19 minute read
Vexations & Conundrums
Tar Balls
When I was a little girl, we had a secret swimming hole, a spring, secluded and shady under a grove of
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trees. My granddad had located it and when it was hot, we would load into the back of his black, rounded-front pickup truck, and jump off the back into the welcoming cool, clear water.
One hot day I asked my Poppy if we could go swimming.
Our hideaway was sullied. Who would do something so careless, ruining such a natural delight? I felt like the person should be in jail.
Years later, as a teenager, I’d spend summers with my cousins. They were older by a few years, popular and fun. And they had a boat! We would water ski in the lake, escorted by teen boys volunteering to work for the privilege of participating in the sport. I thought this was paradise.
Some days we would even climb an oil storage tank and jump about twenty feet down into the water. We had a personal amusement park.
I bought a new white bikini and was thrilled to show it off. One day I was the last person to ski. I took my turn and skied until I was tired. As I climbed back into the boat, I looked down at my swimsuit in horror. My prized new swimsuit was spotted with tiny black, grimy balls. There was a rainbow hue to the stains as I turned in the late day sun. What was this? That was the last time I skied in the lake, as I realized there was now unseen pollution, and it couldn’t possibly be healthy to be swimming in this water anymore.
Later, I moved from Louisiana to Texas. I planned a fun weekend getaway with a boyfriend in Galveston, staying at a fancy hotel facing the sea wall. The beach beckoned us to stroll, running our bare toes through the sand and enjoying the sunset. Shangri-La!
After our first stroll, I donned my flip-flops and went back to the room. I was preparing to shower for dinner when I noticed black smears on the bottom of my feet. I tried removing them with soap and water, but it wasn’t effective. Then I noticed some white packets on the vanity: Tar Removal Wipes. In this fanciest of hotels, on beautiful waters, one needed tar removal wipes to erase the ugly black stains picked up on the bottom of feet at the edge of the water. Not ShangriLa.
A couple of years ago my husband and I were guests at a condo facing the Galveston port where ships lined up to offload products. One night we were on the balcony and noticed a commotion on a jutting finger of land at the bay. First police cars came and cleared the area of sightseers. Lights flashing, sirens off, they blocked the road with multiple vehicles. Then the fire department hazardous waste team showed up, again silently. There was a clandestine quality to what we were witnessing. The next day we learned a barge loaded with oil hit another barge and there was a leak. How much oil had spilled?
At breakfast, I mentioned the event to our diner waitress. Her smile faded and her expression fell. The hand holding her order pad dropped down to her waist. “Not again!” she said despondently, as though this happened all the time.
Now we are experiencing dramatic increases in natural disasters. Opposing viewpoints on how we remedy this danger to our continued existence are raging. Clean energy movements form and face the wrath of the fossil fuels industry.
One friend asked me incredulously, “You actually think that man can control the weather?!” I thought before I answered. “Well, if for every action there is a reaction, then yes.” According to NASA, 97% of actively publishing scientists the world over believe that man has contributed to a global emergency. This is a consensus.
My husband and I debate making the move to a hybrid electric car. I know that petroleum products are used to make life-saving things like blood storage bags. One can’t just stop an industry on a dime. But I am ready to sacrifice to try and save our waterways, to return to a planet not plagued by ever-fiercer hurricanes and fires, destroying the lives of so many people.
Our species has cavalierly put our waste in the planet’s waters, using them as toilets. We continue to rely on fossil fuels, raising the earth’s temperature. I remain perplexed by our lack of foresight, which has brought us to this critical juncture.
Katina Pontikes
During the time I was researching and trying to decide if I wanted to drive my car into
Mexico, an incident occurred which made the thought of not having a car, paying for insurance, and driving become very appealing to me. It was a warm sunny day, and I had an appointment cross town. As I entered the garage, I noticed my front right tire was low again. I made a mental note that there was definitely a slow leak in that tire, and I was going to have to stop band-aiding it by filling it with air every few days.
