If Your Happy and You Know It.....Good for You

I get, I understand happy.  I’m largely a happy person, always have been, I like happy.  The odd thing is, at times, every now and then, occasionally, I feel a little guilty feeling happy. 

As dumb as that is, it’s a real thing for me.

I remember at one point sitting somewhere, eating, talking, hanging with my children while Marty was still in the ICU at Zale Lipshy Hospital in Dallas after her first stroke.  Marty was lying in her high tech hospital bed with tubes in her nose, her throat and her head while being fed food through a tube and given IV drugs to keep her asleep so she wouldn’t buck against the daily assaults on her body.  Keeping someone alive can be an awesome and awful thing.

Anyway, we were sitting, talking, hanging and someone said something funny and I laughed for just a moment. I don’t remember what or who said something funny but the moment caught up with me, life seemed normal for a fleeting moment and I laughed, I found happy, and then I caught myself. 

My happy seemed like a direct affront to my bride who was lying in a bed with a tenuous hold on life.  How could I, if I was true, if my sadness over Marty’s aneurysm, if my fear for Marty’s life was true, how could I laugh. 

I quit laughing.  For longer than was smart.

The whole thing, caring for Marty, watching her suffer, watching pieces of her die was so overwhelmingly awful it pushed out virtually all emotions except for fear, anger and sadness…..and guilt for those odd times when happiness or laughter occurred.  It took months, really years to get to the point where other real and better emotions such as love, gratitude and happiness could be real again.  It took work, thought, self awareness, effort and most importantly adaptation to move past the self pity and angst of our situation.

I have since discovered that happiness does not require an ideal life, it does not require an easy life, it does not require perfection.  Happiness simply requires effort and permission, permission from you for you to enjoy what fruits of life are there.

Man that’s high tone talk about someone who is healthy .  It's because I've been married to Psychologist all of these years.  Think about how hard it is to find happiness if you are the Psychologist in the bed is the stroke patient.

When I ask Marty if she is happy her first and immediate response is almost always, “No.”  Not a lot of detail, not a lot of nuance, it’s just, “No.”  But, give her a few beats, and on most days, almost always, she will think and then say,”Yes, some times.”

I think that’s the real truth.  “No,” she says, “I shouldn’t feel happy.  Life has hit me hard, life, living has taken too much of me away for me to be happy, there is no friggin way I’m going to say I’m happy and it’s pretty damn stupid of you to even ask or think I could be happy.  What the hell is wrong with your pee brain?”  That’s what I imagine she thinks, she really just says no.

But then it hits her, as it hits me, there are a lot, I mean a lot of happy things in our lives.  First and foremost we are both still here, with each other, enjoying each other and yes laughing with each other.  Marty hasn’t had a serious illness in well over a year (knock on wood) and she has me, bubbly little ol me to take care of her.  Bubbly little ol me has Nykkie, Erica, Renea and LaShonda to help, we have amazing children and family to support and love us and we have the means to live life in a reasonably comfortable manner in spite of all the wounds of life. 

It would be wrong, wrong, and wrong again not to claim happiness, even if I am required, through my own psychosis, to feel guilty about it from time to time.

It took time to get over the shock of the events in our lives.   It took time and learning to get past some, but never all of the fear and anger, it took time and effort and a very conscious effort (pat myself on the back) to leave the idea of a daily funeral for Marty, the idea that Marty was always on deaths door. 

Happiness does not always occur naturally, sometimes it takes effort, sometimes it takes thought, and sometimes it takes accepting the guilt associated with it. 

Me, I accept happiness and I expect the occasional feelings of guilt that come with it.  It just is.

Dying Decisions

When I took Maggie, our geriatric dachshund, to the vet the last time I stood there and looked at her and confessed to the vet, “Every morning for the last few weeks I looked in her crate to let her out and kept hoping she had died in her sleep.”

The vet looked up from her business with Maggie and said softly, “That rarely happens with dogs who are well cared for.”

Maybe she told me that to assuage my guilt for doing in my old dog, maybe it’s really true, maybe well cared for animals live long, comfortably and fight to the end. Maybe it’s just happy talk, I don’t know.  

