Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: sad


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You’d be 85

Today is Dad’s 85th birthday.  It seems something of a milestone, one that shouldn’t be forgotten, though I can’t imagine him at 85.  I suppose he would have been similar to the Dad I knew at 75, maybe with a few more wrinkles, but the same twinkling eyes, the same stories, the same advice.

Dad and his little sister

Dad and his little sister

I can’t send him a card through snail mail, can’t email him or give him a call.  I can’t even text him, but then  he wouldn’t know what that was anyway.  On the other hand…if he were still here I bet he’d have the latest smart phone because the whole information at your fingertips phenomenon would have fascinate him.  Though I wonder if he would have sprung for the expense of having internet available 24/7.  No, I think maybe instead he’d have been content to be in his boat, watching the sun set, floating in the warm water of his lake.  Sure he’d check his messages when he got back to the house, but I don’t think that smart phone would have been used much on the boat.

In his canoe.

In his canoe.

The little boy who loved the water, grew up on the river, and took my Mom for a canoe ride on their first date, grew up to be a father of four kids who got to grow up on a lake and spent many summers canoeing there and on rivers.  We got to camp in National Parks across the country and see things lots of kids never did.  We got to sit around the dinner table laughing until our stomachs hurt and tears ran down our faces.  We got to ride bikes to town and climb trees in the woods and go water skiing after work.  We got to have a dog named Sam and guinea pigs named Barney and ride the lawnmower and plant a huge garden.  We got to go to college and grow up and live in nice places.

Most of that is due to having a Dad who was responsible and supportive.  And who loved us unconditionally.

So thank you Dad.  And Happy Birthday.

I hope you get this birthday card and know we all love you and miss you.

Forever.

Dad 044


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How you doing Girlfriend?

She wasn’t my BFF.  We weren’t childhood friends, I didn’t go to school with her, never ran a race, took a class, or joined a book club with her.  I didn’t know all the personal details of her life, never went out for a drink or hung out on weekends with her.  But she was a friend.  We saw each other in the halls at work, ran into each other in the ladies room.  We stood and talked, long conversations about life, family, choices.  We picked each other up when we were having a bad day.  At the very least we smiled and waved as we scurried about our work.  She cared when my parents died.  I cared when her marriage was over.  She’d greet me with “How you doing Girlfriend?” and a smile.  Sometimes I’d tell her how I was doing, sometimes not.  But I was always glad she asked.

I wasn’t unique in my relationship with her.  She was everyone’s Mom at work.  She was where people went for an aspirin or advice.  Where people went when they needed a break from the work grind, to talk about her grand-kids and admire their photos on her cubicle wall.  To laugh.  To commiserate.  To recharge. She wore socks decorated with jingle bells during the holidays every year and we all smiled when we heard her walk by; she was the epitome of Christmas spirit, our own Christmas elf.

And when she didn’t feel well this winter we all cared.  When she was gone from work awhile we all asked about her.  “Not good” I was told when I asked her boss early in January.  He was going to see her that weekend so I said I’d write her a note for him to deliver.  The next day, giving him the note I heard more; it was more serious than I realized and I knew my note was inappropriate.  I rewrote it that night, changed it from a cheery couple of lines to a two page letter telling her how much I enjoyed our conversations, how grateful I was that we were friends, how I would miss hearing those jingle bell socks as she went by during the holidays.  I gave her my home phone number and my personal email in case she needed another long conversation.

I never heard from her.  She died Thursday night – we heard the news at work Friday morning.  Devastated does not begin to describe my sorrow.  Our collective sorrow.

She was a little person, probably not five foot tall, with a heart as big as the sky.  I can hear her voice in my head, I see her walking the halls at work.  I strain to hear those bells.   I tried to remember the last time I saw her, talked to her.  She used to send me emails about jumbo loans that had to be underwritten in my area but had been sent in error to her department.  When it was busy I was never happy to see her emails and we used to kid about her sending me the work.  My last email from her was Christmas Eve.

Her:  “Happy Holidays.   I have just moved 3 files to your new deal
queue…    Thanks”

Me:  “Thanks.  no more gifts now….we don’t deserve them!  🙂 ”

Her:  “Oh, but my friend, you DO deserve gifts!! ….the best that ever were 🙂
OK–no more gifts today–just a wish for a blessed, happy Christmas & New
Year.”

Friday as I sat stunned in my cubicle I idly typed her name into  email.  I know it’s silly but I just wanted to say goodbye.  I sat and stared at her name.  Remembering.  Trying not to cry.  Listening to her voice in my head.  Then I typed one line…”I’m going to miss you girlfriend.”  I paused, then hit the send button.  I got an auto reply:   “I am out of the office until 3/3/14.”

