Category: Illness

A Fevered Illness

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

seagull-flying-aroundI woke up one recent morning with an illness that has overtaken my body just a bit more with each passing day. There is no medication for what I have nor is there a reliable treatment. I can’t be immunized to prevent the recurrence of the symptoms because nobody has yet thought of a reliable way of preventing an epidemic. My only hope is that it will pass without inflicting too much damage. I’ve had bouts with the same disease now and again since I was a child. It always occurs at about the same time of year right alongside the allergies that cause me to sneeze incessantly and otherwise fill my eyes and ears with fluid draining from my sinuses. It is a debilitating sickness that has caused me at times to take off days from work while I wander lethargically around my home. I suspect, but am not certain, that it may be infectious because the people around me sometimes show symptoms similar to mine whenever I am down with a full blown fever. This year in particular I appear to have a real doozie of a case.

The signs that I have been infected are always the same. I’m an industrious person, someone who never really sits still. I can’t even hold a conversation without moving my hands or wiggling in my chair. I’m always on the go and measure the accomplishments of each day with precision, reflecting on how well I have done by calibrating the merits of each of my actions. When the sickness comes my productiveness slows down to a crawl. My home fills with dust bunnies while I sit quietly outdoors listening for the sounds of the birds and watching the antics of the squirrels that scamper in my garden. I lean back and gaze at the brilliant blue sky enjoying the cool breezes that brush across my face. I think back to the games that I might have played as a child and how wonderful the new grown grass felt on my bare feet when the days became warm enough for me to toss my shoes into the far recesses of my closet.

I imagine myself flying to the beach with the seagulls that squawk as they pass overhead. I suddenly long for the life of a gypsy, one in which I have no responsibilities and I go wherever my heart leads me. I pass my time without being aware of the hour. I toss dishes into the sink and look away from the pile of dirty clothes that grows ever larger. I have better things to do. I take long walks without saying a word or drive to lovely places that seem to be calling me to tarry for just a bit. I sleep longer in the morning and stay awake deep into the night. I eschew my usual habits and become quite lazy, a person so unlike myself that I might worry if I were in a normal state of mind and body. But I am not, and so I just let the illness run its course for I have learned that if I simply go with its flow it will soon enough pass.

There is indeed a name for my affliction. It goes by the seasonal label of spring fever. it has been stalking me for as long as I am able to remember. In some years it passes over me with hardly a notice but in others it attacks me with a vengeance and I become a hopeless victim of its control. This seems to be an especially toxic year for me. The start of it came without warning and thinking that it would soon be gone I did little to steel myself against its effects. Unfortunately my symptoms have grown almost out of control as my usual routines have been neglected to the point of absurdity. While the fact that I am retired makes the impact of my idleness matter less, there are still things that must occur to keep my little world running smoothly but I can’t yet get myself fully back into the groove. I use any excuse to dally and to dream.

If I were able I would begin a long journey on foot and just keep going like Forrest Gump until I finally felt as though I was done. I would soak in the world and its creatures like a gigantic sponge. I’d bypass our manufactured creations in search of the ones that nature has made. I would quietly watch the passing parade of people and try to imagine what they were all thinking and doing without ever uttering a word. I would be little more than a fly on the wall, an observer whose only job was to watch and learn.

I suppose that it will not be much longer until I am myself again. I’ll chide myself for letting things go so badly when I finally take the time to look around. I’ll make new lists of things to do and become an industrious cyclone. I won’t notice the doves in my backyard so much when I’m busy dusting the baseboards. I’ll set up appointments and keep them. I’ll join the mad race that is always swirling around me.  I will be in a normal state of health again and firmly in control of my Type A personality. The fever will be gone, replaced by a sound determination to keep my eye on the challenges of life. Nobody will accuse me of sloth or shiftless behaviors. I will be fully engaged in the routine swing of things.

