Will I ever learn?

 Last night, I suddenly found myself on the floor again.  I got cocky.  My mind raced ahead to wherever it is they go when they are not paying attention.  Leaving me stranded – failing, before it went,  to consider my handicap and the critical need to mentally inventory each of my moves as I simply try to make it across the room.

Damn.  I’ve been here before, at the base of my recliner… about a month back.  Same story.  I vowed then not to let this happen again!  Lord, will I ever learn patience?

I still have scars from the last time.  Anger swells up…I flop around, trying to reach the recliner arm, vaguely feeling the familiar tingling of body parts—elbow, knee, hip, even toes this time — as carpet rubs away skin and the bleeding begins.  Strangely, these sensations are welcome.   Feelings over most of my body surface don’t exist anymore, due to the car accident five years back.  At least these feelings are something “normal” – even though this infuriating predicament is definitely not.

 So here I am, once again.  I survey the carpet up close; real close.  Even after five years, I’m still not used to the feeling of limitation, or feeling helpless.  The thought of grasping the cord to pull my telephone down and call someone for help is comforting.  But that’s asking for assistance. That’s accepting defeat.  And that is something I will not allow myself to do.  It would be acknowledging my handicap - admitting I cannot accomplish something as simple as standing up after a fall.  This I refuse to do!

Two exhausting hours of work later - rolling around on the floor, trying to work my body into just the right position -finally allowed me to crawl up the front of my chair and fall back into it.  I have to admit to laughing at myself while on the ground.  And truth to tell, I even said a few prayers.  Life looks a lot different when you lie helpless on the floor. 

Once again, I vow to think before moving.  Triumph never felt so complete!

….tony strodel

… I have hazy memories:  the dinner party in North Berwick, Maine, the slow drive through the sleet and snow back home, sliding into a sharp curve, then - nothing.  I come to… Where? A hospital?  My Akita, Angel, was in the seat behind me… Is she okay?  People, strangers - are busy attaching lines to me - I have something around my neck.  I find I cannot move! One stranger tells me I’ve broken my neck.  Tests to follow, but the break was incomplete.  A good thing she feels.  I feel nothing.  She tells me my family has been notified and my sisters are en route to Maine…

That was March 6, 2003 - my mother’s birthday.  I think her presence, her spirit was in the Jeep with Angel and me that night - something half-remembered, half-felt through the haze: a feeling I wouldn’t die.  And with patience, all would come out OK, eventually.  It would be just like my mother to remind me to be patient.  Growing up, she would constantly tell me to slow down, be patient…”No, Tony, you are not excused from the table”, or “Tony, stop running up and down the stairs”.     

Patience I have now learned, however inadvertently.  Adaptability, I’ve learned as well.  I cannot physically do the things I could before that night, five years ago.  There’s anger as well, but I control the anger with a dose of humor.  Every task, even the smallest, takes forethought and planning.  Five years of hospitals, re-hab centers, nursing homes, assisted living centers and finally, with patience, my own apartment.  I admit to being stubborn on occasion, but being determined has helped me to become independent.    

I could not have come this far by myself, however.  Without my family and friends, who have come through this with me, my life would be way different.  My time with the adaptive service folks at the YMCA allows me to continue exercising, and does not allow me to give up hope for continued improvement.  The Maine Resilience group has been an excellent resource as well.  These are individuals like myself, who live with physical challenges and employ adaptability to solve life’s problems. 

I do have to admit I’ve come a long way, but I still have a long way to go.  I’m lucky to have such a wonderful and diverse support network.  Also my religious beliefs, such as they are, have been of help.  Life can change directions in a nano-second!  There is only frustration and disillusionment in looking back and asking what could have been, should have been, done differently.  I can only press on using resilience, humor, compassion, even stubbornness.  Enjoying the half-full glass, and not thinking of the other half - the half-empty half…………. tony strodel

