I spend more time lounging on the tiny balcony of my tiny apartment than I ever did on the patio in the back yard of our house.  I think Pete and I both agree that this is partially because our house was burglarized and they entered through the back yard, so I was always a little nervous that they – or some other “bad guys” – would come back while I was sitting out there by myself.  Another reason is probably also that I have more down time here (lots less to do in an apartment than a house), and I never tire of watching the traffic on 277.  It’s like my own private NASCAR.  And every once in a while, there is a pause in the traffic, which fascinates me.  One of the things I enjoy about living uptown is finding those non-citified moments: the ceasing of traffic (albeit brief) and the weekends when things close and gets a bit quieter.  Living in the suburbs, nothing ever really changed for me.  I drove an hour from work to home and the traffic was still there.  I didn’t find any retail or dining any better than what I just left behind in the office zip code.  The roads remained busy once I left the peace of my neighborhood, which I had to do to get gas, groceries, or food.  Moving uptown has been a tremendous, simplified blessing for me.

I had a vision when I moved here that I would write some kind of Carrie Bradshaw piece about how although my world seemed to have gotten smaller, it had actually gotten so much bigger.  Here is a sign from 277 that I can see from my balcony.  

My square footage is less, but I’m within walking distance of 2 major hospitals, restaurants, shops, my job…and I can hop on 277 and choose my own adventure, assuming it moves.

Now that I’ve sold you on my location, I am moving again.

I still hate moving.  I hate it because it’s a lot of work, but that’s just the easiest part to express and it’s probably at the bottom of the list.  I hate moving because moving means relationships will change.  Some of you in Charlotte who I love so dearly, I know I will see far less of.  (But please come visit!  We will have room for guests!)  I just watched a plane from my balcony and thought about how it was headed towards my old neighbor-friends in Steele Creek.  My sister said whenever she sees a plane where she lives (about 45 minutes from me), she likes knowing it’s headed towards me.   We all think of each other even if we aren’t blessed with the convenience of seeing each other without trying.

I am leaving a job that I would have had for 12 years come November 12th.  I am starting a new job on June 17th and I will instantly go from the girl who knows almost everything and works with people I care a great deal for to the girl who knows very little and hopes to care a great deal for these new people.  (And, I might add, I hope they eventually care a great deal for me.)  I also hope I can leave this job behind at the end of the day.  I’ve been told I can, but I acknowledge that part of the problem is me.  I am a control freak over-achiever.  Here’s hoping Asheville helps resurrect the “f*ck it” a good friend told me I need more of.

Stay tuned, and I’ll let you know . . .

Sometimes, I decide to write because words repeat in my head.  They seem to need to get out and be heard.  Today’s words are as follows:

Six years ago today – which happened to also be a Friday – I started my day having a mom and a dad and ended my day as a child with only one living parent.  It was a truly horrible day that suddenly seemed unavoidable.  Mom had cancer, she was on chemotherapy, she got a fever and went to the hospital as instructed, she came down with pneumonia, the pneumonia wouldn’t go away, and the doctors said they could not keep her on the life support as she was in ICU indefinitely.  We had to move her to a long-term vegetative care facility or take her off life support.  Dad, Jenny, and I agreed (and it was in her estate planning documents) that she would not want to be on the long-term support.  But it felt like murder to withdraw the machines keeping her alive and watch her try unsuccessfully to breathe on her own.  It is still one of the worst memories I have.  And I don’t think she ever could have done that to (for?) me.

I never went to chemotherapy with Mom, and I am surprised and disappointed by that.  It was her fourth battle with cancer and I really thought she would beat it like she always did.  Mom never met a stranger and I know I was working during her chemotherapy appointments, but if I had it to do over, I would have gone, at least once, to show her I understood what she was going through – that it was significant and unpleasant and a life-or-death battle.  I didn’t go because I didn’t understand.  Isn’t that silly?  I just really didn’t think she would die.  It was completely inconceivable to me until I heard “life support” and a doctor described how much oxygen she was relying on to breathe and how much pneumonia mucus was clogging her lungs.

Six years ago, my life changed forever.  It is not better.  I have recovered and strengthened and moved forward, but life will never be better without Mom.  The world will never be better without Betty Aileen Hood Lynn and the kindness and love that she took with her everywhere, to everyone.  I represent her as best I can.  I look more like her all the time, I still wear at least one dress that was hers, I send cards like a champion, and I still haven’t thrown away all of the things she accumulated.

She has no regrets.  She holds nothing against me.  That’s the beauty of where I believe she is, and it’s also who she was in life – not so much the lack of regrets, but the forgiveness.  I know she is reading this over my shoulder as I write it, hands on my shoulders, telling me it’s OK.  Because she always will be the best mom ever.