Somewhere a short little lady is visiting with friends and family that have gone before.  Her socks are jingling, her smile is wide, her face glows.   Those of us left here are hurting, but were we ever lucky to have had her while we did.

So…you go girl, enjoy your next adventure.  I wish it could have been the retirement we talked about, dreamed of.  I wish you had had more time here.  And I’m hoping this is the biggest, best adventure of all.

But I’m sure going to miss you girlfriend.  Yes I am.


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Nothing much going on

A bowl of birds

A bowl of birds

I got nothing.  Haven’t done anything interesting.  Haven’t done anything important.  Haven’t done anything.

Ask Katie.  She is bored too.

I guess I’m not so much bored as totally exhausted, sad, and seemingly unable to use time effectively.  All I really want to do is nap which is impossible when you’ve got a sheltie in the house.  So I wander.  Do a little laundry.  Do a little cooking.  Watch the birds at the feeders.

Sit down.

Check Facebook, read a few blogs and think about a blog topic.  Sort a little music.

Sit down.

Consider that I should practice before rehearsal tomorrow night.  Sigh.

Sit down.

Make some cookies to put in the freezer for a time in the future when I don’t feel like making cookies.  Read some more blogs.  Remember there is wet laundry in the washer, move it to the dryer.

Sit down.

You see a pattern here?  Three days and nothing much happened.  Tomorrow it’s back to work.

Here’s hoping you had a much more exciting weekend!

Hungry

Hungry


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Reflections on truck safety

Fall reflections

Fall reflections

I’ve been thinking about an injured family a lot lately.  And as our government grinds to a halt and people express their frustration with the gridlock which is Washington I recognize their frustrations in my own ongoing feelings about the slowness of change toward truck safety.  I know, I know…you don’t see the connection.  Let me try to illuminate.

As many of you know last May my family and I met in DC with other families who have been irreparably injured by large trucks.  Families who have had members lost, injured, families whose lives are altered forever.   The first day of our conference, Saturday, May 4, we told our stories, cried, welcomed with heavy hearts the new families, and talked strategy to make change.

That same day a mother and her three children were traveling on a road in Georgia.  Their car was hit by a truck, spun, and was pushed under the rear of a semi.   Her daughters, AnnaLeah, 17 and Mary, 13 were killed.    While we were sitting in a DOT boardroom hearing department after department tell us that they were studying a problem, contemplating a rule, considering change this mother was planning her daughters’ funerals.  While we were arguing that stronger wider rear guards should be mandated on commercial vehicles two more beautiful children died.  Beautiful people are dying every day.  And our government continues to study.  To discuss.  To consider.

Thoughts ripple

Thoughts ripple

So as I watch the government fight among itself I think the shutdown is a bigger reflection on our own fights for truck safety.  If you were to ask most Americans they would side with safety.  But the opinions of most Americans are not heard because we don’t have the dollars or the influence that the trucking industry has.  Even in the article I linked to this post  the truckers  are quoted saying the problem is with those of us in cars.  We need to pay better attention they say.  We need to drive more responsibly they say.  That’s all true.  But this mother was hit by someone else, and was spun into the semi.  A stronger wider rear guard could have saved her children.  Why can’t we do this thing that would save lives.  Why can’t we get even small changes mandated for the safety of us all.

Expanding

Expanding changes

I get discouraged.  And all the news coverage over the current government shutdown just brings home the sense of hopelessness about getting anything positive done in Washington.  I get so discouraged.

But then last week as I was sorting through photos from our trip to DC I suddenly  came across a photo of the framed collage full of faces of our lost family members that hangs in a DOT elevator lobby.  There was Dad.  Like a slap across the face I remembered why I can’t be discouraged.  Because these people, and all the people that have been killed or injured since, have no voice but ours.  AnnaLeah and Mary have no voice but their mother’s…and now ours.  Their family is now part of our family.  They are our children.

We just can’t afford to let the incompetence in DC discourage us.  We can not give up.  No matter what.  You never know when you throw a pebble into a pond just how far the ripples will go.  Change is like that too.  Sometime, somewhere, somehow we will get safety mandated.   We just have to keep throwing those pebbles into the pond.

Marianne Karth, AnnaLeah and Mary’s mother, has a facebook page celebrating her daughters’ lives.  Put  faces on the numbers I so often quote…go visit her page.  Please support her now at the beginning of her new reality.

I’ll keep tossing those pebbles.

Tree of life

Tree of life


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When is $750,000 not enough?

I was driving home the other night when bits of the news caught my attention.  Someone was putting a bill together to raise the fine retailers pay if they are caught selling cigarettes to minors.   I didn’t catch the beginning of the story, but apparently the fine has been $50 for a number of years.  Based on cost of living increases some legislator figures the fee should be at least $98 and has put together a bill to get it raised to $100.

