Uncomfortable Conversations:  
Living and Dying by Social Media

I’m not sure I want anyone to see me die, unless I’m 93, my long, gray hair is brushed smoothly to the shoulders of my favorite nightgown, and I pass peacefully of old age or a quick bout of pneumonia. My mom’s nursing colleagues call pneumonia “a dying man’s best friend,” hastening the process with only a delicate rattle at the end of a stethoscope. Whenever and however it happens, I’m just not sure I’d like a standing-room-only kind of audience.  My guess is I won’t have much to say about the matter.

                                                 

My grandmother waited to die until after we had left the I.C.U. the evening of January 15, 2000. A snowstorm had hit Chicago that evening making travel dicey at best, so my mom and I said our tearful goodbyes and started down the snow-packed road.  After four long days standing vigil, we blared Irish folk music to keep us awake and to celebrate the woman’s life that ended as soon as we pulled out of the parking garage. “Sometimes they just wait for the quiet,” the nurse had said earlier, glancing around the room full of my extended family.

                                     

Kara Tippetts is a 38-year-old local Colorado Springs woman spending her last days at home after a two and a half year fight with Stage IV breast cancer. She has authored two books, the most recent of which is called “The Hardest Peace:  Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard,” written “to appeal to us all as we meet the bitter edges of life on this side of eternity” (mundanefaithfulness.com). Kara maintains a widely read blog called “Mundane Faithfulness” that receives over 10,000 views daily (krdo.com).  She has over 50,000 followers on her Facebook page (Facebook.com), and nearly 2,000 Twitter followers (Twitter.com).

      

(Photo courtesy of Jen Lints via americanconservative.com)

Each of her blog posts are linked to Facebook and shared by thousands who make comments like “thank you for sharing your beautiful life and heart with us all” and “you have touched our lives and I can't wait to meet you in Heaven!” (Facebook.com). When she is able, Kara reaches back to her followers, some battling cancer themselves, admitting that while the journey is hard, “there is going to be grace for this” (Facebook.com). Last October, Kara reached out to another young woman facing death, Brittany Maynard.

Brittany was a 29-year-old woman from California diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and six months to live in January of 2014. She and her husband relocated to Oregon, “one of five states (including Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico) that authorize death with dignity” (thebrittanyfund.org). Instead of the disease ending her life, Brittany swallowed a lethal combination of drugs on November 1, 2014. But, not before partnering with Compassion and Choices, “the leading nonprofit organization committed to helping everyone have the best death possible” (compassionandchoices.org). Brittany believed so strongly in assisted suicide, she spent the last months of her life setting up the website TheBrittanyFund.org, making videos with over eleven million views on YouTube.com, and doing interviews with CNN and People Magazine, lobbying for legislation like the Death with Dignity Act for all states.

                                                                                      

(Video courtesy of YouTube.com)

While Kara and Brittany never met in person, a month before Brittany took her own life, Kara wrote her a letter.  Originally posted on Ann Voskamp’s blog “A Holy Experience” (aholyexperience.com), Kara pleaded with Brittany not to take the life-ending pill saying, “Yes, your dying will be hard, but it will not be without beauty” (dailysignal.com). Whether or not Brittany even knew about the letter is unknown. Nonetheless, Kara’s heartfelt warning went unheeded.

We may agree or disagree with Brittany Maynard’s video messages in support of legalizing assisted suicide or struggle with Kara’s decision to chronicle her decline from advanced stage cancer on Facebook. To most Americans, death and dying is still taboo.  According to lifeintheusa.com, a website of American culture, “The American attitude towards death, in cultural terms, is one of denial.” But, this new generation steeped in social media can’t avoid the uncomfortable conversations about what their living has meant and what their dying might really look like.  Death doesn't just happen in jam-packed hospital rooms.  Now it's part of the public domain.

I can’t help but think back to Grandma’s crammed hospital room, my extended family taking turns telling stories, breaking into laughter, and then crying tears into our collective bucket. Maybe those last moments were for us, not her, but I will cherish them forever. My grandma was never on Facebook, but if she were, her last post would have read, “Love you. Be careful driving home. Heading home myself.”

Screen Time Versus Quality Time With Your Kids:

How Much Of Their Childhood Are You Giving Facebook?

(Picture courtesy of abbyofftherecord.com)

I’m guilty of it myself.  Sitting in the pick-up line at school, scrolling through my Facebook page on my phone, failing to notice my kids have gotten in the car, and suddenly realizing that I’ve already missed several of the frontpage headlines of their day.  I’ll attend a middle school volleyball match or a beginner’s hip hop class and innocently intend to take a picture, only to find myself missing the winning tip or my 8 year-old’s best-rendition-yet of the “Worm”, too busy scanning my newsfeed for the “what’s seriously not important” from the last ten minutes.

