The beginning of yesterday’s post about learning of my father’s death is not some strange metaphor that didn’t work. It’s literal. Following his instructions to the letter, dear J traveled from Alabama to our house with his ashes and rang our doorbell, which is the first we knew of his deteriorating health or his death. His (extensive) instructions, which she is lovingly carrying out, prescribed every step. It was an odd way to learn of a death, though completely consistent with the life that preceded it.
While a completely different experience, it reminded us of our experience with him and ashes when my stepmother died. I was in law school, and we’d been helping him with paperwork and arrangements. As an aside, this is how we came to be reading hospital bills for her surgery and hospital stay, and concluding there must be a secret guild of people trained to construct unintelligible medical bills. We couldn’t make heads nor tails of most of them and ended up hiring a specialist in reading medical bills to help us through the maze. It was a trial. Anyway, one day, my father asked me to go by the funeral home to sign some papers. Thinking it would be a short errand easily accomplished on my way to class at the law school, I set forth.
Instead of papers to sign, however, once I arrived, the funeral home receptionist handed me Dorothy’s ashes. In what looked for all the world like a two-pound coffee can covered with contact paper. A trick of memory or story-telling embellishment leaves me with the distinct feeling that the plastic lid even said “Folger’s,” though that seems unlikely. Arriving at the law school, it felt wrong to leave Dorothy in the car, so I took the can into the building with me. Waiting in the hallway for the door to open, classmates kept saying “hey, are you going to share?” and otherwise joshing about this odd package. Taking my seat, it felt incorrect to put Dorothy on the floor—disrespectful, somehow—so I put the can on the desk, which caused the professor to say, “Ms. Gunsalus, how nice of you to bring the coffee!” It was trying and awkward.
Leaving class and going to work, the dilemma re-presented itself: it didn't feel right to leave the can in the car, so I took it into my office with me. Same scenario: everyone who saw me carrying this coffee can commented on it in some way, the more so if they knew us well enough to know that we don’t drink coffee. In my discomfort with the circumstances, I finally resorted to saying to “It’s not coffee, it’s my stepmother.” There’s a conversation-stopper for you. It made for a good story, though, after the services were over, the ashes scattered and some time elapsed between the experience and the telling.
This is all a diversion from thinking about what it really means for my father to be dead. He was a complicated person of great accomplishment who powerfully affected the lives of many people.
A true son of the prairie, he grew up on a farm with smart, hard-working parents who had only elementary school educations. He told us stories about his father who had a gift for machinery, taking apart his tractor on the barn floor on a tarp, cleaning all the pieces and putting it back together to improve its performance. He learned to drive in a Model T. His mother, a woman of formidable will, raised and supported three children after his father’s death in a threshing machine accident when he was a senior in high school. An eagle scout, he started college at South Dakota State University, and then followed his scoutmaster to Cornell, finished college there, got a Ph.D. and became a faculty member. Over his career, he built an international reputation. From his South Dakota roots—never forgotten—he grew into a cosmopolitan, polished presence, teaching himself and many others about wine, music, travel, and life.
A better mentor, probably, than a father, he wasn’t an easy person to be close to: he had the highest of standards and required much of himself and those around him. Passing along what he experienced, his style wasn’t praise but criticism, always meant to spur greater accomplishment. As a small example—one of the smallest, actually—despite my bringing home all A’s from school one year, he asked me where the plusses were. As they didn’t offer plusses, I was crushed and felt unrecognized for my hard work. It almost surely wasn’t meant that way, and to be around him meant coming to terms with the dichotomy between intent and effect and dealing with it. Riding in a car with him one day as he cataloged my (many) failings, he saw a blind woman having trouble crossing the street. Pulling the car across the lanes of traffic at an angle, he got out, held up his hand, stopped all the traffic, went over and escorted the woman across the street. Returning to the car and permitting the traffic to start again, he returned to the excoriation of my conduct without missing a beat. As you can imagine, this style worked better with some personalities than with others.
We all were clothed and fed and got great educations, if not much emotional nurturing. We were exposed to wonderful people, places and experiences. Scores of students attest to horizons opened, opportunities provided and the excitement of the journey with deep gratitude and affection. He was capable of enormous kindness and stimulated tremendous loyalty. His work was meaningful and will be remembered.