Now I’m all for fining organizations that sell smokes to minors and I’m glad that someone noticed and is doing something to make it less attractive to do so.  But I can’t help but compare that problem to the minimum insurance levels mandated for injury and death caused by commercial trucks and the total lack of attention this issue has received.

In 1980 as Congress deregulated the trucking industry they set a minimum level of insurance mandated by a trucking company at $750,000.  In the past thirty years that minimum has never been increased.  And to make matters worse, the $750,000 is paid out per incident, no matter how many people are injured or killed.  Many companies, mostly larger commercial carriers, do carry more than the minimum, but smaller companies and many independents carry only as much as they have to.

So lets say the trucking company that hits your car carries a million dollars of insurance.  Sounds like a lot doesn’t it.  Lets says someone in your car has a traumatic brain injury, spends a month or more in intensive care, and many more months in rehab.  How far do you think that million will go?  Or maybe the truck that hits your car also careens into 2 or three more cars.  Maybe multiple people are injured or killed.  That million dollars has to be split up among everyone.  Do you think any one of those affected is worth less because they are one of many involved?  I didn’t think so.

We have members of our truck safety family who have turned over their share of the insurance, money won to compensate them for the death of their son, to the one survivor of the crash, someone in another family, a stranger, because she needs the money for care and will need that care the rest of her life.   That’s the kind of families that are touched by these crashes.  Really great, compassionate people.

So all of this has been swirling around in my head the last few days.  There’s a bill to raise the fine for selling cigarettes, but we can’t get a bill introduced to increase the mandated minimum amount of insurance for commercial carriers.   It makes no sense to me.

And it makes even less sense when I learn of a terrible crash that happened in Indiana a couple of weeks ago.  Seven members of the same family were killed; two young mothers, their four children and an uncle.  Hit from behind by a careless, probably speeding, driver who already had speeding infractions on his  license.  Someone that shouldn’t have been driving at all.  A company that only has to pay, by law, $ 750,000 to the family if they are found at fault.  A family that will never, ever be whole.  A company that likely considers the payout a cost of doing business.  The only thing that makes a commercial truck company take notice is a large monetary loss.  These days $750K is chump change.

Unfortunately the chumps are us.


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No respect

I woke this morning to the news that someone has vandalized the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

Mr. Lincoln

Mr. Lincoln

One of the beautiful things about our monuments is that you can visit around the clock.  Wandering them late on a warm summer night, when they are all lit up, when they are quiet without the hundreds of tourists, is a gift.  Perhaps it’s a gift we won’t always have.

Climbing to meet an important man.

Climbing to meet an important man.

All I can say to the person or people responsible is this:  If you don’t have any respect for yourselves at least have respect for your own history.

Number 16

Number 16


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Beyond brutal

If work last week was difficult, this week it is impossible.  Since mid February there have been three women in our department whose husbands have died unexpectedly overnight.  This past Sunday it was the husband of someone in my region.  The resultant pain and grief among our small group is overwhelming and we all feel so helpless.  Each of us wants to help her.  None of us can.  The work must still get done, and the volume of emails and phone calls has intensified as people hear and want to know what happened.  And, of course, how to help.    Today is only the third day of this never ending week.  We were exhausted before.  Now we are plodding, a painful slow hobble; we’re just getting through each day.  Our exhaustion and pain is all consuming but nothing like what she is living through right now.

So it surprised me a bit tonight to find I could still smile and sing, even tap my fingers on the steering wheel.  The CD from our spring concert arrived last night and I listened to it on the way home this evening.  What a great concert; it was full of happy, fun, upbeat music.  Stuff you can sing (or at least hum) along with, sway with, nod your head with, snap your fingers to.  Good fun, great memories, heart singing music.

Here’s a sampling of what we played (found on youtube and played by other groups for your listening pleasure).  For Lassie and Benji’s mom I give you Lassus Trombone.  (She plays the trombone so I figured she’d get a kick out of this.)   And New York 1927 was really fun to play.  We featured the trumpets in Bugler’s Holiday …including one of our oldest members at over 70 featured as one of the soloists.    We even showcased the clarinets with Pie in the Sky Polka…a piece I spent way too much time practicing.

The whole evening was really fun, and the memories of that concert kept me smiling tonight on my long commute home after another very long and sad day at work.  For the concert we invited 10 or so 7th graders to play with us on a couple of the pieces.  The kids looked so young.  The young man sitting with us in the clarinets said as he took his chair that he was nervous.   We said that was OK, we were nervous too.  Afterward his grin, and the grins of most of the other kids went from ear to ear.  Amazing what music can do.

I wish it was this easy to lift my friend’s spirit.