 

I long ago concluded that patience is a virtue I was not blessed with.  I don’t like waiting and I don’t like the unknown.  I watched the movie Secretary with James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhal and understood that if being a submissive meant sitting at a desk for hours in the exact same position, even while waiting for the promise of my lover to return, that was not the lifestyle for me.  I don’t even think I could pose for a portrait.  What a loss for the world, me unable to model.

But sometimes life springs things on us that we instinctively realize are larger than our control, and we surrender, for to do anything else would make the situation worse and drive us mad.

Pete and I met with a physical therapist today.  Turns out she’s a doctor, too.  We found that on the printed physical therapy schedule we received as we left: 8 appointments over the next month.  I am eventually going to write these folks a letter of gratitude.  They first scheduled Pete for March 14th, which would have been the day before what is now his last scheduled PT appointment.  I told them that wasn’t workable.  He was bedridden, unable to work and drive and do basically anything.  They put us on a cancellation list and got us in today.  That’s a gift.

So is the ability to figure out that the inner ear is connected to the eyeball, and a bunch of other stuff we learned today.  Pete has right-beating nystagmus in his eyes.  He told me this, but I couldn’t see it with my untrained eyes, although I could feel it when he closed his eyes and I touched his eyelids.  The PT doctor and a doctor the other night saw it, and the PT doctor put some goggles on and we watched on a screen while Pete’s eyes darted repeatedly back and forth.  They are moving to the right – which is the direction Pete said he felt like the world was moving – to compensate for Pete’s left inner ear (vestibular) nerve being damaged by what the doctors all have suspected is an infection, maybe a virus, that’s long gone now so we can’t even kick its mean little ass.  The communication has been broken down and Pete’s ear thinks he is turning right, so his eyes keep looking to the right.

Pete is in the acute stage right now, and this is day 5.  He has work to do at home, such as trying not to take it too easy while also understanding the limits of the vertigo.  Today, he helped me carry groceries inside, which was no small task up a flight of stairs 3 separate times.  He then slept for hours – as did I, probably because I made so many trips to Asheville this week.  He is using his eyes more, but still has double vision, so he can feel them straining.  The nystagmus should heal by Monday (please, God) and the damaged ear nerve should also heal itself.  There are exercises that will send signals to help heal, and part of that is physical therapy twice a week for a month.  Physical therapy for an ear!  Pete should be fully back to normal within 4 to 6 weeks, which sounds like about the time when we planned to retire.  If that joke didn’t translate: 4 to 6 weeks sounds like forever when you aren’t working, not to mention the cabin fever setting in.  But I think at this point, we’re just wondering if God is moving in beautiful mysterious ways or trying to render us both unemployed in 2019.

From my own perspective, I know that I could not be as present and dedicated to Pete if I hadn’t already quit my job.  I would be significantly more preoccupied with what was going on back at the office.  But I’ve let go, to an extent.  Asheville, and Pete, are where I was headed . . . and I keep thinking that God is just trying to drive that home to me.  “Quit wondering if this was the right choice.  I will bring you up here several times a week until you quit asking.”  Heck, maybe this hellacious adventure leads me to a job somehow.

Pete, to his credit, has been a very good patient.  I thought he would be more resistant like my dad, but he has accepted the situation and grown to enjoy me driving him around.

NEVER.

Pete and I hate riding with each other.  Imagine riding with someone whose driving you hate and having vertigo.  Maybe it’s just going better because his eyes are closed.

But seriously, he has scarcely been curt with me at all, nor I with him.  Health crises put things in perspective.  The little bullshit you used to bicker about doesn’t matter so much when your spouse is ill, or when your spouse is caring for you while you’re ill.  Your primary focus is recovery and getting back to independence and whatever parts of your old normal life you want to resume – like working, driving, watching TV, unloading the dishwasher without taking a break, showering without fear of falling.

As Pete said today, this is good practice for when we’re older.

And I thank God that he has a condition that will be healed – not a “brain issue”, which was the other option.  I thank God that I can be here.  I thank God that we are receiving treatment.

I thank God.

Apparently a crippling illness is what it takes for my husband and I to finally spend Valentine’s Day together . . . and a few unexpected days earlier in the week.

As I’ve previously written, Pete and I have lived apart since 2012.  This past weekend, he sweetly suggested we have dinner out for Valentine’s Day while we were together.  He left for Asheville on Sunday as usual and all was fine.

