When I was a teenager, constant change was exciting and fun. I got to try new things and be spontaneous without consequence. Now, it is unstable, uncertain, scary and full of consequences that could change my life forever. Today my boss decided to (finally) let me know that he was going to let me go. We talked last Wednesday in the midst of my chaos with the loss of my beloved friend and cousin, Delaine, about having different ideas about how things should work in my current position. I was honest, so I was let go. How does that work? Anyway, I am in a strange way relieved that I am not stressed on a daily basis about what his, another girl on my team and another girl on the opposite teams moods will be like. I am going to quote Twilight just to irritate you guys but their "mood swings were giving me whiplash," man! I know I am a crazy, moody, exciting, fun, charismatic, bitchy, assertive, opinionated and loving person, but DAMN! I can control that shit at work! These people, it's like no one told them to turn off the faucet.
Anyway, I left with a friend helping carry a few of my belongings out and she was angry about the way things turned out. In fact, many people were angry about the way things turned out. I am 100% flattered that SO many people are being so supportive of me and the tiny impact I might have had in my short six months of employment there. But strangely, I am relieved. I am feeling better that I don't have to stress out about who is going to be in a bad mood today and who is going to scream at me for being imperfect and not learning exactly the way that they do (since this is how we all learn, right?). I am relieved. In fact, there is a possible job opening on the "other side" of the building where team work, people with high energy and charisma are welcome to be the way they are and in fact encouraged because it brings in more students! I hope they won't look on me unfavorably when I apply considering I went to them today and told them what was happening and still expressed my interest. When those jobs post, I am still going to apply.
So, as I was loading my car with my belongings, I got a text from another friend. She asked if I was still looking for a job. I literally walked out the door and a new one opened. I am not sure if this job is the right fit, or the right job for that matter, but I got a boost. I felt better. And it reminded me AGAIN that I have an incredible group of people always looking out for me.
How on earth did I get so lucky? I am so blessed by GOD, yep, I said it, GOD, and the universe to be surrounded with wonderful people who are always watching out for me. And not only that, people who are willing to stand up when something is wrong too. What a good feeling.
So I have decided that for now, I am meant to focus on school (I have to pay for my classes. Free ones would have started next month. Boo.), yoga and blogging. I do love to write more than I ever thought and it is coming through when I speak to my few faithful followers!
This is your lighter load, my friends. Just a brief update without taking you into the depths of emotion today. Sometimes a lighter load is a little easier to carry...
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Story of An Irishman
On April 6, 2011, my dear friend and cousin died of a disease that has no cure yet. For confidentiality reasons, we won't go into details. Del was 34 years old and well, very Irish. We Irish folk are very proud. Since we are getting in the stuff a little, why not be a little more honest, my dear cousin isn't actually my blood cousin. His biological mother and my mother were very good friends long before we were even a thought in any ones mind. So it goes a little something like this...
On October 8, 1975 a beautiful little girl named Michaela was born. That's me. :) Exactly one year later, a beautiful curly haired boy was born. That's Delaine. Anyway, he was my first birthday present and we were bound together from that point on.
He lived with his parents, Billy and Susie, both of which liked to have interesting and fun themed parties. When they did, we would come over and play while the adults "partied." Delaine had this bed that was a bunk bed, but it was shaped like a castle. The drawbridge was one bed and the top of the castle was the other. I loved it and wished I had one just like it. His first and favorite band at the age of eight was Heart. Yes, the girls rock band, Heart. Mine was Pat Benetar. We were two peas in a pod.
We continued to grow up, but never apart. By the time he was ten years old, his favorite band was Metallica. Yeah, this was the good Metallica - pre-BLACK. By the time he was twelve, his mother died of alcoholism; which she wouldn't control on her own. This obviously takes a big toll on a young boys life. She was on the streets and hard to locate on many occasions. His father had since divorced her and moved on.
Billy met Veronika around the time we were pre-teens. Veronika was from Germany and very beautiful. She loved Billy's love of music and love of a fun social life. They matched perfectly and are still together to this day. Thank God because what they needed to overcome together over the years would require a very strong relationship and strong shoulders to carry such large burdens.