I want to believe there is a little truth in what she said and I wonder if the same could be said for people.  I wonder if maybe, as we get older, more infirmed or deathly ill good care means we don’t go easily, good care means we hang on a little longer to live and love those loving us.

My mind, being what it is, obsessed and a bit crazy; I ruminated over the vet’s comment and I eventually thought of how the comment applied to my life with Marty.  Of course that’s where my little pea brain went because all things, especially notions of life, love and death all come back to Marty.

No, I don’t secretly hope she dies in the middle of the night, not at all.  Marty has beaten the odds so many times in this whole journey; she has already outlasted any common sense mortality projections.  Marty has been at death’s door and refused to walk through; in fact she nailed the door shut.

The question is, did she do that because she has had good care, did she do that because she wasn’t ready to go, did she do that because she is one stubborn lady?  All three of those things are dead true but I don’t know how we have arrived at this point in our lives.     

I know that Marty gets exceptionally good care.  She has me watching over this team of amazing people ranging from a marvelous Family Practice Doc to our children and their partners to four fantastic care givers.  She gets good care, she gets good love.

I also know that good care often leads to really hard decisions like telling your doctor to put that purple wrist band on your loved one, you know the one, the one that has DNR scrawled on it.  I know that most of us will eventually be making some of those hard decisions affecting the people we love and some of those decisions will literally be about life and death.  Hard, really hard, impossible decisions lie in wait for all of us.

Having your long time canine companion put down is nothing compared to deciding to end life saving medical treatment, even when you know, even when you are sure with every fiber of your being that you are being true to a loved one’s wishes, even when you know death is a release.  I’m sure it feels like giving up on someone who needs you, someone you love enough to let them go.

I have known Marty for over 40 years.  She and I have talked, like most, about this very thing.  I know with every fiber of my being that she does not want to be on a vent again.  I know very clearly she does not want to have major surgery again, I know she does not want to ever darken the halls of a nursing home, I know what she wants.  

I don’t know what I can do, I’m the weak link in this particular chain, just like so many of the people who stand over their loved one’s bed trying to decide when and whether to unplug.  Knowing what’s right doesn’t make the decision easy at all.

I don’t want Marty to die in the middle of the night like I wished for with Maggie. With Maggie I was in my own way wanting to be spared the weight of having her put to sleep.  I’m not asking to be spared any part of this journey with Marty or any of the gut wrenching decisions that are part of that ride.  Shoot, the way this ride is going it may be Marty and our kids figuring out what to do with me. 

Ultimately, almost all of us will have to make a stop on this ride to contemplate and decide, how best to honor and care for the person we love.  

My wish for me and all of you, I hope it happens rarely, I pray it happens with love, and I hope we all show remarkable courage. 

Ten Years Later

It was Sunday.  I was sitting in the ICU/day surgery waiting room at Parkland Hospital in Dallas with son Matt.  The waiting room was deserted and we were waiting for the rigidly enforced visiting hour to see Marty.  It was seven days since her surgery for the ruptured aneurysm, it was seven days she had been lying in a coma in the ICU.

The 2005 Masters Golf tournament was on the small television in the empty waiting room and Matt and I watched as Tiger Woods struggled to keep his lead and win his 4^th green jacket.  To golf people it was a huge weekend, one of only four major tournaments, to me, probably to Matt, it was a way to tamp down some of the anxiety and fear that had become omnipresent since Marty’s brain hemorrhage.

I don’t remember who Tiger was paired with that day, I know they eventually went into a playoff and Woods won.  What I do remember is Tiger sinking an amazing chip shot from off the green on the 16^th hole.  He aimed at least 20 feet to the right of the hole, hit the ball and the ball curved around to the hole and almost came to a stop, just short of the hole and then rolled in and hit the bottom of the cup.

In the quiet of the that empty waiting room Matt and I both jumped up, clapped and for one brief instance left Parkland Hospital, left the weight of why we were there, left the anxiety of what was going to happen to Marty next and reveled with a younger red-shirted Tiger Woods as he fist pumped after a miraculous shot.  

The excitement on TV was almost palpable and it was the first time in a week I had felt something other than acute sadness, fear or anxiety.  The excitement quickly abated and amazingly I felt a twinge of guilt for feeling those few seconds of happiness.