He texted me Monday morning: “I think I’m sick.  Staying home.  Swimmy head.  Headache last night.  Kinda nauseous.  In waves.”  Sounded like the flu, which has attacked so many people we know lately.  I’d had a headache Saturday night, and we both mentioned being really tired, so I waited to see if I came down with it, too.

Monday afternoon, Pete actually called out his vertigo symptom and had a low fever.  He was afraid to drive with the vertigo, and I was regretful that I couldn’t take him, being down in Charlotte.

Tuesday, there was no change, and I had looked up Pete’s symptoms online and concluded he could have a brain tumor, among other things.  Of course the brain tumor option stood out to me because it killed my dad.  I said, “I can come up and take you to a doctor.”  Pete and I are both stubborn and independent.  I awaited the text reply where he would turn me down.  I think I was telling my friend at work that he would tell me no when Pete replied, “OK.”

I had a work call scheduled at noon.  Pete’s acceptance of my offer came at 10:27am.  That was a long couple of hours until I could get on the road.  When I entered our Asheville apartment, it was dark and Pete was in bed, a ceiling fan on to alleviate nausea side effects such as sweating.  Pete’s doctor couldn’t see him that day, so we went to a partnering clinic that mercifully accepted walk-ins.  Pete walked with his eyes closed down the stairs out of our apartment.  He lay the seat back in my car.  He didn’t enter the clinic until he had to.  He lay down as much as he could, eyes closed every possible minute.  They made him stand, sit, walk, do this, do that, and the doctor finally said that he has “true vertigo”, suspected to be peripheral (as opposed to central), cause undetermined.

Going through this, we have found several people who have had vertigo or known people who have had it.  Apparently, around 40% of people get it.  Pete’s description is that it’s like the drunk spins.  The world, the room, are moving.  His eyes feel like they’re moving, but they are perfectly still.  We could feel them pulsing at one point through his eyelids, but to look at them, they weren’t darting around like they felt they were to him.  Today is day three, and only tonight is he able to open his eyes for more than seconds at a time, following a visit to his primary doctor, a steroid injection, and two doses of an anti-nausea prescription he received yesterday at the walk-in clinic.

We haven’t held hands this much in 14 years.  Because he can’t open his eyes without the world moving, he walks unsteady and almost entirely unsighted.  I guide him when we go to doctors.  Inside the apartment, he holds onto walls, counters, etc.

Some of you have been through his with people you love.  I have, with my parents.  It’s different this time, because I believe the expectation is that Pete will recover.  And it’s different because he’s my spouse.  And it’s different because I’m not with him.  I’m so grateful I’ve been able to leave work and go be with him, and I’m so grateful we’ve already chosen to close the CLT-AVL gap in a few months so this won’t be an issue . . . and maybe God is using this to make that decision crystal clear for me, since I spend a portion of every day reciting my reasons why.

The fact is, nothing is guaranteed.  Pete, who is not known to miss work, will miss this entire week.  And while we hope that’s all, he’s 2 days into a 10-day medication that cancels the effects of the vertigo by somewhat knocking him out.  Another medication has a 30-day run.  We see a new doctor Friday (Blue Car, don’t fail me now!  I am burning up the roads this week.), and that establishment mentioned follow-up appointments.  How many?  How often?  When can he drive again?  How much work will he miss?  How much work will I miss to be there for him and take him where he needs to be?

I told Pete today: I am stressed, but I am not worried.  I’m stressed because I don’t have answers and I don’t like spontaneously missing work even if I have already given notice and tried to get my replacement in there well before this.  I’m not worried because I do believe Pete will recover, and because I know I am doing what I need to do.  When Mom got sick, I relied on Dad to accompany her to doctors’ visits.  When Dad got sick, I relied on my sister to be his caretaker.  It’s my turn now.  Pete is my spouse and my responsibility – not in a burdensome way, but in a way that I understand that with him is where I need to be.

Something like this knocks a lot of unimportant stuff out of the way.  I think I needed that.

But I also need Pete to get better.  Because we aren’t done doing things yet.

He posted on his own blog today.  I haven’t seen it show up yet, but if you are aware of his blog on his website, keep checking over there and I trust it will appear eventually.

I think I should sleep now.

Thanks for reading.

I think the time has finally come to be direct and tell you: I am moving back to Asheville.

Some of you already know because I have contemplated this decision with you, asked for advice, asked for support.  Some of you suspected because I hinted.  If you listened closely, my answers had changed when asked about my work situation and living apart from Pete.  Some of you may be completely surprised.  I certainly was surprised when I realized that I needed to make this change.

