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Art, caregiving, character, Christopher Cudworth, community, the Right Kind of Pride

Ten years on: and then some

March 20, 2023 Christopher Cudworth Leave a comment

I am chagrined to realize that the last post I wrote in this blog was a year ago. On that front, I can simply state that my energies went into completing a book now published. It is titled Honest-To-Goodness: Why Christianity Needs A Reality Check and How to Make It Happen. If you want to keep up with that project and how it relates to the world we live in today, you can find me on TikTok as @genesisfix.

Today, on this blog, I have a testimonial to write. It has been ten full years on March 26, 2013, since my late wife Linda Cudworth passed away after eight years of ovarian cancer survivorship. She’s the reason I wrote the book The Right Kind of Pride, A Chronicle of Character, Caregiving and Community. The book talks positively about vulnerability, the aspect of character enabling people to be honest about their circumstances and trusting that other people will understand.

The actual definition of vulnerability is somewhat harsher than my description above. Vulnerability: the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.

Perhaps that’s why people shy away from the idea of being vulnerable at all. Fearing attack for showing their true selves, they feel safer keeping their distance or even letting a sign of supposed weakness show at all.

We purchased her a bike to ride when neuropathy made it hard for her to do the daily walks she loved.

For us, I can testify that showing weakness turned out to be a sign of strength. We were blessed by the support of so many people that at times the help almost overflowed. That’s not bragging. That’s an expression of gratitude. Without the help of others through years of cancer treatments, chemotherapy, surgeries, medical challenges + emergencies, emotional breakdowns, loss of work, financial stress, and finally, a move into palliative care and hospice, those eight years would have been hard to endure. My brothers helped. Our friends helped. Even strangers helped. In some cases those people became friends. In others, they were practical angels when needed most. All were appreciated.

We made it through to enjoy periods of remission where things sort of felt normal. She got to attend school plays and concerts, see her kids graduate from high school and watch one of them graduate from college. She only missed seeing her daughter “walk” during college graduation by a few months.

So this isn’t a complaint or a “woe is us” moment. This tenth anniversary of her passing is a statement of respect and love. She lived as fully as anyone that I ever met. In fact, her example resonates to this day with all that knew her. I still get messages from people whose gardens still blossom with the plants she divided and gave them over the years. I also meet the parents of the former preschool students that she taught. They recall her kindness and loving nature with fond hearts and gratitude. Those were her two loves outside God and family. Her garden and her “kids” were always close to her heart.

The watering of her lilies and garden in late June.

She loved so many things that I used to kid her that I was glad to be ranked in her “Top Ten” any given week. She’d laugh a bit because we kidded each other often. But Linda was also known to have a biting sense of humor on many occasions. Despite her sweetness, there was a sharp intellect and cutting sense of humor inside her. She used it mostly with those she loved the most, creating inside jokes that made potentially dull moments more interesting. She’d also tease our kids sometimes, but mostly she found ways to praise them.

Our children Evan and Emily Cudworth posing for a Christmas photo with a Red Ryder BB gun famous from A Christmas Story.

She looked for ways to bring unity to many situations. During a family reunion up north in Minnesota, she wryly nicknamed the handsome young (often shirtless) dock attendant Mr. Boat. That was his job, fetching fishing boats moored away from shore, and whenever one of us wanted to go fishing she’d chirp, “Better call Mr. Boat!” Her powers of observation were that way about many things in life. She chose her favorite shows based on a high standard captured in the phrase, “This is interesting,” which was not given out to just any old show. Usually, that meant the show was either refined or educational. She also loved historical dramas such as Upstairs, Downstairs the series Downton Abbey, and nature shows narrated by Richard Attenborough.

And yet, she loved the silly stuff too, as with shows such as 30 Rock, where an episode could send her into fits of giggles if the absurdity caught up with her.

Nothing captured her imagination quite like gardening, however. She’d pore through catalogs seeking the best new plants, especially specimens few other gardens had. A walk through a typical garden center with her elicited winces and looks askance at the colorful yet commonplace pansies or petunias. Her garden pots as a result were works of genuine, living art. And once during my participation in an Artists In Action event in downtown Geneva, Illinois, her dried plant arrangements outsold my artwork by a far margin. I didn’t hear the end of that for quite sometime.

During one of our fall travels to the Morton Arboretum. A small portion of her ashes were discreetly placed in the Daffodil Garden.

I loved her for all these reasons. Yet I also knew that once the cancer diagnosis hit, it would be tough for her to live it out beyond a certain number of years. Had I not chased her to the gynecologist that spring of 2013, she might not have lived even a year beyond whenever it showed up at last. But getting checked out saved her life in many respects. It took aggressive surgery and chemo treatments to knock back cancer, but she/we did it time and again. She was tough as nails so many times. Even her doctor, a highly respected gynecological oncologist with many years of practice told her, “I don’t think I could do what you’re doing.”

A formal portrait from our church. We moved to a more open-minded congregation during the last year of her life.

That was her will to live at work. Obviously, I was her closest admirer, but there were many whose involvement in our lives proved vital to her survival. But by early March of 2013, when the medical oncologist saw that she could not rise from the examination table on her own, I was pulled aside to learn that it was time to prepare for the end. That’s when I really knew. It was time to say goodbye.

In truth, and I don’t say this with shame, I’d been preparing myself for many years before she passed. This is called anticipatory grief. It takes place when you see parts of someone you love being taken away. People dealing with situations in which loved ones or friends aresuffering from diseases such as dementia or Parkinson’s know the process too well. Bearing witness to the disappearance of that person you knew is painful. Indeed, my freshman-year roommate and running teammate Keith from Luther College was diagnosed with Parkinson’s not long after losing his wife Kristi to ovarian cancer. He dealt with its effects for more than a decade, including slowed speech and movement limitations. Yet he kept his wry sense of humor. Yet what a strange thing to have to happen in life. Those two 18-year-old kids that roomed together as cross-country teammates at Luther College could never know that both of our wives would battle the same disease.

My roommate Keith leading our team. I’m at left in the second group.

Keith and his wife Kristi had been together since they were high schoolers. She and my late wife had quiet conversations about their respective cancer journeys whenever we were all together at college reunions or other events. Recently, one of his daughters sent me a Luther College Bear made from some of his tee shirts. We keep each other company in spirit.

I wrote a poem about the anticipatory grief experienced in preparing for Linda’s passing. That’s the only way I could put all the thoughts together. I’ll place that poem here for your consideration. Perhaps you’re experiencing a change in your life that brings grief about in some way. I hope you know that you’re not alone. And if you feel moved to do so, you can share your experience at chris@christophercudworth.com. I’ve communicated with many people over these years. Sometimes it helps a bit to share.

Anticipatory Grief

At four o’clock a.m., she woke me from sleep

and shook a sheet of paper calling out, “I found the car!”

She’d been up for an hour researching new Subarus

on the Internet and that fact alone was shocking

because she despised almost everything

about technology and how it seemingly ruled our lives.

Our car is still rolling ten years later.

She dug into the website of Gerald Subaru to look through the selection of Outbacks and found the bronzy brown color she desired and printed out the sale sheet with all the stats so that we could go that day and buy the car.

Already we’d experienced the side effects of steroids

from the cancer that passed through the blood-brain

barrier even though it is never supposed to do that.

On December 26 we met with the neurologist

who explained the procedure he proposed

in fine detail, with the clamp on the head

for excision and radiation followed by

a prescription of steroids to stop the swelling.

Her personality grew my increments as the drugs

did their job, reducing inhibitions dramatically

as she spent money we did not have and looked up

cars that we probably should not buy

because I was taking time out of work

to care for her needs.

Fortunately, my credit rating was so high up on the charts

that the car dealership didn’t ask too many questions

and we drove the new vehicle off the lot

with that strange sense of hope enhanced

by that new car smell.

She would get to ride in that car just three more times

as the steroids wore off and her body slowed down

unable to keep up with the rolling effects of ascites

and everything else that goes with ovarian cancer.

It had been years since her first diagnosis

in late spring when my mother also learned

that she was fighting a different kind of cancer

and my father was tied down with the effects

of a life-changing stroke.

