Missing Barbara

Barbara was a force to be reckoned with in the office. With her perfectly coifed white hair and sturdy build, her walk was more of a determined march. Feisty and fearless, she began her conversations with an emphatic “WELL”, throwing out her open palms as if she was presenting a gift to you that was wrapped her in opinion.

Like it or not, you knew where you stood with Barbara. She was too seasoned to deal with what she considered ‘foolishness’ and had no qualms telling me what she would do differently if she were the manager, which was pretty much everything. Age did not slow Barbara down, as the stories of her weekend escapades alone would wear me out. She loved her family, her friends and her life. 

Nothing could stop Barbara. Except Cancer.

She told me about her diagnosis the same way she talked about everything, “WELL... they say I only have a few months to live”, then she moved on to more mundane office issues as I struggled to comprehend the immensity of what she had just told me.

Barbara had Cancer, and she was pissed.

She had family to love and trips to take, and Cancer was not going to mess with her. So she tried to ignore it, which lasted about a week, as she lost weight and became noticeably jaundiced and fatigued.

The last time I saw Barbara was the day she realized that as much as she wanted to ignore Cancer, it wasn’t going away. I was on the phone, and glanced up in time to see her walk by with a look I’ve never seen in her eyes before: fear. As she hesitantly waved to me, I knew she wouldn’t be coming back.

Not long after, we received an email from her daughter that ‘our Barbara’, feisty and full of life, was resting comfortably in a hospice and not receiving visitors.

I was instantly reminded of a phrase I’ve heard before: In those times when there is nothing you can do, do something anyhow.

So we did. We made a goodbye movie.

The idea struck fear into the heart of our HR Department, as well the staff who weren’t sure if a goodbye movie was the best idea ever, or the worst idea ever. But with the blessing of Barbara’s daughter and her mother who ‘couldn’t wait for the premiere’, production began. 

In the three days it took us to make our video homage, we learned more about Barbara than we had for the seven years we worked with her. We learned that it was easier to make a list of things that annoyed her than things she liked. We learned that she had a strong opinion about everything, and a comical story for everyone. And we learned that at the end of the day, we are family. And when one of us is missing, we all feel the loss.

I would outline our step-by-step movie making process, but in the end it speaks for itself.

It speaks of friendship.

It speaks of love.

But most importantly, it speaks of life.

If making the movie kept Barbara alive, wrapping it up was heartbreaking. We sent it off in an email link to her family with a prayer that it would make it in time, and after two agonizingly silent days we got word that Barbara had not only watched it, but gave it two big thumbs up.

Just a few months after her diagnosis, and a week after we delivered our movie, Barbara died.

I still have a hard time writing those words, because when I watch our movie it feels like she is still here, so much so I can almost hear her telling me how everything I do is wrong.

Except for making our goodbye movie, the one thing I’m certain she would agree I did right.

http://youtu.be/F2Lrzz1MXwY.

More Than a Flyer

It’s that time of year again. Time to shake off the winter chill and get into the spring of things as we prepare for the 13^th Annual Spring Dance to benefit the Stephen M. O’Grady Foundation.

So reads the opening line of our first mailing of the year for the charitable foundation started in memory of my brother Stephen M. O’Grady, Salem Little League VP and Executive Director of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Salem, killed by a drunk driver in 1999 at the age of 30- those last few words rolling off my tongue with disturbing ease as I’ve repeated them hundreds if not thousands of times over the past 13 years.

Losing someone you love is painful.  Losing someone you love in a senseless tragedy at a young age is more than painful- it’s a reality check to everyone breathing to remind us that the only guarantee in our lives is the moment we are living in. It’s as much that shared pain and fear of our own mortality as it is the love for our son/brother/friend who left us behind that begs us to do something more. To do something to remind us that while he is gone we are still here,  trying to do something to leave a positive impact in this world for the honor of living another day.  To do anything to make sense of the fact that our lives go on, when one with so much promise was ended so violently, leaving us to wonder  the day after or even 13 years later, ‘why him and not me’.