I previously lived in Asheville for only 5 years, where I made some wonderful friends that I still have.  Unfortunately, the cost of living in Asheville coupled with my inability at that time to earn a livable wage left me looking at maxed out credit cards, considering whether I could take on a third job, and searching for homes I could not afford, homes that would not appreciate, and/or homes I never could have maintained/repaired.  Instead, I came back to Charlotte, got a significant salary increase, and bought my first home quickly.  Having Mom & Dad nearby to show me the new-homeowner ropes was a HUGE bonus.

Those financial memories left me thinking Asheville would always be a nice place to visit, but never somewhere I would try to live again.  But I’m married now – not doing it on my own.  And I’m an established 40-something, not just getting started in my 20s.  Admittedly, I could have made some better decisions when I lived in Asheville the first time, such as not living alone in a 2BR apartment and eating out so much…but I tried to make more money, and short of working multiple jobs, it wasn’t happening for me.

I expect to earn less money in Asheville than I do presently.  I also expect not to damn near kill myself to get the job done, as I have often felt I do presently.  Frankly, I refuse to do that anymore.  I am rejecting that premise, that requirement, and that is part of my motivation towards this change.  In an earlier blog, I shared a post by a widow about how “big law” killed her husband, and I talked about how the decedent and I seemed to have some similar personality traits when it came to our work ethic.  I don’t blame my employer or our clients or opposing counsel or myself for the late hours and burdensome work load.  It seems to be par for the course in family law (and other kinds of law), and I am simply done with it.  I know my boss works late at night.  I know he works on vacation, days off, weekends, and holidays.  I know he has tried to avoid having me work when I was scheduled to be out of the office, or when I had a family emergency – and I truly appreciate that.  But sometimes, in this work, it’s just unavoidable.  And I’m tired of being unable to avoid it.  I’m tired of making plans with question marks.  I’m just…tired.  And in the last 11 years at this job, I have set standards I cannot change now just because I’ve decided I want to do less.

I have enjoyed being a big fish in a small pond.  Further, leaving something I know for what is presently completely unknown (specifically what kind of job do I want?) is very scary to me, and feels foolish.  I feel that God is guiding me into the next phase, but as always, I would appreciate more concrete assurances of my complete happiness and financial security.  I guess, “Living with your husband,” is a nice start for a plan.  Pete and I have been apart since he moved to Asheville for his job in 2012.  We tolerated it because we didn’t know how long it would last, and because I had a secure job that I enjoyed and Pete had his dream job.  I can’t justify being apart anymore when my job does not make me happy and when it sometimes interferes with the limited time Pete and I expect to have together.

I am excited to renew my friendships in Asheville and sad that I will see you guys in Charlotte less often.  I look forward to full weekends with my sister and nephews, who always ask if we’ll spend the night – now we will!  (I look forward to full weekends with Shawn, too, but I don’t think he’s ever been that invested in our sleepover plans.)  I hope to find a job where I thrive again, using my exceptional office skills and also finding some “creative” and “social” tasks as my therapist has deduced would benefit me, qualities that are lacking in my current work.

I am browsing jobs in/around Asheville, though it is too early to really do any active applying because I will be moving this summer when my lease ends.  If you hear of job openings you think may suit me, please let me know.  If you know any paralegals looking for work in/around Charlotte, I will be happy to talk to them, and I will be honest.  I am not leaving because I hate my job or because I dislike the firm.  I am leaving because a series of events in my life spawned changes within me that have rendered me incompatible with my current situation.  I have great affection for where I currently am, and I need to leave that job in good hands.  It is too important to be done by someone with one foot somewhere else.

Letting go has been a constant challenge for me.  I remember sitting in high school science class, ruminating on something (that is my therapist’s word, “ruminating”), when a classmate told me, “Let it go.”  I probably only remember that moment all of these years later (1) because I don’t let things go and (2) because it struck me at the time how insightful this guy was.  This classmate who was outwardly very different from me had actually accurately assessed something I was struggling with.  I have replayed that moment and said “Let it go,” in my mind many, many times in the decades since.

This thought comes to me today for a couple of reasons:

1. Some of my relationships are changing in ways that indicate they may not survive. Friends evolve, sometimes in different directions.  Partnerships that were once well-oiled machines start to have grinding gears.  People want conflicting things out of life and sometimes it means they no longer fit together like they once did.  This is painful and sad to me, but I am working on putting myself first and not sacrificing my time for things I don’t enjoy just to make other people happy.  Sometimes letting go is just letting things be and seeing how they progress, and sometimes it is making a deliberate change and saying, “I can’t be with you/be here anymore.”  Friendships and relationships in general should not feel like work.  This doesn’t mean they don’t require effort, but you should enjoy them.  If I find myself bemoaning time I have to spend with someone, that isn’t kind, and it isn’t healthy.  If I am always the one asking someone to spend time with me, always suggesting dates and never getting a response – I actually am getting a response, aren’t I?  LET IT GO.