For now though I plan to feed the fever that has overtaken me and actually enjoy its impact on my attitude. It is ironically a disease that I secretly appreciate. It slows me down enough to show me the side of life that I miss when I am one of society’s most productive contributors. It adds zest to my personality and a lilt to my steps. It is the one illness that actually makes me feel good. Since I am retired I am now able to surrender to the siren song that is calling me to embrace the beauty and the joy that comes to such glorious life each March. There will be time enough for labor when I have become myself again. Today I am going to let my spring fever run its course.

Finding Marion

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

shamrocksThere is a theory that most people will be completely forgotten within three generations. After that time nobody still living will have heard the sound of their voices or felt the impact of their personalities. They may leave behind photographs or documents attesting to their presence on this earth but essentially they are defined not by memories but by images. Of course the modern era is rectifying this with digital footprints that might include recordings and moving pictures. Such used to be the purview of only the wealthy but now even common folk have access to technology. This is not the case for most of those who came before us and so they are slowly but surely being forgotten.

I have a great grandmother who is a mystery. I think that her name was Marion Rourke but of that I am not certain. She was the mother of my grandfather, William Mack Little. He told us that she died three days after he was born. There is no record of any of this. In spite of my relentless searches, Marion remains a cipher, as though she never even existed.

Of course there has to have been such a person because William was not just found in a cabbage patch. He had a father named James Mack who took him to live with a woman that he called his grandmother known as Sarah Reynolds. Sadly I have been unable to find any records for these individuals. They walked on this earth as though they were ghosts, phantoms of my grandfather’s imagination.

William never knew Marion but he thought enough of her to name his first born daughter after her. It was his touching way of honoring her. I suspect that he always wondered who Marion was and what she was like, just as I do. It saddens me to think that she died at what should have been one of the happiest moments of her life. She had a good strong son who would ironically live to be one hundred eight years old. He was a very kind and intelligent man who treated women with the highest regard. He no doubt would have been a dutiful son to the woman who brought him into the world.

Marion’s last name indicates a connection of some kind with Ireland. My grandfather always claimed to be half Scottish and half Irish and I have verified such roots with a DNA test that I once took. I wonder if she was born in the Emerald Isle or if she was a descendent of someone who originally came from there. She had a beautiful name and was someone’s daughter, but who might that have been? She was obviously quite poor according to what little my grandfather knew of her. He was her first child and I wonder what happened that made her so ill that she died.

When I had my first daughter my labor was long and hard. There were complications and my doctor later told me that in the old days I might have lost the baby or even died myself. I wonder if I somehow inherited the same genetic disposition for difficult birthing that Marion had. Do I have an idea of what she might have endured? Was she alone and frightened as things went awry? Did she realize that she would not live long enough to see her son grow into a man? Such thoughts haunt me as I attempt to remember her without any facts to steer me in the right direction.

I try not to forget Marion. Someone has to think of her. Each St. Patrick’s Day I celebrate the Irish in me and attempt to imagine my great grandmother. I cook corned beef and cabbage and celebrate my own life that would not exist were it not for the sacrifice of her own. I so want to know her and probably never really will.

My grandfather is not quite sure where he was born nor where he spent his childhood. It was somewhere in Virginia where he was able to see hills in the distance. By the age of thirteen he was orphaned again when his grandmother died and he became a ward of the state. He chose John Little as his guardian because he was an honorable man, a graduate of West Point. Grandpa took “Little” as his last name in honor of the individual who helped him to complete his journey into adulthood. Sadly John Little died of typhus when he was in his early thirties leaving my grandfather all alone again. Grandpa had to fight hard to find reasons to to stay alive, and somehow he always did. He had an optimism that was inspiring. I wonder if he inherited that trait from Marion? Would she have been proud to see him overcoming one challenge after another?

I feel a kinship with Marion both as a woman and as her great granddaughter. I know that she lives somewhere in me. I would love to know where she was born, what she did as a child, how she met James and where she was finally buried. It has been a kind of holy grail for me to find out who she really was and I am not yet ready to give up even though I have spent years searching for someone who seems not to have even existed. She deserves to be known and loved and treasured.

