Learning by Accident

The book is coming along nicely, but more slowly than I anticipated. While I turn my own work around quickly, I have no control over the production team, and I want a nearly perfect product, so I need to be patient.

Patience is a virtue I lack; and it's the single virtue my own life seems to be trying to teach me all the time. I've become an expert at counting to ten, breathing deeply, and telling myself, "Hey, it's just a book. It's just a book about your own life's work. It's just a book containing a story I've been bursting to tell for nearly ten years. That's all. It's just a book."

I promise you, it's coming. Nothing is written in stone, but THERE WILL BE A BOOK.  I will let you know as soon as I have a date.

Thank you for your patience!

Thoughts on Caregiving Inspired by the Beach

The one time in life that it’s good to let go is when you're dealing with a long-term medical crisis. Yes, let go. Stop hanging on to your routine; stop wishing you could go back to normal. Remember that you’re caught in a riptide, being carried out to sea, to a place you’ve never been before. Relax, or fight the current at your peril. For the current is unrelenting. Let it take you where it will—through shock, denial, and despair—because swimming against the current will exhaust you till you drown.

Instead, swim parallel to the shore, breathe deeply, and remain calm. Gaze into the blue sky, marvel at the churning of the water. Watch the memory of yourself on the distant shore—the self you used to be, before you knew how erratically and unpredictably your world could flip—and know that when you eventually step back on that shore, you will be changed, and that change won’t necessarily be all bad. You will have gained a new respect for the fleeting human life span. You will yearn to seek out meaning, and may even finally learn to love yourself and others without holding back.   

Moving along

Just to keep you in the loop, I finished the interior edits to the book today! Bring on the aching neck cream!

Now the publisher has to work them into the book and get it back to me for final approval. After that, we tackle the cover design, which is already 90% done thanks to my sister, Pat.

Once approved, it takes four weeks to have the book up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com,  as well as Kindle, and in my hands, so I can begin running around to reading groups, stores, and libraries to sell it. There's also some exciting news coming in the next few weeks, so stay tuned! This has been an amazing process. Thanks to everyone for signing on! I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I'm off to the Outer Banks for a week of rest before things really heat up. Enjoy the sunshine, all! 

If it's to be...

Make no mistake. We all write our own life story. No one does it for us—no one else controls the narrative. Whether we write it with a pen, or with our choices, our story is told by our actions. All of us leave an impression on others and the world we eventually leave behind.

Some write their stories with focused intention. They organize and follow a plan. Others experiment. They try, fail, succeed, and try something new. Still others stumble along, changing only when circumstances demand they must, struggling to find a foothold. All of us learn from others. We learn in school, from our teachers, parents, and mentors. We especially learn from and try to emulate those we admire. But often, the most important lessons are learned by accident. By this I mean, our most important lessons are inside the experience, they are behind the obvious, buried in our subconscious, but when they appear, they burst before us like magicians, miraculously clear—and these lessons change our lives forever.

Once Hugh made up his mind to heal as fully as humanly possible, he often repeated a phrase that became an integral part of how he lives his life every day. He said,
“If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” This one sentence soon defined him. He’s who he is today because he accepted what he could not change and made the very best of everything he had going for him. He’s a walking miracle, in part because he took control of his own life story—and what a life story it’s turning out to be.

Book Buzz

It's getting near the time when I will realize a lifelong dream. I will have written and published a book. I will hold it in my hands. I will see others reading my story.

This is satisfying, exhilarating and frightening beyond belief. Every word of this book is my version of the truth. I have exposed my thought process, my fears, and my neurosis. I've placed my family on a glass slide for everyone to examine. They have cheerfully allowed me to do this, trusting all will go well.

Why would I do this? I've asked myself this many times. So here are the reasons I have for publishing a memoir about the most difficult experience of my life:

1. From the day of the accident until years later, I was so overcome with things that needed doing while at the same time overcome with emotion, that I could not organize my thoughts enough to make sense of them. Writing was my way of telling the story without holding someone hostage while I talked for weeks on end.

2. From the day of the accident until about two years out, I lost myself. I was not the same woman. I could not find myself in the mirror, in my heart, or in my mind. I was full of self-talk that alternated between panic and words meant to calm myself down: Oh My God, he can't focus his eyes. He can't talk to me! Calm down, Rosemary, he'll get better. Smile at the girls, don't let them see you freaking out!

3. "We're fine," became my two word response to the world when asked how things were going. How else could I answer? It soon became clear that no one knew anything about brain injury and what was going on in my house. If it happened in my house, it must be happening in most houses where brain injury occurs. So the book is that glimpse behind the front door, into the living room that has become a quiet room, into the bedroom that has become a hospital room, into the home that has become another place entirely.

4. I wrote this book as a tribute to those with brain injury, who struggle daily to find themselves, to wake up from an exhaustion so bone deep they want to sleep forever, who wonder who they used to be, and who simply want to get back to life. I wrote it as a tribute to caregivers who rearrange their lives for their loved ones, hoping beyond hope that their life will someday resemble normal again, hoping they can calm the trembling of their own heart so they can endure the marathon caregiving required of brain injury.

The interior book design is complete. I'm in the process of proofreading before we begin work on the beautiful cover design. The cover picture was taken by my friend Nancy Tomlinson at the beach and the cover is being designed by my sister, Pat Waters. This is a totally homegrown project. I can hardly wait to launch! I'll keep you posted.

Revisiting the Past

My blog will switch from hospice care for Mom to the subject of caregiving for a loved one with a traumatic brain injury, the focus of my life in 2002, when my husband, Hugh, suffered a TBI.

I have decided to publish a memoir about the journey of his remarkable recovery, and the insights I garnered from the intense experience of caring for him during that uncertain time. The title of the book will be "Learning by Accident."

I began writing this book in the ICU, a few days after Hugh was struck by a car while riding his bicycle. His accident occurred on April 13, 2002. An ICU nurse told me that a written record would be therapeutic for me, and it would help my husband remember things later on. She was right. That book filled up, along with others. I wrote for hours, days, weeks, months, years...always deciphering the story, always digging for meaning, trying to make sense of the senseless. I'll use this blog to post a few of the lessons I've learned, along with helpful tips for those caring for their brain injured loved ones. It's a long, slow journey, TBI. The slowness of it can tear your heart out if you let it. Here we go.

Epilogue or Epiblog, whichever you prefer

It's now over a week since Mom passed. I've cleaned out her bureau drawers and closet with my sister, Pat. I sorted her papers, notified social security, the bank, her insurance companies, and numerous others. A basket of mass cards calls to me to write thank you letters for flowers, meals, and masses said in Mom's honor. But none of this bothers me. It's the morning coffee...alone. Watching the birds... alone. Looking up from the newspaper to say, "Can you believe that?" and find she is not there, eager to discuss the latest politics. It's passing her empty room without the hum of an oxygen machine on my way to put another load of laundry in the washer. These small daily activities bring sudden tears. That large empty room, the made up bed. It's being moved to my sister's house next Monday. I'll redecorate and make Mom's bedroom a workout room. Will I still see her face looking up at me? Will I hear her voice in that room? I hope so. I never want to forget. She was too beautiful to forget.