Pulling out my driveway, I looked down at the gas gage and noticed I was just at a fourth of a tank. I needed to fill up. No problem, I’d stop at the gas station right before hitting the freeway. I pulled up to pump 1 and proceeded into the gas station where I asked for 20 dollars on # one and asked the cashier for change for a dollar, explaining I needed to put air in my tire. She obliged and I walked out, got into my car and drove over to the air pump. After putting an adequate amount of air, I knew because I used a gauge, in my tire I got back in my car and drove off.
While driving down the freeway to my appointment I looked down at my gas gauge and noticed it was still on a fourth of a tank. Damn! Replaying the whole scene in my mind I realized that I never pumped my gas! I must have been so focused on putting air in my tire I completely blanked out on pumping my gas. Oh well, I was too far down the freeway and closer to my appointment to come up and go back down. I reasoned that I had enough gas to get to the appointment and return to the gas station afterwards to rectify the situation. I forged ahead. Thankfully, the appointment was an in and out deal and I was back on the freeway heading back to the gas station within an hour. It was still a warm and sunny day as I pulled back in to the gas station, and coincidentally pump # one was open. I pulled up to it, got out and remember thinking as I put the pump inside the tank that I should have done it this way in the first place, that way I wouldn’t have forgotten to pump. I walked back into the station where the same cashier was tending to another customer. When my turn came, I stepped up and explained how silly I felt but when I paid for my gas, I drove off and never pumped it. She looked at me indifferently and said that there was nothing she could do about that. Surely, she hadn’t quite understood what I said, so I again explained that it had only been less than two hours since I was there. I was the one who asked for change to put air in my tire. I had given her a twenty-dollar bill and a dollar in exchange for four quarters. She then said, “that’s not my problem, people can say anything, and you don’t have any proof that you didn’t pump the gas.”
Now, I’m blown away and my voice is raised as I say to her the proof is in my %$#% empty tank. I try and reason with her that why would I come back and try to get twenty more dollars’ worth of gas that my tank couldn’t hold in the first place. I wanted the gas that I paid for! And you know I paid for it, I say.
As we are going back and forth a gentleman behind raises his voice and says, “Man, you know this lady paid for her gas quit trippin and give me ten on # seven” as he reaches over me to drop a ten-dollar bill through the slot. She takes his money and looks at me like, “and, this conversation is over.” At this point I am totally livid and thoroughly outdone. I started looking around the gas station with the thought, oh you’re gonna give me twenty dollars’ worth of something. There were stacks of t-shirts for sale under the large counter sitting in bins. Without thinking any further I picked up as many of the t-shirts as I could hold, smirked at the cashier and briskly walked five steps out the door. The cashier pushed a button as she stood behind the thick plexiglass protection barrier, and locked me in. I turned to her and demanded she open the door. She picked up the phone and said she was calling the police.
I walked over, dropped the t-shirts
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back in the bin, and said, “and tell them what?” “I was gonna steal?” Defeated, I walked back to the door, rattled it and again demanded that she open the door. She ignored me, while holding the phone to her ear. In a split second I heard the door click as if to open, I spotted a huge incense display sitting on a counter right at the edge of the door (I happen to love incense and burn it daily). In a snap second decision I snatched up the display with both hands and bolted out the door. The guy who was in line behind me was pumping his gas, and immediately summarized what had just happen, he looked at me and said, “Oh! You better hurry up.” The adrenaline coursing through my veins in that moment was something I had never experienced, I had never done anything like that in my life. I opened my car door, tossed the display in the passenger seat, started the car and shot out of the gas station like a bat out of hell. In that instant I thought I heard a thump of some sort but with the adrenaline on full blast I discarded the thought as soon as it appeared as my tires burned rubber onto the street. I was one exit up from my home, so I dashed onto the freeway breathing heavy as if I had run a hundred-yard dash.