(Picture courtesy of blog.games.com)

At least I’m not Shannon Johnson.  In September of 2011, this Greeley, Colorado woman let her 13 month-old baby drown in the bathtub while she played Café World on Facebook (Roberts).  Earlier that morning, reports say that she had given her son breakfast, navigating her kitchen, maybe dicing a banana or scrambling an egg, and then put him in the bathtub to wash up (Roberts). 

(Photo courtesy of cafeworld.yolasite.com)

Ironically, Café World was a restaurant simulation game, which at its peak had more than 8.6 million players a week (Shaul) who could “slice, chop, saute and bake [their] way to the top of the culinary world!” (Café World).  Johnson did, in fact, make her way to the top of the newsfeed with her 10-year sentence for the fatal neglect of her son.  Almost two years later, Zynga, the gaming company who owned Café World, chose to discontinue the game in July of 2014 due to diminishing numbers of players and revenue (Shaul). 

(Photo courtesy of calbuzz.com)

Born in 1974, I didn’t have to compete with social media for my parents’ attention.  A good Sunday sports page in my father’s hands or my mother’s most recent library acquisition, maybe.  But, a handheld device complete with the ability to message a high school sweetheart or to peek at pictures of classmates who had lost hair or gained weight?  Nope.  They had to wait for twenty-year class reunions to roll around for that.  I had their full divided attention.

In an article entitled “Calling All Moms:  Get The Heck Off Facebook!,” Megan O’Neill interviews Gerry Graf regarding his partnership with MomFilter.com to promote a shared vision to “encourage moms to log off Facebook…at least for a little while…and spend some time with their kids” (O’Neill).  Together, collaborators launched the campaign called “The Log Off,” and produced a video displayed at thelogoff.org and linked to YouTube.  The YouTube version has had 148,717 views since May 2011, while “Maybe The Best Funny Dogs Compilation Ever” video uploaded the same day has drawn 2,571,204 viewers. 

The campaign is falling on distracted ears.  With a look at recent headlines, child neglect and the internet seem a joint venture of their own.  While parents aren’t exactly logging off the internet in droves, some are totally unplugging…from their parenting.

  

Works Cited

"Café World." Facebook. N.p., 24 May 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.

“Maybe The Best Funny Dogs Compilation Ever." YouTube. YouTube, 11 May 2011. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.

"Mommy Facebook Song." YouTube. YouTube, 11 May 2011. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.

 O'Neill, Megan. "Calling All Moms: Get The Heck Off Facebook!" SocialTimes. N.p., 11 May 2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.

Roberts, Michael. "Shannon Johnson Gets 10 Years after Infant Son Drowned in Bath as She Played Facebook Game." Denver Westword. Scott Tobias, 18 Apr. 2011. Web. S Feb. 2015.

Shaul, Brandy. "Zynga to Close Cafe World and CoasterVille on July 22." SocialTimes. N.p., 30 May 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.

sister mac attack

What do a nun, two airbags, and a bleach blonde driving a crap heap of a car have in common?

Last Tuesday.

That morning, I was on the way to meet a girlfriend for breakfast.  My one day off from school to get everything done, see friends I have abandoned, pretend I don't have seven loads of laundry awaiting me while I search for treasure at Arc.  All I could think about was Eggs Benedict, a strong cup of coffee, and a few laughs with Katie.

"The light turned green.  I'm positive."  The officer held a clipboard with his black leather gloved hand. He was prepared, while I stood on a curb in Steve Madden leopard print patent leather flats, exchanging my weight from one foot to the next as 24 degrees Fahrenheit turned my feet red, and while I wasn't eating Eggs Benedict.

The light turned green.  The little old lady in the white Corolla in front of me got an annoyingly slow start.  "Let's go, lady!"  I'd said it out loud, my Chicago showing.  She was midway through the intersection when the bleach blonde in the red crap heap barreled through the intersection and sent Little Old Lady sideways up the ramp to the interstate.  The interstate she just wanted to pass, but the one Bleach Blonde in the Red Crap Heap was in a hurry to get on.

I parked my car under the underpass and ran to the little white Corolla.  A couple in a black Lexus had pulled over and were tending to the bleach blonde who was standing at the side of her previously dented to hell vehicle, her arms across her chest looking pissed.  Her lack of concern for the little Corolla she had just crumpled baffled me as I stepped over its bumper and shards of broken glass and plastic.  I gathered this was just her usual expression, years of the victim mentality perfected had probably served her well.