Upon hearing these bits of news, a longtime coach

and friend called on the phone with encouragement

saying, “Your whole life has been a preparation for this.”

All that run training, patience, and perseverance learned in athletics

was called upon in caregiving for years to come.

There were late nights sitting in hospitals waiting

for surgeries to finish, and days spent perched

on partly comfortable chairs waiting for her body

to recover with some sign of digestive activity

usually indicated by a loud fart of some sort

at which the nurses often cheered.

We found humor where we could and between

repeated rounds of chemotherapy there were periods

of remission in which she could return to gardening

her primary love in life along with God and family.

My job was supporting these efforts no matter which direction

they tended to move, and without the help of so many

there were times when I might have frozen in place

lacking hope where there should be some despite all the worries.

The prayers piled up as high as they could go

and people even laid hands on her in a religious attempt

at ridding her body of disease, but she hated it,

the ceremony I mean, because it felt to her

like testing God, or what we knew of such things.

Her main goal was to be free of cancer somehow

and did not like being the center of so much attention

or the need to get so sick that life itself felt like a cruel prank

in the face of nausea, neuropathy, and skin peeling

from her hands as she was gardening.

Linda in her parent’s backyard on the 4th of July, one of her favorite holiday. But she loved them all.

Eventually, her hair was all gone and never came back

while the veins in her arms were so tired from injections

that the nurses had to warm and slap the skin

just to find an entry point for the medicine

or whatever one might try to call the poison

that cancer treatment so often requires.

The wigs she chose evolved from modest

to a bit wilder as she said “Fuck it!

I’m going to look like I want to look with the time that I have.”

Yet she was never negative, only resolute.

Visiting my Paoli apartment during our second year of dating in 1982.

For exercise, she wanted a bike because walking

numbed her feet so we picked up a matte green

Trek and she went pedaling on the Great Western Trail

while I rode along behind because I did not want

to pressure her to go too fast. That was how we proceeded

in many things, because I wanted her to last.

She let it all out that day with a burst of speed, clinging to the wig

on top of her head as the tires rolled on crushed limestone

taking her away from the feeling that life was limited.

I rode along behind feeling the breeze of anticipatory grief across my face.

In some way she knew what was coming as well,

and that Subaru was a last grasp at life itself.

A week later she could hardly get off the examination table

And by early March of 2013, when the medical oncologist

pulled me aside, there was true empathy in her recommendation

that we go to palliative care.

Sharing a kiss after I’d won a road race in 1984.

In many respects, I’d been there for years

because the woman I’d known, or the person she wanted to be

had been slowly stripped away by cancer’s rigors

and all that it represents. That means letting parts of yourself go

because there is no other choice.

She gave up calling me by the nickname “Lover”

and used the name Chris whenever we talked.

During those last weeks, I sat by her bed

asking forgiveness for whatever ways I might have failed her

if that was the case. In response, she turned to me and said,

“Oh, Chris, I’m sorry about all the stuff.”

She referred to all the keepsakes and everything kept in boxes

throughout the house from basement closets

to kitchen cabinets, and while she was no hoarder

I found more than thirty baskets in different styles

along with some money kept in quiet boxes

as a stash for new garden supplies.

Never did I begrudge her a dime spent on her love because

she’d sit outside facing her garden with a gin and tonic

admiring her work as the sprinklers graced the lilies

with moisture and the bergamot shared its wild bee scents

on summer evenings. Bats flew overhead and an occasional

nighthawk with its odd reaching up to a partial moon

as evening fell.

These things sustained her determination,

as she didn’t quit living even to the day she died.

We had to move her from the back bedroom

to a living room medical bed

and the EMTs rolled her through the house

on a computer chair in an act of inelegant

practicality. When she was settled back in bed

She looked up at me with a laugh and said

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to suffer.”

As the medical team went about its work that day

It was advice from her gynecological oncologist

that stayed with me. “This is coming to a close,”

he advised, “There’s nothing to be gained

in being negative. So be positive. Lie if you have to.”

Linda with my parents and Evan, our firstborn.

Those are the mercies of reality

because let us not fool ourselves with false positives

or true negatives. Instead, reckon with the truth

in each our own way. Years before, I’d ushered her

through an emotional breakdown brought on

by the fact that the cancer was back.

That truth was far too hard to condense

and much harder to swallow and I lost my wife

for a while to wherever the mind goes

when it can’t take it anymore.

A close friend and nurse then told me

“She’s going to need you now more than ever,

as her entire affect is off, and she’s afraid

of everything but you.” That was true,

so we held hands everywhere we went

until the shock finally wore off

and we invited short visits from trusted quiet friends,

those women she loved that could comfort her soul.

One of the many monarchs we “ranched” and released from her Batavia garden.

We never knew how cancer took hold, the disease

perhaps emanating from baby powder or talcum

as the legal advertisements later implied,

yet far too late for a cure, or recompense.

There is no room for second-guessing the past

when the future bears down on you from behind

and the difficult part about dealing with death

is how to handle it with children still facing most of their lives.

Surely, I did not handle that perfectly well

because anticipatory grief is an advance

salve for the soul before it all comes to pass.

That is also why on the week that she died,

I attended a Good Friday service and my brother told me,

“Dude, you’re walking straight into the pain.”

At the service, an interim pastor greeted me

with a tear in his eye and said, “It’s good that you’re here.”

Who knows the proper way to handle

the passing of a spouse of twenty-eight years

and four years of dating before that?

The immediacy of life’s endings all depend

on practical facts such as when

the afternoon nurse gives way to the night nurse,

and things seem to be winding down.

I recall her presence well, a slight woman with deep dark skin

and an even deeper appreciation of all that was about to transpire.

She stepped in the door and greeted me with something different

than a smile, but not sad, instead taking a long look across the room

at the woman in the home hospice bed breathing deeply.

Then she moved into the kitchen to prepare for the evening.

My son and daughter and I remained in the living room

with their mother and my wife for hours as her breathing grew heavy

and finally the night nurse came into the room and gestured to us

to gather at the bed, each family member holding a hand

or gracing her face with a kiss. Then it grew quiet

because there was nothing more to say.

I glanced at both my children, as each had come

from different places, one in New York and the other

from college to be back with their mother

who’d survived eight hard years to see them

grow into adults, or at least part of the way.

A trip to Chicago during one of her remission periods.

Then the arrangements began and we knew not what to do

but retreat from the finality of her last presence

as the funeral people took over for the transition to ashes

as were her wishes, but not her hopes.

That night the three of us could not bear to be apart

so we joined as children to watch the movie “Wreck It Ralph”

and its playfully destructive theme seemed just right

to distract us from the woes of loss and pain

and numbness, a heartfelt stain that does not always go away.

Our family was always able to talk

But never so amusingly as the day

that I dragged them all to therapy

when the news first hit

that Linda would be fighting cancer

and I wanted us all to be on the same page

in holding our bonds together.

They all participated patiently yet after the session

my son turned to us and said “I could have done all that.”

He proceeded to describe all of us in terms of personality

and how we got along and then he said some words

that I vowed to respect when he advised,

“Dad, just tell us the truth.”

That is what we all tried to abide during all those years,

allowing concessions for caution when the news

was not clear or the prognosis was still being determined

and only then could we be truthful enough

to offer direction, a parent’s prerogative.

These words are begging forgiveness for my own vain need

to tell all these stories as the means to process

what so many others go through in so many different ways.

I only hope they aid some others familiar

with these transitions in life.

I will also confess to needing affirmation on many fronts,

even going so far as self-aggrandizement on more than one occasion.

Also noted are mistakes made during all that caregiving

and one stands out in my mind, the day that she

needed to choke down the most awful liquids

in advance of a barium treatment test

and I grew impatient with her knowing

that her chemo regimen made even good food taste bad.

Yet I still stepped out on the back porch to chide her

with a call to just get it done. Her eyes flashed

and she raised two middle fingers with just two words

that to go along with that gesture,

and I deserved that.