On St. Patrick’s Day I will once again prepare my traditional meal and think of her. It is possible that I will be the last person to do so. She will one day become forgotten just as the countless individuals who came before her. I am determined to tell her story even if I have to fill in the blanks to describe the details. I know from the scant information regarding her untimely death that she had been loved enough by James to bring forth a child and that hers was a difficult existence devoid of the medical help that might have insured her survival.  I know that her son was a strong, bright and healthy man who would have been a joy to her. I know enough about genetics to realize that she must have been an intelligent woman. Her DNA has helped to produce some quite outstanding descendants.

Marion is a name said to have derived from the Hebrew “Miryam” which means “sea of sorrow.” I hope that this is not an accurate description of hurt and pain that my great grandmother may have endured. I would like to believe that she found peace and that somehow she knows how well things turned out for her son and his son and finally for me.

An Ode to Red

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Sun-and-Clouds-Images-of-the-Kingdom-DollarphotoclubRed was a beautiful girl, no doubt because of her striking ginger colored hair. She was always a lady who often loved to wander aimlessly for hours just enjoying the sights and sounds of the world around her. She was a very good friend, loyal beyond imagination and her gentleness was such that every member of my family loved her. When she was with me I felt special. She hung on my every word like nobody I had ever known. I was enchanted with her. Heck, even my neighbors got to know her and they too fell for her magnetic personality.

I remember a time when I was quite ill with the flu, dizzy from a high fever that seemed to be burning my very brain. Red sat right next to me all day long, keeping watch as I went in and out of sleep. It was comforting to see her there attempting to conceal her worry with a weak smile. Somehow I felt that her vigilance was more than enough to pull me through. She was like that, ever faithful and devoted.

On another occasion Red lost one of her long time friends. Her grief was so all consuming that she could barely eat. She moped listlessly for weeks and all I could do to comfort her was to hug her and assure her that everything would eventually be okay. It pained me to see her hurting but it also convinced me that she was quite special and that her feelings were incredibly selfless and real.

Red loved my two girls. She was as protective of them as I was but she also loved to frolic with them, disregarding all notions of dignified behavior. She rolled and wrestled with them on the floor causing them to laugh with unabashed glee. She raced them through the yard and played catch anytime that they wished. She was totally at their beck and call and when they had bored of playing with her she would smooth her hair and revert to the magnificently genteel ladylike behavior that so defined her and sit quietly listening to my rambling conversations.

Still there were aspects of Red that seemed almost contradictory to the cultured image that she generally portrayed. She was always up for a swim and she could hunt with the best of them. It seemed to be part of her DNA to be swift of foot and unusually alert to the comings and goings of nature’s creatures.

As Red got older her scarlet colored hair became more and more tinged with white. She moved slowly and the old energy that had always marked her spirit had faded. Arthritis plagued her joints and I suspected that her hearing was going away rather rapidly. It saddened me to see her in such a state but she continued to attempt to be her old self. Most of the time though she was just too weary to run or play with children as she once did and sadly she often drifted off into an old person’s kind of sleep even in the middle of the day.

It was only when my daughter Catherine brought a child named Maggie to visit that Red found some of her old verve. She was captivated by the little one and seemed intent on forcing herself to rollick as she might have done when she was so magnificent. Maggie didn’t realize that Red was struggling to keep up with her. She only felt the gentle love that Red always exuded and she delighted in the attention from her new older friend.

One day I learned that Red had cancer that was incurable. I was devastated and filled with emotions and memories of all of the good times that we had shared. Our whole family was engulfed in sadness as we so helplessly watched her grow weaker and weaker. It embarrassed her to be in such a state. She didn’t want us to see her like that but I was determined to be there for her just as she had always been for me.