The two air bags had deployed, and I could hear Little Old Lady screaming.  "God, I hope she doesn't look horrific," I thought to myself as I walked toward the car.  I remember noticing there was no blood on the windows and thinking maybe it wouldn't be that bad.  As I got to the mangled front end of the car, the tiniest Asian nun in the world pushed the driver's door open, stood and held both my hands in hers.  She looked up in my eyes, placed my hands on the cheeks of her warm, tear-streaked face and said, "I will pray for you the rest of my life."

Her name tag from the hospital read "Sister Mac".  She had been on her way to volunteer in the Radiology department.  "Will you call them for me?  They will be so worried."  A man named John in a Jeep had stopped by that point and walked us to his vehicle to warm up.  Three police officers, a fire truck chock full of paramedics, and a community service officer joined the party.  Sister Mac never let go of my hands.  I stood next to Jeep John, who was tasked with the job of filling out Sister's paper work; my job was to hold her hands.

How is it that some people, when faced with adversity, with life or death I-can-smell-smoke-from-my-airbags-deploying adversity, can think of others first?  While others stand on the sidelines pissed because they're late for work or pissed because their crap heap of a car is now undriveable or pissed because they know they did something wrong but could never admit it.  Looking pissed is the only defense they have.

Walking up to windows you can't see through is a lot harder.  Pushing mangled doors open isn't easy. Having the courage to right a wrong is hardest.  Bleach Blonde in the Red Crap Heap had her chance and it passed her by.  She sat in the protection of the Black Lexus, surrounded by first responders, the final report reading "a scrape on the left ankle, a bruise from seat belt across chest".  I wanted to take some blank bright yellow police line and a Sharpie and write "CAUTION:  JACKASS" across it and wrap it around her.

Sister Mac called me to have lunch this Wednesday.  She will wait for me outside of the "Sisters' Office" at 11:30 and watch for me.

"I will pray for you the rest of my life."

I need it Sister Mac.  We all do.


(first picture courtesy of http://friendsofthecathedral.org/photoalbums/historical-pictures.  second pictures courtesy of http://www.culturalcatholic.com/nunscalendar.htm).

rocky road

The day my six-year old daughter told me she wanted to drive an ice cream truck, I put a lock on the basement door.  It occurred to me that if the children couldn’t enter the basement, they couldn’t live in it as adults either.  I love ice cream-don’t get me wrong, but I’m also an eternal pragmatist.  You can’t eat it every day and fit into your pants.  More importantly, you can’t drive it all over creation with gas at almost four bucks a gallon and pay your bills.

But to a six-year old, driving an ice cream truck is whip cream, extra nuts, cherry on top kind of success. There are no obstacles too big, no fears too paralyzing, no bills in the mailbox to prevent them from running straight to the recycling bin in search of boxes from Costco from which they begin to build their empire.  A few rolls of Scotch tape and several dried out markers later, they’re in business.

If loving what you do was that easy.  We’ve all heard the stories about the corporate executives that gave it all up to open a Pet Pedicure Parlor and have never been happier.  That’s fantastic, but something tells me they have a bit saved up for when it stops raining cats and dogs.  When did I get so cynical?  When did I stop believing in the ice cream truck?  What was it that I wanted to be when I grew up? 

             

Somewhere between our first mortgage payment and insuring a male teenager on a vehicle, I realized that what we love to do is more often replaced by what we have to do.  I’ve only known a few people who knew what they wanted to do shortly after the embryonic stage, stayed the course, made all the right decisions, and landed where they intended.  Speaking for the rest of us, we labor over Myers Briggs tests and online surveys, we pay career coaches and life coaches and take coach buses to seminars trying to find our colors or parachutes or both.  And if you’re really lucky, you’ll find something that you love and that pays the bills.  That is cherry on the top kind of success.  And it looks different for everybody.

Recently, I’ve been faced with deciding my major, once and for all.  In other words, is it going to be an ice cream truck driver or a pet pamperer?  Finishing college when you are …well, long after you are supposed to…is a second chance.  This time around, cynicism works in my favor.  I’m old enough to know what I’m good at, young enough to try something new, smart enough to know that the money will come, but wise enough to know it doesn’t really matter.