You could leave a lesser legacy. We will hold a memorial service in the spring, as requested, once the crocuses are blooming.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Stream Flows On
We opened the door this morning to the news that my father has died. Today has been a blur of handling notifications and thinking about what next needs to be done. As one of the people I called today said, “No! Gunny is forever!” It did feel like that, as his was a formidable presence and will. He’d been planning to live past 100, though he “only” made 96. Even that, he did his own way, refusing treatment after his congestive heart failure left his dignity compromised. Even more, he restricted the news about his health in the final weeks, not wanting anyone to see him in a compromised state. He died peacefully, without pain and surrounded by caring. You cannot ask much more than that, after a full and eventful life.
For the rest of us, there’s remembering and reconciling to do. According to his wishes, we’ll have a memorial service in the spring. In his words, he wanted it to be “when the crocuses are pushing up.”
More later.
For the rest of us, there’s remembering and reconciling to do. According to his wishes, we’ll have a memorial service in the spring. In his words, he wanted it to be “when the crocuses are pushing up.”
More later.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Everyday-ness of Recovering
If there were an option to do the everyday chores of life in clumps—like cleaning the house for two weeks solid, or whatever number the statistical gurus calculate as being the quantity of time otherwise spent spread out over the year, that would always be my choice. This would apply to cleaning, exercising, organizing, tidying, dieting, all manner of life chores that need to be done on a regular basis but aren’t that interesting or fun. This applies, double, to recovering, where the everyday-ness is getting old. Of course, if you think about it, I did do recovering in a clump, and this is just a different phase. Given my inclinations, though, every time I’d go for a longer acute period and shorter in-between period, just because managing this is so complicated and frustrating. On the other hand, trying to dwell on the bright side, the recovery report is very good: I’m able to drive reliably now, at least for short jaunts, the incision healing has taken another big leap forward, and my balance and shoulder are improving. Washing my hair and brushing my teeth this morning occasioned a moment to stop and appreciate the distance I’ve come, as both have now moved back into the routine category from extremely-difficult-or-impossible. It pays to stop and track progress and to appreciate it.
Riding in the car with our whole family this weekend, it came forcibly home to me how well the tumor lottery worked out: if anyone in our family had to get a brain tumor, I would choose me every time. Not only do I have the perfect brain tumor hair which neither Michael, nor the girls have (they have Michael’s hair, except more of it), but if it’s me, I have more knowledge and control over how things are going. The horror of it being any of the three of them is hard to contemplate. So, that’s another thing to be happy about: the tumor lottery turned out the best possible way and exactly the way I would have chosen, had I been consulted.
Slowly, it is sinking in that scheduling one big event per day is about all that makes sense; more is possible if the events don’t involve major expenditures of energy, like standing up and teaching, but even then pacing is called for. Even more, I’m getting better at recognizing the signals of when to slow down, which feels like a major victory: after my flu shot, the next morning felt like more sleep was needed, and I actually heeded the signals. Score one for the tortoise.
My goals have been slightly revised: before adding back in the work on the book, restarting mentoring at the middle school needs to be added back. My mentee from last year has moved, so this year brings starting anew with another student, and I’m anxious to meet her and get started again. Maybe next week?
We’ll know a lot more next week, after the election, about a lot of things. Waiting is hard. Hope you’re all hanging in there, and thank you, as always, for the support and caring. We send the same back to you.
Riding in the car with our whole family this weekend, it came forcibly home to me how well the tumor lottery worked out: if anyone in our family had to get a brain tumor, I would choose me every time. Not only do I have the perfect brain tumor hair which neither Michael, nor the girls have (they have Michael’s hair, except more of it), but if it’s me, I have more knowledge and control over how things are going. The horror of it being any of the three of them is hard to contemplate. So, that’s another thing to be happy about: the tumor lottery turned out the best possible way and exactly the way I would have chosen, had I been consulted.
Slowly, it is sinking in that scheduling one big event per day is about all that makes sense; more is possible if the events don’t involve major expenditures of energy, like standing up and teaching, but even then pacing is called for. Even more, I’m getting better at recognizing the signals of when to slow down, which feels like a major victory: after my flu shot, the next morning felt like more sleep was needed, and I actually heeded the signals. Score one for the tortoise.
