by the site and said that she has been missing him too.

It has been a rainy day here today. Fibromyalgia has kicked my ass and humbled me again. I am sitting with my laptop and a heating pad and the itunes I’ve downloaded over the year to remember Timmy by: some John Prine, some Jim Croce, and “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues. Thanksgiving is next week and the reality has been looming at the edges and rims of all my thoughts for days now that our Thanksgiving gathering a year ago was the last time I saw Tim. So easy to take little morsels of conversation for granted, to give and receive hugs as though there will always be another one, to look at someone without the conception that it will be the last look.

One week after Thanksgiving will be the one year anniversary of Peggy calling me to tell me that Timmy had had a massive heart attack. I was ready to rush right there.

“Is he at Lakeland or did they take him to St. Luke’s?”

“Terry” she said, sensing my lack of comprehension, “He didn’t make it.”

I am to this day, on some level, still dumbfounded. My heart still spasms at the thought. I know that it is okay – has been – will be – but it is still not okay.
I don’t know why this should remain so raw. And it is not like this everyday. Many, many days, it is a smile with tender memories, but there are those days when grief still demands its due. This is one. So I am asking, if you would indulge me; walk with me awhile. And thank you ahead of time.

____________

From December 15, 2008 …

We lost one of our own. My brother, Timmy(top left), 52 years old, collapsed and died of a heart attack, catching us all by surprise. That was last Wednesday, December 3^rd. It seems incomprehensible that it has been over a week now. One of the things that always gets to me in the midst of the two most significant life events, birth and death, is that the rest of the world goes on as if nothing had happened. I want to yell out: “Hey! …. Hey! ….. Stop it!”

There are 11 of us and it feels strange as hell to have one gone. We have, each of us, from time to time secretly marveled at our seeming immunity. Our brood has existed intact for 38 years now, a 17 year span from oldest to youngest – no car accidents, no life threatening illnesses, no loss of limb or faculty, and even though our Dad passed at the age of 60 after living with lung cancer for five years, our mother is still with us, her attractiveness and cute little figure, belying the eleven pregnancies and some very tough years over the course of her own seven and one half decades.

I have been trying to write this piece off and on since around midnight on Monday night. Talk about wanting to get something right. So I rip off a few thoughts or phrases and then get frustrated because it’s too hard and switch to numbing myself with electronic solitaire. And while I know that my grief is real and I am entitled to it, I am also chastised by the selfishness of my focus when it is my sister-in-law, Jodie and my nephews, Andrew and Jack Thomas who must cope with the daily absence – each day reawakening to the reality that he who used to dwell with them no longer dwells there. The strange thing for me is this: I am the oldest of 11 – have been since the age of 17 – and I feel like one of my limbs is missing.

My sister Mary and I are the only ones who can refer to Tim as our little brother or younger brother. She was just 1 and I was not quite 3 when Tim joined us. Throughout those toddlerhood years he was often a source of giggles and an easy playmate. Mary had a story to share at the funeral service. It was about the time that she and Timmy were sitting on the back stoop, each with a bowl of strawberries to eat. When Mary finished her bowl and then lamented, Timmy scooped a spoonful from his own bowl and held it to her lips. Such things worked out to a pretty simple equation with him: “Oh, yours is all gone? I’ve still got some. Here!” Of course in later years, Tim would trade liberally on some of that good will with such antics as dunking his cookie in your cup of coffee as he walked by.

Tim’s prankishness was legend – not the mean kind – just the kind that caught you off guard and made you smile. One time he moved the suspended tennis ball hanging in our sister Peggy’s garage to insure that she parked in the right place. A receptionist from his work told me at the visitation of the time he rigged the phone with scotch tape so that when she lifted the handset to answer, the whole phone came with it. Our sister, Tricia who now hosts the annual Thanksgiving Dinner reports that she is still finding plastic caps from the water bottles showing up in her drawers and various other nooks and crannies.