The real object of her fury was the disease itself,

because it was the cause of all that trouble

and deserved to be told to go away

in the harshest of terms.

As they say, we “lost a good one” on March 26, 2013,

and yet there was one more moment of mysterious reckoning

when a friend of my daughter stayed over one night

as night as a gesture of support in the week following

her mother’s death.

The young woman lay on our couch with her feet facing

the spot where my wife’s head had been positioned

in the medical bed, when a set of three orbs of light,

one green, one white, one red, appeared glowing

in the darkness. Her scientific mind hesitated to tell us

that next morning, but we trusted that what she’d seen

was genuine and real.

A photo from our honeymoon taken at Waterton north of Glacier Park, 1985

These events form a helix of memories and realities

that we all seek to unravel with time, yet my perspective

on finality has forever been changed by the people lost

to life’s vagaries and its inevitable conclusion.

Call it anticipatory grief if you will, but I’ll not forget what

the night nurse told me after my wife had passed away.

“She was already gone before I arrived.”

A year after the world changed I sat next

to one of my wife’s closest friends who told me,

“You know, she told me that she knew you’d date

after she was gone.” I thanked her for that,

but related that I was glad she waited to share

that information because we all still need to make

our own decisions in this world. They are often

no easier to make than any other, and whether

we lose a wife or a father or mother,

there still remains a path to walk or run

and it takes resolve to not come undone.

appreciate what love means, caregiving, Christopher Cudworth, community, love abounds, the Right Kind of Pride

A December 26 one cannot forget

December 27, 2021 Christopher Cudworth Leave a comment

The day after Christmas in 2012, my wife Linda and I were scheduled to meet with a neurologist at the Central Dupage Cancer Treatment Center. We managed to have Christmas together with her family that year even though her father passed away that winter. He’d had a heart attack while sawing up a giant oak in his own backyard, Following that incident, he developed dangerous swelling in his legs that ultimately led to kidney failure.

All that fall, we teetered back and forth between hope and reality for my father-n-law. He did kidney dialysis, and it seemed to work, but swelling kept coming back.

Meanwhile, Linda was experiencing an series of seizures. We thought they were a side effect from yet another set of chemotherapy treatments. In any case, it was scary stuff. We’d be out for a gentle walk and her body would start to tremor and shake, but she refused to give up her love of movement and being out in the sunshine.

A combined team of oncologists from Central-Dupage hospital and our longtime gynecological oncologist Dr. James Dolan conferred on her condition. Finally a test was ordered to check the condition of her brain. On December 26, we found out the disturbing news. The ovarian cancer that had afflicted her since 2005 had reached her brain.

“It’s not supposed to be able to breach the blood-brain border,” an oncologist told us. “But here we are.”

We sat together facing yet another shock on December 26, 2012.

It had been a long and difficult year. Back in March, I’d been fired from my job the day after the company learned that she had cancer. We’d kept her cancer a private matter when I started the job, but I finally had to tell them when it came roaring back late that winter. I knew that she’d require more attention with driving her to appointments, staying with her through chemotherapy and taking care of her in between treatments.

Granted, we had a wonderful caregiving team built up around us, but there are always some things that only the immediate family can handle, especially in a life-threatening situation. So I explained our situation in simple terms to the company where I worked, and they promised us support. That was on a Monday, but by Tuesday morning they came forward with an accusation that I’d breached company policy by posting an image of the work I’d done for a client on my personal website. When I walked into work that day, I came face to face the owner, an HR director and a lawyer equipped with all kinds of documents telling me that I’d somehow put the company’s reputation at risk.

No consideration was offered for the stress I might have been under, or how that situation might have affected my judgment. I was out the door and soon forced to pay $2000 a month in COBRA premiums to hang onto medical insurance. All because the owner was frightened that my wife’s condition might increase the company’s insurance premiums.

I appealed the case to the Unemployment system and was blown out of the water by the judge holding the teleconference. He introduced all the evidence the company presented and disallowed everything that I’d provided in relation to the case. I was railroaded, in other words, by a labor-sympathetic judge. Even my best friend, a labor law attorney, was disgusted by the outcome.

But rather than dwell in that space forever, I chose to reach out to that owner in subsequent years and we talked about all that had happened. Forgiveness took place.

But that didn’t help us in the near term.

Little miracles

That summer we struggled to make bills, and sat together praying one night that I’d find a freelance job to cover the $3500 we needed to make ends meet. That next morning an envelope arrived through our front door. It was stuffed with $3700. We hadn’t spoken to anyone about our situation. Other money from our church came our way as well. We hung on, kept her treatments going, but the cancer was relentless. By fall, a tumor was discovered next to her colon. If it could not be removed, the whole colon would need to come out. Then she’d need a colostomy operation. I admit that I was not looking forward to that outcome.

The gynecological oncologist did miracles in the surgery room and my selfish prayers were answered. And then, the day my wife got out of the hospital after surgery, we drove straight to the hospital where her father lay dying.

Crash course

My cycling jersey after the bike crash in September of 2012

As if that had not been enough challenges to face in 2012, I was still recovering from a bike accident that happened earlier that fall. In September I was cycling in a rare weekend getaway with friends while my wife staye back home to spendtime with her family. During the ride, I was cruising down a long hill at 40 mph when a case of bike wobble set in. I crashed in dramatic fashion, flying off the bike and tumbling down and embankment where I lay in shock with a broken collar bone. My friends didn’t know where I’d gone. One of them was ahead of me by fifty yards and the other had not yet crested the hill when I crashed. So I got help from a band of other cyclists who called for an ambulance. I wound up in a tiny Wisconsin hospital in Dodgeville. They pumped me full of Vicodin until someone finally reached the wife of one of my friends. She’s a nurse, and she came to gather me up for the trip back to our campsite.

All that time, my wife was at her parent’s house having yet another seizure. My daughter begged her to go to the hospital, but in typical fashion, wife refused. When the call came that I’d been in a bad bike crash my daughter was in the center of all sorts of trauma. A dying grandfather, a mother shaking to death from cancer, and a father now injured badly after a bike accident.

The effects of trauma

We tend to take these traumas too much for granted in our lives, but they do have long-term effects. We grieve, but perhaps we do not fully process what’s gone on. We move out of that emotional space, but probably not all the way. We deal with what we can in the moment, but life has its demands. So we trundle on. Not fully healed, yet not terminally damaged. If we’re lucky.

During the late stages of my wife’s life, my son was working in New York City. He had to deal with all this strange news from afar. “Do I need to come home?” he asked. It was hard to tell him everything that was going on. It was even harder to figure out what expect of him. My wife said, “Tell Evan I’m fine. I don’t want him to worry.”

My daughter was finally off at college after two+ years of coursework at a community college. She was doing amazing things in her communications studies, even doing live spots on public radio that summer. Her mother was so proud and amazed. We’d sit close to my Mac listening to the live stream and she’d turn to me and go, “That’s Emily!?” Hearing our daughter work professionally on the radio was a welcome joy.

Dealing with the options

But the events of that year kept overwhelming us. And that brings us back to that moment in the cancer treatment center when we found out that my wife’s cancer had moved into her brain. “Here’s what we can do,” the neurologist told us. “We can go in through the top of the head and excise it. Then we’ll apply radiation.”

We sat there thinking about those options. My wife did not have to think long. “Yes,” she said with resolve. And she smiled, “I mean, why not?”

Why not, indeed. We’d been through multiple surgeries, countless rounds of chemotherapy and many times, we got back to some form of ‘new normal.’ But this felt different to me. I looked over at her and smiled. She gave a thumbs up sign when she was ready to go.

Before the brain surgery and radiation. I’ve kept this photo for ten years.

So we came back for the treatment. They didn’t even have to shave her head. She’d lost her hair several times over through treatments, and this time her hair had not come back at all. She stripped off her wig and they began the process of affixing a stabilizing unit to her skull. It consisted of a circular metal band with screws that would be used to hold her head completely still. She posed for a couple quick selfies using the Photo Booth application in my little black Mac Laptop, and off she went.