My goals have been slightly revised: before adding back in the work on the book, restarting mentoring at the middle school needs to be added back. My mentee from last year has moved, so this year brings starting anew with another student, and I’m anxious to meet her and get started again. Maybe next week?
We’ll know a lot more next week, after the election, about a lot of things. Waiting is hard. Hope you’re all hanging in there, and thank you, as always, for the support and caring. We send the same back to you.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Why Are You Teaching After Brain Surgery?
This is the question that I get asked more than any other. I’ve thought about the answer a lot, and the answer remains fairly simple: I really like the teaching and it lets me feel like myself again. My feeling of responsibility to these unusual classes is another element, but I’ve always had an overgrown sense of responsibility—even to the point that it’s gotten me into trouble more than once—and I know how to get over that when needed.
This has been an isolating journey; the blog and the responses I get to it reduce that isolation, but the contrast between the number of people in my life before diagnosis and after is sharp. Teaching my classes gives me concentrated doses of interactions with people, and as both groups this semester have remarkably cheerful and pleasant personalities, it’s always nice to see them.
It’s not particularly fashionable to like teaching as much as I do and maybe that’s attributable to the fact that I haven’t been doing it year in and year out for decades, only for most of one. Maybe if I’d been at it longer, I’d be really tired of it and glad to drop it. On the other hand, the experience is never the same because the kinds of topics I teach lead to fascinating variability in each topic and simulation. I’ve had experiences this semester in each class where negotiations I’ve assigned scores of times developed in ways I’d never seen before. Law students are smart, hard-working and interesting people; the freshmen I teach are smart, motivated and enjoyable to see where they are in their lives. So the experience of teaching my classes is stimulating, challenging and fun. Each provides me with a fairly safe place to figure out if I was/am still “me” the more so because I’ve had such stellar people with me backing me up and providing a safety net if I turned out not to be up to the task either physically or cognitively.
That’s why I’m teaching my classes, and so soon after brain surgery. Because it lets me experience a little control and provides a lot of reassurance that I’m still in here. Kearney points out this morning that all of this could end up making me a better teacher, especially the part where I’m experiencing being a slow learner. She points out that the best teachers and coaches are ones who understand what it is like not to be good at something initially and can help others move from that to strength. That’s a positive framing, and I’ll go with it. My slowness at getting to know and love being a tortoise is helping me be a better teacher. Selfless of me, isn’t it?
This has been an isolating journey; the blog and the responses I get to it reduce that isolation, but the contrast between the number of people in my life before diagnosis and after is sharp. Teaching my classes gives me concentrated doses of interactions with people, and as both groups this semester have remarkably cheerful and pleasant personalities, it’s always nice to see them.
It’s not particularly fashionable to like teaching as much as I do and maybe that’s attributable to the fact that I haven’t been doing it year in and year out for decades, only for most of one. Maybe if I’d been at it longer, I’d be really tired of it and glad to drop it. On the other hand, the experience is never the same because the kinds of topics I teach lead to fascinating variability in each topic and simulation. I’ve had experiences this semester in each class where negotiations I’ve assigned scores of times developed in ways I’d never seen before. Law students are smart, hard-working and interesting people; the freshmen I teach are smart, motivated and enjoyable to see where they are in their lives. So the experience of teaching my classes is stimulating, challenging and fun. Each provides me with a fairly safe place to figure out if I was/am still “me” the more so because I’ve had such stellar people with me backing me up and providing a safety net if I turned out not to be up to the task either physically or cognitively.
That’s why I’m teaching my classes, and so soon after brain surgery. Because it lets me experience a little control and provides a lot of reassurance that I’m still in here. Kearney points out this morning that all of this could end up making me a better teacher, especially the part where I’m experiencing being a slow learner. She points out that the best teachers and coaches are ones who understand what it is like not to be good at something initially and can help others move from that to strength. That’s a positive framing, and I’ll go with it. My slowness at getting to know and love being a tortoise is helping me be a better teacher. Selfless of me, isn’t it?
