When Words Fail Us Both

Grief is odd. It is disturbing to feel, to experience, and it is often difficult for many to just be near. It makes people uncomfortable speaking about it; we are sometimes not really sure what to say in situations of others’ grief, and when we do, we intuitively know that whatever we say cannot equate with the intensity of their emotional experience.

Take, for instance, the interaction I had with friends and acquaintances and peers the first week I returned to work following my father’s funeral. Most conversations began something like this:

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

It’s a perfectly normal thing to say, and I appreciated the sentiments of everyone who took the time to express them. But, as the week wore on and I would have first, or chance, encounters with people, it seemed as if they all had the same thing to say.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

There were those who actually sought me out those first few days, and they were thoughtful enough to ask about how I was feeling, how things went, or about my father and his life. Their compassion was genuine. Yet invariably we would reach that awkward moment where we both felt the need to segue to topics of work, or news, or just simple, friendly chatter. Then we would part, I would move on, and, moments later, I would run into the next person.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

After a couple of days I developed a succinct “Thank you” as a reply, and I would couple it with a sincere and appreciative smile in response to their equally sincere look of sorrow and empathy. I think we struggled with how to communicate the nonverbal, just as much as we wrestled with the words we chose.

There came a time when everyone’s comments became a disruption of my attempts to return to the rhythm of life, where each exchange served as a reminder of my father’s death, and of the start-stop emotions of the previous week. Their kind offerings also began to sound like a mantra.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

I thought I recognized code in what everyone was saying and possibly not actually expressing. It was as if they were warding off the same for themselves, because they recognized that the loss of a parent can, and will, happen for every one of us. It was possible my father’s death made their parents more mortal, and by extension, themselves more mortal as well. In their words, I began to hear hushed prayers.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

For some it may not have been what they feared in their future, but instead a remembrance of the same event previously happening in their lives. A few people spoke to me about the previous losses they’d experienced, but they often spoke of it with the detachment of something which took place long ago. I wondered if cataloging it in such a manner was their way of eventually coping with it, and if I would one day do the same with my father’s death.

After a few days a card came in the mail. I recognized it as one of the cards we keep around the office and leave at the central desk for everyone to sign. There may have been over a hundred different signatures squeezed on to this card from various people with whom I work, all written in the tiniest of handwriting to accommodate space for everyone that might want to sign the card. We’ve become practiced at such things.

I read through each of the comments. They were all well-intended and—I am sure—heartfelt, but even in that I saw a pattern of difficult communication. “Sorry for your loss,” and “Thoughts and prayers with you,” were among the most common expressions scribbled into all of the available space of the stark, white cardstock. The miniscule writing and the density of the comments made me hear a chorus of whispers as I read them.

We do, say, what we can, I thought to myself, when I finished reading them all and set the card aside for safekeeping. I’m still not sure what to do with it now.

Late in the week I ran into a friend and peer who is similar to me in age and who had recently come to work with me in the same building. She also had lost her father just a few short weeks before my father died.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “How are you doing?” In my voice inflection I heard my involuntary reach toward someone I knew must truly understand something I was still attempting to wrap my head around.

She smiled, and I thought I could see her eyes moisten a little.

“I’m okay,” she said. “But, every once in a while I feel like there are things about it that are still hitting me, still settling in. It’s like it is still becoming real to me. I think there is still more to come.”

“I know,” I added.

We talked for a few minutes more. I think she was the first person all week with whom I could make prolonged and sincere eye contact. It felt as if our two separate experiences folded together in the small space between us. For a brief moment, we each knew the other’s feelings on an almost palpable, and deeply personal, level. It was comforting.

Eventually work called us each separate ways. We promised to talk more when we had the chance, and we went back to our beckoning tasks. Walking away, I turned to find someone approaching me, and I felt myself brace in anticipation:

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” they said.
   
© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Echoes In the Labyrinths

Of all the most gratifying things in my life, the accumulation of knowledge and tools to be able to fix virtually all things a homeowner might encounter ranks near the top. I’ve owned several older homes and repaired them all, literally, from top to bottom, tinkering with many of them along the way in a sort of self-taught process. I was also in the lawn and landscape business for many years, and, as a matter of pride (and admittedly, competition) always made sure I had the greenest lawn in the neighborhood to prove it.


I’ve had a wealth of tools. Some I’ve used often, but some have collected dust, or have done so until they were one day called into service to perform that rare function for which they were designed. I had a wealth of knowledge—still do, for that matter—it’s requisite to retaining ownership of your Man Card, I believe. At any given moment, either for my own purposes, or for the sake of giving advice to that less experienced Man Card carrier, or for the distressed damsel with a distressed home or lawn, I can flip through the file cards in the recesses of my mind and whip out the solution for a needed repair.

For me, the knowledge and experience that enables me to fix things is empowering.

But drain traps and plaster walls and wood floors do not—even if I try to attribute as much to them—have a mind of their own. Their performance and actions, or inactions, are pretty consistent and predictable based upon their condition and purpose. If A is wrong with them then they will do B, and I can perform repair C on them with tool D and get them to act and function in the manner I want them to. Or I can replace them.

But not everything in my life is so rigid, or fixed, or predictable, or replaceable, and it is those things—things I shouldn’t call “things,” really—that I struggle with the most. It’s a frustration for me when I can’t produce result Y from action or influence X.

Here is where the how-to books and the tools fall far short of what I can apply or need. In these situations, there are just too many variables. I understand the variables that lie between those two points of X and Y, and I understand equally that they should be both expected and maybe even appreciated, but the inability to produce the immediate or best result is what gnaws at me.

In those matters, like most anyone, I look back through life experiences in order to find the lesson, or the countering lesson, from which to draw. People I’ve encountered in my life are sometimes great examples to follow, but sometimes they are also great examples to not follow. Usually I am a pretty good judge of which category these people fall into, but I sometimes discover later I may have initially misjudged them.

One such person from my past was Gary Brandt, the Dean of Men at Southwest Baptist University, which was the college I first attended after high school. Dean Brandt was fond of inviting me into his office, where I would have to endure private lectures and chats on a somewhat regular basis.

For whatever the reason, certain things Dean Brandt shared with me in those chats have stuck with me all these years, some things more than others. I remember one particular visit, when he called me to his office to discuss an event with which I might have been involved, one I then viewed as a rather minor flirtation with the campus rules.

The relevance to me now makes the words he said then even easier to recall, and as I do, I can still hear them in his own voice:

“My job, Cody, is not to regulate every little movement that young men make on this campus, or to even force them into any kind of lockstep. My job, instead, is to provide them with the two walls of a comfortable hallway that leads them toward what it is they came to this college to achieve. They may bounce a little against one wall or the other as they move down this hall, but so long as I keep those walls sturdy for them, and keep them moving forward toward their goal, then I am doing all I can.”

Dean Brandt was a little wiser than I gave him credit for at the time. And, he was a little more generous than I gave him credit for as well; during any one of those private lectures he could have summarily dismissed me from his campus. I’d given him plenty of opportunity to do so (maybe).

I remember how I felt about Dean Brandt at that time in my life. I thought he didn’t understand me. I thought he didn’t even really know me. I thought he had branded me and judged me by what little interaction he had with me on campus and in his office, and by the rascal reputation I had—quite erroneously, mind you—earned in the school community. I was fairly dismissive of his counseling and advice at the time, and even came to think of our little meetings as something akin to chess matches between the two of us. He would lecture on the hypothetical event that I may have been involved in, and I would argue hypothetically in order to avoid any admission of the alleged participation.

Thinking back on those conferences years later, I realize that Dean Brandt exercised a great deal of patience with me, and I am grateful he didn’t grab me by my ear and lead me out of his office, off of the campus, and down to the Bolivar bus station. Just the same, I spent a great deal of my life viewing Dean Brandt’s judgment of my character with much the same indifference. I carried around a certain satisfaction of feeling accomplished, despite what he ever thought I would turn out to be.

I thought for a long time, should I ever have the chance to be in Bolivar again (how that would happen, I have no clue), that I would have to march into his office and show him what a responsible, upright, dependable, and accomplished man I was now, despite whatever I did to justify his judgment of me back then. Never mind the fact that (I believe) he long ago left his post at that college. I think he should have to meet me there in his old office just to satisfy that little fantasy of mine. He and the campus security guard as well. And the Dean of Women. And that one dorm mom for the women’s dorm.

But, I’m a little off point—just a little. How I felt then, or later (or still now, just maybe) about the “Wall” lecture I got from Dean Brandt is not so much what lasts with me right now as what it is he said. In fact, I remember those comments he offered me frequently these days, because I am now in the challenging position of being those walls for others. I am at work. I am for a couple of people I humbly mentor. I am at home.

In each of those settings, my emotional attachment, involvement, actions, and reactions differ accordingly and appropriately. But, each of them often give me cause to recall Dean Brandt’s sage advice that one day, and to varying degrees test my patience and resolve in trying to maintain those caring boundaries I am suppose to offer.

I have to remind myself that I cannot make those walls too narrow, and I have to be careful not to make them too wide. Within that delicate balance, I sometimes have to admit I tend to err on the slimmer side. I guess I have always thought that I would rather be at fault for providing slightly narrower corridors than for giving too wide a berth. But a narrow gauntlet does act as a crucible of tension sometimes, and I have to recognize the need to relieve the contained pressure by widening the passage. That is not always easy, when you judge the future or well-being of someone you love or care about to be affected in that balance.

And I can’t just pick up a tool and fix it, which is the most infuriating part, really. It would be easy, if I could only do that. Instead, what I have to hope for is that—in the end, when the outcome is likely more critical and the judgments their own to make, and no tool or manual is of any more use to them than mine are—the people for whom I maintain those walls may remember my words in much the same way as I remember Dean Brandt’s.

A Power No One Wants

As I write this, I am sitting a few feet away from my father, who is resting somewhat comfortably in his hospital bed. I’m not sure anyone can really rest very well in such a bed; what distant memory I have of one from my childhood reminds me that they never seem to be able to be positioned in just the right way, or in a way that I could withstand for very long. Maybe it was my youthful impatience.

Dad’s comfort is further challenged by the fact that we are waiting for him to be taken down for a procedure, and waiting far too long. He was checked in here on Friday night (three days ago) and has been doing little more than waiting for something since he was admitted. Waiting for his MD to come in and speak with him. Waiting for his heart doctor to come in and speak with him. Waiting for a nurse to come in and either bring him some news about when his procedure is scheduled or help him with something.

In the time I have spent with him here in his room over the weekend and today, I have decided that the medical profession has a two-pronged approach to their care: waiting things out might possibly make the problem go away (what I call “Head In the Sand Treatment”), and patients are people to merely be tolerated through their stay, and occasionally placated by doctors with ambiguity and thinly-veiled condescension in their voice. The nurses are nice and well-meaning enough, but it was about all I could do to keep from shredding his heart doctor in the brief time he was here, restrain myself from lecturing him on the pompous pratfalls of his God Complex. I remembered, before I vomited that all over him, that I would have been just as pompous to do so.

My father, lying there in his bed, is not quite the same person I have known most of my life. I always remember him looking much more physically fit than I see him now, which is the way I think we all want to envision our parents. But I have this idea about Kilgore men, only a theory really, that we seem to be blessed with a gene or two that slows our aging process, or at least the appearance of it. I am sure that theory is wishful thinking on my part, but it has its roots in how I remember my dad being fairly fit, trim, and active for much of my adult life. Attractive too. Okay, so maybe I am wishing.

