Forever Linked

I don't understand families that treat their family members badly and hurt each other. I don't understand families that don't keep strong ties. There are so many that seem to feel it's just an onerous duty to spend time together.

And then there are families like mine that love to be together and gladly travel great distances to do it, families like mine that find it an important part of their identities, that want to be in contact. The mothers in my family are always bonded to their children, as I am bonded to mine. We are forever linked not just by a family name and "blood," but by love and shared memories.

It's those memories that come back, the happy and the sad, to keep those links alive, even past death. I remember Leif every day, but there are so many different things that trigger memories. Tonight it was a show on television. Peter started watching a science fiction show that took place in space and featured a fighter pilot, just the kind of show Leif would have chosen, would have loved, and would have commented upon. The moment I saw the space ships I thought of him and how he would have liked it. I will likely never look at a sci fi show or movie again without associating it with him, or see NASA photo of outer space without remembering the NASA images he had on his computer, or see the stars and moon in the night sky without thinking of him.

While we were in Egypt we saw some "falling stars," and I've seen one more since we got home. Those I associated with both my sons, Leif, because they were in the heavens at night, Peter A. because of his interest in planetary defense against asteroids.

I am forever linked to my sons, or, at least for my lifetime.

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This "stairstep" photo of me with my sons was taken in Hawaii in the summer of 1980, when we were stopping there for a few days of vacation on the long move from Germany to Japan. Leif was five years old.

Dimensions of Sadness - Missing Leif

It's been a hard week and I've been posting simple posts of happier times, reflecting the way I wish life still were, not the way it is right now.

My sisters were coming to visit and I got the bright idea to take each of them on a cruise, with my mother. None of them had ever been on a cruise before and my sisters had always wanted to go. Mom is a world traveler that hasn't been on a trip outside the USA since November 2007, so I found a couple of inexpensive (great deals this time of year) short cruises to the Bahamas and booked them. I told everyone my one worry about it was the step up (or down when you come out) to the bathrooms in the staterooms.

We started the cruise with Mom and Lannay with very chilly weather, not at all like you'd expect for a cruise to the Bahamas, and we got to Nassau two hours late because right after we left Cape Canaveral, the ship had to return to port to disembark a passenger who had a life-threatening health crisis. We had a good time in Nassau, and at Coco Cay the next day, but Mom's back was bothering her and she seemed to have trouble walking at Cocoa Cay. I thought it was because she had stepped down a large step onto a water taxi too hard.

That night, the last night of the cruise, she got up in the night to use the bathroom and lost her balance. She fell into the bathroom hard and injured her back, but she didn't tell anyone. My sister Lannay, who was sharing the cabin, heard a noise but didn't find anything when she checked and Mom didn't tell her. She later said she didn't want me to know because I'd "have a hemorrhage."

We returned to Cape Canaveral the next morning, Monday the 23rd, and Mom was still having some back pain but not admitting she had fallen. We went to see the Bodies exhibit at MOSI, the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry, and had her in one of their wheelchairs she she didn't have to walk, but didn't know how bad off she was.

The next day, without our knowledge, she went to her doctor and told him about the fall, and had her back x-rayed. It wasn't until the next morning, Wednesday the 25th, that she told Lannay about her fall and by then she was in severe pain. I got another appointment with the doctor that afternoon and we found out she had another compression fracture in her spine. The doctor ordered her to lie flat on her back and to be up as little as possible, but she didn't follow orders and by Thursday she couldn't get up on her own and was in excruciating pain.

I had taken care of Mom when she broke her back with two compression fractures in 1992 and remembered how to get her up and walk her, and I got a wheel chair and walker checked out, but even with me staying there and helping her, by Friday evening the 27th, she was in such terrible pain that we had to call the Emergency Squad to transport her to the South Bay Hospital emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital and put on pain medications, given a CT scan, and the next day an MRI.

On Monday, March 2nd, she had a procedure called kyphoplasty to stabilize the fractured vertebra, but she was still in immense pain. By Wednesday they transferred her to the rehab center at Plaza West here in Sun City Center.

My sister Sherie arrived February 28th and has been so helpful in all the things we had to do for mom at the hospital and rehab center and at her house. I don't know how I would have gotten through this time without her. She was terrific.

All through this, I've been sick with a sinus infection, cough, and nasty sore throat. I've been exhausted, but had to keep going with so much to do. I still haven't unpacked from the cruise.

Today, I took Sherie to the airport. I was so sad to see her go. I really appreciated having her here, not only for all the help, but for the moral and emotional support. She had taken vacation to come here to go on the second cruise, and instead she helped rearrange and clean up at Mom's, visited rehab centers with me, made her own breakfasts and lunches, did dishes, and so much more. I knew I'd miss her when she left, but I wasn't prepared for how all the emotion of the past week and a half would hit me then.

