Finishing Well

Some days are harder than others. It is part of what makes life interesting, the ebb and flow of fortune and the disparate demands our lives make of us. One minute the sun shines brightly on our plans and ambitions. Then suddenly all goes dark and every crossroad looks like a crisis.

It is this volatility that gives our lives meaning. If not for conflict and the possibility of defeat, at some point there would be nothing driving us out of bed in the morning. Fear is a great motivator. Conflict is the straw that stirs the drink. Fear of conflict then is a waste of energy. We should invite it, relish the prospect. For some, life is about peace at any price. Not me, I have always thrived in conflict. For me it concentrates the mind and eliminates distraction. Winston Churchill said it best, “Nothing in life is as exhilarating as to be shot at with no result.”

But, when it comes to my Dad, I’m exhausted. For nearly two years now we have been managing his care, dealing with his inexorable physical and emotional decline. My sisters, my brother and the rest of the family have been struggling mightily with decisions great and small, trying to make Dad’s final years as comfortable and fulfilling as possible. It has been a noble struggle. He deserves much more than we have given, but we have given all we have.

He is now entering a new phase of decline that will require new forms of care. Decisions must be made soon. We will do the best we can. The love and support of friends has been tremendously helpful, comforting in ways unimaginable. But this conflict has taken a toll on me, altering me forever, changing the way I see the world. I can’t speak for my siblings but I imagine it has changed them too.

I remember once, my Dad fussing at me about some project I had started with great fanfare only to have lost interest, leaving the thing undone. “It’s not how you start son, it’s how you finish.”

We are determined to allow my Dad to finish well. But honestly, in doing so, it’s about to kill me.

Juggling Monkeys

Imagine this scene. Two wild monkeys are struggling to balance themselves atop their unicycles while juggling machetes and chainsaws. As the camera draws back we see that the monkeys are performing this death defying stunt while perched on the top of a giant beach ball being held in the air by the trunk of a white elephant, himself reared up on his back legs attempting to surf a pipe wave in Ehukai Beach Park in Hawaii.

This is what has been going on inside my wife’s head for the past seven days. When I wrote my blog a week ago entitled “The Next 97 Days”, I couldn’t add the part about her planning and executing a 50^th birthday party for her sister because it was a surprise. Even though it was absolutely, positively the last thing she needed on her plate, the thought of someone else throwing the party without her was too much for her to bear. It was like waving a red blanket at a raging bull. No, if a party was going to be planned it would be Pam at the helm or nobody at the helm.

Of course, being Pam, it had to involve color coordinated decorations, properly arranged with a consistent theme… and cupcakes. She would insist on not one, or even two, but three different varieties of these delicious but labor intensive confections.

So, the morning of the big event I hear her down stairs in the kitchen rattling pots and pans, precariously close to meltdown status def-com 5, but what to do? The extent of my baking skills is limited to the consumption phase of the process. As a general rule, I have always held to the belief that injecting myself into the midst of a chaotic kitchen is one of the worst rookie mistakes of marriage, and is to be avoided at all cost. But, I could tell that the pressure and fatigue were catching up with her. So, I go downstairs and peek around the corner. She is franticly whipping up something with her high tech mixer, flour and confectionary sugar all over the place. Then it hit me. I am one hell of a dishwasher.

“Honey, how about I just wash up the pots and pans between courses here? Would that help?”

One of my better ideas.

Two and a half hours later she was done, the kitchen was spotless and I had even managed to help her put the filling in some of the cupcakes, a collaborative triumph of brains and brawn.

She then headed over to the venue to set everything up. I followed later with a chicken nugget tray from Chick-Fil-A, the only store bought item on the menu. When I arrived all hell was breaking loose, as people were showing up early and no one had showed up to help yet. I was plugged into this gaping manpower hole with barked commands from both my wife AND mother-in-law. (def-com 6.) Twenty minutes later this is what the place looked like:

Yep. My wife is amazing.