Grateful for happiness?

Posted on December 5, 2014 by curibe2014

Thanksgiving Table

Thanksgiving was at our house this year and in a sense it was the most relaxing one yet. This is the first year I wasn’t stressed about making the turkey since taking over that duty from my mom, more than a decade ago. My sister and I have tried to make it a bunch of different ways but slathering a mixture of butter and herbs de Provence between the skin and the meat makes the juiciest most delicious turkey so we stick with that recipe. My broccoli gratin was made in advance and the rest was potluck so while twenty-eight of us would gather around the table this year, I spent the day taking a walk, watching football and generally just waiting for the turkey to be done.

Thanksgiving day was warm, sunny and stunningly beautiful. My California sycamore seemed to glisten in the sun even as the leaves dropped gently to the ground. It was the kind of day Gus would have been running around the yard, kicking at leaves, agonizing over how long much longer he’d have to wait to dive into the turkey. I imagined his legs, which would have been by longer now, draped over the end of the couch as we watched the football games or episodes of Twilight Zone. I imagined I would have been trying to capture the family Christmas card picture while none of the boys cooperated. I willed myself not to cry.

Each year, before sitting for dinner, we go around the room taking turns expressing something for which we are most grateful for that year. Over the years, this tradition has taken on a life of its own as I imagine all traditions do and going around the room has been taking longer and longer because everyone seems to want to make a speech. I decided I would limit everyone to a single word this year. To make sure we were all listening to each other, I would ask that each person first say the word just said by the person next to them before adding their own and that we try not to repeat any sentiment or object of our gratitude already expressed. It would be a wonderful exercise in listening and being concise.

As the time neared for me to start off our expressions of gratitude I wondered what feeling or thing I would choose and if I could mean it. Grief can be unpredictable and devious and so while I thought I had somehow learned to co-exist with it, it has turned around and poked at me with much more ferocity than I expected this year. I have been missing Gus terribly this holiday season. I feel constantly sad and on the verge of tears most days. Another holiday without him, another year gone by. I reminded myself that Gus would not want me to be sad or make others sad and so when it was time, I slapped a smile across my face and gathered everyone around the table. After thanking everyone for joining us again, I said I was grateful for happiness and I began to mean it.

Allowing happiness to enter into our midst has been as difficult as the loss itself. Being happy seems wrong somehow as though it is an act of betrayal or a sign that we are “over it”. There is no getting over your losses, I still miss my grandmother now deceased thirty years, I miss my grandfather, my mother-in-law and I can’t imagine ever not missing Gus but I have to make a choice. I can either to wallow in the sadness or bask in the sunlight of happiness. I choose happiness because that is the best way to honor my baby boy who was always happy even when he was sick. The truth is there is much to be happy about, lots of “upsides”. I have great friends, an awesome family, a wonderful husband and two amazing, talented, funny older boys. I have lost weight and feel great about myself. I have extraordinary parking karma, finding a spot near where I need to go even when the lot is full. I have a job a like and I am taking a shot at doing what I always wanted to do – write. I am finally in a book club through which I was introduced to incredible books and authors. We have been fortunate to have had many opportunities to travel this year. We skied in Utah, visited my sister in New York, cruised through the Panama Canal, partied in Vegas a couple of times and next week we will head to Seattle to watch the Seahawks take on the 49niners. We must be happy because everywhere we go, Gus is with us. Our most recent and obvious encounter with him was when we stopped in Cabo San Lucas at end of our family cruise. Of all the places we could have chosen to stop for breakfast we just happen to pick the one restaurant that is permeated by the image of a figure with outstretched hands in a sign of victory much like Gus’ memorial picture. Thank you Gus for giving us happiness by your life on earth and from above in heaven.

Gus’ memorial picture

Gus image on chairs

Gus image on base of sinks

Gus image on the window outside. Gus with his brothers again.

Our Camino – Arzua to Rua – April 5, 2013

Posted on June 12, 2014 by curibe2014

Everywhere I look – Mothers and Sons

The walk from Arzua to Rua was 20Km, just one kilometer more than what JB advised in his guidebook but we cursed him anyway. A kilometer IS a kilometer. The distances between our stops have shortened from the original 25 kilometers to only between 15 or 20 now, but it feels the same or our pace has slowed. Perhaps we just don’t really want to get there. Either way the last 5 kilometers reduced us to petulant children, repeating every few steps, “are we there yet?”

