Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The Importance of Faith, Hope, Love, and Family (and a little bit of booze)


 
 
Exactly one year ago this week I was at the lowest point that I have ever been.  Sure, I’ve had letdowns before: deaths, breakups, and the general humiliation of whatever embarrassment I just caused myself or my family. But never before had I been hit with so much at one time.

 
Of course, by saying “I”, I’m leaving out the fact that my wife Carol was going through the exact same thing as I was.

 
Literally

 
I didn’t write about it at the time because I wasn’t looking for pity. I also didn’t quite know how to fully describe what I was going through because I really couldn’t process the emotions. I had one thing piling up on top of another and I didn’t know what made me mad, what made me sad, what gave me hope, and what gave me that feeling in the pit of my stomach that made me want to just curl up in a ball under the covers and not come out until everything passed us by.

 
But I had no idea when or if that would happen.

 
It all began on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2012. I say it began with this Monday because it was the first official slap in the face. I had been working at a job for around four years that I really liked. I saw chances for advancement and I really liked the people I worked with/for. It paid a nice salary and I was always able to leave work at the same time every night. I really couldn’t have been happier. On this particular Monday, however, that happiness took a crushing blow to the gut as the moment I walked into the office, before I was even able to sit down in my cubicle, I was informed by a co-worker that our company had been sold.

 
I can’t say I didn’t see it coming as the company that bought us had been attempting to do so for quite some time. We had been assured all along by the higher ups, however,  that our company would not sell as they saw what we were doing and felt very strongly about both our short term and long term growth as a company.  What that translated into, basically, was that they wanted more money and would sell as soon as they got what they wanted. Well, they got what they wanted and they sold the company.

 
At the time of the announcement the writing was on the wall. I was a corporate employee and the company that bought us had a corporate headquarters in Omaha, NB. There is no sense in having two corporate offices doing the exact same things so, essentially, I was going to be losing my job.  Gone were the thoughts of advancement and retirement with a healthy pension. Those thoughts were replaced with the concerns that I may not even be employed long enough to afford Christmas gifts. I didn’t know, my bosses didn’t know, and the execs – if they knew anything – weren’t saying a word. The best we got was our CFO politely telling us, with no time frame in place, that we should polish up our resumes.

 
I’ve been on the brink of losing my job before, but that was before I was married and had a child. That was before I had a mortgage and bills out the wazoo.  We, as a family, had just gotten to a comfortable point where the credit cards were paid off and we were starting to stock a little bit away each month in our savings. I finally felt like a grown-up who had his stuff together before it was ripped from me because my employer had an attractive stock price. The saving grace in all of this was that at least Carol still had her job and we could do what we had to do to make ends meet until I found something else.

 
Carol had been very comforting to me when I told her my news. We hoped that I would be able to hang on to my job for at least a few months so that we could put away every spare penny to get us through what could very well be lean times. It would be rough, but she is my rock and when she told me everything would be okay, I believed her. Together, we can make it through anything.

 
To add to this untimely news, we had both been dealing with ailing grandparents. Both of our grandmothers were dealing with Alzheimer’s and dementia. In a horrible trend, it seemed as though whatever ailment, fall, or incident that occurred with my grandmother would be duplicated by Carol’s grandmother about one month later. It was a sad time for both families as we knew our matriarchs would not be with us for much longer nor would they be able to be fully with us, physically or mentally, for the holidays. They were both trending downwards rather quickly and we were fully aware that this holiday season with them would more than likely be the last. 

 
So, given this information, I was low. I wasn’t in the mood for the holidays and really didn’t want to decorate the house, trim the tree, or do anything.

 
That’s when I got the call from Carol

 
Carol’s boss had called a store meeting for the day after I had gotten the news that my job would soon be eliminated. She didn’t know what the meeting was about but, whatever it could have been, she did not expect to have to make the very next call she made.

 
When I picked up the phone I could immediately tell in her voice that something was wrong. I thought maybe Ben had fallen and gotten hurt or maybe she had some news about her Grandmother. What she told me though came completely out of left field and left me absolutely speechless.

 
After Christmas they were going to close Carol’s store which would put her out of a job as well.

 
Shit

 
As she told me and cried on the phone I fought back tears of my own at my desk. My job as a husband and as a man is to be strong for my wife and family but I had absolutely nothing to give. I’m sure I muttered out the consoling “it’ll be okay” and “we’ll be fine” but I highly doubt that she was any more consoled by hearing it than I was convinced as I was saying it. The reality of the situation at that point in time was that by the end of the calendar year which was little over a month away we could both be unemployed.

 
Merry freaking Christmas and happy freaking new year.