Not only did all my worries about Mom, which had been buried under the work that had to be done, surface, but as it always does when I'm driving alone, the bottomless sadness about missing Leif came pummeling through. I cried all the way home, especially when I passed the exit that would take me to Bay Pines National Cemetery. I've been crying on and off all evening. I just can't shake it. I miss Leif so much! How could nearly 11 months have passed since he died? He helped me out so many times. Who will be there, now that he is not?

We will manage. We have family. We have friends. We are so much more fortunate in so many ways than many in this world, and we know that, but that knowledge doesn't take away the loss.

And I'm so worried about Mom living alone when she gets out of rehab and whether she's going to be able to manage, whether they can get her pain under control, what her future holds. I miss my sisters and having them here to buoy me up. I am so tired, emotionally and physically, still sick.

It will pass. I'll get well. Life will go on.

But so will loss.

I go along, busy, and being busy keeps my mind off things for awhile, but it always floods back. There are two times that it happens most often, when I am driving alone, and when I go outside at night, like taking out the garbage, or going somewhere, and I can see the sky. The night sky and the stars always remind me of Leif and I miss him terribly then.

I miss him terribly now.

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The photo above is of Leif and my mother on December 25, 2005 when he was showing her the cell phone we got her for Christmas . . . his idea.

Wishing Upon a Star

When I was a child, we often played outside until or even after dark, all year around, and enjoyed watching the "stars come out." We didn't have all the light pollution in Manhattan, Kansas then that's there now, and we could see a stupendous number of stars and the glorious Milky Way. I remember lying on my back and watching the stars in the summer, along with the fireflies that were numerous then.

I had a Little Golden Guide for Stars and in those days, I was fascinated with the heavens. I learned to find many of the constellations and planets and loved to watch for "shooting stars." One of the highlights of my childhood was seeing the beautiful Northern Lights twice, once in Canada and once an amazing display of red Northern Lights that came as far south as Manhattan, Kansas.

When I was in the fifth grade and had to do a report, I chose to do one on astronomy and called the university to find out if there was anyone who could help me. It turned out that just the person I needed lived all of one block from me. I called him up and "invited myself over." As an adult, I now wonder what he thought of some little fifth grade girl calling him up like that. I'm no longer sure, but I think his name was Jack Robinson. I wish I knew for sure, because he was great. He not only answered my questions but revealed that there was a small telescope on the roof of the chemistry building, which was where my father taught organic chemistry.

Between the two of us, we engineered a field trip for my whole fifth grade class to go up to the roof of Willard Hall at Kansas State University and look through that telescope at the heavens. I remember seeing the craters on the moon, the rings of Saturn, four of Jupiter's moons. To children today, having grown up in the Space Age with incredible photos from the Hubble telescope and space missions, seeing what we saw would be less than stellar, but for us, it was the window to other worlds and it was a highlight of my childhood.

Both my sons took after me in their interest in the stars, but their interest wasn't in identifying them. They were interested in the future, in science fiction, in colonizing the universe, in space travel.

Friends of Leif's have said they think he must be traveling in space now, maybe hanging onto a comet with his hair on fire.

Leif did not believe in God or an afterlife. He was an agnostic, primarily, I think because the orthodox beliefs of organized religion did not make any sense to him and because he fervently believed that our religions have caused so much death, destruction and hatred in the world that they deserve to be destroyed. He could not conceive how a god that could create the universe could be the god of those religions, and saying that he "believed in God" would allow people to think he believed in the god of those religions. He did appreciate many of the teachings of inspired religious leaders, but felt their followers had perverted their vision and misused their words.

Regardless of that, I think he wished he could believe in some kind of divine creator, one not defined by our human failings and beliefs.

I don't know if there is an afterlife, but if there is, I think Leif must be mighty surprised. If there is one, I hope it is a good one for him, better than the crushing load of disappointments, problems and health issues he faced as an adult in this one.

I will never look at the sky the same way again since Leif's death. I have always loved the sky, the sun, the clouds, the everchanging beauty of the sunrises, sunsets, storms building, cloud shapes and colors. I have loved the heavens at night. Now, I think because we associate death and heaven with the sky, whenever I look at the sky, I think of Leif. I wonder whether there is anything left of that powerful mind, that imposing personality. Like him, I doubt that there is. I haven't felt his presence, though I suspect that if there were an afterlife for Leif, he would not spend it here trying to contact those of us still alive.

When I look at the night sky, I will always, always, think of him and say that childhood wish poem:

Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.

I will never get my wish, for I wish for Leif back, alive and happy. I will never get it, but I will never, ever stop wishing.

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The photo I've posted is one from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab site.