MAINE RESILIENCE – LOU PELLETIER

 I trust you will forgive me for breaking the chronological litany of trauma in my life so I can discuss Miracles.  Many of us are familiar with the Bible accounts of the Miracles Jesus performed, but how many of us have beenblessed with a Miracle in their lives.  Believing that the circumstances of our lives are much our doing or Man’s doing  due to our Free Will, I have neither expected or prayed for Miracles. An incident this past Christmas Day (2007) has reaffirmed by belief that Miracles occur. My daughter Stephanie, her husband, newborn son (2 month) and I spent Christmas Eve and day at her sister’s home.  At approximately 4 A.M. on Christmas Day, Stephanie was going down the stairs to the kitchen after having fed the baby (Edgar) for a bite to eat.  Being in a bedroom downstairs I heard her coming down the stair when suddenly a loud thud sounded out. It was loud enough for me to think some large amount of snow had fallen from the roof or one of the adults had fallen out of bed.  A few minutes later I heard my daughter painfully calling out for her husband.  After some commotion, hearing her sister tend to Stephanie, her husband, Scott, came into the room and explained that she had lost her footing going down the stairs and had landed on her back.  She could not get up and was having trouble breathing. Even before I knew what was going on I was talking to God, praying it was not serious. An ambulance came and took her to the hospital.  As we let the children empty out their Christmas Stockings the mood was somber and the adults were all praying for a good outcome.  We received a call from Scott saying the X-rays were inclusive but they believed she had three broken ribs and a vertebrae that had some damage.  Being a paraplegic, you can imagine my stress over the thought that my daughter with a newborn could end up with a serious spinal injury.  I prayed steadily from the time I knew she was hurt until she returned to us that she would be OK.  After a C.A.T. scan, anothercouple hours passed, and we were informed that Stephanie had no broken bones and would be released from the hospital.  She returned to us just before noon and we had a very happy Christmas celebration from then on.  She was in a lot of pain, but we were all overjoyed that no serious damage had occurred.  As a result of this experience, I am now quick to pray for a Miracle healing for those I know who are suffering through one of life’s traumatic experience.  You can see that one of the factors for building resilience worked well for me during this very stressful and frightening experience. It allowed me to remain calm, and focused on helping those going through the same stressful issue.  Our connection with FAITH , for me is the strongest factor that makes me resilient.Louis Pelletier  

As I ride the train down to Boston, I enjoy the beauty of a winter afternoon.  The snow covered fields.  The frozen marshes.  The snowbirds gone.  Only the hardy, and those who can’t afford to go south for the winter, remain and by late March, the longest month of the year for most Mainers, many of us will feel like we are in the second category and not the first.  A Maine winter can be physically stressful, the cold, the snow, the dark and psychologically stressful, the cold, the snow, the dark.

The Maine winter reminds us of the need to stay connected.  To keep talking, to not isolate.  It’s easy to  hibernate.  And to take care of ourselves by continuing to exercise and control our appetite.  On a weekly basis, the winter has reminded us of the need to be flexible.  That plans may have to change in an hour if the rain changes to freezing rain or snow.  And most of all, the Maine winter reminds us of a need to remain optimistic.  Spring will come.  There are good things about the winter if you will get out and allow yourself to enjoy them.  And the weather is nobody’s fault.  It’s God’s winter.   - Ron Breazeale

    As some of you know, Reaching Home, a novel about conquering fear that I authored, was published in the late fall of 2006 by New Voices Publishing. Soon after it was released some of my colleagues suggested that I write a guide to the novel that would focus on resilience. Duct Tape Isn’t Enough was the result. And as some of you may know, we have been using hte novel and the guide in the Maine Resilience Program to teach the attitudes an skills that help people to be resilient.

Those of you who have seen Lions to Lambs or read my last post, are aware of the questions the film raises for the baby boomers and the current generation. Have the baby boomers sold out to the system or are they just too tired, stressed and part of the system to engage the real problems…poverty, health care, greed…facing our society? And will the gifted both in money and talent of the present generation address these problems or choose self absorption and consumerism instead?

These are questions that will only be answered if they’re asked over and over again so they cannot be avoided. I hope there will be more films, books and articles that will encourage this debate. A novel, I think, is a great place to address these issues. I plan to explore them more in a sequel to Reaching Home.

I just recently saw Lion’s to Lambs, a new movie by Robert Redford. It definitely is a boomer story. It raises a number of issues for my generation. Set in the present it asks have the children of the ’60s sold out the values we so loudly proclaimed? Merle Streep is a TV network reporter who must decided whether she tells the real story of the one the current administration wants her to report. Is she too tired, too stressed and too caught up in the system to tell the truth and risk, at 58, losing her job.

Meanwhile, Redford, whose character is a college professor at an Ivy League university,  struggles with on of his “gifted” student to convince him to reconnect to a system that the student sees as corrupt and irrelevant. “There’s no science in political science,” says the student, “just politics.”

Their debate raises the question will our children and grandchildren, many of whom have had it all, choose to engage the system or avoid taking responsibility for changing a society that perpetuates poverty, health care for the rich and supports greed is good for the top 1%?

While the student who has it all is debating with Redford, two of his fellow classmates on scholarship who grew up in poverty give their lives in Afghanistan trying, as they see it, to change the world for the better.

The movie is clearly about the resilience of the baby boomers. Are we still in the fight or have we copped out? And what of our children and grandchildren, many of who have only limited experience with adversity? Will they engage the problems our society faces? Do they have the skills and attitudes that will be required? Or will they avoid them by watching “reality television” and cosmetic ads?

Since I reached the ripe old age, I wonder where that expression came from, of 60 a couple of months ago, I have been feeling my age. And no, my body suddenly hasn’t fallen apart, at least not yet but the way I think about myself has certainly changed.