And jobs – well, they have to pay you to show up, and one of the reasons why is that you may not always enjoy it.  Fine.  But if you find yourself being irritable because you can’t shake work after you leave, or constantly complaining about your job…if the fire is out and you can’t reignite it…if you find yourself looking for gratitude by comparing your job to Deadliest Jobs or Dirtiest Jobs or some other far-fetched scenario just so you can convince yourself your job could be worse (“At least my boss never locked me in his office from a secret button at his desk!”), it might be time for you to explore other options.

2. Some of my relationships have ended. A friend unfriended me on Facebook and while this may seem trivial (and often it is), this is a person I care about and I know that this unfriending signals something deeper than a desire not to see inane status updates.  I am considering reaching out to her off of Facebook, but why?  She made her choice.  And this is something else I am working on, something I have been dealing with way back into my dating days (or days of wishing I had someone to date): you cannot love someone enough for both of you.  If someone has chosen to exit my life, as much as it hurts, I suspect that is not my problem to fix.  I have had friends who quit speaking to me and would never tell me why, even though I asked – repeatedly – and apologized for whatever unknown thing I did to so grievously offend them.  That wounded me because it was so foreign to me, but later in life, I had relationships that I ended without explanation because I finally grew wise enough to understand that some people actually never listen to your words.  They only hear what suits them.  They only speak.  Perhaps, for my former friends who dumped me without a word, they felt we would never see eye to eye and it simply wasn’t worth the effort.  I don’t regret trying to apologize, because I cared.  But at some point, I had to let go, because they weren’t coming back.

I have some relationships that I was forced to end with fewer words than I would have liked because those relationships existed in a professional setting and I lacked some control about what I could say.  I was considering reaching out to one of those people and then I realized it’s been 8 years.  That seems really silly.  That seems like it might do more harm than good, sort of like if I ever find the ex-girlfriend of a guy I used to see and send her a letter of apology.  “Hey, I just want you to know I’m really not a bad person because I slept with your boyfriend.  See, I was crazy in love with him and also I was super young…”  A good response to that letter would probably be, “Hi, thanks for asking for forgiveness for this sin you committed 20 years ago.  That would have been the time to do right by me – not now.  Thanks for stirring up painful memories.  I’ve moved on.  Too bad you haven’t.”

LET GO.

It is very hard to be present when you are fixated on the past and worried about the future.  I know this, and I am trying to repair myself so I don’t sacrifice the gift of now for what I can’t change behind me and what’s unknown ahead of me.  I’m not sure how good I’m doing since I’m writing about these old memories, but since I have probably counseled myself into not reaching out to them, I guess I’m making a little progress.

Thanks for reading.

My friend Ross has completed a very touching series about pet euthanasia on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/rosstaylorphoto/?hl=en).  I’ve known Ross since junior high or high school.  He is an incredibly feeling person, and I can tell in reviewing these posts that he feels every emotion in the rooms where he is watching these animals pass and watching their human loved ones – including their veterinarian care providers – grieve.  He talked about the paw print people sometimes receive when an animal passes – Pete and I have one of those for our beloved Zenith, whom we lost in September 2016.  We were not blessed to be with Zenith when he left us, but we were fortunate enough to have a vet who was also a friend, and we were comforted that she could be the one to send him across the rainbow, or whatever the saying is.  It’s a peace and a closure I wish we had with our still-missing Julius – although I don’t wish for Julius to be dead.  I wish for someone to find him and contact me on moving day as I relocate into a house, because I would of course then go to him and he would return to us and we would make it up to him forever.

But I digress.

One of Ross’s posts mentioned a friend who said she was with her friend during her dog’s euthanasia because she couldn’t let her go through it alone, and I remembered that my mom had a dog (Buttons) who had cancer and she had decided to have him put to sleep rather than have him endure treatment.  She thought treatment would be frightening for him.  I don’t think it was going to cure him, and he wouldn’t know what was happening, and it would just prolong his life rather than improve it.  (That kind of reminds me of Dad in the end, too, now that I write it.)  I don’t think Mom asked me to go to the vet with her.  I think I volunteered, so that she would not be alone.  It was one of my rare Super Daughter moments.

