Saturday morning Punk Rock Mommy died from inflammatory breast cancer.
Her husband uploaded her last post and I read it
and cried.
I never met Punk Rock Mommy, I had never read her blog before this morning. But I am struck by the human spirit and how impending death can clarify perspective. Punk Rock Mommy couldn’t be more different from my father, yet they both died from cancer in the past year, and they both, in that last year of their lives, gained a super-human measure of perspective and wisdom. Things that separated my dad from Punk Rock Mommy and Randy Pausch (who wrote The Last Lecture), things like religion, ethnicity, gender, and politics are superficial labels, but underneath – we’re all more alike than different. The messages that they left us with (or are leaving us with, Randy Pausch is still fighting pancreatic cancer) are essentially the same: love one another, choose to be happy, don’t ruin the rest of your life mourning, don’t live your life in “someday,” live right now, don’t waste your time on anger it’ll just ruin your day. This quote from Punk Rock Mommy really leaped out at me: “I am no doormat, but I just let go of all that hard core resentment.”
How can we learn from this? What would you do differently if you had a week, or a month, or a year left to live? What would you write in your last post? What message would you leave for your family, friends, and the world’s prying eyes?
Whidbey Island Writers Association hosts an open house the first Tuesday of every month at the Rockhopper in Clinton. This Tuesday I hopped on a ferry to Whidbey Island to attend the meeting. I’m so glad I did.
The focus of the July meeting was Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers that is located on Whidbey Island. A thousand women from around the world have been hosted for residencies of two weeks to two months. The retreat can host six women at a time, each in one of six cabins. A seventh cabin hosts an established writer in residence. Gloria Steinem is the most recent writer in the seventh cabin.
The tagline at Hedgebrook is Women Authoring Change.
Gitana Garafalo, Director of Alumnae Relations at Hedgebrook, was the speaker Tuesday night. An engaging speaker, Garafalo was passionate about Hedgebrook and as an alumna herself, she is particularly knowledgeable.
I had the best of intentions to take wonderful notes on all the Hedgebrook details, but upon reviewing my notes I discovered I had, through the course of the meeting, written 4 pages of story ideas and outlined a couple projects. Just sitting in that room full of writers inspired me in my own writing.
To the aspiring writers in the crowd: Have you ever gone out of your way to put yourself in a (real world, not online) room full of writers? If not, I highly recommend you give it a try.
Both Hedgebrook and Whidbey Island Writers Association offer numerous literary events throughout the year. Stop by their websites to see if they offer something that might ring your bell.
In 1991 my mom brought home Matt; I was not happy. Although I had moved out, I still had a room at the homestead – a room I needed to clear of my belongings so it could go to this new kid. But that’s not the whole reason I was upset.
Taking in kids was nothing new in our home. I had four younger brothers and we had all, at one time or another, brought home friends to stay for extended periods of time. My parents took in my cousins, kids who had aged out of the foster care system, and runaways (there was always a phone call to the parents to let them know where the kids were). My parents would not turn their backs on a child in need. Eventually they decided to start taking in foster children, and Matt was the first of many special needs placements my parents welcomed into their home.
But Matt was scary. He was a 16-year-old, severely developmentally challenged kid that had been held in a motel room 24 hours a day for months because they could not find a home that would take him. After time in the foster care system, Matt had an attitude, and he was very difficult to care for because of his medical needs as well. Along with an improperly formed brain, Matt had cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus; he functioned at the level of a two year old. He was difficult to look at. His hair grew in funny little tufts around the scars from all his brain surgeries, he shuffled along all bent over, he had a vocabulary of only 50 words, and he was a head banger. By head banger I mean that whenever he was frustrated or angry or for whatever other reason he would haul off and slam his head on whatever hard surface was handy, often drawing blood.
He terrified me. I did not like the idea of this kid living in my parents house.
