January the Capricious

January was quite a month.  I'd be happy if I never encountered another month like it!  It was cold, it was hot.  It was sad, it was happy.  It was worrisome, it was triumphant.  It was expensive, but it was worth it, mostly.  It certainly kept me on my toes!  Some people like living like that.  Never knowing, one day to the next, what will be flung in their direction.  Like playing a cosmic game of dodge ball.  I never liked dodge ball.  I'm not a fan of having things flung at me.  I'm a simple gal, who thrives on routine.  January threw routine out the window!

At the very beginning of the month, January 3rd to be exact, a lady who is very special to me had a terrible fall down the stairs in her home, and spent quite a bit of time in ICU.  She is doing alright now.  She got to come home on January 30th, but is still wearing braces on her neck and wrist.  I was so worried about her because the fall was so severe, and because she broke bones in her face, around her eye, and in her neck and wrist.  She is the mother of my oldest and dearest friend, Jenny.  (Jenny and I have been friends for 30 years, so her mom was like my second mom when I was growing up.)I was also very worried about Jenny, because she lives so far away from her parents, and was so upset that she couldn't be there with them.  She finally got to go home for a visit the very last week of January, and got to bring her mom home from the hospital. 

On January 7th, I had a meeting with a friend in Georgia.  I was very nervous about this meeting, but it turned out to be great!  There have been problems with Annalise making her first Communion here at our church in Florida.  Long story short, she didn't receive her sacraments in second grade like she was supposed to because of the disarray our lives were in when she was in first and second grade.  I.e. Steve getting a job in Florida, and me being pregnant with, and then giving birth to Nathan.  The church here has an RCIA program for children that they needed her to take before she could receive her sacraments here.  For reasons that would take far to long to go into, she could not be in that program.  I got the ok to home school her for her sacrament prep from the Director of Religious Ed, only to have him move away and another DRE take his place.  The new DRE and the pastor said they wouldn't allow homeschooling, Annalise had to go through RCIA, and it didn't matter that we were already part way through our home school prep.  She and I were very upset.  I contacted my friend, Mara, who is the DRE at our old parish in Georgia, and she spoke with the pastor and he ok'd it.  Our meeting on the 7th was with Mara, so she could approve our program, and give Annalise a little quiz to see if I was teaching effectively.  Of course, Leesie passed with flying colors!  I'm not saying I'm an outstanding teacher, I'm just saying I've got a great student!  She's really into it!!  On March 15th we will be heading back up to GA for her to make her first confession.  We will go back up the last weekend of April so that she can receive her first Communion on April 27th, which also happens to be my mom's birthday!  I'm so grateful to Mara and Monsignor Terry for accepting us! 

At the same time that I was getting ready for that meeting, and getting ready for Annalise and I to drive up to Georgia, my grandma, my dad's mom, and my last grandparent took a turn for the worse.  Over the last few months, I'm not quite sure how long, but it was at least since the end of the summer, she had been struggling with congestive heart failure.  She had been on oxygen for a year or two, but doing alright with it until the past few months.  She and my grandpa lived in north east Michigan, in Oscoda.  When she retired, they started wintering in Arizona.  Every year, even after Grandpa died, she went to Arizona for the winter.  This year was no different, even though her doctor told her that he didn't think she should, and that she probably wasn't going to make it back in the spring.  At the beginning of January I received a message that she had had a heart episode, which caused her to fall, breaking her arm.  She was taken to the hospital, and at the end of the following week, January 11th, she died.  She would have been 94 in March, and that last week of her life was the only significant amount of time she spent in the hospital as a patient.  What a remarkable thing to live that long and not be in and out of the hospital, or live in a nursing home, or any kind of assisted living!  Up until she was put on oxygen, she was still hiking in the mountains in Arizona!  This past Christmas, she was still riding her three wheeled bike, with her oxygen tank in the basket!  She was an incredible woman, to be sure! 

Her funeral was in Oscoda, on January 21st.  They prepped her body in Arizona, then flew her back to Michigan.  Thanks to my awesome father in law, who lent us the funds for a plane ticket for me, I was able to attend.  I moved away from Michigan one week before I turned 22, and have lived in various places in the south since.  I despise being cold.  It makes me feel the darkest combination of emotions, which is just as unpleasant as physically feeling cold.  Anger, fear, loathing, anxiety all rolled into one, on top of just plain being cold.  I LOVE living in Florida!!  I haven't been back to Michigan in the winter in 16 years.  When my plane was landing in Detroit, I was watching out the window, like I always do when we take off and land, and noticed that the lake we were flying over was covered in ice.  Out of the blue, I had a panic attack.  Beautiful.  I hadn't even landed, and I was already in the throes of anxiety over the weather.  Never mind the grim business I was there for!   I had decided before I left Florida that I wasn't going to complain about the weather in Michigan.  I did a pretty good job, until the last day I was there.  It was bitterly cold the whole time I was there, (from Sunday, January 20, to Wednesday, January 23).  The temperature never went above 8 degrees, and the wind chill stayed between -10 and -20 the entire time.  I have cousins who live in Marquette, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and they were complaining about the cold!  I have a cousin who lives in the twin cities area in Minnesota, and she was complaining about the cold!  I just agreed.  The day after the funeral, I went out with my sister and our friend, Alexis, and took pictures of places that I have a million summertime pictures of.  I've got them posted on flickr if you'd like to see what hellishly cold looks like.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/animagusthree/collections/72157632693595817/