It’s just plain weird to feel guilt because you feel something good, something other than fear or sorrow, but that’s the way it was for those first few days, weeks and even months.  If it felt good to be with our kids or my family, I felt guilty for feeling good, if someone said something funny and I laughed and for a second and forgot about where Marty was, I felt guilty.  

Simply put, if I wasn’t miserable, if I wasn’t grieving, if I didn’t try to feel Marty’s pain, if I felt happy for a moment, I felt guilty.  Dumb, huh?

That has changed over the last years as we moved from the hemorrhagic stroke to the ischemic stroke, as we moved from one rehab facility to another, as we found care givers and doctors and nurses who made our life better, as I matured in the care giving process. 

I have grown and while I still feel a tiny twinge of guilt when I am off enjoying parts of life that are cut off to Marty I know Marty wants me to feel and be happy.  And besides, we have found a way to be happy together with each other with other.  We have found the rhythm of our new normal.

Ten years later to the day when Matt and I reveled in Tiger Wood’s golf Marty sat in her wheelchair beside me as rain fell intermittently against the windows at our house on Richland Chambers.  We sat side-by-side, her in her wheel chair, me in my recliner and we watched the Masters Golf Tournament, together. 

I suspect Marty was not invested in this golf tournament; I mean really, its golf on TV. Tiger didn’t pull off a miraculous shot to stay competitive and there were no singular moments of thrill aside from a 21 year old from Dallas winning his first major.  

This time, ten years later, Marty and I sat together, not in a sterile uncomfortable hospital environment, not worrying about the next life changing medical crises, but sitting with each other enjoying a moment together.  

It was a moment that reminded me of seconds of arm raised exhilaration and then the inevitable fall back to the weeks of unmitigated fear and anxiety.

Human beings adapt amazingly well.

Pushing Through to Happy

A comment on one of my blog posts and a couple of facebook links really nailed me this week. 

The comment was nice, the writer pointed out how good things were in my life.  They were spot on, my life is good.  It’s good for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I have the time, resources and health to tend to Marty’s care.

 

The face book post was about being content in a career.  The writer posited that some in their chosen career groused because they felt like they were supposed to grouse, that they were, somehow, supposed to be unhappy because their chosen career was very hard and required long hours sometimes fighting against great odds.  I resemble that post.

The article I read, also on face book, listed five regrets the dying often had in common.  The last regret, one many of us can understand, was wishing they had let themselves be happier. 

 

All three of these pieces dealt with happiness.  They all spoke to me and reminded me of something….well they reminded me of …..Me.

Somehow I got it in my brain that feeling real abundant happiness, expressing joy, was okay for some, but not for the serious.  Overt happiness was not for those who had important things to do.  I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know why it would be there because I like happy, heck I am a huge fan of Pharrell’s Happy, I love it, it makes me do the baby boomer head bob.

 

But the curmudgeon gene is somehow stuck in me.  I know it’s kind of a stupid thought and I really, I promise ain’t that stupid.  I suspect it has to do with that whole Texas work ethic manly crapola.

There have been too many times I have found myself feeling a little guilty for being happy.  I worked hard in my life, I worked at hard jobs, I was a hard, serious career man, how could that produce happy?  Told you it was stupid.

Then came the strokes and being a giver of care for Marty, talk about a serious undertaking. 

I distinctly remember as Marty lay in a coma in the intensive care unit I was having a light moment with my children one evening.  I laughed, I smiled, and I felt a brief moment of happy with my favorite people in the world.  I occurred to me at the time I should not be having happy stuff and I decided right then and there I needed to feel bad about the happy feeling.

Marty was sick, really sick, very sick, it was serious, how can serious and happy exist together?  In my mind they couldn’t so I couldn’t ever experience a light moment, everything had to be a heavy burden so I could show myself and others that I felt miserable bad about my wife’s plight, our plight.  Guilt made me move away from happy, serious made me shun joy, dumb, dumb, dumb.

