Flowing with the Go (3 page)

One time, when I couldn't sleep, I was pacing around downstairs when I got this wild hair to go to our exercise room and see if I could bench 115 pounds. I have no idea where that number came from (my maximum was only 105 pounds), but I was determined. I scrambled around, trying to find the plates I needed to get 115 pounds on the bar. Plates were clanking, and just as I was ready to grab the bar, Chuck walked in. “What are you doing? It's two a.m.” I looked at him as if I do this every day and said, “How ‘bout a spot?” Chuck just shook his head, admonished, “Don't hurt yourself,” and walked away. Chuck doesn't lift weights.

During a session with Kathleen, my grief therapist, she remarked that I seemed like a person who needed to move and who functioned best when I was connected to my body. How did she know this? From my chronic fidgeting, leg-crossing, finger-tapping, and exhaustive crying? Did she see me lift weights in the middle of the night? Was this why she often forced me to take a walk before I got into my car to drive home? When I told her that I was thinking of calling a number I saw for women to join a boot camp fitness group in my area, she looked at me as if I told her I saw the Virgin Mary in a tortilla.

To an outsider, most of our sessions up to this point would have played out like reruns: I cry. She says, “Breathe.” I cry and say, “I can't do it anymore.” She says, “Yes you can.” I cry, “When will I feel better?” She says, “When you are ready.” I cry, “Am I crazy?” She says, “No, there is no right or wrong way to grieve, only your way. There is no manual for you to follow.” I cry, “This is hard.” She says, “I know.”

When she had regained her
therapistic
composure (yes, I made that word up) after my comment about boot camp, she said, “Let me know how it goes.” I replied. “I probably won't do it.” And right then, I knew that I would. I used reverse psychology on myself.

My parents were elated to hear that I was considering an activity other than sleeping. At the time, I didn't realize how difficult all this was for them. Not only had they lost their first grandchild, but they were losing their daughter as well. My dad sent me a check paying for six months of the camp (I had told him I was going to try it for a month) as a birthday present. Everybody is a shrink.

I loathe exercising in the morning, and boot camp was at five-thirty in the morning. Add depression and my-fat-self to someone who does not pop out of bed like toast, and you have a recipe for grumpy. I showed up on time, but I didn't talk much and preferred to just do my reps without being bothered. I didn't need to talk. I didn't need any new friends. I was there to work out. I would work out until six-thirty, and then go home and go back to bed. In my mind, I could check off “move today” from my list of appeasements to others.

Despite how unfriendly I appeared, I was asked to join a team traveling to British Columbia to compete in FemSport. It's a competition where you compete in different exercises against one other person, and your scores are compiled for an individual score and a team score. The events were bicep curls in one minute at 30% body weight; fifty 18” box jumps for time; weighted sled pull at 65% body weight; kettle bell shuttle where the bells got progressively heavier and the pedestals you put them on got higher; and an obstacle course where you carried jugs of water, flipped tires, walked a balance beam, and sprinted.

I was the heaviest competitor in the event at 203 pounds. I was appalled at weigh-in. I had never weighed that much without being pregnant. At FemSport, that meant I was going to have to lift and curl and drag more weight than anyone in the competition. To my credit, I beat my opponent in all the events and finished in the middle of the pack in points. I guess there were still some muscles under all that insulation. But all I could think about was being the heaviest person in the meet.

The director had said, “Well, someone has to be the heaviest.” Easy to say when the heaviest thing about you is your clipboard. I went out and had Jagermeister shots that night.

4
My Rubber Room

S
ome tangled occurrences led me to the Foster Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym. At times during boot camp, we would change it up by doing some cardio kickboxing. I thought it was really fun, although no one wanted to be my partner because afterward their hands hurt from holding the mitts. Even the most athletic gals in the group were much smaller than me, so I had to “pull my punches,” so to speak.