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Conveyor Belt Moves Into the Larger World
The conveyor belt I stepped onto in September, pulling my family with me, started its path in a small and tightly enclosed space. In recent days, it has been moving into the larger world, something I’m ready for only part of the time. While returning to the larger world is the much-desired overall goal, it also can be overwhelming and tiring. Mostly, it raises “what if?” questions that aren’t answerable until the effort is made—and succeeds or doesn’t. Uncertainty is not very fun.
The balance that has been lost and must be regained is more than physical, it’s also personal: can I do this again? And if not, then what? The conveyor belt’s current path may be in a bigger space, affording a wider view with horizons that are farther away, but it still goes over bumps and takes sharp turns that are unexpected, for which we are unprepared. In general, though, its consistent direction is towards real life, regular life. The hard and important things to remember are that the shortages of energy and drive are rooted in the physical issues. This turns out to be way too easy to forget in the moment. It took me many years, before this adventure, to learn to trust my own pacing and sense of timing, and that must be regained: if I do not feel like taking on a task, it is almost certainly a physical energy issue, not my inner shirker at work, as my early programming trained me to conclude. My inner shirker, it turns out, probably either does not exist or is so ineffectual that it is almost never the culprit.
Learning to trust the “go rest” and “slow down” signals and to respect them is the part of this adventure that presents the biggest challenge for me. And that turns out to be yet another way of seeking my inner tortoise, a creature I did not know existed and never particularly wanted to know before this adventure. I’m warming up to the little guy. Very slowly. That seems suitable, somehow.
This part of the recovery would be psychologically easier to work on if it had more overt visible physical symptoms. Those are incontrovertible and do not require much calibration or explanation. The internal healing, though, is not so easy to gauge, so just dealing with it is now called for. On with these tasks.
The balance that has been lost and must be regained is more than physical, it’s also personal: can I do this again? And if not, then what? The conveyor belt’s current path may be in a bigger space, affording a wider view with horizons that are farther away, but it still goes over bumps and takes sharp turns that are unexpected, for which we are unprepared. In general, though, its consistent direction is towards real life, regular life. The hard and important things to remember are that the shortages of energy and drive are rooted in the physical issues. This turns out to be way too easy to forget in the moment. It took me many years, before this adventure, to learn to trust my own pacing and sense of timing, and that must be regained: if I do not feel like taking on a task, it is almost certainly a physical energy issue, not my inner shirker at work, as my early programming trained me to conclude. My inner shirker, it turns out, probably either does not exist or is so ineffectual that it is almost never the culprit.
Learning to trust the “go rest” and “slow down” signals and to respect them is the part of this adventure that presents the biggest challenge for me. And that turns out to be yet another way of seeking my inner tortoise, a creature I did not know existed and never particularly wanted to know before this adventure. I’m warming up to the little guy. Very slowly. That seems suitable, somehow.
This part of the recovery would be psychologically easier to work on if it had more overt visible physical symptoms. Those are incontrovertible and do not require much calibration or explanation. The internal healing, though, is not so easy to gauge, so just dealing with it is now called for. On with these tasks.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Glass is Filling Up
We’ve been having a family weekend, visiting with Kearney and Brad, enjoying our time together and eating some truly great meals. Yesterday’s post never happened, but if it had, it would have been titled “Siesta Lifestyle. Minus the Lifestyle” (all I do is stop and nap, it feels like), but Kearney pointed out that it’s a pretty nice lifestyle to visit and eat and nap. That’s true—it makes for a great weekend, though even there the undone chores beckon. It makes for a little less great everyday life, especially if getting anything done is part of the concept. Even so, taking a retrospective look, more things are getting done, and the recovery continues at a steady pace.
If I think of this blog as a record of recovery (and not just self-absorbed drivel), it helps. The progress is all in the positive direction and the distance come is long. The only real remaining big challenges (other than stamina) are balance, the scalp issues and not being able to summon words/ideas sometimes. Otherwise, the use of my shoulder and arm are almost complete, though there is still some work to be done. I still haven’t looked up the effects of the brain moving around to refill the tumor void, and hope there will be a time soon when I both remember and am sitting at the computer. It strikes me that there may be some information out there that would explain some of how recent times have been.