Del managed to get in trouble as much as any kid of our kind did. Which was a lot. We hung out as much as we could over the years. He picked up the guitar and managed to play really well. I sang. We lived in different neighborhoods, but connected as often as possible. No matter where we lived, we managed to get in the same kind of trouble and have similar life experiences. We won't get into detail on those for fear that parents reading these might be afraid. We also fought with our parents and ran away from home from time to time, but always came back home in the end. This was the way our home lives worked. Not because of our parents, but because of who we were as young kids.
As we entered adulthood, Del was fortunate enough to travel and live in many different states in the US. I stayed in Denver and lived in many of the metropolitan cities. He would stop back in Denver from time to time and we would go to a local bar and sing karaoke (this would be me, not him), go to a party with our parents or even just have dinners with our parents. We just grew up like normal people. Or at least I thought we did.
We both stayed single until we were in our 30's. I managed to settle down with my now husband Jared, but Del didn't seem interested in settling down. He had moved to Florida for a job selling guitar music books. This seemed ideal to me for his personality and he loved it.
Before I got married, he started to call a bit more often and become a little bit more emotional in his calls. He was very sure to tell me he loved me in his calls and was very certain to stay in touch. He was coughing a lot and it didn't seem normal. Something was definitely wrong and it didn't take a genius to figure it out. He never mentioned anything except that the doctors thought he might have some mold growing in his lungs.
He came to Denver last year for my wedding. He was looking slightly thin, but was VERY happy and emotional about my decision to settle down. He was crying and hugging me a lot and we would sneak out for a quick smoke when no one was paying attention. It was the only chance I had to see him without having to be caught up in all the chaos a wedding can bring. Still, something was nagging at me that things were just not right. I knew something was wrong, but he didn't say anything.
Finally he got very ill at the end of the year and decided to come back to Denver. We were all relieved at his decision to come back since he had been laid off months before and his unemployment had run out. He also seemed to be getting sicker and sicker and would not stop smoking.
We would talk as often as possible. I am a part time graduate student and work full time, so my schedule is chaotic. Not that any of those things excuse the lack of communication, but it definitely hinders my ability to see most of my loved ones. We finally talked and set a day to connect and talk so I could ask questions about his illness.
When I arrived to pick him up, he warned me by phone about how thin he had become. The tumors (mold) had been taking the few things he did eat and by taking all the nutrients out of the food and growing out of control. He was not receiving much on his own. He was trying to build up his weight to a stable point so he could start chemotherapy to reduce the size of the tumors. And yes, still smoking.
He came around the corner and I swore I saw a skeleton. He was SO thin. I was very concerned immediately and knew that this was going downhill and very quickly. Time wasn't on our side. We went to a local restaurant called El Diablo and had a couple of drinks and talked a lot about his disease and how he contracted it. He was in another state and wasn't proud of his behavior, but he was not angry. He seemed totally content about how and why it happened and was just trying to be a person who was alive now. He talked about his ability to have dual citizenship in Ireland and about his mother, Susie. Which I have recently learned he doesn't talk about much. He kept smoking, of course, but not much. We were hanging out like we used to. Things didn't seem out of the ordinary, but something was telling me this would be the last time I would see him.
We decided to go to the bar where my brother Marcus works. Marcus came out and saw Delaine and chatted with us for a few minutes. Our day was coming to an end and quickly. I drove Del to hang out with his step mother for the evening and made him promise to call me when he started chemo. I never got that call.
The next call I got was from Billy two and half weeks later. I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I didn't answer because I was scared. I listened to the voice mail that followed on that Friday evening and it said that Del was very sick and in the hospital. I couldn't move. My soul mate was dying. I knew he was and I knew I should have called sooner and didn't.
It was later in the evening, so I didn't leave my house until Saturday. I went to the hospital the next morning to find my friend on life support with tubes coming out of his neck and arms, sleeping. He was in a coma that he agreed to go into in order to help with the trachea tubes. I sat and held his hand and talked to him. Told him I loved him and watched in disbelief as precious moments passed with the remaining moments of his life in them. His parents and the doctors had decided earlier that they were going to meet on Tuesday to discuss his fate.