When Mom died, I thought it was the first time I learned to be unafraid of the physical presence of death.  I thought I was sort of forced into it, because she died and we were by her side and wouldn’t have been anywhere else.  But in reality, it was animals who taught me how to handle death.  My friend Nicole’s cat who got hit by a car and I removed it from the street so she wouldn’t have to.  Countless pets I buried, some who returned from the grave thanks to other critters who didn’t know or care to leave them alone.  There was a cat whose exhumation I insisted on just to confirm it was my cat (I hadn’t been the one to find him dead), and then I reburied him.  (Bless that stranger who humored me in the pouring rain with that task.)  Buttons and my cat Schatten, whose medically induced passings I attended and whom I hope I helped comfort in their final moments.

And even before that, I remember what most would call an “inappropriate” conversation with my dad about embalming at my grandmother’s funeral.  He was just explaining to me why she didn’t feel like a regular person.  I don’t remember asking…I just remember him telling me about the embalming process.  And I appreciated it, because she was the first deceased person I ever remember seeing or touching.

There is a stark contrast between a deceased human and a deceased animal.  It is less expected in our normal lives to see “a dead body” outside of a funeral, but we see dead animals all the time.  The universal pain comes with the grief we feel when a person or an animal we love dies.  How we respond to a corpse or blood or vomit or poop – all of that varies from person to person and from situation to situation.  I know parents who gag at bodily excrement.  I don’t think I mind any of it, but I also have a poor sense of smell.  I’ve been puked on, peed on, pooped on, bled on, and died on.  I don’t “mind” any of it – although obviously my preference would be for every living being to be alive and healthy.  I think I should have been a nurse, but God didn’t give me the math and science smarts, so I guess that isn’t where He wanted me.  I’m a helper, though.

I am comfortable in an office.  It is easy (usually).

But I am also comfortable with sickness and death – which is not easy for everyone.  Is this a calling?

How do I know?

Where do I go?

I read an article recently entitled “’Big Law Killed My Husband’: An Open Letter From a Sidley Partner’s Widow” (https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2018/11/12/big-law-killed-my-husband-an-open-letter-from-a-sidley-partners-widow/?slreturn=20181014132201&fbclid=IwAR2ugcMH1Gs8UOzMBfthoUxNTUYiu-XOx7H6p4FZF5ihpvn3Z0-SW38hV5Q). The author’s husband committed suicide in the parking garage of his law firm after his stressful job sucked the life out of him.  His wife acknowledged that “he had a deep, hereditary mental health disorder and lacked essential coping mechanisms. But these influences, coupled with a high-pressure job” made for a fatal combination that ultimately led him to take his own life rather than to take a sabbatical, quit his job, or attempt a variety of other options that could have resulted in a happier outcome.

I am a paralegal. I recognized parts of myself and others in this industry in the decedent, Gabe:

• Self-medicating because we are wound so tightly we can’t leave it behind when we leave the office. This is something I especially have to be careful about because I am a child of two recovered alcoholics. I have been struggling with insomnia and sometimes I just can’t stop my mind from processing things that need to be done. Thank God the firm administrator told me when I started my job not to put work email on my phone, but I send myself to-do emails at work and I check the upcoming calendar somewhat obsessively.
• Turnover at the office, which is blow after blow to your soul when the people who matter to you disappear and leave you behind, leaving you with more work to do and a less pleasant environment because they aren’t there anymore to share your day. It also becomes something you don’t want to do to anyone else, so you find yourself staying at a job longer because you don’t want to be one more person who leaves. I remember writing a resignation letter to a former employer, saying I hoped he would remember me as one who had stayed. I think even as I wrote it, I realized how empty those words were when I was in the process of leaving.
• The work that comes to you that you say you can and will do because you are that person, the one who gets it done, and you won’t share it because giving any of it to someone else seems weak or lazy. Letting go seems like you have failed, like you have let others down. Gabe’s wife spoke of “maladaptive perfectionism, that combines unrealistic standards of achievement with hypercriticism of failing to meet them”. At my office, we all talk about sharing work, and we encourage it in theory, but most of us don’t actually do it. There seem to always be people drowning in work and people who aren’t working all that hard. I have been both of those people. I have asked to share the load and been denied it; I have been asked to share the load and said, “No thanks, I must do this myself,” because I don’t know how to share it and therefore I worked late into the night, and/or the weekend, and/or the holiday. I think the latest I heard of anyone working was something like 3:00 a.m., which beat my latest night by a couple or few hours. There was a weekend where I went to work before my husband awoke and got home after he went to bed – my husband who works out of town, whom I only see on weekends.