The treatment worked. They captured and killed the cancer in her brain. The seizures stopped. They gave her a steroid prescription to deal with the swelling caused by the surgery and radiation. From there it was off to the races. Those steroids turned her into a Survival Machine. Her personality became magnified. She cleaned and cooked and sat up writing lesson plans for the preschool classes she taught. But as the steroids added up in her system, her sense of judgment disappeared. She spent money we didn’t have. One night she researched a new car, and that next day, we drove to the Subaru dealership and bought it. I wasn’t sure if she was getting money from her parents or what, but I sensed that something final was happening, and decided to go with the flow.

The steroid effect

Toward the end of February, she could no longer handle teaching at the preschool she loved. Her spaciness increased, and it frankly put the children at risk. I collaborated with her director to ease her out of the position. That was absolutely necessary. Yet despite our efforts to be kind, something in her broke the day that she learned she could no longer teach.

Once the steroid prescription was eased, her body and mind fell slowly back to a normal state. That was when I knew that she would not live much longer. The stress and fatigue of eight years of cancer survivorhood wore her out. During one of our last visits with the oncologist before bringing her home for palliative care, she was too damned tired to even get off the treatment room table. I spoke quietly with the oncologist that day. She was kind. And honest. And earnest. “Take care of her,” she told me.

Linda Mues Cudworth passed away peacefully in our home in March of 2013. My son and daughter were together with me that night. It is both a blessing and a strange truth to be present when someone you love that much passes into eternity.

Aftermath

We’ve all gone through gyrations in the wake of her passing. My son suffered through depression and a period of addiction. He’s emerged with a will not just to survive, but to help others process their mental health in constructive ways.

My daughter was just coming into her own as a young woman when my wife passed way. In many ways, that left a void in her that is hard, if not impossible, to completely heal. Every year, she recognizes more of her mother in herself, and the pain of losing her mom keeps turning over. Those are legitimate feelings. I know other women that have lost their mothers. I wish at times they could all talk with my daughter.

As for me, I’m not sure that I fully processed all that happened that year, or perhaps the many years before. During my wife’s eight years of cancer survivorship, I was also the primary caregiver for my father after my mother passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2005. That was the same year that my wife Linda was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

My father lived another four years after Linda died, and I did my best to take care of him. After my wife’s passing, I admit that what I wanted most was to be free of the constant pain and fear involved in caregiving. But there was still a job to do.

Coping

During the eight years of caring for her, I’d been on and off supportive medications such as Lorazepam to help me deal with the anxiety of caregiving. It did its trick as needed, but some of that stress sinks deep into your soul.

I recall trying to ride my bike with friends during that period. I’d be out on a fifty or sixty mile ride with them, but when it came time to ride hard or compete, as cyclists love to do, I often did not have the will to keep up. I’m pretty sure that what I experienced was an active sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. Not the kind that comes from being in a war, or witnessing a murder, but the kind that comes from not being able to deal with personal shocks over and over.

As a form of therapy, I started blogging to our caregiving group to communicate some of the feelings I had about the things we were going through. Much of that was quite positive, and I’m proud that we found ways to find blessings and hope in all that trauma. That’s the right kind of pride. This blog is an echo of all that.

Anniversary

But this year, when December 26 rolled around, I realized it’s been ten years since that strange day when we found out that the cancer had moved into her brain. Once we knew the cause of her seizures, it explained quite a bit about what was going on with her body

But it also brought on conflicted feelings in my mind. Should I hope for her to continue going through the stress and pain of cancer survivorship? At that point, I began to grieve in real time. I understood that I no longer wanted to see her go through the awful stuff. The sickness. The numb feet and hands. The fear. The trauma of surgeries. The loss of life quality. Giving up the things she loved to do. None of that is ever what I wanted for her. It certainly wasn’t what she wanted. Some part of me was relieved when the pain was over. Through faith and reason and love of life, I began to move on.

For these reasons, I got ahead of most of the people in my life by recognizing that she was not going to make it through the year in 2013. I didn’t know how long it would be before she died, but I knew for certain that it would happen. Even her doctors were astounded at the job she’d done for so long in staying alive.

That’s not the kind of news that people want to hear from the primary caregiver, so I kept it to myself. Perhaps that was a mistake of some sort. But my wife had plowed through so many obstacles during her years as a cancer survivor that none of us could imagine it coming to an end. She was so tough about staying alive it did not make sense to question her. She surely showed us all what it means to love life. She loved her children fiercely, almost to a fault at times.

Endings

So we didn’t make end-of-life elaborate plans. We were so occupied with keeping her alive that we never discussed what to do when she died. But earlier in life, we’d talked about cremation, so that’s what we did. Her ashes rest under a grave marker next to her father in the Lutheran cemetery in Addison where she grew up. That town was the place where she attended the church gradeschool, then moved on to Addision High School. She graduated Magna cum laude from Northern Illinois University.

We met in October of 1981 and she lived until March of 2013. In all, we had a great life together; full of family, friends and most of all, our children.

The lilies being watered in our garden, circa 2011.

She also loved her garden so much that it’s hard to describe the satisfaction she got from her green craft. She’d sit in our LL Bean Adirondack chairs staring at her garden with a glass of wine, or a margarita, or one of her strong gin and tonics in her hand, and just enjoy.

Perhaps that’s why I moved on quickly from the trauma of her last year of life. That’s not how I wanted to remember her.

I chose to remember her cherishing the work she loved. She also told a close friend, the preschool director who served as our close caregiver for all those eight years, that she knew I’d date if she ever passed on. But that friend waited a full year to share that quiet bit of insight with me. I thanked her for waiting. We all need to make decisions on our own terms. I’m grateful to have had a wonderful life with my late wife.

I’m also enormously grateful to have found love again.

Gaining traction

Life is often complicated, and even the people closest to you have a hard time understanding the reasoning or motives behind some of the decisions we make or the changes and impacts that come with them.

Ten years on from December 26, I hope that people gain from reading this and find ways to embrace life even in the face of trauma, and even if life turns out different from what they expected.

It’s indeed a strange thing to go from the traditional joys of a December 25th to facing moments when the world itself seems to shift underneath your feet. Sometimes the best thing to do is to keep those feet moving, to find traction in the things we do and love every day. And please, let’s forgive ourselves for wishing the world would just stand still now and then. Take some time. Look at your garden, whatever that means in your life. It is the work of your life.

caregiving, character, Christopher Cudworth, science and religion, trusting science

the wrong kind of pride

June 29, 2021 Christopher Cudworth 1 Comment

The single most frustrating aspect of living through this pandemic is the persistent strain of obstinance evident in so much of the population.

Obstinance: is a characteristic of being impossibly stubborn. Like a bull that won’t budge, obstinance keeps people from going with the flow.

We’ve seen obstinance from people refusing to wear masks.

Obstinance from people refusing to get vaccinated.

Obstinance by arrogant people gathering in social gatherings without masks to create super-spreader events.

It’s been one bit of obstinance after another.

Obstinance is mostly a matter of false pride. Clinging to a belief that is tightly held, often for all the wrong reasons.

Like mask-wearing. Was it ever a question of personal freedom? Is asking people to wear a mask any different than asking them to wear pants in public? It’s not. But people chose to fight the idea of masks rather than consider the value or the purpose. They branded it an imposition on their “personal freedom.”

But masks work. Look at how low the flu rates were in America this year. Cases were way down. All because people wore masks in most public places. Currently the only places where Covid cases are on the increase is areas where vaccination rates are low.

Like Missouri. The so-called “Show Me State.” The origins of that phrase are interesting, as documented on the website of the Missouri Secretary of State. “The most widely known legend attributes the phrase to Missouri’s U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1903. While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Obstinance as a worldview

There’s a degree of obstinance in that “Show Me” tradition. It is a trait of impossible stubbornness. The same sort of obstinance drives certain religious beliefs as well. Biblical literalists known as creationists refuse to accept the theory of evolution because they claim there is no proof. “You have to show me,” the logic goes. “Or I will not believe you.”

Of course, there is evidence of evolution in every single living creature on earth, but the obstinate among us refuse to see it and choose to project simplistic explanations on all of material reality.