The next day, I went back. He was still lying there the same, tubes, skinny, ill and in a coma. I cried and cried and as I looked up, he opened his eyes. I couldn't believe he opened his eyes. He was trying to focus on my face and recognize who I was. The nurse came in and began asking normal questions like "do you know what day it is?" and "do you know where you are?" He nodded and seemed to know what was going on. I thought he was OK. I had an exchange of words with the nurse and asked her to call his father. She did and everyone was so happy to see him awake. He was coming around and we were all happy to see him. As all of this was happening, the number of visitors was growing around us.
We hung around on Monday and Tuesday, but his vitals weren't getting better and the outlook wasn't good. He was still surviving on life support. His father needed to talk to him so he could decide what he wanted to do. On Monday night, they talked and Del said he was tired of fighting. They started slowly removing him from life support on Tuesday and then fully on Wednesday. He passed away one hour after they fully removed him.
Maybe I didn't focus enough on how many people Delaine was able to connect with in his life. Let me do that real quickly. Everywhere we went, he knew someone. Wait, let's dig a little deeper. You know that story where the little kid in school falls down and everyone makes fun of her when she is on the ground and then one kid comes along and helps that kid up? Del is the one who helps you up. The rules in the ICU at Denver Health Hospital are two people in the room at a time. Do you know how many people were in his room at any given time? Sometimes 20. People playing the guitar for him, big, burly, tattooed men you would never see crying were standing beside him sobbing with absolute disbelief that their friend was about to die. He knew EVERYONE. And I mean EVERYONE. And not just knew, he made you feel like you were the only person in the world. And if that wasn't enough, you were the only person in the world that mattered. He was special. He knew how to make everyone feel like they mattered. Because everyone does matter. No matter what we have all done, when we did it, who we did it to, we all matter. And he knew how to make that come alive.
So, now back to Billy. Wow, Billy. What on this earth did he do to deserve such heartache and pain in this life? He was always good to everyone, took care of everyone, loved his son like he was the only kid on the planet, what did he do to deserve this? Well, sadly, I have no good answer, my friends. He did nothing wrong. Nothing. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Karma can't be true in this case, because he would be living a long, fruitful life with the people he loves if that were the case. He did nothing wrong!
So when he told me today as I dropped off the final slide show of photo's for Del's funeral tomorrow that he hadn't the heart to even go through Del's pockets to find another friends phone number to notify them in Florida, my heart stopped. When I call him (Billy) and hear his heart breaking over the phone, I have no answers to explain why such a horrific thing can happen to anyone. Why is it when all you do is love and try to help people that you get a pile of steaming shit back in return? Well, we just don't know. Things just happen. Yeah, shitty answer, right? I wish I had a better one for you! There isn't one. It breaks my heart that things ended this way for such wonderful people. I can't make sense of it. I can't put it together. I have nothing. There is no logical reasoning for it. To see other people go through this kind of pain is almost more painful than the situation itself. People don't deserve this. Life just happens. It's not fair, it's not equal.
However, the one thing I did learn in all of this horrific pain and sorrow? As I was working with my husband to put together this final tribute to Delaine in a slide show, the song choice Billy made was perfect. The photo's work chronologically and are done with the Beatles Golden Slumber, Carry That Weight and finally The End. It was one of the most emotionally challenging things I have ever had to do to put this thing together. And I am blessed to have been a part of this mans life. I am blessed to have known a person who should have been more angry but wasn't. I am blessed to have been someone HE was proud of. I am blessed to have known him. Period. He changed my life. He helped me realize through life and death how petty some things are and how important others things are. He made me realize how much I would always miss him and remember how important he was to me.
As John Lennon Says...
And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.
On October 8, 1975 a beautiful little girl named Michaela was born. That's me. :) Exactly one year later, a beautiful curly haired boy was born. That's Delaine. Anyway, he was my first birthday present and we were bound together from that point on.
He lived with his parents, Billy and Susie, both of which liked to have interesting and fun themed parties. When they did, we would come over and play while the adults "partied." Delaine had this bed that was a bunk bed, but it was shaped like a castle. The drawbridge was one bed and the top of the castle was the other. I loved it and wished I had one just like it. His first and favorite band at the age of eight was Heart. Yes, the girls rock band, Heart. Mine was Pat Benetar. We were two peas in a pod.
