North Star Lane — Holding On

We spend our lives learning to hold on, and learning to let go.  Two personal stories this week on North Star Lane: program host Michael Goldberg holds onto his sister as long as he can.  And Grand Rapids community activist Kathleen Blake tells how she faced life and death with her young son. 

Music provided by Sam Miltich.

For more information including links to accompany this discussion see:
https://ncdn.work/northstarlaneE0005.html

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Michael Goldberg 0:01

Hi there, I'm Michael Goldberg, collecting stories here on North Star Lane. The stories we tell ourselves about what's happened to us in our lives or what just happened or what might happen, these stories I think are part of how we learn what to hold on to. Today we have two personal stories about learning to hold on and learning to let go. Kathleen Blake tells us about her young son's first experience of a death in the family. But first I want to tell you about letting go of my sister. It wasn't easy. For as long as I could remember, basically my whole life, I was about seven years old at the time, we had played together every Saturday morning in our pajamas in front of the TV, had played some game together, Candyland or Chutes and Ladders, Parchee, until one Saturday morning, as I came into the room holding the game, she said no. I couldn't believe it. I pressed her and she said Leave me alone. And she meant it every Saturday morning. It was the same story. I would try to entice her with the delights of Candyland, and she would say no, leave me alone. She was four years older than me, and she meant it. Leave her alone and leave all of her stuff alone. She was the boss. Anytime that my mother heard us quarreling, she would invariably yell at Carol and tell her to stop, which of course just made Carol hate me even more, and so suddenly in my family of my parents and my one sister, I was kind of lonely. But you know, things changed, and after a while I wasn't seven years old anymore. She was getting ready to go off to college, and I figured if we weren't going to live in the same house together, maybe we could be friends. So I took some of the money I had gotten from my bar mitzvah, most of that was in the form of savings bonds, but there was cash enough for me to buy her a brand new Schwin bicycle with a basket, something I knew that she wanted on campus at Skidmore College in fabled Saratoga Springs, New York. I hid the bicycle in the basement and wrote a little story about some elves who were wildly riding this thing all over town, out on the highways, in and out of buildings, up and down the escalators, through people's houses until they finally got tired of it and just abandoned it in some random basement where she found it. And I put the story in the basket, led her downstairs. Big points for little Michael. And I kept up that campaign. When she went off to school, I started writing her letters about all the doings in my life and news from home. I always made sure to include some sarcastic remarks about our parents, you know, making us allies. And she wrote back to me a few times too in her very tidy left handed handwriting, news of college life. And then she really floored me when she came home for Christmas break. She invited me to go with her to the home of a college friend of hers who lived a couple of hours away to go overnight with her. Now, at the time I was thirteen years old, so I already knew that I was destined to become a famous writer, and the success, the evident success of my little story and of my letters was early proof of my future fame. We rode to her friend Alice's house. It was the longest time the two of us had ever spent alone together, and she told me this story. She said every dorm has an RA, you know, a residential aide. Ours is really nice. Her name is Sarah, and she wants to get to know all of us, and I was telling her about our family, and I told her about the time that we took a family vacation to Hersheyland in Pennsylvania, and she asked me if you had been along. And I couldn't remember. I mean, I knew you must have been, they wouldn't have left you behind, but I couldn't conjure up a single picture with you in it. And then I started thinking about other family trips and things we'd done all together. I couldn't remember if you were even there. Now I had known for a long time that I was invisible, but this was a shocking revelation to her, and away from home for the first time, starting her grown up life, she decided to try something different. We had a great time with her friend and a great time with that long drive back, and it was the beginning of a new relationship between me and Carol. We were close throughout our teenage years and young adulthood, and getting to know each other became part of how we got to know ourselves. And then it multiplied. Gail and I moved out to New York City for a few years, where Carol lived with her husband, Howie, in a really cool apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and we spent a lot of time with them. They showed us all the secrets of New York. They introduced us to dimsom and Hagendas Ice Cream, how real New Yorkers get the Sunday Times on Saturday night and lug at home. I had never had a brother, and now instead of Parchee with Carol, I was playing backgammon with Howie. And Gail had never had a sister, and the two of them became very close. Closer still as Carol waited impatiently for the delivery of her second child. One night under a full moon, Gail and Carol went out for a walk in Central Park to see if they could move things along. And we stayed at their apartment when she went to the hospital, and we were waiting with the four-year-old when they came home with the new baby. And then it was the six of us. And even after Gail and I moved back to Minnesota and had our own two little boys, it was the eight of us. Their daughters loved having little cousins to look after, and we loved looking after each other. Eight of us with how many is that? Eight times eight relationships, all of them loving, really something to hold on to. But things do change. In her fifties, Carol was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It was just inconvenient at first, but the course of the disease was brutal and merciless. Towards the end, I was sitting with her on her porch in California, and she started to cry. I put my arms around her and held her tight, and she said Why is no one holding on to me? She could feel herself slipping away. Why is no one holding on to me? she said, as I held her close, as I always will. She told me once when I was saying how much fun I was having with my grandkids, just wait. Being a great grandparent is even better. For one thing, because the kid's parent is not your kid, it's your perfect grandchild. Here's a story she told to a live audience earlier this year.

