Get Your Business Done

I lost a family member about two days ago.

A part of me inside is saying, "I can't believe you are writing about this again".
It feels that I'm always mentioning someone who died recently in this blog.

Lately it seems that I am losing all 'my people'. The people who I care about, who are in my memories, the folks that ultimately made me...me.

I put it down to becoming middle-aged. And I admit, I've been sad and wallowing in it.
Mourning the person, their life, their loss, but in the end it comes down to being selfish. In the final analysis, it seems that most of us, no one more than myself, are mourning what their loss 'does to me'.

More than any other, this death has shaken me. A few weeks ago, I didn't know how sick she was, how ill she'd become in the last year or so. And worst of all, I hadn't really asked.

I feel guilty and stricken. In this, my own blog, I preached about the importance of making time for family, but I felt that meant just attending the family dinners when asked and picking up occasion specific cards at the right time. I realized that I had taken the lazy way out, letting all of the invitations come to me second-hand through my parents and not taking the initiative as an adult and calling to see how they were, maybe emailing, driving over, etc.

In short, I  haven't grown up. I'm still acting like a 13 year old adolescent, worrying endlessly what 'people will think of me'.  It's hamstrung me in every way.  For fear of what people would think, I've stifled my sense of humor. I've put on a professional sort of mask to cover my personality so that I would be taken seriously because I've never been able to handle criticism, always fearing the ultimate judgment that I would be found out as a fallible human being. Excessive pride + vulnerability of any kind= crushing humiliation.

And it is this that caused me to always take the conventional path, to never make waves, to never step outside of the bounds and really do the things that show people what you mean to them. It's not what we say, it's what we do that people remember.

And this lady, what she did for me, for my sisters, for all of us kids was pretty remarkable. Acting only out of kindness, she spent her time, what little money she had and her energy to provide us with unforgettable memories. She took us to movies, for ice cream, to the zoo for the annual Easter egg hunt, to the fair for cotton candy and hotdogs, she set up weekend trips to the beach, backyard Double-Dare-esque obstacle courses, stuffed Christmas stockings, always had the time to play games, to listen to our childish chatter. As I sit here typing, the blanket she gave me in 1992 is still draped over the foot of my bed. In short she gave sacrificially, she never held anything back. She didn't spend time agonizing over what everyone thought, she was too busy doing...

I remember feeling bad that she had never become a mother herself, imposing a little of my own regret on to her, and it was just yesterday that I realized, she had actually been so much more than that. Instead of concentrating on one or two of her own kids, she'd been a sort of den mother to so many. Me, my sisters, their kids, the children she taught Sunday school to. There is not one of us, whose life wasn't impacted by her. This zany lady who taught us that it was okay to let our hair down, have fun and to be silly from time to time.

I guess I, in my devout struggle to become an accomplished adult, to by God be taken seriously, I forgot this.

A few years ago, on a popular sitcom, was an episode with the premise that a visiting African-American minister to their church turns the whole congregation on its ear, exhorting them that life is short and that the meaning of one's life, is to "Get your business done!" The family around whom the show centers is gripped as one by one the family members strive to follow the injunction and get their business done.

I know it's TV and maybe a little silly. But I took something profound from it and it's stayed with me.
No more so than this week...Am I getting my business done?
Maybe my career wouldn't have suffered such setbacks if people knew there was a real live human being inside. If they knew that when I'm alone, I sing...a lot. And that I can't hear salsa or flamenco music without moving my hips, that I bust a move frequently when really into music. That I can do the Cupid Shuffle at any moment completely from memory...even without the music. That I have to read my favorite poetry out loud, usually to my long-suffering cats.  If I talked at all, they'd find I'm actually pretty funny...that I have a really well developed sense of the absurd. They'd know that some mornings I wake up laughing because that Monty Python line, "No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition" is frequently in my head. That there are certain moments in movies where I laugh so hard, stuff comes out of my nose.

I quit showing all that; I reasoned that I was an adult, that it was time to start living my life in tailored black trousers with serious heels, and a serious expression, and to seriously work hard.

Maybe it's time I took a page from her book, maybe it's time for me to stop taking myself so seriously, to remember the lessons she taught me, to give more than I get, to stop worrying about what people think, to get busy having fun.

To get my business done.

I'll miss you Auntie G.....and I hope that in heaven you are baking, playing games and singing with the angels.