We continued to grow up, but never apart. By the time he was ten years old, his favorite band was Metallica. Yeah, this was the good Metallica - pre-BLACK. By the time he was twelve, his mother died of alcoholism; which she wouldn't control on her own. This obviously takes a big toll on a young boys life. She was on the streets and hard to locate on many occasions. His father had since divorced her and moved on.
Billy met Veronika around the time we were pre-teens. Veronika was from Germany and very beautiful. She loved Billy's love of music and love of a fun social life. They matched perfectly and are still together to this day. Thank God because what they needed to overcome together over the years would require a very strong relationship and strong shoulders to carry such large burdens.
Del managed to get in trouble as much as any kid of our kind did. Which was a lot. We hung out as much as we could over the years. He picked up the guitar and managed to play really well. I sang. We lived in different neighborhoods, but connected as often as possible. No matter where we lived, we managed to get in the same kind of trouble and have similar life experiences. We won't get into detail on those for fear that parents reading these might be afraid. We also fought with our parents and ran away from home from time to time, but always came back home in the end. This was the way our home lives worked. Not because of our parents, but because of who we were as young kids.
As we entered adulthood, Del was fortunate enough to travel and live in many different states in the US. I stayed in Denver and lived in many of the metropolitan cities. He would stop back in Denver from time to time and we would go to a local bar and sing karaoke (this would be me, not him), go to a party with our parents or even just have dinners with our parents. We just grew up like normal people. Or at least I thought we did.
We both stayed single until we were in our 30's. I managed to settle down with my now husband Jared, but Del didn't seem interested in settling down. He had moved to Florida for a job selling guitar music books. This seemed ideal to me for his personality and he loved it.
Before I got married, he started to call a bit more often and become a little bit more emotional in his calls. He was very sure to tell me he loved me in his calls and was very certain to stay in touch. He was coughing a lot and it didn't seem normal. Something was definitely wrong and it didn't take a genius to figure it out. He never mentioned anything except that the doctors thought he might have some mold growing in his lungs.
He came to Denver last year for my wedding. He was looking slightly thin, but was VERY happy and emotional about my decision to settle down. He was crying and hugging me a lot and we would sneak out for a quick smoke when no one was paying attention. It was the only chance I had to see him without having to be caught up in all the chaos a wedding can bring. Still, something was nagging at me that things were just not right. I knew something was wrong, but he didn't say anything.
Finally he got very ill at the end of the year and decided to come back to Denver. We were all relieved at his decision to come back since he had been laid off months before and his unemployment had run out. He also seemed to be getting sicker and sicker and would not stop smoking.
We would talk as often as possible. I am a part time graduate student and work full time, so my schedule is chaotic. Not that any of those things excuse the lack of communication, but it definitely hinders my ability to see most of my loved ones. We finally talked and set a day to connect and talk so I could ask questions about his illness.
When I arrived to pick him up, he warned me by phone about how thin he had become. The tumors (mold) had been taking the few things he did eat and by taking all the nutrients out of the food and growing out of control. He was not receiving much on his own. He was trying to build up his weight to a stable point so he could start chemotherapy to reduce the size of the tumors. And yes, still smoking.
He came around the corner and I swore I saw a skeleton. He was SO thin. I was very concerned immediately and knew that this was going downhill and very quickly. Time wasn't on our side. We went to a local restaurant called El Diablo and had a couple of drinks and talked a lot about his disease and how he contracted it. He was in another state and wasn't proud of his behavior, but he was not angry. He seemed totally content about how and why it happened and was just trying to be a person who was alive now. He talked about his ability to have dual citizenship in Ireland and about his mother, Susie. Which I have recently learned he doesn't talk about much. He kept smoking, of course, but not much. We were hanging out like we used to. Things didn't seem out of the ordinary, but something was telling me this would be the last time I would see him.
We decided to go to the bar where my brother Marcus works. Marcus came out and saw Delaine and chatted with us for a few minutes. Our day was coming to an end and quickly. I drove Del to hang out with his step mother for the evening and made him promise to call me when he started chemo. I never got that call.