After the big reassessment, the next activities to be added back in need to be the book I have under contract, and projects that involve others being slowed down by my absence. All adding back in will come in small steps, as I think (hope) I’ve absorbed and learned the overdoing lesson.
We all send good wishes for your weekend and the upcoming week.
If I think of this blog as a record of recovery (and not just self-absorbed drivel), it helps. The progress is all in the positive direction and the distance come is long. The only real remaining big challenges (other than stamina) are balance, the scalp issues and not being able to summon words/ideas sometimes. Otherwise, the use of my shoulder and arm are almost complete, though there is still some work to be done. I still haven’t looked up the effects of the brain moving around to refill the tumor void, and hope there will be a time soon when I both remember and am sitting at the computer. It strikes me that there may be some information out there that would explain some of how recent times have been.
After the big reassessment, the next activities to be added back in need to be the book I have under contract, and projects that involve others being slowed down by my absence. All adding back in will come in small steps, as I think (hope) I’ve absorbed and learned the overdoing lesson.
We all send good wishes for your weekend and the upcoming week.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Learning, Slowly
My courses are built around letting students discover as much as possible for and about the topic of the course and themselves. This generally involves giving them both conceptual information (readings, lectures, etc.) and experiences (simulations, other exercises) that are related to the conceptual information, and then working to integrate the two, so we can go forward, building on that base, repeating the whole cycle. Experiential learning, it is called. A very wise man who generously shared advice and materials with me told me that the lessons people learn best are those in which they are given an opportunity to do it for themselves, fail, and then learn from the experience. He pointed out that if you just tell them information related to the topics I teach (negotiation, interviewing, leadership, ethics, etc.) without context or application, their reaction is often “I knew that” although, likely, they did not and could not have applied the information—nor will they likely be able to generalize and apply it in the future. It would have been nice if I had been quick enough to learn my fatigue lesson without experiencing it first. It's not like there weren't plenty of warnings.
People I know, respect and love advised me throughout this process to take things slowly, or risk prolonging the recovery. I heard this advice, trusted them, nodded my head (“I knew that”), and then was not very good at applying it to my situation—or recognizing what being overextended felt like. However, having failed now, I get it. Now, the feeling of being tired and on the brink of over-doing it is clear to me, and I have observed personally how long it takes to recover from going too far. Wiser now, if set back by most of a week, my tortoise lessons have progressed by leaps and bounds, enhanced by all the information supplied all along by those who had been there themselves and tried to warn me. This has been another illustration of the power of experiential learning. I am sure there are people who manage to learn this without failing the way I did; how do they do it? That would be a nice skill to acquire....
Sometime this week, I realized that my fingers and toes have almost completely stopped tingling—the absence of something (even something unpleasant) isn’t always quickly noticed. Anyway, that is more evidence of progress, so hooray.
Thanks for the encouragement, all. We get to see Kearney this weekend, who finally gave her long-delayed seminar yesterday and passed with flying colors. Another hooray! We’re looking forward to cooking, visiting and exploring together. Plus, of course, resting even when, in the moment, it might not feel needed.
People I know, respect and love advised me throughout this process to take things slowly, or risk prolonging the recovery. I heard this advice, trusted them, nodded my head (“I knew that”), and then was not very good at applying it to my situation—or recognizing what being overextended felt like. However, having failed now, I get it. Now, the feeling of being tired and on the brink of over-doing it is clear to me, and I have observed personally how long it takes to recover from going too far. Wiser now, if set back by most of a week, my tortoise lessons have progressed by leaps and bounds, enhanced by all the information supplied all along by those who had been there themselves and tried to warn me. This has been another illustration of the power of experiential learning. I am sure there are people who manage to learn this without failing the way I did; how do they do it? That would be a nice skill to acquire....
Sometime this week, I realized that my fingers and toes have almost completely stopped tingling—the absence of something (even something unpleasant) isn’t always quickly noticed. Anyway, that is more evidence of progress, so hooray.
Thanks for the encouragement, all. We get to see Kearney this weekend, who finally gave her long-delayed seminar yesterday and passed with flying colors. Another hooray! We’re looking forward to cooking, visiting and exploring together. Plus, of course, resting even when, in the moment, it might not feel needed.
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