But evolution is not just real. It works. One can map out the relationships of DNA among all living things and find enormous commonalities. In fact, the only reason diseases such as Covid can jump from one species to another is that living things share the same basic genetic structure.

The Vail Health Foundation describes how the Pfizer vaccine is designed to work:

“While the vaccine is new and has been produced quickly, mRNA technology has been around for many years. The vaccine essentially takes a piece messenger RNA from the viral cell and causes our bodies to produce the protein that triggers the immune response and antibodies to ward off infection.

An mRNA vaccine does not actually contain the virus itself. An analogy is to think of it as an email sent to the muscle cells at the injection site that shows what a piece of viral protein looks like and then — like a Snapchat message — it disappears. Our bodies will develop an immune response to kill the viral protein and remember how to recognize it in the future. It is an amazing technology and a breakthrough in modern medicine.”

I took the Pfizer vaccine. The only noticeable side effect was a half-day of fatigue after the second dose, then things were fine. I was vaccinated against Covid-19. Not once did I have to give up personal freedoms to achieve that status.

Stubborn defiance

Rather than consider the medical technology that developed the Pfizer vaccine, obstinate anti-vaxxers instead invent all sorts of obstinate reasons not to get vaccinated.

The roots of anti-vaxxer psychology have grown over the years, with some making connections between vaccinations and conditions such as autism and other brain disorders. According to the Global Citizen website, “The CDC estimates that more than 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children born in the last 20 years will be prevented because of vaccinations.”

Obviously many of the 600,000+ deaths caused by the Covid-19 pandemic could have been prevented if a specific vaccine for the virus had been available from the start. That’s not the case when a new infectious disease variant spreads into the human population. Thus it is critical to conduct research into pandemic diseases, which is what the lab in Wuhan, China was doing.

Blaming China

Some ask if Covid sprung free from that lab to infect us all, but there is no evidence so far to indicate that as a fact. The precautionary measures to prevent such an occurrence at all such facility is high. Then there are the cynical among us insisting that China purposely spread the disease and tried to hide the source.

That’s known as a conspiracy theory, an approach to opinion popular among extremists, some of the most obstinate people on earth. Even when faced with facts disproving their “theory” about why things are happening, or how, they cling to a conspiratorial version of “reality” because is it a worldview they can own. It is giving up control that obstinate people fear the most.

That explains the illogic driving anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti-science people in today’s culture. They are immensely proud of their seeming ability to provide “secret” explanations that justify their distrust of a world they can’t explain or control. First they deny the science driving knowledge of infectious diseases, then they invent irrational explanations to cover up their ignorance. Obstinance is the last empowering gesture of the terminally disenfranchised and self-persecuted.

Dog whistle empowerment

It is no wonder these folks clamber to authoritarians talking to them through dog-whistle language and obstinate tactics. What they also refuse to understand in these actions is how dangerous and dumb their obstinance is to themselves, and all of us. That brand of obstinance is forever the wrong kind of pride.

Today’s blog on The Right Kind of Pride is titled The Wrong Kind of Pride. It addresses the obstinance of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists and how it endangers us all. But there’s a history there…

Personally, I don’t think the United States has ever been any different. There is a strain of obstinance––the “wrong kind of pride”––woven into the American populace from the beginning. The wrong kind of pride is responsible for horrific moments in history such as the proliferation of slavery and secession in an attempt to protect it. The wrong kind of pride also fuels white supremacy, anti-Semitism, anti-feminism, and anti-gay bigotry. The wrong kind of pride drives religious hatred, wars of choice, and resistance to the truth of all kinds.

The wrong kind of pride is as much a part of American history as the so-called “exceptionalism” with which rabid patriots love to credit the nation. That explains why Critical Race Theory is considered such a threat to the preferred narrative of American superiority. Critical Race Theory is a humble attempt to address American wrongheadedness and prejudice. We can see who’s resisting it with political force. It is the fearful and arrogant among us, the selfish and unkind. It is all those wielding the wrong kind of pride to their own personal advantage.

caregiving, character, Christopher Cudworth, love abounds

That homesick feeling

June 16, 2021 Christopher Cudworth Leave a comment

The farm in Upstate New York that I loved to visit as a child.

At six years old, most of us don’t have a great grasp of the world around us. Life revolves around parents and family. The rest of life is a mystery until we experience it.

During the summer after my second grade year in school, my favorite aunt and uncle traveled from their farm in Upstate New York to visit our family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When the time came for them to leave, I begged my parents to allow me to go with them back to the farm. To my surprise, my parents agreed.

A half hour later a bag was packed and I was plopped in the back seat of their car for the trip north to Bainbridge and the farm that I loved.

But the next morning, I woke up with a horrid feeling in my gut. I was homesick. If you’ve never experienced that feeling for yourself, it can be best described as a deep combination of longing and loss that penetrates your whole being. All you want to do is go home.

Confession: I was always an anxious kid. Already at that age, I chewed my nails. Looking back through a life of dealing with aspects of anxiety and depression, I realize that homesickness was a product of who I am. Learning to cope with anxiety is a lifelong job. I don’t blame myself for it, and these days I know myself well enough to function healthily. It wasn’t always that way.

The morning of my homesickness, I recall my aunt making a phone call to my parents, who drove up from Lancaster that day to fetch their anxious, homesick son. Apparently all involved had pity on me. Perhaps they knew those feelings well enough to realize there was no cure except to send me back home. Sometimes good caregiving is a matter of listening to the people involved.

Keeping me on the farm a couple days might have cured the homesickness, but I must have been a sorry sight with all those aching tears. I guess I can be grateful that adults had compassion for my condition.

The giant elm that once stood in front of the Nichols family farm where my mother grew up.

I looked up homesickness on the Psychology Today website. It had interesting things to say about homesick feelings. “A number of studies have suggested that homesickness can be associated with psychological difficulties such as loneliness, depression, anxiety, difficulty adjusting to new situations, and psychosomatic health problems. Given that being away from home can be accompanied by the sadness of missing it, one wonders why we form such powerful emotional bonds to our home. Surely, attachment is at least partly the product of all the wonderful experiences we enjoyed during our childhood.”

It goes on to say, “As poet Robert Frost famously explained, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Our bond extends beyond enjoyable experiences. It encompasses unconditional love, commitment, loyalty and enduring connectedness.”

Still, no specific mention of fear as a cause of homesickness. Perhaps there’s no reason. That emotion is woven into the DNA of anxiety and depression. It is both the cause and a symptom of those conditions.

The PT article continues,” Efforts to prevent homesickness must contend with a paradox. Although research findings have been inconsistent, homesickness seems to be more likely when children have had prior experiences with separation from home as well as when they had had little or no prior periods away. If homesickness is the price we pay for attachment to a strong loving home, would anyone want to diminish the quality of a child’s home to prevent the possibility of future homesickness?”

Like many children in that day and age, I lived in a home that was both loving and at times, a conflicted place. My father lost his mother to complications of cancer treatment when he was just seven years old. He went to live with an uncle and two aunts because his own father experienced profound depression at the loss of his wife and also brought on in some ways by The Depression.

So my father’s upbringing was at times gruff. His pain at losing his mother at such a young age was probably never adequately addressed. No doubt there were feelings of homesickness after being shuttled from his family home to a life with a tough old uncle and two unmarried aunts. The sense of loss must have been profound. Thus despite his largely caring character, he bore an anger within him that spilled out at times. His four sons tried to meet his approval but there was an exasperating and sometimes frightening tone to certain aspects of our upbringing.

So that feeling of separation from home as a place of safety and comfort is both a physical and emotional reality for all of us. Yet to this day, I still view our Lancaster house and yard as “home” in many ways. We moved away when I was twelve years old. A type of homesickness has traveled with me all these years. We’d have never left that place if I’d had my way.

A Google Maps photo of the family home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Yet that would have denied me all the experiences that were to come and those were good. So while homesickness is real, it is also not permanent and is no way to define or limit one’s time in this world. We have to rip off the bandage at certain times in life, and move on.