I was with her on her final night. I held her has she moaned in pain and her breathing became more and more shallow. Now and again I grew so tired that I momentarily fell asleep. If my arms slipped from embracing her, she would begin to cry and that frightened and plaintive sound awakened me to take proper watch once again. At some point during that long and horrific night I fell into a deep exhausted slumber. When I awoke Red was perfectly still. Her chest no longer rose and fell. The color was gone from her face. She had died.

I sobbed uncontrollably as I realized that I would never again have those wonderful moments of unconditional trust and love that I had shared with Red for so long. As I gave the terrible news to each member of my family they in turn were devastated. It is never easy to lose such a great companion. Our grief would hang over the household for weeks.

At Christmastime that year I threw my emotions into decorating my home and preparing for the annual celebrations but I was still thinking of Red. Catherine was there with Maggie helping me to complete the chore of trimming the tree that had always been such a delight but was difficult that year because of Red’s passing. As we placed one ornament after another on the branches Catherine came across a trinket that she had made as a child. It was created from an old Christmas card and it featured a lovely photograph of Red back in the days when she was still vibrant and beautiful. Catherine burst into tears as she clutched the worn and tattered memento. When she held it up for me to see, I too lost my composure and cried. The two of us released the pain that we had been trying so fruitlessly to conceal while little Maggie looked on in wonder.

Our hearts eventually healed but we never forget how much Red had meant to us. I still gently place the old paper ornament with her picture on my Christmas tree each year and I remember what a great lady she truly was. Red was as fine a pet as any family ever had. She was a sweet golden retriever who was our friend, our protector, our playmate and a member of our family. She was a wonderful dog. 

Love Is Us

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

beatles-abbey-roadOn September 26, 1969, the Beatles released perhaps their quintessential album, Abbey Road. The timing could not have come at a better time for me. My idealism was badly damaged from the events of the previous summer, a collection of weeks that quite literally changed me and my family in the most devastating ways. I was not yet twenty one and I felt like a forty year old. My mother had endured a crushing mental breakdown during July and August and I had reluctantly accepted the responsibility for her care and that of my brothers. I was shoved out of my naive and isolated world into the hellishness of reality as I struggled to keep everyone together and to make decisions that were foreign to my nature. I was a bride of less than a year who was being tested more than I thought I might bear. The Beatles came to my rescue with their innovative music that eased the beasts that were battling inside of me.

There would be many a time when I would listen to the songs that became so comforting to me, not so much because they were happy and lighthearted, which they were not, but because I marveled at the genius of the work that was unlike anything that the world had ever before heard. I was able to escape into the guitar rifts and poetry of the lyrics. Here Comes the Sun became my mantra. It gave me hope that somehow my little family would one day reclaim the happiness that had been so missing in the dark days of Mama’s illness. To this very day I can’t hear the strains of that tune without remembering both the pain that I was feeling and the tranquility that the music afforded me. 

I was still in a honeymoon period with my husband Mike with whom I was madly in love but I had no idea what an incredible man I had married until those trying times. He would rise to the occasion and never leave my side over the decades in which I struggled to keep my mother healthy. He was loving and understanding and the two of us listened to Abbey Road together sensing that its brilliance expressed the feelings that we shared. My story might have been quite different had it not been for Mike. He was my anchor and my strength. I listened to lyrics from the album like “Love is you” and understood totally what that meant with regard to my devoted spouse. We may have been two babies playing house but we had something quite magical happening and somehow the Beatles had captured every emotion that we were experiencing.

I had little idea that in only a few weeks I would learn that I was pregnant with my eldest daughter Maryellen. We had no plan as to how we were going to find the money to raise a child but we could not have been happier. It was like a blessed miracle to learn that something bright and beautiful was going to happen to take our mind away from the fear and anxiety that had been stalking us. When Maryellen was born the following July I often listened to Abbey Road when I fed her in the middle of the night. It was one of the only ways I was able to keep myself awake when I was so sleep deprived. I loved the line “one sweet dream came true today” because that was exactly the way I was feeling. The contentment that I enjoyed with the birth of my little girl filled my heart. It erased the despair that I had known only a year before and replaced it with a feeling that we were all going to be okay.

