You've made it through
A few reflections at the beginning of a new year
<Welcome to Sandwich Season, where I explore the burdens and blessings of life in the sandwich generation—in the hopes of encouraging others in similar seasons.>
Hi friends—
“You have made it through 100 percent of your hardest days.”
I heard that saying about a year ago, when I was really in the thick of it.
I had lost my mom a few months earlier, and then my dad had a stroke … and then a TIA … and then came down with covid.
Jon, Max and I had just moved into my parents’ former house, which they had moved out of in March 2023. It had taken months to clear everything out and mitigate for mold, and then just as Dad was about to put his house on the market, Jon and I decided to buy it. Struggling with all transitions, in addition to our usual challenges, Max was refusing to eat with us or cooperate with us on much of anything. He spent late nights pacing the house.
As my worries mounted, to-do lists lengthened and footsteps sounded outside Jon’s and my bedroom door, sleep eluded me. I was exhausted.
“You have made it through 100 percent of your hardest days.” Barely.
One thing was going right though. My mother-in-law had recruited Max to sing in her church choir, and he was going with her, learning the music and helping some of the older women up and down the risers. While things fell apart at home, Max was finding community—in a good place, no less.
The best Jon and I could do was stay out of the way, pretend to be disinterested while subtly showing that we cared. So we followed Max to church. And that’s where I heard that saying, in a sermon:
“You have made it through 100 percent of your hardest days.”
Yes, it might sound a bit pat, but if you’re reading it, it’s true for you too. For me, it was a reminder that although I was in the midst of a really hard time, I had indeed survived other challenges. Like in the distant past when I was hospitalized in rural India with what turned out to be parasites. And when I muddled through an early life divorce. And in the near past, summer of 2023, as I watched my mom decline and then fade away.
So about a year ago, I pulled out a green marker and wrote that quote on my whiteboard, and there it remains.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve thought maybe it’s time to erase my whiteboard and give it a fresh start. Compared with a year ago, (dare I even write this?) I am fat and happy. I’m a praying person, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that as I’ve reflected on 2024 and the transition to 2025, many of my prayers have been ones of gratitude, especially when it comes to Max: Thanks for the spot that opened up in a nearby group home. Thanks for the kind and thoughtful staff who watch over Max and his housemates. Thanks for healing our relationship with Max. Thanks for his friendships and for his work and school experiences, where he’s building skills and figuring out what he enjoys doing.
Are we trouble-free? Hah! No. But compared to last year at this time, I am sleeping better and thinking straighter and enjoying—truly ENJOYING—the time we spend with Max. It all makes me feel so much lighter.
And because our family has gone through these storms, I feel as if my expectations have changed. Now I am anticipating that more storms will arrive in the future … but instead of spawning dread, that anticipation is helping me stay focused on the present. Today we are OK. Today, this morning, our situation feels stable, I tell myself. Enjoy this very moment.
In October, Jon and I traveled to Japan, a place where we have each separately spent about two years of our lives. During our visit there, I caught up with a friend I’ve known for 30 years.
I had visited her on my own two years earlier, in 2022. That time, I went with her and her husband to a kuru kuru sushi restaurant, where we placed our orders on a tableside screen and watched for our sushi to arrive on the conveyer belt that ran past our table.
The mood surrounding her and her husband had been subdued. Wilted. Depleted. Understandably so. She had recently lost her father and was worried about her mother, living alone about an hour away from her. Her husband had also lost his mother not long before my visit, so both of his parents were gone. My friend and her husband had recently moved into his parents’ former home and were in the process of getting resettled.
At the time, I had yet to fully comprehend the sandwich season I was entering or what it would feel like. So I sympathized with what my friends were going through but didn’t truly have a sense of the weight of the emotions and energy they had been expending.
