Revisiting "It's all landfill-bound anyway"
Looking back at the (sort of) beginning
Hello friends—
As the one-year anniversary of my parents’ move from their house into a retirement community came and went last month, I wondered what I might have shared at that time.
So I paid a visit to the blog I wrote prior to starting Sandwich Season. It was a bit of a mashup, really, with topics ranging from writing tips to book reviews to reflections on faith, Japan, food, Minnesota and family.
The first thing I noticed was the absence of posts between December 20, 2022, and March 23, 2023. For a whole season—winter—my blog was silent.
I know why now. We might call it “the winter of our discontent,” a run of months I had spent quietly and not-so-quietly freaking out.
That winter
The quiet times I reserved for my parents, when I sat with the two of them and sometimes just with Dad, gently suggesting that we needed to get more help for Mom, whose dementia was worsening and physical condition was deteriorating.
I also quietly toured retirement communities, gathering information and politely asking questions about their caregivers and activities and fees.
And I whispered at Dad about ways to make use of the in-home helpers we had finally gotten on board at their house, quietly coaching him to stop serving coffee and offering goodies, and start getting out of the house. Run an errand! Go stare at a wall or a field of snow!
Accepting—much less asking for—help does not come naturally in our family.
The not-so-quiet part of that season emerged every time I returned from a visit to my parents or hung up from a phone call with them, looked at Jon and started doing my Chicken Little dance—the sky is falling! the sky is falling!
It was near the end of the winter of 2022-23 that I broke my blog-silence. Sixteen days after my parents made their big move, 15 days after I’d started the process of clearing out their house, I shared some thoughts: “It’s all landfill-bound anyway.”
Springing ahead
Reading my year-old post the other day with the benefit of 13 months of hindsight, I thought, “Oh, Grasshopper.”
At that time I was just nibbling around the edges of what needed to be done—gathering up unopened mail, and throwing out long-expired packs of crackers and decade-old frozen pie crusts and Christmas cookies.
I had yet to realize that my parents’ house had a serious mold problem. I had yet to enter the world of contractors and bids and mitigation and remediation and containment walls built of two-by-fours and industrial-strength plastic.
I had yet to experience the special horror of throwing out piles of musty handknit and crocheted baby clothes, and most of my family-of-origin’s Christmas decorations. I had yet to spend a week with my friend Linda, who flew in from Washington to help me fill a supersized, blaze orange Dumpster sitting on my parents’ driveway.
I also had yet to sit with my mom while the hospice nurse helped her roll over in bed, wincing in pain. I had yet to write and deliver her eulogy. I had yet to (cautiously) speed my dad to the ER to get diagnosed with a stroke. I had yet to race with Jon and Max to deliver Leo the dog to the veterinary ER to get his heart rhythm stabilized.
I had yet to deliver family treasures all over hell’s half acre for consignment, donation, recycling and the dump. I had yet to move into my parents’ home, move our son Max into his new place and sell our home.
>>Very important note: I did not do all of this on my own. Strong, generous and compassionate people supported me throughout and in many cases did the heavy lifting.<<
Reading that post from early 2023 was like stepping back into my less seasoned, less weather-beaten shoes. Oh, Grasshopper.
On some level, I think the woman I was a year ago had an inkling of the fires she would need to walk through but not how quickly they would arrive, one after another. Had I known what was ahead, how would I have moved forward?
Psychologist Susan David says in her popular TED talk that “courage is not an absence of fear. Courage is fear walking.” (Thank you, Victoria—@carermentor, for introducing me to David’s work.)
At this point in the journey, I’m thankful I didn’t know any better—and don’t know any better—than to keep putting on my shoes and moving forward.
If you’d like to check out “It’s all landfill-bound anyway,” here’s the link.
Susan David’s TED talk, The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage, is available here.
And here’s a post I did at New Year’s about the blessing of not being able to see into the future: “The porthole.”
Epilogue: An Ann Arbor surprise
Note: This will only make sense if you’ve read “It’s all landfill-bound anyway.”
On March 23, 2024, a year to the day after I posted my “landfill-bound” piece, I flew to Ann Arbor to visit my friend Janet. It was the first time I’d been back to that city since 1984, when I’d played in the piano competition and received the certificate the Minnesota mice would, decades later, find so irresistible.
As it happens, Janet is also a pianist, and while I was staying at her home, I looked through the music she had on her piano—and found one of my favorite pieces, Claude Debussy’s Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum.
Doctor Gradus happens to be one of the pieces I played in that competition in Ann Arbor and one that I’ve played on and off ever since.
When I opened up Janet’s music, I saw that either she or her teacher had written down the date of when she had been learning that piece: June 1994.
Decades before we would meet, we were both playing the same song—one that we’ve both continued to treasure ever since.
Isn’t that magical?
A lovely piece, Sarah! I'm glad Susan David's work resonates with you as much as it has with me. Thanks for the shout-out! ;-)
I hope that good karma connections are being made all the time. The fact that a piece of music highlighted one is heart-swell. I will look for the music to play on the piano - I haven't played that piece before.