The years would go by. Mike and I only grew closer as we raised our little girl and then added another girl child named Catherine. My mother would go in and out of emergencies with her mental illness. I never really became accustomed to the sadness that I felt whenever she had a psychotic break. I did my best in getting her the medical help that she needed but I always felt heartbroken that her problems were chronic. I so wanted her to mend and never be sick again but that was not to be.

Abbey Road would forever be an old standby for me, a favorite of which I never grew tired. I heard new words and musical innovation each time that I listened. It somehow came to remind me of the entire span of my life. All that I am is somehow encapsulated in the music.

Imagine how wonderful it was for me to receive a text from my grandson Andrew this week telling me that he had been listening to Abbey Road at college. We traded stories about the songs that we most love and I could tell that somehow the music had reached as deeply into his psyche as it had into mine. I found myself wondering what he might think if he knew that I had rocked his mother in my arms while listening to the same brilliant harmonics back when I was only a year older than he now is. I found it somehow ironically meaningful that his birthday is on September 26, the same date as when the album first became available to the public. I thought about the enormous influence the Beatles have had on so many souls and particularly on me, providing so much solace during the most difficult moments and the happiest ones as well.

The day on which my mother died can only be described as beautiful. We all will eventually leave this earth and she knew that her end had come. She was ready and convinced that she would soon be in her heavenly home. Everyone who had ever loved her was gathered around on that day, including Andrew. Mama asked my Mike to take care of the family, an honor that he humbly agreed to accept. We said our prayers and our goodbyes. When she had breathed her last I once again thought of the Beatles and their prescient words that seemed almost to have been written especially for her and our family, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” We had overcome one problem after another hand in hand only to emerge with an ever stronger bond time and again. Through it all the Beatles have continuously been there as we have traveled down our long and winding road learning with each step that love is us. 

Open Hearts

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

1ebff25909b8878c31424a09e6757466I was eight years old when my family and I went to the Trail Drive In to see Tammy starring Debbie Reynolds. I truly enjoyed that movie much as today’s young girls like to watch the programs on the Disney Channel. It was a wholesome and uncomplicated film about an innocent seventeen year old who finds love for the first time. I instantly learned the words to the song Tammy that Debbie Reynolds sang so romantically in the film and belted out the simple tune as I rode my bicycle around the neighborhood. Mostly I became an unapologetic fan of Debbie Reynolds after seeing Tammy and never lost my admiration for her even as the years went by and I became a well seasoned woman.

I often caught snatches of the conversations that my mother had with her sisters when I was a child and I knew that they highly approved of Debbie Reynolds. She was an all American princess in their eyes, as uncomplicated and lovely as the character she played in Tammy. One of my aunts often read a magazine called Confidential which was a precursor to The National Enquirer. I remember seeing photos of Debbie Reynolds in the pages of that publication with her husband Eddie Fisher. He was a singer and a heartthrob of sorts but I never particularly cared for him. Because I was still an uninitiated child I thought that Debbie had the most perfect life nonetheless and I wanted to be just like her one day.

Eventually a tremendous Hollywood scandal made the headlines. Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher had been close friends with Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Mike Todd. They had even named their son Todd. When Mike Todd died suddenly in a plane crash a grieving Elizabeth Taylor found comfort from her good friends, especially Eddie. One thing led to another and the two stars wound up having an affair. Stories about the sordid incident seemed to be everywhere and of course my mom and her sisters were aghast by the turn of events as they whispered comments while they sipped on their coffee. I would have had to have been deaf not to hear them discussing how horrible the whole situation was and how much they felt for Debbie who by then was the mother of two children including a daughter named Carrie.