The next call I got was from Billy two and half weeks later. I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I didn't answer because I was scared. I listened to the voice mail that followed on that Friday evening and it said that Del was very sick and in the hospital. I couldn't move. My soul mate was dying. I knew he was and I knew I should have called sooner and didn't.
It was later in the evening, so I didn't leave my house until Saturday. I went to the hospital the next morning to find my friend on life support with tubes coming out of his neck and arms, sleeping. He was in a coma that he agreed to go into in order to help with the trachea tubes. I sat and held his hand and talked to him. Told him I loved him and watched in disbelief as precious moments passed with the remaining moments of his life in them. His parents and the doctors had decided earlier that they were going to meet on Tuesday to discuss his fate.
The next day, I went back. He was still lying there the same, tubes, skinny, ill and in a coma. I cried and cried and as I looked up, he opened his eyes. I couldn't believe he opened his eyes. He was trying to focus on my face and recognize who I was. The nurse came in and began asking normal questions like "do you know what day it is?" and "do you know where you are?" He nodded and seemed to know what was going on. I thought he was OK. I had an exchange of words with the nurse and asked her to call his father. She did and everyone was so happy to see him awake. He was coming around and we were all happy to see him. As all of this was happening, the number of visitors was growing around us.
We hung around on Monday and Tuesday, but his vitals weren't getting better and the outlook wasn't good. He was still surviving on life support. His father needed to talk to him so he could decide what he wanted to do. On Monday night, they talked and Del said he was tired of fighting. They started slowly removing him from life support on Tuesday and then fully on Wednesday. He passed away one hour after they fully removed him.
Maybe I didn't focus enough on how many people Delaine was able to connect with in his life. Let me do that real quickly. Everywhere we went, he knew someone. Wait, let's dig a little deeper. You know that story where the little kid in school falls down and everyone makes fun of her when she is on the ground and then one kid comes along and helps that kid up? Del is the one who helps you up. The rules in the ICU at Denver Health Hospital are two people in the room at a time. Do you know how many people were in his room at any given time? Sometimes 20. People playing the guitar for him, big, burly, tattooed men you would never see crying were standing beside him sobbing with absolute disbelief that their friend was about to die. He knew EVERYONE. And I mean EVERYONE. And not just knew, he made you feel like you were the only person in the world. And if that wasn't enough, you were the only person in the world that mattered. He was special. He knew how to make everyone feel like they mattered. Because everyone does matter. No matter what we have all done, when we did it, who we did it to, we all matter. And he knew how to make that come alive.
So, now back to Billy. Wow, Billy. What on this earth did he do to deserve such heartache and pain in this life? He was always good to everyone, took care of everyone, loved his son like he was the only kid on the planet, what did he do to deserve this? Well, sadly, I have no good answer, my friends. He did nothing wrong. Nothing. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Karma can't be true in this case, because he would be living a long, fruitful life with the people he loves if that were the case. He did nothing wrong!
So when he told me today as I dropped off the final slide show of photo's for Del's funeral tomorrow that he hadn't the heart to even go through Del's pockets to find another friends phone number to notify them in Florida, my heart stopped. When I call him (Billy) and hear his heart breaking over the phone, I have no answers to explain why such a horrific thing can happen to anyone. Why is it when all you do is love and try to help people that you get a pile of steaming shit back in return? Well, we just don't know. Things just happen. Yeah, shitty answer, right? I wish I had a better one for you! There isn't one. It breaks my heart that things ended this way for such wonderful people. I can't make sense of it. I can't put it together. I have nothing. There is no logical reasoning for it. To see other people go through this kind of pain is almost more painful than the situation itself. People don't deserve this. Life just happens. It's not fair, it's not equal.
However, the one thing I did learn in all of this horrific pain and sorrow? As I was working with my husband to put together this final tribute to Delaine in a slide show, the song choice Billy made was perfect. The photo's work chronologically and are done with the Beatles Golden Slumber, Carry That Weight and finally The End. It was one of the most emotionally challenging things I have ever had to do to put this thing together. And I am blessed to have been a part of this mans life. I am blessed to have known a person who should have been more angry but wasn't. I am blessed to have been someone HE was proud of. I am blessed to have known him. Period. He changed my life. He helped me realize through life and death how petty some things are and how important others things are. He made me realize how much I would always miss him and remember how important he was to me.