One of my own stories is from the time that Tim was a groomsman in our brother Joe’s wedding, the summer of 1986. The ceremony was a Catholic High Mass and during the serving of communion, the groomsman filled the front pew on the right of the church, the bridesmaids on the left and as the communicants filed to the front of the church, they lined up in front of the pew on either side while waiting for the previous section to vacate the communion rail. As I stood waiting my turn, I felt myself pinched on the butt and I whipped my head around to be met by Timmy’s grin. He later told me that he and a fellow groomsman had been “girl-watching” as the communion line moved forward and when I rounded the corner of the pew, the other guy had elbowed Tim pointing me out. Tim had agreed with him that, yes, I was great looking but also informed him that I was his older sister and had just had a baby four months earlier. The guy didn’t believe him, so Tim felt that the best way to prove his relation to me was to pinch my butt and let the guy see my indignation turn to big sister irritation/grin. I think that Tim took a little pride in the fact that his sisters are/were attractive and enjoyed having some fun with that at another guy’s expense. I also think that he knew that in the split second before the indignation registers for a gal like me, there is that teeny, tiny little thrill to think that somebody still finds you pinchable.

The remarkable thing about our family, aside from the large number, is the fact that all but three of the 11 live within a fifty mile radius of the family home. In addition to spouses and significant others there are 25 grandchildren, 5 step-grandchildren, and 9 great grandchildren. Thanksgivings and Christmas Eves continue to be celebrated en masse and while 100% attendance is not guaranteed, a comfortable 2/3 majority is consistently present. Each year also has its share of birthday and graduation parties, weddings, showers etc. – life events that are celebrated. At any and every occasion for a gathering of the clan, Tim greeted you as though he had been waiting specifically for just your arrival.

As an entity, our family can be diva-ish. Many of our spouses would say that we are stubborn, that we have difficulty admitting we are wrong, that we never let you forget a weak moment, that we can be critical and judgmental, that we always take too long saying good-bye, and that we girls, in particular, have a certain neurosis about how we look and whether our outfit is working “for us or ag’in us”.

Every family has their skeletons, squabbles and less than stellar moments. What I have been learning through my own children is that most of the individual idiosyncrasies that my brothers and sisters and I can find irritating in one another are the things that our nieces and nephews find endearing and humorous. Watching their Moms or Dads interact in each other’s company in a way that reverts back to some childhood hierarchy revealing untold misbehaviors and quibbling is sometimes a funny, funny show. Such was the case this past February, gathered for Mom’s 75^th birthday, as we tried to shush each other and make each other obedient to get lined up in birth order for a family photo – as it turns out – the last photo of us all together.

The gift of Timmy’s passing has been the opportunity for us to have the ability to stand back and see how good we have all truly done. Throughout the five day odyssey that began with receiving the news on Wednesday through the funeral service on Monday, it seemed that our children and spouses kept gathering us all into metaphorical lifeboats and rowing everybody to safe shores again and again, solicitous of our needs and comfort. Our children – the grandchildren – the collective brood of our brood – demonstrated such soulful maturity in so many different ways. On the day of the wake, they grouped themselves to carpool to our sister Peggy’s, whose house became the central meeting place, to lay out and set up the buffet to be ready and waiting as we made our way back, exhausted and spent after five hours of sharing our sorrow, memories and tears with the hundreds and hundreds of people who came to mourn with us. Our children filled our plates and emptied our dishes and comforted each other in between with unyielding tenderness. It was such an unbelievable gift.

My brother Joe, who delivered an exquisite eulogy at the funeral service the next day, spoke of the number of people who remarked that they never heard Timmy say anything bad about anyone. Not only that, but if you yourself were starting to dog on someone, Tim had a way of just moving you along to something else. Tim just seemed to prefer waking up on the sunny side of the bed and staying there.

Many people use to think that Tim looked and sounded a lot like the actor, Sam Elliott, especially during the years when he had that thick mustache. Tim’s voice had that same deep, sort of unruffled drawl. I can’t believe I’m never going to hear that again, breaking through the din at family gatherings.

In his late teens and early twenties, Tim played the guitar. John Prine was on of his favorite artists. I wish I were better at doing some of these technical things. I would have liked to have set this up so that a John Prine song was playing in the background while you are reading this post, but for now, click this video.

Rest in peace, dear brother.

November 19th, 2009 | Tags: Add new tag, death of brother, grief, loss, Midlife Musings, sibling death | Category: Family, Me, Myself and I | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL