Greg

Greg, Greg, Greg…

Tchad

Now that everything is starting to settle down from Greg’s death, I’m going to start posting my journal entries from the time I found out he was in the hospital (that entry is already up – I posted it the day I found out, as I had just finished coding the blogs) to the week after his memorial service a couple of weeks later.

None of it is earth-shattering, but it may be interesting to you if you have never had to be with someone at the end of their lives and then deal with the arrangements afterward.

I will be back-dating the stuff so that you can read it in sequence with a note or two about when I actually posted it instead of posting it on the day it is actually put up.  I thought about it and think that it will give you a better sense of what was really going on.

 

Don’t roll your eyes, Don’t roll your eyes, Don’t roll your eyes…

Tchad

A few years ago I stumbled on a series of Anthony Robbins’ self-help cds at the thrift store.  I guess whoever bought them gave them away when they moved into their Castle on the beach in St. Croix.

Anthony Robbins

You can roll your eyes, but it does help some of us.

In all seriousness, I was grasping at straws when I found them.  I was (am) skeptical about self-help. I have a parent who turned to them (not Robbins, but others in the “rage therapy” vein) and I blame them for a lot of my late childhood issues.

But I was struggling.  It was 2005-06. I had no support, was essentially bankrupt, and had just spent the better part of the past year taking care of an alcoholic friend who manipulated me into one of the most soul-sucking friendships of all time.

I was desperate.

So I bought them and started listening.  I wasn’t doing it right. I was coming from an “I’ll show all of you assholes what I can do” instead of “Here I go! Watch me explore and develop my world!”.  It turns out that anger CAN drive you. The caveat is that it can only get you so far. In my case, I got up to 180 Lbs (in a good way), built an almost 3,000 square foot workspace from scratch, dated, traveled, and wrote a lot. Once you have grown and matured a little, it cools a bit and then you have to decide what to do with all of the emotion that you invested in these things that it created.  It taints the creation a bit.*  Others may not see it, but it does.

I’ve gotten better since then, but have gone back to those cds.  Friends make fun of me, and that is totally ok, but there are those of us who have no emotional tools to work with.  I am not a child abuse victim, have never been sexually abused, and enjoy what most people would consider to be a good helping of first-world racial privilege.  I can do just about anything.  I can make you an evening gown (or suit), tell you the best way to grow Paw-Paw trees, cure leather & hides, conjugate (some) Latin verbs, tell you the finer points of the NEC code as they relate to Chicago, make GREAT sutures (don’t ask how I know, please), and (poorly) code html.  I grew up with parents who told me that I “could do ANYTHING!” which meant that I could do anything with that little tidbit of motivation as long as it meant that I got married, became a doctor, and had millions of babies.

A lot of the breadth of my interests were mocked as silly.  Latin, especially.

So anyway:  I have picked up the Robbins series again and am listening to it with a more neutral ear.  My friend is dead, I have no romantic relationships, and I am running a business I never planned on having but enjoy more than most people enjoy their jobs.  I am in a good place to re-develop where I am going.  I can’t change who I am but I CAN change how I look at things and what is important to me.  Isn’t some of it ridiculous?  Yes, yes, it is.

And yet: One hour every morning is now going to be going back to the personal development basics.  To give myself the tools I wasn’t given and redirect a bit.  Kind of like adult braces: You are always going to have to wear that damned retainer because the bone is already formed.  You have to get over the anger and resentment that your parents didn’t take care of it when they should have and just move on.

* You should also know that if you connect it to music as inspiration, you will never be able to listen to those songs again.  And some of them are good. But nope – all you remember is the anger behind them and how that felt.  It is especially problematic if the person is dead or you really really liked the songs.

 

Snap. Snap. Snap.

Tchad

Hundreds of pictures.  Hundreds.

Not even 30% of the way through the tables of stuff from Greg’s and am getting tired.

I really want to get everything except the antique glassware, books, albums, and cds done tonight.

If I can get those listed, then I can list the rest of the things over the course of the next two days.

Aiming to have the whole workroom empty by 6 July.  A tall order, but I think it can work.

The nice thing about this much mindless focus is that it really takes you out of yourself.  It is the one thing I liked about a corporate job – you are called on just to do.  Format, template, rules, just do. Do. Do. Do.  So this kind of thing is not making me tear up like something that forces my creative side.

OK.  If you want to look at the mess I am in, check out my Ebay profile.

No crying today.  THAT, my friends, is a very good thing.