As John Lennon Says...
And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Day 1
Well, after a long two weeks of a very close friend and family members death, another bad boss experience and job failure, a successful end to another graduate class and a creation of a DVD for Delaine's funeral video, here I am. At the beginning of a blog. I can't believe it has taken me so many years to start an actual blog considering I talk like I write and I love to talk and write. So, here goes nothing...
Sometimes I wonder how the most of us can sit around and deal with the many struggles of life and difficult human beings. When we were younger, everything seemed so simple and easy. But as I have gotten older I have found conflict to be a regular part of my life. In addition to that, I have a ridiculously strong support system. The combination of both help me learn a lot.
The first thing is, conflict is inevitable. Whether it be with your family, your significant other, your boss, your friends, yourself, your computer, your dog or cat or whoever else you can think of. It never ends. Second, how you deal with that conflict is KEY to survival. Many of us like to crawl into a hole and stay there until the rest of the world disappears, but things just don't work that way. We have to learn to manage what we have. Fortunately, conflict is a positive thing and will help us grow. So, learning how to communicate effectively and in a way that doesn't make everyone around you want to murder you is important. I am still working on the latter. Third, having that ridiculously strong support system I just referred to? Yeah, that is critical. I know a lot of us aren't communicating, charming, beautiful, loving and outreaching individuals, but you are always able to connect with someone. I promise. Connections can always be made.
Sometimes I just like to watch people and see how they walk, talk, interact, and even handle any given situation. You can tell a lot about people simply by the way they behave. If you like the way people behave, start stalking them. I am kidding. Ask how they are doing. See if you have common interests. Do the craziest thing ever - SMILE. Don't be creepy though. We can all stare and act weird and that doesn't make anyone want to be your friend. I am sure EVERYONE has watched enough TV to see how to interact with people. If you haven't, where the hell have you been? You have to be on the Internet, right? Something? Help me out here...
Anyway, I guess I am just spewing about conflict because its the one thing I study constantly but never figure out. As a conflict practitioner and mediator, I am surrounded by conflict. WE ALL ARE. It goes with the job. So, just be aware that its OK to have conflict, just try not to run from it and try to manage it the best way you can. And before you know it, it will be over. Until the next one...
Sometimes I wonder how the most of us can sit around and deal with the many struggles of life and difficult human beings. When we were younger, everything seemed so simple and easy. But as I have gotten older I have found conflict to be a regular part of my life. In addition to that, I have a ridiculously strong support system. The combination of both help me learn a lot.
The first thing is, conflict is inevitable. Whether it be with your family, your significant other, your boss, your friends, yourself, your computer, your dog or cat or whoever else you can think of. It never ends. Second, how you deal with that conflict is KEY to survival. Many of us like to crawl into a hole and stay there until the rest of the world disappears, but things just don't work that way. We have to learn to manage what we have. Fortunately, conflict is a positive thing and will help us grow. So, learning how to communicate effectively and in a way that doesn't make everyone around you want to murder you is important. I am still working on the latter. Third, having that ridiculously strong support system I just referred to? Yeah, that is critical. I know a lot of us aren't communicating, charming, beautiful, loving and outreaching individuals, but you are always able to connect with someone. I promise. Connections can always be made.
Sometimes I just like to watch people and see how they walk, talk, interact, and even handle any given situation. You can tell a lot about people simply by the way they behave. If you like the way people behave, start stalking them. I am kidding. Ask how they are doing. See if you have common interests. Do the craziest thing ever - SMILE. Don't be creepy though. We can all stare and act weird and that doesn't make anyone want to be your friend. I am sure EVERYONE has watched enough TV to see how to interact with people. If you haven't, where the hell have you been? You have to be on the Internet, right? Something? Help me out here...
Anyway, I guess I am just spewing about conflict because its the one thing I study constantly but never figure out. As a conflict practitioner and mediator, I am surrounded by conflict. WE ALL ARE. It goes with the job. So, just be aware that its OK to have conflict, just try not to run from it and try to manage it the best way you can. And before you know it, it will be over. Until the next one...
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