I loved Debbie Reynolds even more fiercely after that sensational scandal and thought of her as a brave warrior who somehow soldiered on even after enduring public humiliation. It would be decades before I would be able to forgive Elizabeth Taylor for her egregious behavior and I disliked Eddie Fisher forevermore. I was happy when his star power plummeted in the aftermath. He ultimately disappeared from the limelight and his tryst with Elizabeth was short lived, but Debbie continued to perform and remained beloved to me and her fans.

I was grown when I finally discovered the movie that seemed to most accurately depict the duality of sweetness and spunk that seemed to define the real Debbie Reynolds. Singing In the Rain became one of my all time favorite films. The casting was incredible and Debbie more than held her own with giants of the screen like Gene Kelly and Donald O’Conner. There are few scenes from cinema that are as iconic as the one in which she dances with her male co-stars and they all three end up tilting over a sofa. Her star quality shone through and that charisma would never die even after she left the silver screen for a quieter life.

Debbie Reynolds showed up from time to time in Las Vegas and on television programs like Will and Grace where she always seemed to light up the room but it was her daughter Carrie who would eventually become even more of a Hollywood icon than she had been. When Carrie Fisher played the role of Princess Leia in the Star Wars series she immediately became a role model for a new generation of little girls just as her mom had been for me. Carrie was beautiful and intelligent and showed the same spark of independence that her mom had always displayed. Young men across the world fell in love with her more feminist version of the ideal woman. She was an equal to the male characters who fought side by side with her against the dark side of life.

Carrie Fisher had a brilliant mind and went on to display her intellect and her sense of humor in the five books that she eventually wrote. She possessed a sometimes defiant honesty in which she told of her own demons and struggles. For a time she was estranged from her mother because of her willingness to so publicly speak of her life. She suffered from addictions and mental health issues and was never afraid to talk openly about them. She became an outspoken advocate for everyone who deals with the heartache and loss that comes from fighting for their mental well being. She understood that by admitting her own weaknesses she not only freed herself from their grasp but helped others who so often feel abandoned and alone in the battles against their cravings.   

The world was shocked to hear of Carrie Fisher’s death from a heart attack that she suffered while flying home on Christmas Day. Her many fans both young and old recalled the joy that she had brought to them. Her friends and family grieved for the giving and sensitive person that she was. Her mother Debbie was distraught and missed her beloved daughter immediately. Only one day later she too died, possibly from a stroke.

After my father was killed in a car crash at the age of thirty three my grandmother commented that she had lost her parents, many siblings and even a husband but the death of her child was the most difficult thing that she had ever endured. I watched her change from that day forward. She was a fighter who carried on but there was a shadow of sadness that seemed to follow her in spite of her efforts to smile and be optimistic. She spoke often and wistfully of my father and provided me with snatches of her own history as though she was preparing me for her own demise. Eventually she was diagnosed with stage four cancer and she died after a short but painful battle. Somehow I always felt that it was her broken heart that took her and I suspect that the same might be true of Debbie Reynolds. It is just so incredibly shocking and wrong in the grand scheme of things to lose a child.

I feel a profound sadness today as I think of the family of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. They will be dealing with a great deal of pain in the coming days and weeks and months. In the end the icons that we so worship as fans are just people like ourselves. They have brothers and daughters and close friends who love them and know them in the most personal ways, “warts and all” as my mother used to say. Behind all of the glitz and glamor of Hollywood are humans who experience the very same feelings that we all have. They give away much of their own privacy to those of us who fantasize about them and make them famous. We share vicariously in their triumphs and their tragedies but we never truly know them. We forget just how human they really are. The death of Debbie Reynolds just one day after her daughter reminds us of what matters the most in life. In the final analysis the most important thing that we do each day is to love and never forget just how fragile the human experience is. We can’t take a single day for granted because we never really know what our final destiny will be. We need to attempt to live with courage and open hearts like Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher tried so valiantly to do.