It has taken me time, like years, but I’m better at finding and accepting joy.  I still struggle with the guilt of feeling happiness, especially when Marty is feeling bad or when I am away and doing things while she is at home, recovering from her strokes, my fallen partner.  How can this engender happiness?

I know and Marty knows that we have many things to celebrate in our lives.  We have Marty being here, we have a supportive loving family, our children are good people who have joined with good people and are producing amazing people.  Happy, happy, happy.

We are supported by good people and we have met many amazing health care givers who are serious about their craft and about helping Marty.  We are incredibly fortunate to have been touched by so many who care so much and are so very talented at their chosen endeavors.  That’s bound to be happy.

We worked hard and had very good fortune and I know we are blessed that we are financially able to maintain this rather expensive care giving hobby.   This is a lot more expensive than golf, and for me and my golf skills, much more rewarding.

We have been lucky and in spite of the overall tragic circumstances we, I have a lot of reasons to be happy.  I’m happy Marty is still with me, I’m happy I’m healthy and able to care for her, I’m happy with my family, I’m happy with friends, I’m happy a lot of the time.

Most importantly I know Marty and I know she fights for happy moments for herself so I should do the same.

I still feel a little guilty for it.

Dealing with the Guilt

Guilt. Husband guilt, father guilt, survivor’s guilt, caregiver guilt, it’s pervasive, if not ruling. It’s always there. Guilt too often drives behavior, thoughts, and feelings, its real, its palpable; it’s a part my being with Marty. It’s a part of who I am that I must confront and it can be a part of what I do to others from time to time. After all what are parents if not purveyors of a little bit of guilt.

I know her strokes were not my fault, I know the trauma was beyond my control. It’s incredibly narcissistic and grandiose to think I could have prevented Marty’s strokes, to think if I had somehow made her quit smoking, if I had been more present, been a better husband she somehow would not have gotten sick. It makes no sense to any rational sentient person that I somehow feel guilty about her strokes, but sometimes I do feel that guilt, that ugly emotion, which clearly brings into question my rationalness and sentience.

The first couple of years after Marty had the strokes I felt guilt for almost everything. That little nagging inner voice kept haranguing me with I wasn’t doing a good enough job in caring for her to avert the second stroke, I wasn’t aware enough of illness signs or hygiene processes to catch or prevent the latest life threatening infection, or I wasn’t being attentive enough.

It’s weird to feel guilty for smiling or feeling joy but I did. It’s just plain crazy to feel psychic pain for enjoying a round of golf or a trip to see your children, but for a while every time I smiled; every time I enjoyed myself I felt it tinged with this sense of remorse and guilt. How could I feel anything but grief, sadness and remorse when Marty was lying in bed, broken by strokes?

It happens most often when I am somewhere or doing something I know Marty would have enjoyed. It hits the hardest when I am living our life with our children without her. The day our grandson was born I went to Dallas, alone, promising her I would take her the next day. It was a hurried trip, a quick turnaround trip that required going quickly and on the spur of the moment. I beat myself up the entire way to the hospital, why didn’t I just load her up and go, why didn’t I take the time and the trouble and go the extra step to take her, instead of Marty I took guilt with me in the car.

I know Marty; I know she would never wish the burden of guilt on anyone, she felt it too often in her own life with her own mother. She can’t make it go away, it’s in me and too often I can’t get completely away from feeling that pang. It’s a futile and useless emotion in our life’s situation.

Guilt became something I could use to make me feel as damaged and hurt as Marty. In a strange way I used guilt to punish myself, I used guilt to make me at least as frail and needy as Marty. Guilt, feeling bad about feeling happy was a tool to make the caregiver, me, sick too.

In time, over time, guilt for all things bad in her life and the burden Marty and I put on our families and friend’s lives abated. Understanding I was using guilt as a crutch helped; recognizing I’m not responsible for all bad things helps, knowing I’m not everything to everyone helps, living the life helps, time helps.

It’s still there from time to time, every now and then. It still creeps into my psyche on occasion when I have missed something, when I forget to make an appointment, when we miss a medicine dose, when I let my guard down for just a minute, guilt for all perceived sins past and present breaks past my guard. Eventually you just have to learn that life happens and we simply can’t take responsibility for everything, we can only do our best. It’s all we can do.