All of us have some sense of home that lives within our souls. Sometimes it’s just the smell of a room when the windows are open… or the curl of a pillow as you roll over to face that person whom you love. It can be heard in the song of a bird calling in the trees, or the sound of a car pulling into a driveway.

Take in those sensations and indeed, you’re home again. That’s the right kind of pride.

Note: I’ve shared impressions about homesickness before on this blog because they symbolize so many other aspects of life. May you find that sense of home wherever you are.

appreciate what love means, caregiving, love abounds, the Right Kind of Pride

Bathing in love and respect

May 3, 2021 Christopher Cudworth 1 Comment

She works hard and seldom takes time to slow down.

After our fifty-mile bike ride in the hills of Galena, Illinois, this past Saturday, we awoke Sunday morning to do a long run back home in Illinois.

It turned warm and the long run turned out to be, in my wife’s words, “A lot of ouch.” When we got home she proclaimed that she was going to take a relaxing bath.

She does not do that often. More typically she takes a shower “on the fly” after her morning and afternoon workouts. That’s why her plan for a late-morning bath seemed like a good idea.

Knowing that my wife wanted to slow down and indulge herself a bit inspired me to move into the background. She did request that I bring her favorite shampoo, conditioner, and deep conditioner to her in the tub. I delivered those and flopped back on our bed to rest my own tired body after an earlier shower.

From my reclined position in bed I could see her head as she ran the whirlpool. She called out: “I’m flexing my toes…They’re really tight.”

I flex my toes that whirlpool tub as well. It feels good to let the jets work out the stiffness in joints. Finally the jets turned off and she took to washing her hair. Her blonde mane darkened as it got wet. Watching her ply her hair with product made me smile. She was due for a stylist appointment before the weekend but it didn’t work out. “So, much, hair,” she observed.

Like many couples, we’ve shared the bath and shower a few times over the years. Those moments of intimacy are blessed connections when the time is right. There are also times when the best thing a husband can do is be the “support crew” for her relaxing bath.

I went downstairs to make breakfast. The vision of her bare body in the tub made me feel a tremendous intimacy that had less to do with sex and more to do with bathing her in my love and respect. A woman deserves that and more.

Art, caregiving, Christopher Cudworth, the Right Kind of Pride

Teaching and learning

February 26, 2021 Christopher Cudworth Leave a comment

The kids in the INCubator program at our local high school.

A number of weeks ago while speaking with a friend who runs the INCubator program for high school students in which I’ve served as a Mentor and Presenter the last five years, we talked about how schools are adapting during the ongoing pandemic.

“A lot of people are out,” he told me. “We need subs.”

Getting certified

I dug into the requirements to become a substitute teacher and learned that people without a teaching degree can register to become a short-term substitute. That means teaching according to the lessons plans provided by the full-time teacher.

It took several days to fill out and submit the paperwork, gather transcripts from college and high school and file it through the Illinois website. Then I needed to register through the county website and get fingerprinted. Finally it was time to fill out the district paperwork.

Much of that signup could be done online. But wanting to put a face with a name and forms, I stopped at district offices to meet briefly with human resource directors. It is always good to become a known quantity.

I was impressed with the relative efficiency of all that registration. The districts I’m serving also have a great way to sign up for substitution assignments.

Middle school subbing

My first days of teaching were in middle school, running physical education classes all day, managing a language arts class and becoming a “floater” as teachers were getting vaccinated and needed someone to oversee class time and assignments.

Conducting a live art instruction at the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse for an audience of 900 children

I’ve spent many hours in classrooms and teaching in other ways over the years. My late wife was a special education teacher for ten years and a preschool teacher for twenty. She asked me to teach her class now and then. My mother was an elementary school teacher for twenty years. I visited her classroom many times to talk about birds, art or other subjects. I’ve also been a guest speaker for the “art people” trained by the Art Institute of Chicago to share art with student at all grades. Some might say teaching is in my blood. Perhaps it should have been my profession. But it’s never too late to start…

Learning abilities

My next round of assignments were in an elementary school two miles from our house. At the front desk, a fellow substitute and I met with a teacher and administrator to determine who would take the music or ILP classes that day. ILP stands for Individualized Learning Plans, a term describing students with specific needs. My mother often tutored children in our home that needed individualized learning. She’d tell me, “These are your classmates, and you can go out and play after their lessons, but you need to let them learn while they’re here.” She also told me to keep their tutoring a private matter. “They learn differently than other kids,” she explained.

To some degree, I was one of those kids too. Only late in life did I ascertain that there is a certain amount of attention-deficit disorder at work in my brain. Looking back at my education years, I now recognize patterns of difficulty, obstinance, and outright frustration or failure when it came to certain learning circumstances. I’ve had to work a bit harder than others on certain kinds of tasks, and build discipline and good habits into my routines. I take pride in that now.

I think it can be accurately stated that every human being on earth has some kind of learning disability if a fine enough focus is placed upon it. Some excel at math and stink at English. Others love the social sciences and history while some find it excruciatingly boring.

Individualized Learning Plans

I chose to work with the ILP children earlier this week even though teaching the music class that day seemed like it would have been fun. I’ve played in bands and can sing fairly well, but I knew that past experience in classrooms with special education children would help me help them.

The ILP teacher walked me through the day’s lessons, materials, and tools used by the students to practice and learn. Each child had their own ‘best practices’ to follow. They took pride in pulling out their respective memory cards, books, and speaking devices.

The first boy I worked with was a charming child with Down’s Syndrome. He applied himself with energy for the most part, with only occasional drifting or distraction. His favorite part of the lesson was going through a series of slides depicting people expressing different kinds of emotions. While he did not recognize all the words, some of them were pretty long, he loved working with me to imitate the facial expressions and body language of the kids in the photos. We had a particular laugh at my imitation of the person exhibiting a ‘dubious’ expression. I turned my head to the side and lifted my chin, looking at him out of the corner of my eyes. He came back to the slide several times to coax me into the dubious mode, and we’d laugh all over again.

Then it was time fo reading, and he read me a book about a cat named Puff who liked to hide.He pulled out another book about a Mama Bear gathering berries, nuts and fish for her family. We talked about why the characters liked to do what they were doing.

Teaching is about helping people make connections.

By then he’d earned his ten stars for progress and I moved his behavior code up to blue from green, a promotion! He’d been good for me. Then he could grab his Chromebook and spend time with Baby Einstein software. He plunked his fingers on the screen to make a pool of faux water send ripples all around. It looked like fun. And gratifying.

Speed it up

The next student on the morning’s schedule was a charming young girl who arrived at class upset about something that had happened on the way to school. She was comforted by the paraprofessional and following a quick hug and a reminder to wear her mask the proper way, she got her stuff put away. When it came time for me to learn with her, she informed me that I was dawdling with the word cards. “Too slow,” she frowned. We sped it up.

Later when I needed help getting another student logged into their Chromebook, she washed her hands first and jumped over to log him in. I thanked her, and she asked, “Are you going to be here tomorrow too?” She was missing her regular teacher, I knew. “Probably not,” I replied. “But I want to thank you for being such a good helper today.”

“I like to help,” she chirped, then hurried to her cubby to prepare for recess and lunch.

Non-verbal

Some of the students in class were non-verbal. We worked together on reading. I was quite impressed with their ability to key in words and letters and hear them read aloud by the device. One of the students keyed in the entire first half of the Dr. Suess book Green Eggs and Ham. You know the one: Sam I am. When he finished reading, I hummed a little tune, and he hummed back. I’d noticed that he was singing to himself before class. Why not speak the same language?

Autism

The fifth child was the most challenging for me to teach. Instead I tried to learn from her. Her autism gives her a keen energy and a need to jump up now and then. She engaged in some massively dreamy stares at times. I thought about her parents and how much they must want their child to learn on her own terms.

We read two books together and my instructions were to ask her to speak clearly, well above a whisper. She did fine with that, but ultimately felt like she’d had enough and pulled out a sheet of paper to repeatedly “knuckle” a symbol in the middle of the sheet. She wanted something specific to happen, but I could not tell what it was. One cannot learn everything a student needs or wants in one session. We do our best, and move along.