Why am I using this Mother’s Day post to tell you about Matt? Because Matt became a part of our family. My Mother would not give up on him. No matter how hard it was, no matter how many late nights she sat up wondering “what have I gotten myself into,” she would not be just one more foster home that sent him back to that agency. He deserved better than that. And we learned a valuable lesson about acceptance and love, because we all came to love Matt. As he became more accepted and comfortable in our home he started to blossom at school, and at church where Mom took him every Sunday. By the time he passed away in 2000, he had touched so many lives that his funeral was standing room only. An entire community had learned a lesson about acceptance and love.
Mom has always been a caretaker. It’s her calling, her gift, and she’s very good at making people feel better when they are ill. When my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October of 2006, we were all devastated, but we all knew that he was in the best hands. While the doctors may be prescribing the chemo and performing surgeries, and the nurses attending to vital stats, it was Mom that cared for him and fought for him. She was the one that kept him going, and made sure he kept his brain active, and held his hand through the emotional roller-coaster of dying.
My Dad was never a big talker, that just wasn’t his style, but Mom always made us talk on the phone together even if we didn’t think we had anything to say. Dad and I would sit there on the phone, sometimes it felt like forever, trying to think of something to say to each other. We talked a lot about baseball, we talked about mom, we talked about work – his and mine, we talked a little bit about the cancer and it’s side effects, we talked about the weather, but most importantly, we talked.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my Dad. It’s just that both of us are introverts – and completely unskilled in the art of small-talk. The point is, I had conversations with my dad, about nothing and everything, that I hold dear in my heart, and I wouldn’t have had them if she hadn’t made us talk.
She is the glue that holds our family together, and through the most difficult time of her life, she found ways to meet each of our needs.
In the six months since my father’s death, Mom packed up and moved to Seattle. Sure part of it was to be near me. But really she’s here because she’s taken over as the primary caretaker for my 97 year old grandmother. And she’s loving every minute of it, because helping people feel better is what she does, it’s her gift.
Happy Mothers Day, Mom. Thank you, and I love you.
Happy Mothers Day to the rest of you moms out there too.
I read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones the first time in 1990. I was twenty and had just decided that I want to be a writer when I grow up. I had never imagined such a book: a writer writing about writing. It’s a simple concept, I know. But it blew my mind. I devoured every word and then went back and read it again. I was so full of hope and ambition and passion. I went out and bought myself a big beautifully bound journal in which I would practice my craft.
I went to a bustling cafe, sat down with my big steaming cuppajoe, got out my new pen and stared at the blank page while I waited for a jewel of inspiration. Nothing. Nothing in my head was worthy of that fancy journal. Crap. Drivel. Cliche. Not a single thought that tickled my brain or twitched the nib of my pen was good enough to commit to paper. How the hell do writers do this? Everyday?
Damn.
I missed the basic premise of the book: just do it. Don’t wait for it to be perfect, don’t repaint your walls to create the perfect writing room, don’t wait for the soundbites that everyone will still be quoting 50 years after you’re gone. Just write. You find the good stuff in editing.
Eighteen years later I reintroduced myself to an old passion that never died; the dream of making a living as a writer. It’s different this time. I write every day. Most of what write is crap, and that’s a beautiful thing. I celebrate the shit. I write in spiral bound notebooks that pile up and clutter our apartment. I write, I doodle, I daydream, I do timed writes, I write even when my head is completely empty. I write when I don’t know what to write. Sometimes I just write “I don’t know what to write” over and over until my pen writes something else. It’s not glamorous, it’s not inspirational, it’s not perfect. It’s just writing down the bones.
I re-read Writing Down the Bonesand this time I got it. You have to be willing to be not perfect. I still have times when I find it critically important that I reorganize my files, or transcribe an entire spiral bound notebook into my computer, but on closer inspection that usually means I’m procrastinating and I’m afraid I might write crap. So then I sit down and write crap anyways.
Every morning I get a “leadership tip of the day” in my work email. Today’s quote was particularly apropos as it’s my last day at the office before I go back to school.
It is never too late to become what you might have been.
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