 

Gabe’s widow said, “He said he couldn’t quit in the middle of a case. The irony is not lost on me that he found it easier to kill himself.” I know that feeling.  To be clear, I am not suicidal.  But I have been at my current job for over 11 years and I take great pride and responsibility in the tasks assigned to me, in the work that I do.  When a client calls me to just ask for a copy of something a decade later, I am pleased to still be the one available to help.  I want to close out the files to make sure it’s done right.  I want to see the cases resolved.  I care about these people.  I care about my firm.  And every time I think it is eating me alive, that I need to leave it behind and move onto something easier, I feel a tremendous amount of guilt about all of the people I will not be helping in doing so: my boss, my coworkers, “my” clients.  (Quotation marks on the last one because I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know if I really have clients.  But I sure do have relationships with them.)  You know the joke, “I can’t die because I have too much to do”?  That’s me leaving this job.  I have a long list of excuses why I am the most important person here who can never leave.  If only every case magically concluded at the exact time my boss retires before I die of exhaustion or misery…

I have worked in the legal industry since 1998. I don’t know if it is this kind of profession or certain personalities that inspire the kind of loyalty where we sometimes think the only honorable way to exit is by death, or to wait for a magic setting in which the person who tries to do a damn near perfect job will inexplicably be asked to leave.  (“Christy, I’ve decided we can do this without you.  Why don’t you take a break and go rest up a while and be with Pete?”  Enter Snow White and the 7 dwarfs for full fantasy effect…)

Perhaps it’s certain personalities that are drawn to and thrive in certain professions – at least, for a while. But at some point, we snap.  We burn out.  We find that we have given again and again and there is always more asked of us.  There is another family vacation to miss because of another trial or discovery or deadline.  It’s good that the work keeps coming, because if it didn’t, the law firm would go out of business.  The trick is realizing when it’s time for someone else to do your job.  Knowing that you aren’t invincible or irreplaceable and that you may be doing more harm than good when you find yourself dreading the work instead of embracing it.  I wish Gabe had known that.  We have big shoes to fill, but they can be filled.  If I disappear, someone else will come right in and struggle a bit and sit in my seat and do my job – just like I did when I got here in 2007.  I bet someone replaced Gabe.  Our replacements aren’t the same as us, and frankly, I hope they care a little bit less, for their own sanity.  I took the place of someone who is rumored to have left every day at 5:30.  I still don’t know how she did it.  But I didn’t get her job because she got fired, so apparently, she was doing OK.

I agree with Gabe’s widow: “I don’t have any immediate solutions, but for the sake of retaining people like Gabe in these important professions, something needs to change. We need people like him walking this earth; they make it a better place. My husband was impeccable with his word, and actually cared so immensely about the job he did and how people viewed him. He wasn’t focused on the bottom line or lining his pockets with more money. He cared about his clients and the hundreds and thousands of people impacted by a corporation filing bankruptcy. Not to mention, he was really good at what he did.” I have been told so many times that I am good at this job, but it exhausts me and it scares me (it’s so important not to get it wrong, not to miss a deadline, not to miss a document).  I’ve also tried discussing the things that bother me with superiors, and mostly what I find is that unless you are stating that you are leaving, nobody is willing to make a change.

I didn’t know Gabe. I don’t know what tools he had available to help him when he was struggling.  His wife says, “He saw someone professionally a few times, but that was it,” and I know she tried to help him as best she could. I see a therapist and I give special thanks to my husband who has talked to me almost daily for many years now about what was bothering me.  And when my husband couldn’t come up with the right words, I had a sister, and friends.  I believe that suicide is not a choice, really, any more than are the depression and despair leading to it.  Once Gabe reached a point where he found what he thought was his only viable solution, I am not sure there was a way out unless someone happened to decipher what he had secretly selected in his mind and stop it.  Please, please, don’t be Gabe.  It’s just a job.  Someone else’s problems are not your burden.  Choose yourself.  Save yourself.  I’m working on it, too.

I guess he was a charmer, although I’d never considered it.  Stacy charmed his way into my sandbox  when we were toddlers, and we stayed friends for a decade plus thereafter, until the confusion of puberty stepped in.  I remember one day, standing on my parents’ front porch, and he raised his arm and had a whole armpit full of hair I’d never seen before.  I remember when he came to ask me to play one day and I was shaving my legs instead.  And because our hormones didn’t take over in a way that made us gaze at each other with suddenly starry eyes, we just drifted off in different directions.  I eventually did decide he was a potential love interest, and I think he decided I was weird for thinking so.  That was no different than most of my crushes, and I moved on and we never spoke of it.