 

A Little Taste of What’s to Come…

Tchad

As I emptied Greg’s apartment I was having to, for the first time in my life, say goodbye to someone with whom I have no romantic relationship and to whom I am not related.

Try explaining that to a client while you are falling apart and can’t do the work you need to do.  They have no reference point for it and end up thinking that you are just screwing with them.

In any case, as I was having to decide a week or two ago exactly what I was going to do with the things that were important to him.  I had promised him as he died that I would do things right and that I would try to make it all as right as I could.

When I said that to my mother she said “What the hell does that even MEAN?”.  She was right, of course.  Making things right is such a weird way of putting it.  For me it has more to do with a lot of post-death apology than it has to do with any Platonic sense of Rightness.

In any case, the piano.  I put the ad up and waited.  No one bit.  I wanted to see $300 out of it, but it wasn’t forthcoming…

Then out of the blue I get an email from a woman who wants it for her son.  He is three and his father is a composer.  There really was no better customer than that.

Greg had gotten the piano for his high school graduation and it just seemed right that his life-long passion should be passed down.

They came and picked up the piano and I was thrilled.  The little boy was SO EXCITED.  It was great.  They sent me a video of him playing, but he was so excited that his dad played while he just hit every key.
So before they got there, I was feeling a little maudlin like I have been since the 8th of March, and so I recorded a video of me playing the piano.  I am not very good.  I only remember a few things here and there from childhood.  But it will be nice to click on this link and see it on Youtube as long as they are around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMU3wd9FMM0

And here is the video that she sent me the day they came and picked it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muSQJv3nH00
The piano held its tune pretty well through the move.
Ok.  That is two posts in one day and I think I am done until tomorrow.

More Ebay fun awaits.

T

 

Lesson: You Can’t Please Everyone and You Can’t Make Everything OK

Tchad

One of the biggest problems and biggest fall-outs from all of this has been my professional life.

My personal life?  All I have is totally internal, so there isn’t much of an external one to notice change.

But my professional life tends to be my connection to others.  I may not have friends like most people, but I have roomfuls of people who chit-chat, make nice, and then I teach them a stitch or make them a dress. And there is the rub.  Making the dresses.

See, the entire Spring session was a disaster.  It began when I was at my worst.  I tried to soldier through it.  I really did. But I wasn’t at my best.  Luckily my third or fourth best is better than most people’s first best so it seemed ok. OK as far as the classes went. It seemed.

But how many times can you catch yourself screwing up and making terrible mistakes – or in a classroom setting not catching others and stopping their mistakes before they happened.

See, I have always said that my students and clients deserve my best or something close to it.  That hasn’t happened for months and now I have everyone pissed.  Well, not everyone.  The students are pretty good about it.  But the clients aren’t.

Oh, sure, make the dresses, teach the classes, whatever… how hard could it be?  What is your problem? But when you are your own worst critic (it isn’t really that much of a cliché… some people aren’t) it is overwhelming.  You make ridiculous mistakes and then spend hours crying about them.  In a corner. You lose time, you lose money, you lose the little spark of inspiration that makes it all worthwhile.  I thought I understood depression before, but until I caught myself NOT going to Greg’s 23rd floor apartment because there were no locks on the windows and what if… well, you know you have a real problem.

Wellbutrin seems to be helping, but I won’t know until nearer the end of the Summer.  Right now I am trying to stay out of harm’s way.  It is a real pain – in every sense of that word. It feels like someone punched you in the stomach the night before while you were blackout drunk – you have the pain and the cramping but can’t explain it.
I had experienced a broken heart before – once – in my early 20s and it wasn’t fun.  But this.  THIS was something else.  Something profound and life-altering.  It is one of the worst things so far and I am someone who has plenty of battle scars. YOU can’t see them, but they are there.

Have been telling myself for years that if it came down to it I would go back to the country raise tomatoes and ride horses.  That may just happen.

But the title!  What the hell does all of this have to do with the title?

Ah, glad you asked.  I have been sick to my stomach for months with three projects that just aren’t going to happen.  I don’t want anyone’s money and have offered refunds because that’s what I do, but so many folks are pissed and I just can’t do it.  I hate to disappoint them.  I hate it that I can barely pick up anything creative or build something without it turning into some nightmare-fueled sob-fest.