Toward the end of our fifteen minute session, she broke free from all of that and leaned toward me to study my face or simply break the tension of having someone new in her presence. It felt to me like she had three strong signals going through her brain, competing for space. I don’t know if that’s an accurate description of how autism works, but I could relate to that, and perhaps that’s what counts.

The teachers who work with these students have the knowledge, compassion, and commitment to help children learn despite their supposed limitations. That’s all that any of us can do. Keep on learning. That’s the Right Kind of Pride.

Black History month

I closed out the day teaching a class of first graders about Ruby Bridges, the American civil rights activist whose brave story of being the first student to desegregate a Southern school was read aloud in a video we watched together. I paused the video to ask the children how they would feel in Ruby’s place. We also looked at a painting of Ruby walking to school in the company of federal agents. That tomato smashed against the wall held so much symbolism.

That story has taken on greater meaning in the last year with civil unrest unfolding around the rights of Black Americans that have been threatened or killed by police, chased down by vigilantes or otherwise abused by institutional racism in the United States of America.

I looked around at the kids in that class. They were the same age as Ruby Bridges, six years old, when she dared to learn in the face of massive bigotry that unfortunately, has not dissipated in the country where she continues her work in civil rights. Some lessons take so long to learn, while some people just refuse to learn them.

That’s not what I saw in the eyes of the children in class that day. It is a gift to be present for that.

caregiving, Christopher Cudworth, the Right Kind of Pride

A deserving burst of grief

February 5, 2021 Christopher Cudworth Leave a comment

While driving up a local road on some necessary errand last week, I turned up the radio and found the song “Somewhere Only We Know” by the band Keane playing.

I listened with trepidation because that song has deep significance for me. The album on which it appeared was released during an intense period of caregiving for my late wife Linda.

The lyrics are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard.

I recall so strongly one of the moments I heard this song during that period of my life. I’d spent three hard days and nights in the hospital after one of my wife’s many surgeries. She was beat up from the procedure and facing chemotherapy. Due to my work obligations, my mother-in-law spent the first night with her. When I arrived to take over, she warned me that the chair provided for hospital guests was far from comfortable. In recline position it bent backwards, forcing anyone trying to rest in the device to sleep like a dying dolphin.

On top of that, the nurses rolled in and out checking on her every hour. The machines beeped and the pumps pulsed. Doctors slipped in without warning. She’d greet them with a look of hope in her eyes that broke my heart. Was the cancer gone? Again?

Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I’m getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you’re gonna let me in
I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

At that point my wife and I had been married for nearly twenty years. All she wanted was to be free of the disease, to work in her garden and teach her precious preschoolers. She wanted to love her children without fear of leaving them. She wanted to live.

I came across a fallen tree
I felt the branches of it looking at me
Is this the place we used to love?
Is this the place that I’ve been dreaming of?

After three days I needed to get back home and check on things around the house. She would spend two more days in the hospital watched by friends who volunteered to stay with her. I climbed into our car, leaving behind a wife still trying to fart to prove that her digestive tract was back in working order. It’s true: the things that stink about living are the things that keep us alive.

I drove back home through the black night on wet streets thinking “Why does she have to go through this? Is it worth it?”

And if you have a minute, why don’t we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know?
This could be the end of everything
So why don’t we go somewhere only we know?

I recall falling into a rage of sobbing tears that night. Felt guilt over being free of the hospital and driving back home while she lay there hooked up to drips of painkiller and antibiotics and fluids. Her blue eyes still twinkled through the haze of hospital dreams.

We were years into cancer survivorship by that point.

My strategy to cope with caregiving duties for my wife and my father, a stroke victim, was to work through a series of lyrical albums by Andrew Bird and Indie group CDs that my daughter compiled from her catalog.

Then I dug deep into the Beck catalog, so deep I thought I’d never come out. Then came Modest Mouse, Regina Spector, the quirkier the better. On and on the music played as I clung to jobs trying to take care of everything, protect our insurance and keep the money coming in. Always the money. The goddamned money.

On that night driving home with Somewhere Only We Know playing , I felt a cogent realization that her back-and-forth dance with cancer could not go on forever. The wild balance between hope and terminal completeness is one that we all face. Cancer just compresses it.

That’s why I let myself cry so hard in the car this week. This strange, hard year has affected us all in strange, hard ways. For a moment, I needed to be weak and vulnerable, to let it all out, and admit that life has been hard in some ways. This was a deserving burst of grief.

It is also important to say that I have found love again with a woman I appreciate and respect. We are also meant to be together. But there is great value in remembering all those you love, wherever they are. It doesn’t last forever, you know, this thing we call life.

Perhaps you’ll be moved to sing along when a song like this one comes along. Allow yourself a bit of deserving burst of grief in these times.

Oh, this could be the end of everything
So why don’t we go somewhere only we know?
Somewhere only we know
Somewhere only we know

caregiving, character, the Right Kind of Pride, trusting science

wearing a mask is the right kind of pride

December 28, 2020 Christopher Cudworth Leave a comment

One of our Christmas gifts this year was a set of colorful masks. I also received a set of three free from a retailer where I bought gifts. All in the spirit of Christmas.

As Year 2020 grinds to a close, we can agree that we everyone has shared in the difficulty of a manic year. The pandemic disrupted all aspects of life and normalcy, and people are grieving loss and pain at many levels. The active symbol of that grief is the face masks we’re wearing to keep the pandemic from getting even worse than it already is.

Some people resist wearing face masks, claiming it is an impingement on their freedom. The reality is that wearing masks in public is an act of respect for the health of others and for ourselves.

The irony is that so many people seem determined to deny that reality.

Spreading disease––knowingly or unknowingly––is the least acceptable option in a civilized society. Wearing a mask is not a restriction of freedom, it promotes it. If more (even all) people wear masks in public we’ll all have greater freedom as long as this pandemic lasts.

All societies depend on etiquette to protect lives and get along in a civilized manner. The basic rule of driving on the Right side of the road in the United States is an excellent example of people agreeing that social order depends on predictable behavior to govern safety and protect lives. In other parts of the world, people drive on the Left side of the road.

Being required to drive on the Right or Left side of the road isn’t an impingement upon freedom. It is a guide designed to provide greater freedom for all. The same holds true with wearing masks during a pandemic. These are not political demands. They are practical measures designed to keep people safe.

The threat of getting sick and dying during this pandemic is real. More than 330,000 Americans have died from infection. The numbers continue to climb, and America’s infection and death rates are devastatingly real, as bad as anywhere on earth. But why?

It’s simple, and symbolic: some people still find the request to wear a mask in public a great affront.

A recent Huffpost story shared the heartbreaking tale of a man battling Covid-19 in the hospital. Days before he was intubated, he wrote his wife a series of messages, including this loving recognition of his mortality:

“If I don’t make it I want you to know that I lived a happy…life with you and would never have traded it for all the riches in the world.”

He also gave his wife a blessing to live a happy life and find love again if he passed away. That is the right kind of pride: Gratitude and selflessness are the two greatest signs of character in this world.

Yet some people don’t get that. Some people thumb their noses at the idea they have to listen to anybody when it comes to wearing masks. They appear determined to hold out due to some selfish sense of tribal pride. “Don’t tread on me?”

The irony in that the same people determined to avoid wearing masks seems so eager to obey the cynical directives uttered by politicians, business moguls and religious public figures eager to exploit the masses for political, financial and personal purposes.

That’s because the wrong kind of pride vanquishes conscience and steers people away from the truth in favor of arrogant, selfish motives.

Bathed in the light of vainglorious cause, the people that claim to hate wearing masks seeks out alternate views of reality to replace those they hope to avoid. There is a massive psychological game being played in American culture in which people that respect others enough to protect them from disease by wearing masks in public are being portrayed as ignorant and sheeplike. That is gaslighting.

The wrong kind of pride encourages people to embrace resentment, greed, and fear over genuine conscience and consideration.

Even religious channels are being used to communicate this alternate view of reality. This brand of corruption is toxic and painful to witness. It encourages people to care only about themselves, or their tribe. That is the exact opposite message of the world’s major religions, all of whom seem to embrace some form of the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would have others treat you.