The funeral was beautiful.  Sacred Heart Catholic Church sits right on the beach on Lake Heron.  Behind the alter, and another set of pews, the entire east wall of the church is glass and looks out onto the beach and the lake.  I wish I had taken a picture of it.  I wanted to, but didn't think it was appropriate to take pictures of the church view at a funeral. 
My dad wrote a eulogy the weekend before the funeral that, for one reason or another, he did not deliver.  He gave me a copy of it, and I have it below. 

Edna B. Amley

Eulogy

By Joe Amley

 

            When I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I say to myself is, "Man!  This really hurts!"  Right now, as I look around at all of your faces, I want to put into words what we are all feeling.  "Man!  This really hurts!"  It hurts in the back of my throat, it hurts all across my chest, and it feels heavy on my shoulders.  But mostly it hurts in my heart.  The reason for all of this pain is the fact that we are trying to grasp and hold onto a nothing!  There is an emptiness, a kind of emotional hole where mom used to be and we are trying to get our arms around that hole and hold it, and it keeps slipping away.  You feel like the memory of the sound of her voice, and the way her face looked keeps slipping away.  It hurts like crazy, and it doesn't work.  What we need to do instead of trying to hold onto a hole, is fill it with memories, the biggest and best memories we possibly can.

            I think I may be able to help a little.  I think I can at least help you get started.  Please remember, however, that we all have different memories, even of the same events.  So give me a break, give me a little leeway here, and don't say, "That isn't the way that happened!"

            Mom was a lady; She had poise, dignity, and tremendous fortitude.  As Red Galvin once said, "She may be small, but she is tightly wound!"  She taught, through enduring example, what love means.  It means you are there for someone when they need your support - and she was there for each of us, and we knew it, and, I'm sad to say, I for one, sometimes took it for granted.  Love means that you will set your own dreams aside and care for those you love - doing whatever is called for, for as long as necessary - and she has cared for each and every one of us when we needed it most. 

            One of the things that she did that is, to this day, a complete mystery to me is somehow she made me believe that we were rich!  As God is my witness, I didn't realize that we were actually poor until I was in college.  We always had with I thought were nice clothes to wear.  I know now that that was due, in large part, to her ability to make anything out of anything.  Did you know that she made a tent for camping once out of a clear plastic drop cloth?  That's right, and that darned tent was absolutely impervious to everything except wind and rain!  After the first night it was covered with tiny holes - she told me they were caused by mosquitoes trying to suck my blood.

            Looking back, I can remember her buying the whole bread counter at the A&P on Saturday night at pennies on the dollar!  Remember that?  Oh lord, I used to hate it when we got down to the pumpernickel in the back of the freezer.  That stuff made the worst peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I ever tasted!  Of course, you younger kids won't remember that because eventually some farmer found out about the deal and started overbidding her to feed his pigs.

            I can remember getting government food.  That's right.  Not food stamps.  Oh no, back then we got peanut butter in big cans, and cornmeal, and blocks of cheese.  Man I loved that cheese!

            And still I didn't realize we were struggling!  I was thick as a brick!  And some of the things we ate, holy cow!!  Various organs were nothing.  How many of you remember Sucker Burgers?  Right out of the river and onto the table, what a convenience!  Mom canned sucker, she froze sucker, lord, I thought we would be eating that stuff forever!  How about the sheep that was tied up to the apple tree in the back yard that dad was supposed to kill to save a couple bucks on meat? 

            I know it probably sounds terrible to some of you, but usually we thought we were eating high on the hog.  Many nights there were swarms of other kids, because we all had two or three friends, clamoring to stay for dinner, and mom rarely said no.  I remember the first time Rosie went on a trip with us down to see Theresa and John in Texas, she said that it was like traveling on a troop train.  Well folks, it was like that as far back as I can remember - carefully orchestrated chaos.

            Again, what I can't understand is how she made us feel like we were well off.  There was always the attitude that we had it a little better than most folks, but it's not polite to talk about it - you might make other people feel bad!

Today, I believe that it was her deep gratitude to God that we had what we had, and that we had each other.  It was almost like we were not allowed to be sad.

            There were a few other things we were not allowed to be.  It was dangerous to admit to mom that you were bored.  Am I right?

            "You find something to do, or I'll find something for you to do!"

            It was also dangerous to even be seen on Saturday morning.  Saturday was the day the house got cleaned, (i.e. the dreaded basement, or your bedroom, or the walls, or any member of other medieval tortures).