I want to write.  I want to be Erma Bombeck when I grow up.  I’ll know I’ve arrived when I can write something that people other than my mother want to read.  Until then, may we all believe in the power of the ice cream truck!   May you still hear the tinkling of the bells, run out the front door, and place your order with utter abandon!  Driver, make mine a double…scoop!

           

half-hearted

As a kid, I can remember spying one of those best friend necklaces, a jagged half-heart of silver, gleaming on the neck of one of the girls I so badly wanted to be.  Secretly, I wondered which of the other “in” girls had the other half. But, was I really missing out on anything?  It seemed like one of them was on the “outs” almost every other week.  Maybe they played “musical necklaces” to hand it off to the next honoree.  I decided early on to sit that game out.

I’ve just never been the type of person to have one best friend.  If I’m totally honest, it’s partly because I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, although at last glance, there wasn’t a long line of potential candidates at the door.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned along the way, it’s that people come and go from your life, but never without a reason.  Sometimes it’s just to clean the air ducts, but most of the time they leave something that matters, not just their sunglasses.  Picking a best friend is like trying to pick a favorite color.  Yep.  Never had one of those either.  But I got both in Vickie.

She overflowed into my life by accident and took up residence in my “everything” for three brief years.  Vickie told me my toes were fat, my children were edible, and that my hair looked best short.  She encouraged me to move beyond motherhood and write, to get in an airplane (with her) (without my 8-month old), and to buy new jeans before I reached my goal weight.  She taught me to forgive the unforgivable, to love myself in the process, and to just do “the next thing”.

And, all of this from her chair in the chemo clinic.  I willingly deployed to take her, when the cancer came back, the cancer that knew her before I did.  Suddenly, it seemed as if some third-wheel got in our way, ruining lunch dates and shopping adventures.  Vickie thought she had dodged her once, but, evidently, had been too kind a hostess.  Uninvited, she joined our duo and made us a trio.  And, she was there to stay.

She wasn’t all bad, cancer.  We learned to use her to our benefit and made no apologies for it.  She may or may not have gotten us a table by the window at an exclusive restaurant, when Vickie took off her turquoise baseball cap and revealed her sweet, bald, head.  She may or may not have made a trip to Florida possible, miraculously without our husbands or having to make even one pre-vacation casserole.  Whether or not she convinced us to skinny dip in a hotel pool just after midnight is not a fact for public consumption.

Mostly, she had a profound effect on our particularly wasteful theories of time-management.  We were forced to pack the friendship of a lifetime into less than 6 months.  Skinny-dipping was nothing.  Stripping life down into countable, measurable moments was the real offense.  The last vacation with her husband and children, the letters written after dark to be read when she was gone, the day she lay in the sunshine that poured onto the floor of the home she had raised her children in, asking God if he might change his mind.  He didn’t.

I hadn’t asked for this.  I’d never even said I wanted a best friend.  There was no script to refer to, no manual, nothing to tell me how I was supposed to respond.  I’d never had a half necklace. All I had was Vickie. Still there. Still teaching me.  Still calling or emailing or texting 40 times a day.  So, we did what any other respectable women would do in the face of such adversity:  we ate and shopped. 

Vickie bought shoes at Nordstrom that had cost as much as my utilities bill.  She asked for black napkins to place on the lap of our black pants at expensive Italian restaurants.  She bought an obnoxious, expensive red-orange SUV.  But, mostly, she loved.  Everyone and anyone that got in her way.  And, being a best friend meant I got to be there and watch from the sidelines, knowing that our time was up, but that I’ll always have the other part of the “necklace.”

435 S. Adams St.

If I pushed my sister’s vanity stool over to her dresser, I could boost myself up on top of it between her Love’s Baby Soft and porcelain ballet figurine to scan the scene out of our bedroom window. The view of my backyard was quite familiar, probably because we spent a fair amount of time together. In the center, was a birch tree covered with curly papyrus provoking me to peel it. Around the tree sat a puddle of ivy, where you could pull stout earthworms from the shaded soil underneath.

There were lush cherry bushes that looked like green hoopskirts with red polka dots. I’d wait until the fruit was dark red and sweet before reaping the harvest “Laura Ingalls style”, carrying the impressive yield in my t-shirt “apron” to the kitchen counter. There, I’d mash them up, add half a bag of sugar to balance the flavors, and after surveying quite a mess, I’d head back outside while my mother was preoccupied in the laundry room.

Beyond my backyard, however, was an entirely new world. And, one that beckoned my inner explorer and the Scotland Yard tenderfoot to unlatch the back gate and head into the alley. Alleys in and of themselves present mystery and intrigue, as an alternate, less known route, where on either side one can view the private “back side” windows of peoples’ homes. To a ten year-old girl, however, alleys were the only avenue of adventure worth taking.