A car pulled up alongside of me on the freeway and when I looked over he was motioning towards the back of my car, I thought and mouthed to him oh, the gas cap (thinking it was open) he shook his head vigorously. I looked through my side mirror back at the tank and discovered I was dragging the entire gas pump down the freeway! That thump I heard was the pump being snatched out its station. I flashed back to putting the pump in my tank before I had walked back into the station to claim my twenty dollars’ worth of gas, assuming that there would be no problem. Boy, was I wrong as I watched in horror the sparks popping off the pump being dragged by my car! I came up on my exit, pulled over and quickly pulled the pump out from my tank and threw it over in the grass on the off ramp. I shook my head, got back in my car and drove home. I backed into my garage, let the door down, took a few deep breathes and the incense display invaded my nostrils. I looked down at the gas gauge which was just about on empty now, cut the car off, picked up my display of incense and went in the house.
Throughout the rest of that warm and sunny day, I retold the story to family and friends who thought that was one of the funniest stories they’d heard. There was teasing, laughing, the asking for boxes of incense, and little concern for police involvement. I definitely never returned to that gas station during the rest of my stay, before I moved to Mexico. I’m currently two months away from my one-year anniversary here, and as I write this, I’m burning the incense that was my retribution to not receiving the twenty dollars’ worth of gas on that warm and sunny day.
Queen D. Michele
By Donna J. Mansfield
Ididn’t know before my husband died how well prepared
I was for grief. Sure, I suffered, lost my memory, had a bad reaction to tranquillizers, cried almost non-stop, couldn’t eat (my throat closed after two bites) and missed him like crazy. And it took about six weeks before I stopped saying to friends who asked “How can I help?” with the response, “Bring him back”.
When I could look around me with clear eyes, I could see how well I was being supported in my grief. Chuck had been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for forty-eight years and we had been attending a local open AA meeting for over a year, and at that meeting, non-alcoholics could speak. There I was surrounded by people who knew and loved him. They could listen to the pain of my loss because they felt the same way.
Those folks are not made uncomfortable by sharing painful feelings because they do this regularly with honesty and bravery. Saying it a different way, these people are KNOWN and KNOW me. We don’t coddle each other emotionally. And this is the rarest form of being known. I wonder in looking back at how attending 12 Step meetings for 46 years enhanced our marriage and personal growth journeys. Some people are lucky to have ONE trusted friend with whom they can be honest. We had dozens. And they didn’t back away in uncertainty when I LOST Chuck. They respected me enough to know that they couldn’t say anything that would make my grief worse, or better. That I could, even in my grief, take care of myself or they would take over.
We also attended a Zoom ‘Partners in Recovery’ meeting with new friends here and long-time friends in France, two of which had joined our “Die at 95 Club”. We formed this group with others who decided we would live healthy until age 95 and then die on the same day as our partners. It was a noble goal. Dr. Bernie Seigel in his book “Love, Medicine and Miracles” indicates we have some limited control over our own deaths. In our case, this was not to be. Whatever, we put death out of our thoughts with the exception of prepaying for our cremations and writing health directives and hold harmless agreements with our doctors in case they made “mistakes” that caused our deaths. But even though my husband had a debilitating disease, we put death mostly out of mind and focused on living each day.
However, with the “95” mindset, I found myself angry when he died because he “owed” me 14 years.
I was also fortunate to have a friend who had been a widow for seven years. She was persistent in the face of my ignoring her offers of help, constantly sending me emails that said, “I want to have lunch/dinner/coffee”. When I finally relented she gave me constant reassurance that what I was experiencing was normal grief and not as “off the rails” as I determined. It is impossible to imagine ahead of time how you will grieve so every reaction that is not normal in your usual life feels crazy. I think it might also be helpful to read a book about grieving before YOU NEED IT. That will make you much less self-critical when the time comes. And speaking of books, buy a copy of “Healing After Loss”, by Martha Whitmore Hickman. It will help you, once your spouse dies to move from caregiving to grief because you will be stunned by the loss of your past role. And please be aware that your caregiving skills are not transferable to yourself.