Around this time, Kathleen suggested that I was not admitting to feelings of anger and that it was unhealthy to hold them in. I could deal with this, she instructed, by first finding a place where I could not hurt myself—what, a rubber room?—and then punch a pillow, or perhaps go into the forest and scream. Although I was nodding to make her happy, inside I was rolling my eyes and thinking, LAME. Those tactics were clearly not going to be part of my wellness plan.

I had decided, thanks to the boot camp introduction to kickboxing, that I wanted to learn how to kick and punch correctly (not like a girlie-girl) and do it someplace where I wouldn't have to hold back. As serendipity would have it, during some downtime while teaching my high-school biology class, I googled “kickboxing Kent WA.” The website for Foster Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was on my screen when one of my students walked behind me and said, “Hey Foster's. I go there. My dad is one of the coaches.” My student, the daughter of one of the coaches there and a charismatic, athletic young lady, went on to tell me where the gym was located and convinced me that everyone there was treated like family.

Who wudda thunk it? At the very moment Foster BJJ was on my screen, someone who had trained there would see me looking at it. Coincidence? I think not.

The first lesson was free, so I emailed the coach, James Foster, and signed up to try the striking class. Striking is taught by Bobi D., a Swedish former boxer and Jiu-Jitsu brown belt. Coach calls him Blue Steel due to his inability to take a bad photograph.

I soaked it all up—the repetitive footwork drills, the ducking-under drills that made my quads burn, punching combinations into the mitts, cardio punching the heavy bag until I couldn't lift my arms. I loved it. I didn't know what heavy-handed meant, but I was called that. Intent on practicing, I bought a heavy bag so that I could get more reps in and chalked lines in the garage to practice my footwork. I downloaded boxing workouts, and I would go out into our cold basement to jump rope and do intervals of punch combinations. It was a winter distraction for me. Winter is tough because that's basketball season.

I didn't watch girls' basketball for three years after Carly died because I physically couldn't. The first time I tried to watch her AAU team play, I had to take two laps outside the gym before I could enter. I was composed until I saw all of the players from her club wearing patches displaying “21,” Carly's number. I had to leave and go throw up. I tried again during high-school basketball season. Like AAU, the parents and teammates all insisted they wanted to see me there. I would smile and greet people, and then I'd let my eyes stray to the large shadowbox on the gymnasium wall, where her retired jersey hangs with a plaque that says, “An artist on and off the court,” and my throat would seal up and my chest would implode and I would feel like I couldn't breathe.

I continued to have these panic attacks for years around girls' basketball, a sport I loved and missed, but could never feel the same way about again. Eventually I distracted myself with coaching volleyball and scheduling practices on Fridays so I had an excuse for not being able to accept the invitations to the games. My boys both play basketball and wear #21 in their sister's honor. Watching Carson play ball does déjà-vu with my heart. He looks just like Carly with his long, gangly body and fluid gestures. They share many of the same court mannerisms, like pacing behind the free-throw line while waiting, and rocking back and forth on their toes in the huddle—wound tight like a racehorse pawing at the starting gate. Going to see the boys play is not as hard as watching the girls, but still I don't watch many of their games. I prefer to stay at home and get their texts, “Mom, I scored twenty-one points! I know Carly was there with me.” People say they understand. I'm not sure I understand. Sometimes I ask myself why I am not over it yet. I feel guilty about not being there. Yes, I feel like a bad mom.

Bad mom, but better boxer—or so I thought. One time at practice, I had been there maybe six weeks when one of the other coaches, Rick, suggested that I spar with Bobi. Here begins the lesson in controlling one's enthusiasm and spastic behavior. Heavy bags and mitts are one thing, but they don't punch you back.

Apparently I got a bit too vigorous (Bobi was jabbing me over and over again. It was maddening!), and Bobi popped me on the side of the head, pretty hard. Then he stopped the class. “Hey, just so you know, when you are training, your partner will go as hard as you go. So if you dish it out, then you better be able to take it.”
Uhhh, that's directed
at me, isn't it?
I would later realize that stopping a class to point something out for the benefit of the whole class was Foster standard operating procedure. One has to understand that it's not personal, even though you know you started it.

