Taking Stock

60: (September 2019)

I just finished reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, a surgeon who gives a sobering examination of the dying process. He notes that when people know they have limited time due to a terminal disease, they tend to focus on what really matters: family and friends. It brought back a vivid memory from a few years ago, when I got to experience what I’d feel like emotionally if my life were about to end.

I was in a hospital emergency room with chest pain and had just been diagnosed with a large pulmonary embolism. After the doctor reported this to me, I asked him what the worst case scenario might be. He said, “Well, you die,” and then left the room. Now granted, it was 2AM, so maybe I missed something, or maybe he had to attend to someone else and meant to return to my room to finish the conversation. At any rate, I lay there fighting off sleep until 6AM when my family arrived, thinking that it might be my last few hours and that if I fell asleep it might be for forever.

That was actually a tremendous gift to me; I got to experience all the emotions I would have if my life was truly ending, only it wasn’t. It was quite an informative experience. At 6AM when the doctor came back in to speak with my family, they also asked what to expect. Only this time he said, “Well, you can die, except I gave her an injection to prevent that from happening.” Aha! Good to know!

I was sent home within hours. The valuable thing I learned through this was that I hadn’t been scared of dying. It was in fact comforting to feel at peace with my life and spiritual beliefs. But I did have the overwhelming wish to have at least another day so I could adequately thank all the people in my life who meant so much to me. I wanted to wrap everyone in a huge blanket of gratitude and love. And now I had my chance! I was given my life back, essentially the same as it had been before.

But did I do that—did I run around telling everyone how grateful I was to have them in my life? Maybe a little. Certainly to my daughters and husband. But now that I wasn’t actually about to expire, it felt awkward to gush all that emotion on extended family and friends. And so I allowed daily life—work, chores, all the minutiae of the day—to quickly rush in and distract me from pausing to tell people how much they matter.

Maybe the key is to express that through words and actions in lots of little ways, inserted into the swirl of daily life, in the busy-ness, in the everyday bustle. Perhaps little daily doses that gradually fill a cup of gratitude are what life is all about. In my heart, mine is already overflowing.

40: (September 1999)

It really happened. I have no “little” ones at home for most of the day now. Last year was a transition for me when my youngest daughter began kindergarten. This year completed the transition as she entered first grade.

One phase ended and another began, with no fanfare and few to notice, although the shift is both monumental and bittersweet to me. School started and my role as a mother changed significantly, yet there was no formality and no one to hand me a change in my job description (let alone a promotion or paycheck, for that matter). My role as a mother simply evolves over time, and as all mothers, I must grapple with the changes, deal with the sense of loss over what was, and determine if I am doing a good job on my own. It is hard to be one’s own critic when it matters so much. Sometimes it seems like it would be easier to have a boss.

Was I a good mother to them during their early childhood years? Psychologists often state the importance of a child’s earliest years for his or her whole future. My mistakes, my successes, and my inability or ability to be perfectly loving to them are now in the past. I cannot erase crabby days or times when I could have done a better job as their mother. I wish I could make the bad days disappear, but as my own boss, I have to face myself squarely, flaws and all. I can only hope I was good enough.

On the first day of school, my first-grader stopped in her tracks as she ran past me in the kitchen after breakfast. “Good job, Mommy,” she said. “Good job doing what?” I asked in surprise. “I don’t know,” she chirped, as she ran up the stairs to brush her teeth. Good job doing the breakfast dishes? Packing her lunch? I want to believe she meant good job being her Mom and taking care of her for all her “little” years. I want to believe she meant I’d done a good enough job to allow her to feel strong and confident and ready to test her budding wings.

Maybe she just meant the counter I was sponging looked clean, but I can dream, can’t I?

60-40:

The ultimate “good job” will be whether we’ve lived a good enough life in general, rather than whether we’ve done any particular thing favorably or not. We are so very flawed as humans. I still kick myself over times when I failed to be the mother my children deserved, but I find myself increasingly taking a measure of my life in its entirety, rather than focusing on specific days or years.

I think it boils down to whether we’ve loved enough—loved with abandon, loved deeply. Family, friends, strangers, people in need. Life is full of opportunities to sprinkle a day with loving gestures. Over a lifetime, they might just do the job.