Our families stayed friends, so we weren’t completely out of touch.  Stacy would come home to North Carolina for holidays, graduations, and funerals and I was always glad to see him, but we never reconnected as individuals.  We just saw each other peripherally, because other people who were really important to us – usually his family – created events where we might all be together.  And I was glad for social media, where I got to know Stacy in his habitat.  Stacy loved the beach and invited people to join him there often.  Stacy loved working out and had gotten into really good shape.  (He actually took one of my birthday posts and used a photo of him and me as a “before” picture.)  Stacy worked in a restaurant and would post invitations for people to come there.  I love to eat out.  It’s too bad I didn’t live nearby so I could visit him at work on a regular basis and sit under a big umbrella on the beach, avoiding the sun (I burn) and hiding under a cover-up (because I do not care for working out and that + my love of dining out = you know).  I imagine Stacy enjoyed the sun, tanning and showing off his muscles.

I imagine a lot about Stacy, because I really didn’t know him in recent years.  We went to school together until the early 90s and saw each other infrequently thereafter.  He lived in Florida when he died unexpectedly earlier this month at age 42.  Today is his 43rd birthday.  I keep contemplating digging out all of my childhood journals and scouring them for every memory I recorded involving him – but that’s an awful lot of living in the past, even for me.  Stacy came to probably all of my birthday parties before the dreaded body hair awkwardness events sent us in opposite directions.  He hated coconut cake, which was what I had every year, but I think at some point I may have gotten Mom to make two cakes out of consideration for my coconut-hating guests.  We played baseball in the front yard with other neighborhood kids.  Stacy and Jeff were so good from playing on a team, they would hit one-handed to give us girls a better chance.  I think Stacy played G.I. Joe with Jeff and me (or I played with them).  Stacy and I had birthdays that were 10 days apart.  I remember that at some point, Stacy had crazy carpet in his room that was square carpet tiles with different colors or letters or numbers or something.  I had never seen anything like it.  I had boring shag rust-colored carpet.

When one of my parents died, someone sent a plant in sympathy.  I posted a photo of the plant on Facebook and asked what it was.  Stacy told me it was called Crown of Thorns.  That’s when I learned that Stacy knew plants.  I call the Crown of Thorns Stacy’s plant now.  I sat at Stacy’s “service of celebration and remembrance” today and listened to stories about someone I really didn’t know despite having known him almost my entire life.  And yet, although the details were new to me – the specific facts about Stacy’s life – the character they described matched very much with someone I always knew.  He was a fighter.  Sometimes we fought as kids, because that’s what kids do.  But in that fight was also passion and self-preservation, and people who knew him better than I did later in life saw those traits keep him alive and serve him well in his career and his relationships.  Stacy was well-liked and a hard worker, a professional.  He was honest, caring, and kind.  He liked animals, and people, and nature.

I wanted to know adult Stacy.  I won’t say I didn’t try.  But there were decades and states between us.  One of the lessons his father gave at the service today is to let people know you care about them.  Not tomorrow – NOW.  Who says you’ll get tomorrow?  Look, if I had Stacy back and told him everything I am writing here, he would probably block me and ask his family to quit inviting me to things.  But what I should have done is been more direct.  When I casually tried to see him when he was in town and he was busy doing other things, I should not have taken life for granted.  I hoped he would move back here and I could ease my way back into his life.  It never happened.  I should have asked for a chance.  I should have said, “Hey, in case I don’t make it clear, you’re pretty important to me.  I know we barely know each other now, and I’d like to change that.  Maybe we find out we have nothing in common, or maybe we remember why we spent so much time together for most of our formative years.  Breakfast?  Lunch?  Dinner?  A snack?  What do you have time for?  I have time for you.”

Because today my friend is gone.  Really, truly gone from my physical life from here on out.  And all I have is this blog it took me weeks to write because it was hard to form words about someone wonderful whom I used to know and still love very much.  If you’re reading this – it’s your turn.  Who will you miss if tomorrow is stolen from you?

 

There’s a lot of complaining about people being glued to devices, and while I agree that there are problems with it (lack of verbal social interaction, lack of eye contact, lack of human contact, walking into traffic, take out your headphones and hear what’s going on around you, don’t text and drive, this list is too long to continue), I hoped that at least we might become better writers.  I believe people become better writers by reading and then by writing.  But you have to first read good written words so you absorb and regurgitate them.  That isn’t always happening.  I can no longer sit idly by and watch so many people publish sloppy stuff.  Do you use spell check?  Do you proofread?  Do you care?  Maybe not, but I do.  I say it’s a gift because I was born with it.  We’re supposed to use our gifts for good, and I am going to start teaching by correcting obvious mistakes and helping the world become better writers.  I think it is my responsibility to not ignore and perpetuate the bad writing.  Thanks for reading.

P.S.  Why are we judged negatively for staring at our devices, but it’s still respectable to read a book, newspaper, or magazine?  I have pondered this.  Perhaps because the standard is higher for being published in those.