Kathleen Blake 7:52

Mom, do people die in their sleep? That is the question my four and a half year old son asked me six months after he was diagnosed with leukemia. What does a mom do with a question like that? And what do four-year-olds know about death anyway? Most four-year-olds have had little to no experience with death. But Michael's experience was different. You can imagine the chaos. Tom's six kids and my four. But it was a wonderful weekend. The older kids played outside from sun up to sundown, running throughout the entire neighborhood. The two little kids somehow managed to entertain themselves as well, leaving us adults free to laugh and joke, tell stories, eat, and play games. But one thing different happened this weekend. Normally when all of us get together, my brother Tom has nothing to do with the kids. Who can blame him? Six kids and they all came bing bing bing bing. It must have been a relief for him to have some diversion of entertainment for his children. But for some reason, Tom spent a fair amount of time with our son Michael, who was just a little over three at the time, and his three and a half year old son Ryan. I was so pleased that my brother Tom wanted to get to know my youngest son, and pleased that Michael got to spend some special time with his uncle Tom. The weekend ended, of course, and we returned back home to our daily routine. The following Saturday morning I was awakened early by a phone call. My brother Tom had died in a motorcycle accident the night before. We loaded up the kids, headed back to Grand Forks to help out with funeral arrangements, coordination of food, taking care of the kids, and gathering with family and friends as one does when tragedy strikes. After the funeral, Rick took the three older kids back home while Michael and I stayed behind for an extra week to help Nancy and the kids in whatever way I could. At the end of the week, Michael and I returned home. When we got home, I took Michael out to the garden with me, a place of refuge, even among the weeds. While I was pulling weeds, my neighbor walked by. I looked up, waved, and said, Hi Tom. Michael, in a startled voice, said, Mom, is he back? I picked him up in my arms, hugged him, and said, Honey, when someone we love dies, that means we won't see them again, except in our memories, and then again after we die. Well, death is a pretty big concept for a four-year-old. As adults, we know about death. We've experienced it among friends and family, we've read about death, we've talked about it with others. But what does a child know about death? And how do they come to understand this big concept? Well, kids come to understand this big complex world through play. As I was walking back to the house with Michael, he plopped his little head down on my shoulder and said, Mom, I'm dead. Oh Michael, I said, I don't know how I'm gonna go on without you. I can't stop crying. I miss you so much. At that, his little head popped back up and he said, I'm back. I said, Honey, I'm so glad you're playing dead. But Uncle Tom can't play dead. When we love someone who dies, we won't see them again except in our memories, like when we tell fun stories about them. And then again after we die. As I said earlier, death is a big concept, and it took a while for Michael to work this concept out in his little mind. He continued to play dead for six to eight weeks until finally he had figured out whatever it was he needed to understand. I was so relieved when he went back to normal kid play. Nine months after Tom died, Michael suffered excruciating bone pain and was diagnosed with leukemia. That was a terrifying diagnosis for us, as you can well imagine. Not only was the diagnosis scary, but it carried a special weight for us in my family. My paternal grandpa, my dad, and my brother had all died of cancer. Cancer in my family meant death. Struggling to get through each day to do the things we needed to do to support Michael and the other kids. After the shock wore off, I remembered that I had a job to do. I was the mom. My job was to make sure that Michael got the very best medical care and the very best emotional care he could possibly get. We had wonderful doctors and nurses, and that was a gift. It helped me in my job. We spent three weeks at the University of Minnesota Hospital while Michael received intensive treatment. After the three weeks, we were finally able to return home back to a new normal. The new normal meant we would go down to the U only once a week and then return home for the other six days of the week. Rick and I did our best to make life as normal as possible. That meant returning to our normal routines. Our daytime routine, of course, meant work and school, childcare, household chores, kids' activities, and play. We also had a nighttime routine. Every night, each of our kids got a story, a song, we said prayers, and a good night kiss. After that kiss, I did not want to see that child again. I had four kids. I was tired. But for Michael, after his hospitalization, that bedtime routine changed. After his story and his song and his prayers and his kiss, he could not go to sleep. Every night he wanted to talk about grandma and grandpa and Uncle Tom and Uncle Mike. I knew this had something to do with death, but I didn't know exactly what it was, and I didn't want to put words in his mouth. I told him stories about each of them. Sometimes I told him how much Uncle Tom loved him and how much grandma and grandpa and Uncle Mike would have loved him if they had been alive when he was born. This continued on for an entire six months. At the end of the six months, we finally reached a new phase of treatment. We no longer had to go down to the U every week. This called for a celebration. And what could be better than finding out that a Star Wars movie was in town? We took the kids to the movie, we got our popcorn and settled down. The three older kids were sitting to the left of me. Michael was sitting on my lap, and Rick was sitting to my right. We were so excited. I don't know if you remember the Star Wars movie Return of the Jedi. In this movie, Yoda dies in his sleep. Michael sat up, turned around, and said, Mom, do people die in their sleep? I hugged him as tight as I could, and I said, No, honey. If you were going to die, Dad and I would never keep that a secret from you. And even if, for some reason, Dad and I didn't know, you would know. You would just know. That must have been the answer that Michael was looking for. Because after that, he was able to go to sleep.

Michael Goldberg 19:45

Kathleen Blake, her illustrated children's and family book, The Story of Michael Elephant, will be published later this year. I'm Michael Goldberg collecting stories here on North Star Lane. Our musical interludes provided by Sam Miltich. The show is sponsored by the Northern Civil Defense Network, NCDN Radio. You can find more about the network and more stories at ncdn.work.