It may seem straightforward to be on a small foundation board, and in a way I guess it is. You create a mailing list, ask for community support, tell your friends and family when the events are and hope they show up.  Behind the scenes you edit the website, update the Facebook page, and print flyers.  But there are those times when you stare at the computer screen and his photo stares back at you, and you wish you could ask him if this is what he would want, if it is making a difference, if he’ll really be waiting at Heaven’s gate to say “good job”. Then you wonder  if you’ve done enough good in the world to even make it to that gate, and if not can he at least try to stick his foot in it to hold it open. You stare closer and try to remember how tall he was next to you, what his voice sounded like, how big his hands were when he shook yours.  You take a moment to think of the cowlick that drove him nuts, how he was constantly trying to lose a few pounds, or how he never stopped liking spaghettios.

As the years go on the man and the foundation seem to drift apart as guests and scholarship recipients no longer know who Stephen was, and others who knew him their whole life join him in Heaven. You see the faces of those who have lost their own loved ones in the crowd, and want to tell them “this is for you too, for everyone who has lost someone they love”. You struggle with how much to remind people about the tragedy, without taking away the fun they are having.  You wonder what people want to hear, what they need to hear. You wonder where they were when they heard the news of the accident, and know you’ll never forget where you were.

You think of all of this, and then you relax a little bit when you hear a small voice inside of you that tells you “do what you need to do”, and you realize it really is that simple because you can’t imagine not doing it.

So you stuff the envelopes, sealing inside of them dreams of what should have been,  hope that one day you’ll find out if he still has a cowlick in Heaven, and gratitude for the honor of living another day.

Measuring Time

I always admired people who have a knack for remembering things like the names of our Presidents in order of their term, every state capital in alphabetical order and even the mascot for each Division I college football team.

I equally respect people who have such a keen sense of time they are never late for anything. I once knew a manager who began his weekly sales meeting exactly on time, starting with the most important information first, whether anyone else was there or not. It was a little extreme, a lot eccentric, but quite effective.

Even more amazing to me are people who can recite the month, day and year of a wide range of events beyond the obvious birthdays and anniversaries, including things like the day they got their driver’s license, the date they stopped smoking or even the date of a first date.

I have never been one of those people.

My sense of dates and time goes something like this (in order of oldest to most recent): before I was alive, when I was little, a wicked long time ago, back when I was in school, a long time ago, a couple of years ago, not that long ago, just a couple of days ago, a little while ago and now. Which seems to have worked out fine so far, as people appear to understand what I mean without my having to get into specifics.

Unless of course I’m cornered by a question I should know, like when a member of alumni relations at Salem State University asked me what year I graduated, assuming that would be an easy question for me to answer. I muttered some small talk as I miraculously recalled that I graduated Salem High School in 1978 and discreetly counted out four more years on my fingers under the table to figure out the answer. Since then I’ve been taunted by the chipper greeting of “Hi Beth, Class of 1982!” reminding me that an acquaintance remembers significant dates in my life better than I do.

Major local sports events fall into similar time frames. While its been a couple of years since the Patriots and Red Sox won a championship, the Celtics won one not that long ago and the Bruins were in the Stanley Cup Playoffs just a couple of days ago. Everyone knows what I mean without getting into specifics, which most of them will aptly fill in for me anyhow, conveniently concealing my ignorance.

But while I’m hopeless at remembering when things happened, I am great at remembering how I felt when things happened. So while I have to refer to my resume for the actual date I started working at the Boston Herald, I vividly remember that on my first day I wore a dusty pink pantsuit with huge shoulder pads and sheer sleeves (sadly, this is 100% true) and went to a Thai restaurant for lunch with the Marketing Director who got pad thai, and I got a bowl of soup. Perhaps my brain has no room for dates precisely because it is full of random, useless details such as these.

And although even I remember the iconic date of September 11, I still can’t easily recall the year. But I’ll never forget the fear of the unknown that permeated the office as employees begged to go home to be with family and the eerie quiet as I drove home later in the day when the world seemingly stood still as we all realized our world had changed forever, adding another dimension to my timetable, and everyone else’s; before 9/11, and post 9/11.