So you can’t please everyone.  You can try to explain, you can try to deal with it, you can try to keep things to yourself and let people in on an as-needed basis, but it is still going to smack you in the face and you have to decide.  You have to decide if screwing up that dress and sending yourself into some dark hole  for a dress just so someone won’t be upset with you.

ramblerambleramble…  You can’t please everyone.  It is good to try.  But at the end of the day, you can try to make it as right as you can and then you have to accept that not everyone is going to be ok with it.  You can hope they see what you are trying to do, you can try to explain, but in a professional setting it isn’t really appropriate to say something like: “Well, I have been crying for six hours and that is why there are water-spots on your taffeta.  Sorry ’bout that.”  People think you are a drag (and you are).

One thing the past three weeks have taught me, though:  I will never go three weeks without checking my email again, that’s for. damn. sure.
So, you know, at least there’s that to gain from a horrible month.  Gotta hold onto something…

 

It seems like it has been a million damn years.

Tchad

What was I doing last time I wrote?

I had just gotten the call from my friend Greg’s sister.  He was in the hospital again and I was pissed.

Well, I’ve changed my tune now, that’s for sure.

See, March 6th started me on a terrible roller coaster.  I wasn’t in a great place to begin with. I have been like a schizophrenic drunk with vertigo on some horrible amusement ride.  Does that color it properly?  Yes, I believe it does.

So for a while I will write about lessons and how life kind of smacks you around a little sometimes.  I have a friend who would say: “Be more Stoic!”.  What he means is: “take it like a man”.  He doesn’t realize that if one is really being stoical he would fall on his sword tout suite.

My little ride has almost cost me a business, has worn me down to nubs I have never been worn to, and yet has still given me a couple of cherries.

Remember: It is not all bad.

Until it is.

Throughout the Summer I am going to be posting about some pretty personal stuff.  Don’t be too hard on me.  I am trying to live my life in the open and help folks out.  Don’t read it if you don’t like it.

So stay tuned and read me rant.  Hopefully I can make you laugh or think.

Or cry. Sometimes all three.

 

 

 

At some point everyone should learn this balance:

Tchad

It is something I’ve never been able to master.  This need to do and be (whatever) balanced with the need to care for others and make things right.  I am either running around trying to fix things, being the martyr that no one asked me to be or I am working on my projects for months on end.  Alone.

It is hard being a Secular Mother Theresa and/or a Spiritual Howard Roark.  I don’t advise it.

I found out this afternoon that a very good friend of mine is in the hospital (again) and will probably not make it through.  He is 61. This is the same friend I nursed from the beginning to end of his last hospitalization four+ years ago.

I couldn’t do it then, but did.  It almost killed me, but I did it.  I ended his extended hospitalization and rehabilitation for 4-6 months and dropped everything.  I almost lost everything as well.

When he started drinking again it made me sever ties.  I couldn’t cope.

And now this.  Some part of me, the younger more maternal part, says that I could have stopped this.  It tells me that just giving enough will fix things.  But I think emotional energy works like scientific energy:  It cannot be created or destroyed – it just changes form.

The last time it drained everything I had emotionally, financially, and physically.  I am still feeling the effects all these years later.  And yet I sit here thinking, thinking, thinking.

He never changed his condo admittance papers, so off I go tonight to find his will and business papers for his sister.  I am the only one allowed in the building unattended without a power of attorney.

It reminds me of a story of a distant cousin…

He worked out West for a widow as a ranch hand.  This would have been 30+ years ago.
She was a hopeless alcoholic, and as such was too much for him to deal with.  He tried, but it got to a point where he just had to go.

As he was leaving, she said: “You may have lost your loyalty, but I WON’T lose mine!”

He thought “sure, whatever” and cut out.

Fast forward 10 years.  He gets a notice.  He finds out that she has died and left him everything.  Every single thing.

Not that I am interested in my friend Greg’s things but there is some part of me that wants some kind of grand movie ending like that.  Some part of me that wants to show off how, even though he never stopped drinking, never straightened out his act, never did any of the things I thought he would when he essentially got a second shot at life…  that… I don’t know.  Validation? Vindication? Admiration?  What?

Then the hyper-rational side of me kicks in.  It has been my dominant side for the past few years.  It tells me that this has all (all of it!) been a lot of effort invested in someone to whom I am not related and with whom I don’t have  a romantic connection.  A LOT OF EFFORT.

Sigh.

So I’ll go to his condo after class tonight and find the appropriate papers.  I’ll think about where I want to go from here.  I haven’t been there in two years, so it will be hard to do it, but I will.