            Mom was a lady of deep faith.  She believed in, trusted in, and relied on God.  She couldn't carry a tune across the street in a bucket, but her very existence was a song of joy.  I can remember when one of the younger of y'all, (that's how I talk now), would wake up and cry in the night.  She used to come in and sit next to the crib and put her hand on you, and say a rosary.  Very rarely, maybe when you were sick, would she actually pick you up and walk around, and never would she sing to you - my gosh!  That would make the dog cry!

            The one thing mom did not do was take her faith for granted.  She was a convert to Catholicism - I can remember her baptism.  She questioned, she read, she studied her faith.  She attended mass and received the sacraments as often as she could, and seldom missed mass on Sunday.  To say she encouraged us to attend mass as we were growing up would be an understatement.  Mass on Sunday was never optional - even if we were camping, or sleeping over someplace.  She deeply believed that her faith was her anchor and her support in life and she did all she could to pass that on to each of us.  I can remember asking her once why she went to confession.  I said that I couldn't believe that she ever committed a sin.  I will remember her answer as long as I live. 

            "The bible tells us not to judge others.  That means judging others to be bad - or good."  she said.

            I can't prove it, but I think there is a correlation between spiritual strength and humor.  I believe that when a person is at peace with God, and when we are accepting of life's ups and downs as parts of God's ultimate plan for our good, that we begin to see what we call the humor in situations.

            Mom could not tell a joke any better than she could sing, but she had an uncanny ability to set up humorous situations, sit back, and watch them unfold.  Mary, God bless you sweetheart, was playing with a baby doll one day in the kitchen.  She was putting the doll's diaper on and taking it off.  When she had left the room for a minute to get a "clean" diaper, mom walked over, pulled down the diaper, and put a dollop of peanut butter on the doll's butt.  When Mary came back in, she looked at the doll in horror, and ran over and forced it into mom's hands.

            I seem to remember one year, that Joanie wanted to wear a strapless evening gown to the prom.  Poor Joanie, I love her to death, but she was still wearing Fruit of the Loom underwear, if you know what I mean.  Mom stapled a piece of a yardstick in the front of the gown to hold the top in place!

            If I seem to be dancing around the tough times, you misunderstand.  I know that things were more than a little difficult many times.  I know that mom's dad, Grandpa Baker, was an unbelievable burden.  I know that, to a mother, the pain of losing a child, let alone two, to me seems unsurvivable.  I know that the care of a spouse day after day, year after year, for some would erode a loving relationship.  But she wasn't some.  She was mom.  Yes, I know all of these things, and so do you.  I choose to build my memories around her smile, around her giggly laugh, around her joyful conversations.  What I want to remember about the rest, about the harder parts, is her integrity, is her emotional strength, is the true meaning of love she put into practice day after day. 

            We had all become so used to Mom that I'm sure we all believed that there was nothing she could do that would surprise us.  Well think again!  I never would have thought she would get re-married.  There is no telling when or where anyone will be given the gift of love.  Harold was a late and very welcome addition to the family.  Mom was very much in love with you, Harold, that was obvious to everyone.  It would have been impossible to hide her love, it shined through in everything she said and did with you.  It takes time to introduce someone so that others really get a chance to know them.  We were well on our way to seeing that the same, unpredictable, let's try anything attitude was the order of the day for the two of you.  Unfortunately, we were not given as much time as any of us would have liked to watch the two of you grow together as a couple.  Rest assured, however, that even though the time was too short, we are all still family and we obviously don't take that lightly.

            I hope I have helped everyone start on the path to fill the gigantic hole that that little woman has left in all of our hearts.  Memories are very individual things, and no two are exactly alike, but memories can better be built in communion with those who share your love.  As we move forward into life again, let's all resolve to join more closely and build those memories with one another.  Mom would love that!

The Sunday following Grandma's funeral, I was home in my kitchen, having just come from Mass, and my sister called.  My mom's closest cousin, Bee, was in ICU in a hospital in Grand Rapids, MI.  That's my mom's home town.  Back up to Michigan went my mom.  The news she had received over the phone made it sound like Bee might not hold on until she got up there.  She and my dad were reeling!  They had just gotten back from one funeral, and thought they were on the verge of another!  My sister and I were panic stricken!  Mom and dad didn't handle Grandma's funeral all that well, and this one was going to do them in!  I knew there was no way I'd get to go up to Michigan again, so I was stressed about that as well!   Not to mention, it was sunny and 80 degrees here and I was loathe to go back into he tundra!!  As of last Thursday, the last day of January, Bee is doing great!  She's no longer in ICU, and will probably come home this week. 

Last, but not least, on the evening of the 29th, just as the month was being put to bed for the year, my two stupid dogs decided it would be fun to get into a fight, and tear each other limb from limb.  A trip to the vet ER, and an obscene amount of money later, they are both fine, if a little bruised and punctured.  Here we are a week later, and they have been acting like nothing ever happened.  I have no idea what the fight was about in the first place, but I'm glad they are friends again.  I just want things to be back to normal!  I'm so glad it's a new month!!