While most of us mask up and recognize that this pandemic can end if people use common sense and gain enough perspective to know that the suffering will someday end, those who refuse to do so literally separate themselves from the norms of humanity and in the process, bring more suffering upon themselves and others.

That man dying from Covid who wrote loving last words to his wife knew better than everyone the value of life, and love. That is the message more people need to hear; that life is precious, and the right kind of pride is having the humility and respect to care about others.

caregiving, Christopher Cudworth, community, trusting science

I started the day teaching about storytelling

November 20, 2020 Christopher Cudworth Leave a comment

This morning I taught a session for the INCubator program at a local high school. In the past I’ve served as mentor to groups working together to create a product, service or solution.

Today’s session was on storytelling, a major component of marketing. to explore the subject of what makes a good story, we discussed some of their favorite television show. One young man shared his interest in a show about corrupt superheroes owned by corporation. We talked about how the contradictory nature of the show’s subject was an immediate attraction.

We talked as well about the branding success of the Nike slogan “Just Do It.” We discussed the fact that the phrase has been used for a couple decades and somehow still feels fresh. “How does that work?” I challenged the students.

The Nike approach works––we decided––because it allows the company to show examples of Just Do It while also issuing a Call To Action. That way everyone gets to be part of the story.

Culling a brand message down to such a simple, useful form of marketing takes a bit of inspired thinking. It’s easy to get caught up in all the associated stories and lose sight of what you want customers to do: Identify with your brand.

That sense of ownership is vital. We talked about how customer stories actually become the product when they offer strong enough testimony to its value. I also shared a hint that could help them find that brand messaging the easiest way possible. Ask questions, then listen.

Listening to people is the most powerful tool to build ownership on the whole earth. It is true when you’re a brand marketer. But it’s also true when you’re a caregiver, a team leader or any number of other positions of responsibility in this world. Your brand is composed of the character it expresses. Its authenticity depends on how well people trust what is being said. That’s why influencers have such powerful voices in today’s marketplace. They are the storytellers that people trust for word of mouth advice.

With all this information swirling around, I shared one last image to help the students understand the process of revealing the main story of their product, service or solution. I showed them a fossil (at top) that I’d collected years ago. It has the back of some segmented creature protruding from a sedimentary rock. “Your job,” I told the students. “Is clearing away the material around the creature inside the rock. That’s what you want to show them.”

Every fossil is like a new product emerging from the rock of creativity. It is a revelation when the whole thing is revealed. The reward is sharing that discovery with other people in a way that invites them to participate in the story going forward. That’s what Steve Jobs did with Apple… from the personal computer through to the iPod to the iPhone. Those devices were locked in the rock of perception. It was his genius to see them lurking there and dig them out.

Jobs once stated: “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”

Having the will to persist in that exploration and discovery is the right kind of pride.

caregiving, character, Christopher Cudworth, community, the Right Kind of Pride

Take pride in that aging face

November 18, 2020 Christopher Cudworth 2 Comments

Originally published on my blog WeRunandRide.com

Posted on November 18, 2020 by Christopher Cudworth

Let’s talk about aging faces. I have no real way of knowing the age of the people who read this blog. There are about 1500 subscribers, and there are some who don’t subscribe but read these words through social media and other portals. But no matter what age you are, we all deal with the aging on our faces.

When you’re in your tweens and teens, those facial changes have profound impact on your self image. Getting zits and growing facial hair is a part of growing up. Dealing with tweezed eyebrows and the right makeup mix, or watching a callow jaw shift to manhood are all part of the process. Hair length also affects how facial changes are seen.

So the process of dealing with our aging faces starts early in life. Add in the impact of getting braces on your teeth, or in my case having a baseball accident smash a front tooth, and the changes never cease.

Those of us that compete in athletics put our faces through an entirely different kind of strain. The grimace lines wrought by the pain of endurance sports begins the process of forced aging that continues throughout our lives.

So perhaps it’s time for all of us to take a healthier form of pride in that aging face we see in the mirror each day. That face of yours has so much to tell about all what you’ve gone through. There is laughter, joy and excitement. There is sorrow, fear and depression. All in the same face. It’s a wonder we don’t wear them out with all these emotions.

In recent years, I’ve worried that the look of my face has begun to limit opportunities in life. The ugly specter or ageism creeps up on you secretly. People aren’t going to tell you to your face that they consider you “too old” to do a job or fit into a workplace culture, but it happens. By law, age discriminate is illegal. Yet we all know that it still happens.

Wattled and tired

I was sickened one day while reading an article that popped up in my social media feed. A younger writer crowed that he wants nothing to do with people whose faces are “wattled.” That’s a disqualifying factor in his mind. His thinking seemed to be centered around the idea that if someone looks old, they must be unable to think clearly or creatively.

That would be news to millions of people throughout history whose contributions to this world continued or even began in their later years. I think in particular about the life of R. Buckminster Fuller, one of the most creative yet practical individuals to ever live. One of my favorite quotes by Mr. Fuller evolved from an experience of great sorrow and near defeat in his life. He’d experienced a great personal tragedy and was depressed beyond imagination. He indulged in a period of intensive personal isolation to figure out what to do next and emerged with a vision of new purpose, “You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe.”

He used that perspective to face the world in a new way. Among his many inventions were the geodesic dome, a mathematical breakthrough in architecture. His influence and thinking continue to expand to this day. No one cared that he looked young or old. What matters is how he thought. We all need to grab that truth and never let it go.

We should also never forget that our faces are attached to our bodies. Today I read an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about the fact that people who do something more than walking in their exercise routines wind up having better efficiency and posture as they age. While walking is beneficial, it doesn’t stress the body in the same way that cycling, running or swimming do. It’s the classic training principle that applies to life itself: you have to push past your boundaries to gain the most benefit.

That seems to be the principle at work when we consider the condition of our faces as we age. If you’re engaged and passionate and pushing yourself to continue learning and trying new things, it shows in your expression and even the condition of your face.

Facing life

Until a few years ago, I’d never heard the term ‘resting bitch face’ applied to the baseline expression of someone who looks dour or unhappy all the time. Is that term as bad as dissing someone through ageism? It certainly seems cruel. Yet there is a reality at work in how we project our emotions through our visage. I’m perpetually aware of the value of smiling during conversations with people.

That’s especially true in business situations. I once had a boss tell me, “I like you a lot more when you’re smiling.” He was right. I wasn’t a happy person during that period. My late wife had just experienced a recurrence of cancer and had a nervous breakdown as a result. I was scared, felt alone, and had little tolerance for the daily vicissitudes of business, which seemed so insignificant compared to what was going on at home.

Those internal conflicts showed in my face. There was little I could do about it at the time. Just put on the best face I could, and get through it.

Facial control

So we perhaps don’t always have control of what our faces say about us. There’s always the possibility that a person with a ‘resting bitch face’ has gone through so much in life their face reflects that path. But then again, some people develop attitudes of victimhood and duress that dominate their existence. There is such a thing as becoming so bitter about life that it shows in everything you do.

I’ve got enough life experience now to look back and understand the causes of the challenges I’ve faced in life, and the reasons for the mistakes I’ve made. I’ve come to realize that a native anxiety affected many of my decisions. So did a likely associative form of ADD, a lifelong challenge that often determined the manner in which I processed information, or did not. In summary, I’m proud of having dealt with these challenges and adapted to succeed in some ways along the way. It all comes with knowing yourself well enough to accept past mistakes and not let them rule the present.

I can look at my face in the mirror now and see all sorts of experiences etched there. I see miles of training and racing, and the self-belief emerges from all those tests. But they keep coming. A former coach once told me, upon hearing that my late wife was diagnosed with cancer back in 2005, “Your whole life has been a preparation for this.”

He was quite right. That coach later faced cancer himself. He passed away a few years ago. The thing I remember most of all about him is still his face. I don’t see him as young or old. There’s a spiritual aspect to that, I believe. Take pride in that aging face, no matter what age you are.

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