5
Lucky Charms of
Remembrance

L
oss can be especially painful for people who have emotional attachments to inanimate objects. I was that child who cried when her brothers tied her favorite stuffed animal in a ball and kicked it around the house. “Stop it. You are hurting Huggy Bubbles.” I had such an attachment and love for this more-than-an-object stuffed animal that “Huggy” became Carly's nickname within the family. And yes, I still have Huggy Bubbles, although Chuck refuses to let me bring her into the bed.

I'm not attached to just any old thing. I'm not ready to be featured on
Buried Alive
(the show about hoarders), but I am very sentimental about gifts I have been given or objects that remind me of someone or a special time. I can still look at an old wedding present and tell you who gave it to us twenty years later. I can find meaning in the simplest of trinkets if one of my children gave it to me. I can tell you where I was when I picked up a piece of art or handmade jewelry. And so deciding what to do with Carly's things was like a storm cloud that followed me around the house, threatening to cause turmoil at whatever I perceived to be the slightest disturbance to my coping.

The first time I saw the door to Carly's room ajar, I was angry. Who went in there? Why did you go in? It turned out that the boys had gone in to pay tribute to Carly by raiding her extensive collection of Jordan basketball shorts. I became aware of this one morning when Eason came into the kitchen wearing the green and gray shorts that matched Carly's favorite pair of J's—her Green Beans. I remember catching my breath with a silent gasp. I wanted to react sharply. I was shocked, angry, betrayed, caught off guard. Yet, I just sat there. Somewhere amidst those edgy feelings, I realized that this was perfectly acceptable, a discreet way for a young teenage boy to pay homage to his sister. Who was I to stop him from doing that? It was too painful for him to talk about, but he wanted everyone to know that he missed her and carried her with him.

I went crazy trying to carry her with me by wearing symbolic talismans—rituals I was sure would tell her that I hadn't left her, that I would remember her and miss her every moment.

I wore a silver necklace with a butterfly, a cross, and the number 21 in a heart every day . . . for a long time.

I still wear a leather bracelet with the words Gratitude, Forgiveness, Courage, Acceptance, and Kindness on it. I look at it most days as a measure of my emotional status. Gratitude, for the time I had with her: okay today. Forgiveness: nope, not there yet. Courage: going forward today? Yes. Acceptance: sometimes. Kindness to others, like she often gave: I can do this. How I answer varies from day to day.

I found an artist who made dichroic glass pendants and had her make some in shades of blue and emerald that contained bits of Carly's ashes and gave one each to my brothers and my parents and put two away for the boys. I had mine mounted in silver and engraved with her name and “Ah be boo” on the back. Like most little kids, Carly had her own language for a while, and “Ah be boo” was her way of saying “I love you.” At night, we played the Waltons, yelling it through the walls to one another. I wore this pendant or carried it with me every day that first year of survival. I felt that I was never far away from her.

And then I got a tattoo. Like the powerful need I had to wear or carry symbols of her with me, I felt I had to immortalize her. On my lower leg, I have her motto: “Do what you love, love what you do” with a basketball and a 21, a blue butterfly, and a music note. It seems that tattooing a memory is not uncommon, and Carly's friends and coaches have paid tribute to her with their own tattoos. There are butterflies, 21s, a twenty-one in script, and a basketball with Carly's name. One friend had “Do what you love, love what you do” tattooed across her ribs. I feel so honored and humbled by these acts; they let me know that I am not alone in missing her and that Carly made a difference to many people. Not to be left out, Chuck had his dentist put a 21 on his new crown.

Over time, I began to accept that neither my world nor my composure would fall apart if I didn't wear one of my talismans. I stopped feeling guilty if I left them in my jewelry box. But I still have problems with family pictures. I don't have a problem with pictures of the boys, or the boys with Chuck, or Chuck and me, or the boys and me, but I dislike pictures of the four of us together, because they just don't look right. The pictures seem like an incomplete family, and I only see who is missing. I don't have a single picture of our “new” family displayed either. I don't know, I just can't . . . yet.