Give and Take
Pausing for gratitude on my Sunrise hike at Rancho La Puerta
I wake, and my first thought is to thank God. I don’t really have a specific thing I am thankful for, just that I feel grateful and appreciative. This nod to God isn’t formal or religious. It’s more of a Jamaican “don’t worry, be happy” kind of vibe. I stretch out my legs and arms and twist my back, squeezing out the remnants of held stress. Yesterday is inked and the day ahead yet to be written. Game on!
Gratitude mindfulness exercise - thanks for the pencils, Erin!
I like the idea of furthering positive change through giving and receiving. Linda-Marie gave me a block of creamy lavender soap this week. I think of her each time I reach for it; sometimes just looking at it will make me smile. Her positive energy was first released days before my postman dropped it on my doorstep. My sister knew I was having a tough time and her empathetic thoughts were focusing on me. Her positive energy was now out there, as she shopped, packed, mailed, and even sent an email to alert me of its presence on my porch!
If positive energy was visible, dusted with color to correspond to its strength, what would it look like among the other emotional energies rushing around? The act of giving and receiving has tremendous potential to counter our many energy-sucking experiences.
Speaking of energy-sucking…..
I try to see negative experiences as blueprints where actions, responses, decisions can be examined and repeated or marked with a mental flag to take a different route. It helps me to re-frame an experience, recalling and remembering that people in general come to the table with good intentions and a kind spirit. These same do-gooders may also be part of a system where policies and procedures enable if not empower things to go wrong.
This will be a little walkabout, but you may understand my anger. I welcome your thoughts on how to harness this negative energy to a better result. I am writing about my ex-mother-in-law, Han Zhen Liu. She mended things. To extend the life of her favorite pillow, she sewed on a flap of white cotton where her head would lay. Using the same blanket for decades, she sewed a large piece of white cotton along the part of the blanket that touched her face. She knit her sweaters and hemmed the pants of my oldest son. Yet on April 19, while recovering from surgery at Swedish Hospital, she created a noose from a spare gray power cord that somehow was in her room and used it to cut off her last breath, breaking my and her husband’s spirit.
That was two and a half years ago. I was emotionally broken for a year despite a steady stream of acts of kindness from dear friends and family; but I slowly moved forward. Until, a few weeks ago, when the circumstances of her death would again haunt me. I received an email from the social worker assisting my ex-father-in-law asking me if she should translate to him a bill for more than $2400. The bill was from the funeral home letting us know that Swedish Hospital was not paying for Han Zhen Liu’s expenses.
I ripped off a reply telling her ‘over my dead body’ and reminded her I have the word of the Chief Medical Officer John Hassle that he and his hospital would take care of this expense.
The manner of her death brought on a hurricane of pain and burden with sustained timber-whacking strength that stalled over my life for a year. I lost capacity to deal with new challenges, which in my life seemed a constant. All I recall now is that I survived. Having this bill come (and a second and third one since) left me to wonder what to do. Should I call John Hassle? Swedish? Seattle Times Ombudsman? The New York Times? I am tired of trying to be the one to make sense of things. I am tired of trying to understand that the caregivers who are good people are the same ones told the medical examiner my mother in law was allowed to ambulate independently which is not what I was told to translate to my mother in law over and over. I am tired of being told to remember she was old and dying anyway. I am tired. And ticked off.
You may click below for what is a raw account of how she died, and how the hospital responded. Please keep in mind I wrote most of this at the time without the intent of a broad audience. However, I am pissed off and not holding in any secrets. Yesterday is inked. I welcome anyone wanting to join me in re-framing eldercare and ensuring her tragic death does not fall lost through the cracks.
Email exchange with Chief Medical Officer of Swedish agreeing to pay for her burial costs