Bouncing Into Graceland - Chapter 1 (or Remedial Bouncing)

I have a friend from South City St. Louis - he grew up there in the 1960s and 70s and he starts just about every story with, "one time, back when we were kids on the South side.."  And this is a guy who likes to tell stories, so you can imagine how we roll our eyes as soon as he starts.  Affectionately.

So, sometimes I feel like that too when I start a story "one time, when I worked in hospice..."  I hope my audience has the same patience and fondness for me that I have for South Side Pete.

As I was saying:  When I worked in hospice, I became closest to and listened to the stories of caregivers. Husbands, wives, daughters, sons, siblings, cousins, who found themselves in the role of taking care of their dying loved one in their home.  Caregivers are made, but some people have a natural predisposition to it.  Caregivers put their own needs second.  They see what needs to be done and they do it.  They have strong stomachs and live on very little sleep.  They are stubborn, self-sufficient.  Sometimes they are martyrs.  They often get irritable.  They often think it's easier to 'do it myself' than let someone else do it.  They often think others don't do it right.  Many times they have a secret thought, "If I don't get it done myself, something terrible is going to happen."

I am a natural born caregiver.  It's no badge of honor, I've come to find out.  I am the oldest sibling and something in my disposition is a 'fixer.'  When I was just four years old, I saw a baby bunny in the jaws of a neighborhood cat and I went and plucked that bunny out of the mouth of the cat and gave it to my mom.  How proud I was that I "saved" it! I am sure I was a caregiver in other ways over the years, but I never named that part of my personality until I was a young mom AND I worked in hospice at the same time.  I also noticed that many of my other young mom friends acted and felt much the same as the caregivers I worked with.

In 2013, I found myself and my family in a crisis.  The biggest crisis I'd ever faced.  And I again, found myself in the role of a caregiver.

Yet, I was in shock and grief myself.  And I needed caring for.  I didn't know where to begin.  The only thing in my life before that which had prepared me at all was my observation of other caregivers when I worked in hospice.

And here is the remedial lesson for today in Bouncing Into Graceland - when you find your grown up self in pain and at an all time low, but also having to maintain a job, be a good parent, pay bills - and you don't have the luxury of falling apart.

People who love you will tell you, "Take Care Of Your Self."  They mean well.

We caregivers don't know what the hell that means. Maybe most people don't know what it means.  If you have some financial means, about the best you can come up with is, "maybe I'll get a massage."  Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a massage, but taking care of yourself is something so much more basic than that.

Caregivers will tell you, "I don't have time to take care of myself.  I'll take care of myself when x y or z happens (my dad dies, when my kids are in college, when I get this promotion."  I am here to tell you that from experience, I can now officially say I know better.  I can offer a better, kinder, more healing way.

Taking care of yourself starts small.  Are you getting sleep?  Are you getting enough sleep?  Do you taste your food?  Are you eating food that has some yumminess to you?  Are you getting  hugs?  Can you feel what it feels like to let someone hug you?  Can you stretch your body?  Can you read something for fun?  Can you feel what your warm coffee cup feels like when you hold it in your hands?  Can you take 20 seconds to look at the colors of the Fall leaves?

Taking care of yourself means knowing that you are a grown up you, but you are also as precious as a child.  Your basic needs of sleep, food, connection need attention.

This is one place I started.  This was my remedial lesson in getting out of my strictly caregiver role.  I knew that if I didn't, I could maintain, but I would become a bitter, weakened person.  I knew this because I'd seen it happen with some others caregivers I'd worked with.  I didn't  want this for myself.  It started so small for me.  The warm coffee cup.  Thinking hard about what food sounded good to me, even when there were times it tasted like dust.  Doing the same thing the next day.

If you find yourself burnt out and frustrated or feeling like a martyr, don't wait until a crisis.  If you are scared and fragile, you don't have to take on the world.  Just try to get back to basic building blocks.  Today is a beautiful Fall day...the sunlight is free and feels warm and good if you let yourself step outside.

Playing with God and Other Big Questions

You haven't heard from me for a while because I'm working on a graphic novel! Well, that's pushing it a little...in the past two weeks, I got overcome by some creative spasm, and started this crazy project.  We'll see what happens.  It may be particularly ridiculous since I draw stick figures.  What compelled me was this overwhelming urge to create a story/portrait of what role(s) God has played in my life.  Which is especially weird since I'm a Unitarian Universalist, and often with people I love dearly  who are either agnostic or atheist.  I feel like I'm coming out of the closet!

Anyway, as a creative project, I am just getting started and don't really know where it's going, but I wanted to share some really non-arty panels with you and connect it to some things I've been reading in the past week.  So, here goes. I'm very nervous.  If you look at this and ask, "is this supposed to be funny?", the answer is yes.  Sometimes when you write about a big thing like God, people think it's supposed to be 100% serious.  This is not.  Okay, I just had to get that out there.

In case you can't read it, I'm 10 years old and wondering what it means if people want to be good just to get to heaven.  Maybe I'm like this, I wonder. 

Now, it's 6 mo later and I decide it's better just to 'be good' and not worry about why.

Coincidentally, I stumbled upon an essay just after I drew this little 'ditty', From the journal, Image:  Art. Faith. Mystery.  http://imagejournal.org/ .  The piece, by Dan Wakefield, is called,  Kurt Vonnegut, Christ-Loving Atheist.   Here's a quote from this piece that I really liked - it's an exerpt from Timequake, a semi-autobiographical novel by Vonnegut,

 "Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife.  The creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far.  We serve as well as we can the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community."

But despite this theological theme today so far, what I'm grappling with is not so much the question of being 'good'  or the nature of God.  What I'm grappling with is why create something?  Whether it's a picture, a piece of music, a poem, etc?  I think Kurt Vonnegut and I may agree that one part of creating art is being of service to your community.  But I think, more basic and real than that - something that really inspires me - is that we can create art as a way to PLAY.  As a way to bring a light touch to the sometimes serious business of being a human.  \

This graphic novel is a way for me to 'play' with big ideas.  I think there are lots of things we can be more playful and light with in our lives - so many friends (and me) get so serious about HOW TO BE A GOOD PARENT or WHAT DO I REALLY WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE or I HAVE SO MANY REGRETS or lots and lots of other things.  Maybe it's just helpful to remember to play a little bit and not take ourselves so seriously.

Another one of my heroes, Bill Watterson, who wrote and drew, Calvin and Hobbes, mentioned in an interview that whenever Calvin and Hobbes were grappling with deep, universal questions, he'd send them a careening off a snowbank in their sled or tumbling into a pile of leaves in their wagon.  They couldn't take their philosophical pondering too seriously when they were in the middle of a crash landing.  So, here's what I'll leave you with - a comic from a total genius.  Shout out to Bill Watterson and my old friend from high school, Bob Early who I haven't talked to in years, but who shared a love of this comic strip with me as well as an earnestness about God and talking about vomit.