The problem was, I had no fresh suspects. The same neighbors, for what seemed decades during the decade I had spent alive, had lived in these homes. Mrs. Chevalier’s house perched on the hill directly behind ours. She was an artist from France, with a cat named Tiger. I’d pay her visits, using the cat as an excuse, but all the while taking in the smell of oil paints and the colorful canvases stacked on the living room floor. She’d serve me little chocolates on china dishes with wrappers I’d never seen on any Halloween, and send me on my way with my pockets full.

To the north of her, lived Mr. Luedemann. He had a mini harmonica that fit entirely into his mouth and would begin playing a tune, suddenly and delightfully, so it seemed he had only intended to take a breath. I spent many hours awake hoping against all odds that Mr. Luedemann had remembered to take the harmonica out of his mouth before he went to sleep. The sound from the other end of Mr. Luedemann may not have been as enchanting.

How is it that years later I can still remember the smell of the lilac bushes on the corner, the sound of Mrs. Mudloff’s charm bracelet tinkling while she worked in her yard, the feel of my Big Wheel hitting those certain bumps on the sidewalk that most often sent you careening off? What is it about the places we live and call “home” that locks into our memories, but I somehow can’t remember my recent online password update for Amazon?

Fast forward nearly 30 years, with a houseful of kids of my own, and I become satiated with the idea that I’ve taken my role in the list of characters that my children and others will remember always. That in some small way, something I do or say, or something I plant or paint, will be part of the canvas of someone else’s life. Be it a small glimmer in the background or a loud harmonica solo at the forefront. This thing we call “doing life together” matters, in the smallest of ways we may never see.

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poultry barn or pottery barn...

we started our homeschool year monday with a field trip to the colorado state fair.  in the three and a half years we've lived here, this was our maiden voyage to steamy pueblo.  i can say, without a doubt or the least bit of hesitation, that we will make it a yearly event.

the car ride there consisted of a lesson on how and when state fairs originated (detroit, 1849) and why they were held.  it was certainly not to employee seemingly countless "carn-ees", much to the dismay of the children.  nor was it to consume mass quantities of sugary dough fried in fat or glorified lemonade that costs several dollars an ounce.

so, with our focus on experiencing a "real" state fair, we jumped off the shuttle, entered the gates and headed straight for the 4h building.  it was inspiring to see all the fiber art, fine art, baked goods, canned goods, apparel, leather goods and more made by young 4h'ers from all over the state.  it certainly whet olivia's appetite for her first 4h meeting next friday and even wrangled in ethan to participate.  he only had to see the gun stands and displays of bow and arrows to sign on the dotted line.

next, we made our way to the animal buildings.  the kids and i fell in love with several hundred rabbits, chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigeons and a sweet pig named teacup.  we hit it at just the right time to catch the "sheep show".  the kids watched other kids show their prize sheep and learned what makes a winning specimen.

the next building housed the dairy cows and bulls.  marcus managed to irritate a bull enough that he snorted on olivia and i was convinced was going to take the massive steel gate down.  we backed away from there and found good ole' bessie.  she was a dairy cow that the kids and i had the opportunity to milk.  as the warm milk dribbled down audrey's hand she said, "it's warm milk, mom!"  yep.  it doesn't just come from inside the fridge, audge.  bessie was incredibly sweet, so even evelyn felt confident enough to crawl right up under that huge animal and give it a try.

several hours had passed and we were all getting hungry.  so, we let the kids have one ride each at the amusement park.  olivia passed on the rides saying, "the animals were enough for her".  audge rode her first mini roller coaster, hands up the whole time.  ev was just happy we got to take the shuttle bus back to the parking garage and the boys went on some spinning vortex thing i couldn't even look at.  then we were off in search of a renowned pizza joint in pueblo, angelo's.  we had our sights set on a 26" monster pizza and darn near finished it.  needless to say, it was a quiet ride home and an early night for all.

to be totally honest, i would love to farm.  marcus and i actually picked up paperwork on it.  we have long wanted to own some land and goats.  i'd rather be in a poultry barn than pottery barn anyday.  i'm not even sure how i know that, as i don't frequent many poultry barns.  but even just a taste of that life with a visit to the state fair, well, i found my happy place.  it's definitely not the beach.  or even the lake, although that's a close second.  wide open spaces, animals, elbow grease balanced by sweet simplicity and a strong sense of purpose.  i'll sign on that dotted line.