I also have an Al-Anon sponsor who can listen to resentments I had with friends and family who have no experience in emotional honesty. I judged them harshly. One family member even told me I expected too much of people. I had to listen and consider this criticism and found it to be true but not valid. With 46 years of 12-Step Programs and 40 years of being a psychotherapist, I am used to people gathering together for purposes of
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eliminating their liabilities, increasing their enjoyment of life, and coming to love themselves. This leaves me little patience for victims who excuse their failure to change to fear as if that excuses it, or to the neglected childhood resentments they can’t let go of.
Also, with my widowed friend, we have started a local branch of the USA based Modern Widows Club. Hopefully, when you need it, a branch will be available. I don’t have a resource for men, sadly. This is important for women because the MWC’s website is a wealth of information that widows need as they traverse the deep waters of settling estates and insurance claims. This is incredibly difficult when one is overwhelmed by grief. As a psychotherapist in private practice, I am quite familiar with insurance companies that want to slow walk payouts. I used to hire sweet and unassuming women to be my insurance clerks. Within six weeks I would walk into their office and hear them swearing, screaming and spitting anger to the insurance rep on the other end of the phone. They would accuse that rep of throwing the paperwork away as the first step in paying a claim…and then recite a list of other behaviors that slow down legitimate claims.
I found one kind and sensitive insurance agent in all my survivor interactions. I received one notice that the company had received all necessary paperwork in my survivor case. Then, three weeks later, I received another notice that my claim could not be processed because there was outstanding paperwork.
By now, I was so angry that it crowded grief aside and I got on the phone with an insurance rep. His name was Chris and he listened patiently to my rant. Then he said, “Donna, turn over the first page of the letter”. There was a list of all required paperwork. All were marked submitted EXCEPT one form that the company had to fill out.
Chris said, “this letter is absolutely thoughtless to send to grieving spouses. Let’s go over it page by page to determine changes that should be made in order not to re-traumatize grieving spouses”. I promise you, I will take your suggestions to the highest authority in the company and fight to secure change”. The first needed change was NOT to write the paperwork list on the BACK of the first page as the natural instinct when reading is to go to the NEXT page.
His words suddenly straightened my tilted world upright. It was no longer tilted in favor of a heartless insurance company.
Another thing necessary for caregivers is to have a caregiver of their own. Unless I remind you, you won’t think of doing that on your own because all your attention is focused on making life easier for your ill loved one.
But you really do need someone to remind you to take a walk, go to a movie, or eat healthy. To demonstrate how skewed a caregiver’s life gets, during the entire 12 years of my husband’s decline only one person asked how I was doing. A caregiver seems to disappear into their role.
Be prepared to be ignorant of how to take care of yourself once your loved one dies. The transition from other to self is difficult because you probably have become expert at ignoring your own needs in order to prioritize another. You will also feel purposeless. Only when the ill person is no longer there do you realize the inordinate amount of time it took to care for them. Life seems empty but that is just the stillness of waiting for the tide of your own being to surge back in.
In order to prepare for this, decide on a hobby to try before you need it and, maybe even buy the supplies you will need to carry it out. Choose a club, an exercise group or a lecture series you might be interested in when you get the time and write down the details of how to participate. You won’t be capable of gathering this info when you REALLY NEED IT.
Write down self-care appointments you will need to make: nails, haircut, dental appointment, massage, etc. Because after death occurs, you will find yourself looking in the mirror at overlong hair, broken nails, or a physical pain from lack of touch.
You will need to learn to be proficient at skillful emotional discharges because the emotions of grief might overwhelm you otherwise. Remember, “the only way out of it is through it”. But how to do this requires a much more extensive explanation and will be saved for the next article.