Dad doesn’t need much from me here. We talk from time to time, but neither of us feel the need to fill the room with conversation. There is a comfort between us in the silence. It’s not an ignorance of anything needing to be said, but more a fulfillment created by just being around each other. Reassurance through small talk is not so necessary between two men of our age, and our shared history creates more of a palpable connection that hangs in the air between us. Conversation may only disturb that, interrupt the silent movie memories that are a part of our current stream of consciousness.

I do have something I want to talk about with Dad, but now is not the time. He is due any time now to be taken down for a heart catheterization to help diagnose what is causing his recent spate of coronary issues, and I worry that if I raise the subject with him now, it will only raise his anxieties. There is no need. The waiting already has sufficiently rasied his anxieties.

A few years ago, dad asked me to be the one to make any decisions should he ever be incapacitated to do so himself during a crisis or medical procedure. I was flattered that he placed such faith in me by asking me to do so, but because I was not sure if I was the son closest to him at the time, I had to ask him why he chose me. His reasoning, he said, was that because he trusted my perspective on life—my views on religion and the afterlife—I would most likely make a decision he thought would mirror his wishes if it ever came to that.

At that time, we only had a brief discussion about what his wishes would be, and I asked him to either have his wishes documented, or have his lawyer draft a power or attorney to have on hand. Dad had told me, in the best way he could from the terminology of his days, he did not ever want to live “like a vegetable.” I knew roughly what he meant by that, even though I knew it was not specific enough for any doctor, or hospital administrator, or lawyer to understand if it were ever to involve them. And at the time we first discussed this, there were plenty of cases in the courts and in the news that made those specifics that much more important.

But I didn’t ask dad for more specifics because it was a difficult conversation to have. The details seemed both too morbid and too uncomfortable to voice openly, and he never volunteered anything either. I suppose neither one of us really wanted to deal with it in anything more than the abstract, the future, or possibly something that would never have to be. About the only time it seemed to come up was when he was having a health issue, and I wasn’t sure if that was the best time to talk about it. When each health problem was over, I didn’t want to seem like I was unnecessarily worried, or create that same worry for him. Where your parents are concerned, does the timing for that conversation ever seem right?

I’ve had some time to think about it this morning though, and sort through those thoughts well enough to commit them to paper, and to this medium. I told myself I had to, even if I couldn’t worry him with that kind of a conversation right now. I also knew I really had to be well prepared for that kind of a moment in case it ever does come, because I will need a clarity and a resolve in that moment that will be very hard to summon up, and which will produce a decision that will also be acceptable and clear to everyone concerned.

The best I’ve been able to come up with in our five hours plus of waiting—what I would ask of myself and of the medical staff—is this:

1. What is the raw end result? Would the medical condition or problem or illness be over when we are done with this specific choice with which we are immediately faced?
2. What would be the potential life extension my father receives as a benefit?
3. What will be the quality of life for my father after the fact, as compared to what he defines as a quality life? I know my father well enough to know he would not enjoy life if he could not communicate or interact with those he loves, even if they could communicate with him. I also know that if he were able to communicate, but were not ambulatory, he would carry on. In the case of the latter, he would also want me to revisit Question One and Question Two again.
4. What strain, or effort, or pain would he have to live with after the fact? I know this seems redundant of Question Three, but I am convinced that pain and suffering have to be considered separately from issues of mobility and consciousness. Still, in addressing this I have to go back and revisit almost all of my other questions.
5. What, if anything, would Dad be left to deal with after the fact that would be outside the normal process of aging?

I know this seems somewhat like circular reasoning, and maybe it is. It isn’t an easy decision that can be arrived at through a checklist or with black and white definitions. There is a great deal of gray area. But it is clear to me what my father would want if he knew the answers to those questions, and that is exactly how I would decide.

And in the end, I, as the decision maker, and we, as a family, cannot be a part of the equation. It can’t be about how much more of our father we would want, or how much more of his time with us we would want. Likewise, it can’t be about the effects it might have on our lives, decided either way, because you cannot understand some of those things beforehand, without living them. Like a friend of mine just recently said, you never know how strong you can be, until you have to be.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.