This most recent visit, in October 2024, was so different. The sparkle had returned to my friends’ eyes. They showed us photos of their new granddaughter, who they clearly delighted in. And I saw that my friend had decorated an entire bathroom with accessories from My Neighbor Totoro. She had cut her hair and had a new look. Although she is facing challenges with her mother’s declining health, she seemed clear-eyed and strong. I could see that a sense of joy and playfulness had returned to her and her husband’s life.
They had made it through 100 percent of their hardest days.
After returning home, I created a photo book for my friend with images of us from the past 30 years. When I got to recent times and pulled photos from 2022, the sorrow on her and her husband’s faces and in their posture was clear. As I added photos from 2024, I noticed the contrast: They glowed.
A few days ago, Jon and I were flying back from Arizona, and I was seated next to a woman in her mid-eighties. She lives in my small Minnesota city, but her three children live in the Twin Cities, Denver and San Diego. They’ve told her she needs to move in with one of them, and it sounds like she’s going to Denver—“It’s OK,” she said. “I like the scenery better there anyway.” (We have no mountains here.)
But first there is so much to do, she added, explaining that she has a lot of stuff, and getting rid of it will require hard work.
Oh, I get it, I told her. Piles of feelings returned to me as I recalled helping my parents transition from their home of 30-plus years to a one-bedroom apartment in a retirement community.
It seemed that this lovely woman next to me and her children were embarking on a similar journey.
I told her that it was wonderful to hear that she and her family are talking about the possibilities and making plans together.
Then I took out a piece of paper and started writing down my local contacts—names and numbers of people and businesses that had helped my parents and me walk through our process, those many months.
I expect some hard days are ahead for my seatmate and her family, but they too will make it through.
Workshop: Writing the Obituary (aka a postcard)
I’m starting to help people with writing projects related to life’s final chapter. Jon describes it as “writing your final chapter, so others don’t have to write it for you.” Yes!
This month—January 2025—I will offer an Obituary Writing Workshop where you can work on your own obituary or one for a loved one.
An obituary is like a postcard—an opportunity to share a snapshot of a person’s life. It can include:
who they are
what they’ve accomplished
what they’ve treasured
what wisdom they want to share
and more.
These “postcards” can be used in newspapers, funeral home websites and other web-based services, and in the memorial service program. They can be kept and passed down to keep memories alive.
Why write it now?
Writing an obituary before someone passes is an opportunity to gather information and reflect without rushing. You might even learn something new about yourself or your loved one!
It also is an opportunity to complete an important project when you/your loved ones are not grieving and trying to do the many other tasks that emerge when a person passes.
If you’re interested in this workshop, feel free to reply to this email or send me a message. I’ll alert you when I’ve ironed out the details.
This will be a fee-based workshop—but free to Sandwich Season annual subscribers.
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Share your thoughts
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When you first started writing this, I thought, I'm not in Sandwich Season. My parents are already gone. But lately we've been dealing with my sister in Pennsylvania, in and out of the hospital, and I'm her health care power of attorney. I guess we're not out of these woods yet. Thanks for all your sharing.
An obit writing workshop is a good idea! I've written many obits in my day, and so has my sister, but when we wrote our dad's we forgot to mention his surviving siblings. Oops!
Your reflections on where you were at emotionally a year ago resonate deeply with me. When you're in the thick of it -- whatever 'it' is (the decline of a parent, for certain), you just don't know what the next weeks and months will be like. I'm sure there's a psychological term for that uncertainty; anticipatory grief is what resonates with me. It's at those times and in those moments when it feels so hard to be reminded that these times are what they are and there's no rushing them (and usually we don't want to rush them because of what that means) and that we will get through them. Usually getting through them means facing inevitable loss. Of course, the actual grief is it's own journey. And the challenge is that anticipatory grief and 'regular' grief are in the midst of the rest of our messy lives.
I reconnected with a high school acquaintance a couple times right before my mom made the decision to go to hospice. She had just experienced her own dad's death and her mom's death a couple years before that. Her ability to really listen and understand how I was navigating things with my mom helped me so much. I consider her a true gift to me and I consider you and your reflections in your blog a true gift to me, as well. :)