We joined up with a large group of pilgrims and then collectively cursed JB as we all practically barged into a random Spaniard’s home having taking a wrong turn along the road. To be fair, it was not JB’s fault, we all just missed the marker clearly visible below the cold beer sign (HELLOOO) but he seemed like a reasonable target for our exhaustion. We came across memorials for fallen pilgrims along the route or for those in whose name someone else was walking. We left Gus’ prayer card or his cross in their care as often as we could.

The teenagers we’d seen yesterday was even more impressive today as we met up with them only to discover that the group had only ever consisted of six women and the three young men in wheelchairs. Their chaperone told me that the men we’d seen with them the day before had materialized then like every other time they were in most need of upper body strength, to carry the wheelchair across a swollen creek or to help push them up a particularly steep hill especially because one of the wheels had broken. So it was our turn to help them for a while. We’d just happened to catch up with them at the foot of another steep hill.

We practiced being cute, holding hands and taking our picture while we walked down the hill (it only took five tries). Santiago is just another 20km away!

Holding Hands

Along the Camino

Adding Gus to a shrine

A Gus cross at another shrine

Remembering a fellow pilgrim

The Great Purge

Posted on March 31, 2014 by curibe2014

Two weeks after the worst day in my life, I went back to work. That first day I hid in my cubicle for eight hours holding back tears, pushing papers from one side of the desk to the other and tried to remember what I did for a living. I found myself staring at the clock dreading for “three” to roll around. With our older boys in their twenties and Gus gone, it would be the first time in twenty years that I would not have to rush out to pick up a child from school, race to a practice or a play date, do homework, or in Gus’ case dash from doctor’s appointment to doctor’s appointment. I stayed until four that day and then went home hoping I’d let enough time pass. I hadn’t. With nothing better to do I ambled around the house impatient and sad. At the corner of the family room was Gus’ bookshelf still crammed with his school supplies, books and toys. I decided it would make a great place for a permanent memorial. Right there in the corner of where we ate and watched tv so that he was still in our midst.

I began by clearing off the shelves and collecting anything that Gus had ever used, slightly touched or even glanced at. I planned to organize it all and put it in his room which is kept closed and nearly like he left it – probably until I die. Since keeping all of his pencils, crayons or games would be ridiculous, I resolved to keep only the “special” ones -the ones he used the most. As I sunk deeper into my task I came across boxes of other things that with him gone we’d no longer need. The assortment of paints for the pinewood derby cars (apparently we’d bought more and more of them each year), boxes and boxes of crayons, paint brushes, coloring books, bottles of glue and stacks of long-forgotten games. As I tossed or boxed the many items that I thought were Gus’, I realized that many more were mine. Soon, I was organizing not just his shelves, but the immediately adjacent closet, then the cabinet across the room, the pantry next to it, the laundry room, the linen closet, the other linen closet, the outdoor tent, the garden shed and finally the two holiday decoration sheds. And so the great purge began.

I blame William-Sonoma for convincing me that I absolutely needed that express rice cooker I was always too afraid to use and a multitude of “specialized” kitchen gadgets like a mandolin (I might have used that thing once). I blame Pottery Barn for the collections of nick-knacks appropriately “grouped” and displayed throughout the house and for filling my linen closet with “seasonal” sheets and comforters. I blame Martha Stewart for the all the ridiculous “matching” holiday collections and decorations like the “mummy in a web” for Halloween and the Santa Clauses, Easter rabbits and wreaths that contributed to that special “a Holiday just threw up all over the house look”. I mostly blame myself for believing that I ever needed any of it to heighten our family experience. That my perfect family was somehow more complete in a expertly staged photo-ready setting. Over the year I made at least ten trips to the local shelter with the car filled to the brim (trunk, back seats and passenger seat) with neatly arranged boxes of the useless and irrelevant stuff that once crammed rooms, got piled on shelves and clogged up closets. At one point I was even asked if I was moving. At the time I blushed and muttered that it was a long story. The truth is though that I am moving – from the perfect family Gus era to the nearly perfect family “after” Gus era.

In this new era, it is not the setting that will take center stage but the memory of the experiences we had and the ones we are yet to have. The less “stuff” I have, the more room I make to bask in the glory of our family love (Gus’s love) and the love of the people that are still in our future. I expect the great purge to continue.