I’m in my sixties so I must be old. And old in the American society is not a good thing. I began to doubt whether I could still communicate with younger people and be taken seriously, but let’s face it, many of them at times, like my teenage daughter, didn’t take me seriously before I turned 60. I thought maybe I might need to reconsider how I dressed and the expressions I use in conversation. And that big bald spot on the top of my head. I had passed on Grecian formula when my hair turned gray but maybe I shouldn’t have passed on the hair regeneration treatments.

Ron Breazeale

Well as you can see from my previous post, I was in a bit of a crisis. Was it midlife or late life? My God, I didn’t know. I guessed late life and that sent a chill down my spine. What saved me from all of this worry, at least for now, was thinking about my dear old dad. He died in the early 90’s. He had just turned 80 and after 25 years of battling rheumatoid arthritis, he was ready for a rest.

In the last years of his life, I was a young man in my late 30’s and early ‘40’s. At least I think of 30’s and 40’s that way now, young. I never appreciated enough his sense of humor. He never took getting old that serious. Nor did he ever see himself as disabled, although he spent the last year-and-a-half of his life in a nursing home. Sometimes when I would visit him, he would tell me how concerned he was about some of his fellow residents and how they were having such a hard time, seldom ever focusing on the constant pain the arthritis created for him. He was not in denial he was just resilient.

Ron Breazeale

As I said in an earlier post, my mom could be the poster child for resilience. My friends comment on how young she sounds. Like my father, she has never seen herself as old. And not because she is in great health, she has severe osteoporosis and a pacemaker. But like my dad, who had severe rheumatoid arthritis, she doesn’t think of herself as OLD.

Like a young person, she is not obsessed with her health. She stays active but doesn’t worry about how much exercise she gets each day and she doesn’t have a particular diet she feels compelled to stay with. She eats what she likes in moderation.

She does insist on keeping her mind active and is a great fan of crossword puzzles and “fill ins.” She values her friends and family and takes new residents of the elderly housing program she lives in, under her wing. I am sure her efforts with at least two of her fellow residents suffering with the early stages of Alzheimer’s allowed them to live independently much longer than they could have without her constant calls and direction and “talks” e.g. reorientation.

But she knows that the day may come when she can no longer live independently. Based on how she has handled other changes in her life, the death of my dad, moving into elderly housing to name a few, I assume she will adapt, cope and change until it no longer makes an sense for her to do so.

Ron Breazeale

This is Lou Pelletier

 continuing my saga of “resilience” building experiences….

During my seventh year, a new addition came to our family - a second brother, named Peter.  At eight years of age, I recall my sister, brother and I would  go a couple of blocks up the street and cross to visit our Aunt Jenna.  She treated us as her own because she and mother were friends since they were children.  Thursday was donut baking day.  In my

impatience to get there one day, I was struck by a car when crossing the street!  The impact threw me some twenty feet into the driveway.  Aunt Jenna hearing the commotion came out and got me, took me inside and cleaned up my bloody face.  Luckily I had only been scraped and bruised. Even though I shook it off quickly, I’ll never forget how it felt being helped even though I didn’t realize how little I’d been hurt.

The next summer, at nine years old, our family had to move out of the only home I had ever known to that point in my life.  The landlord decided to renovate and we moved to a much smaller place about a mile up the street.  Dad bought me my first bicycle, a used three speed, 26-inch wheel, bike that was all in parts which he and I assembled.  We lived next to a small store, and one day I helped myself to a bottle of soda from the delivery truck.  My mother brought me to the driver, made me pay  and apologize for stealing. This impressed the driver, and every weekly delivery day he would give me a soda.  During the winter I recall getting a bad flu and the mumps.

At ten years old, our family emigrated from New Brunswick, Canada to Millinocket, ME.  It was quite difficult giving up all that was familiar, friends, community and school.  We were bilingual, due to television, but the English was minimal and accented.  We were enrolled in another Catholic parochial school, well known for discipline (physical!) as much as theological education.  Being the new kid brought its share of teasing not to mention the bullying.  It was especially tough for Mario (my deaf brother), when he attempted to mainstream into this private school - and it did not work out.  Being 1962, the school did not have the resources to accommodate his needs, and he had to spend the school years at Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Falmouth.  To us, that was very far away, so as before we would only spend summers and holidays together.

Which of the eight factors for Resilience do you think would have been helpful or were being developed during these changes I went through.  They are: 1. Connect with others.  2. Be flexible.  3. Make realistic plans and take action.  4. Open lines of communication to problem solve.  5. Manage strong feelings.  6. Be self-confident.  7. Find purpose and meaning.  8. See the big picture.

     — Lou Pelletier, a resilient Mainer