 
When Carol got home that night from work, we hugged. We hugged and cried and consoled each other and tried to convince each other that we could make it through this. We put on a good face in front of our son but the fear was there and it was real and it was overwhelming. I’m not sure I’ve felt as helpless at any point in my life. We had, of course, told our families about the news as soon as we had told each other but, despite their helpful words and encouragement, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had disappointed them.  I guess I’m kind of used to that feeling as any big event like this in the past had usually been the result of something stupid I had done and I more than likely deserved it. But this was different. I knew in my head that it was differnt but I still felt like a disappointment. Carol and I were going to be unemployed, possibly very soon and at the same time, and we, along with our loved ones, were all hurting due to the rapidly declining health of our grandmothers. Everything seemed to be crashing down at once  and I had no clue what to do about it.

                                                                            
Well, at least not in the long term.

 
In the short term, Carol and I were going to get drunk.

 
This is by no means an endorsement of alcohol as a crutch to get you through hard times. If anything, it typically only exacerbates the problem. For this one night, however, Carol and I decided that we were going to get drunk and have ourselves a little pity party.

 
So that’s what we did.

 
And a funny thing happened along the way that night: we laughed.

 
We laughed a lot.

 
I’m not sure if it was the stress of the situation, the alcohol, or just a coping mechanism, but we laughed. We made jokes about being unemployed and things we could do to make money (for the record, Carol is against prostituting herself out for cash but I am not). We made jokes about just walking out of our current jobs and telling each person that we work with exactly what we really thought of them (for the record, Carol is against setting her co-workers on fire but I am not). We even tried to figure out exactly how much Ben would be worth on the black market (for the record, Carol is 99.8% against selling our child for cash but I am not).

 
What started out as a pity party ended up being quite therapeutic. Somewhere around the 5th or 6th beer and the 100th joke about living in a tent in a family member’s backyard I realized something: there was not a single thing we could do to stop what was going on in our lives. I couldn’t convince my company to unsell itself. Carol couldn’t convince her company not to close her store (see my note above regarding her thoughts on prostitution).  And neither one of us could do anything for our grandmother’s health but pray for as quick and painless of an exit for each of them as humanly possible.  We were stuck in this situation where life was on the verge of turning into an absolute nightmare for the foreseeable future and we were sitting on our uncomfortable, ugly, stained-with-God-knows-what-from-our-son-and-the-pets couch and we were laughing.

 
That’s when I knew it was all going to be okay.

 
It seems as though it’s always okay when I’m with Carol.

 
We’ve been together for over 10 years and had our trials and tribulations, some minor and some major, but it’s always been okay. In fact, it’s been great.

 
The next day, we woke up and put our big boy pants on. We both began working on our resumes and told each other that we’ve got this. We were going to face this head on with a positive attitude and we were going to be fine. There was no indication anywhere that we would be okay financially or that we were going to be able to find jobs that paid what we needed them to or would even be anything that we liked but we knew we were going to be fine because we had each other.

 
We will always have each other.

 
As the next few weeks and months played out we had our share of good and bad news. The first bit of good news came rather quickly when Carol found out that she’d be able to transfer within the company to a new store. Sure it was a lot farther from our home and from where she currently worked, but it would do as a steady source of income until we could figure out what was happening with my job prospects. Sadly, this was quickly followed by the loss of my Grandmother on December 13. While difficult for all of us, we knew Grandma was going to a better place and took solace that she would be reunited with Grandpa in the afterlife. Around this time I found out that I would be employed until at least July 2013 which would provide for temporary security but I was not about to stand pat and wait it out so I amped up my job search and began interviewing for a new position towards the beginning of February. Between the first and second interviews, unfortunately, on Februrary 7 Carol’s Grandmother left us as well. Again, this was a tough time for our family but, again, we knew Grandma would be better off moving from her aged earthly body to the new one awaiting her with her beloved Charlie. To help ease the pain of our loss, however, I soon found out that the company I had been interviewing with had not only offered me a job, but was also offering a considerable raise from what I had been making. Needless to say, I took the job.

 
And just like that, everything was better.

 
I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that I’m thankful.  I’m thankful for the prayers from our family and friends who knew what we were going through. I’m thankful for the hope and well wishes that each one of them bestowed upon us even though they were going through their own grieving process. I’m thankful for opportunities that may have never presented themselves under different circumstances. I’m thankful for belonging to not only one, but two supportive families who have never once failed to be there when we needed them most.  I’m thankful for any and all adversity that, while difficult to endure, provides ample opportunity for me to grow as a man, a father, and a husband. The adversity will always be there in some form or another but I never have any reason to doubt the outcome as I have one helluva supporting cast in this roller coaster of life.

 
But mostly, I’m thankful for my wife Carol. As I said earlier, she is my rock. She is my best friend. She is my partner, my common sense, and my moral compass. But more than that, she is a selfless mother and wife who, despite the insanity of her work schedule, always makes time for her family and their needs before her own. Whatever we go through whether it be in the past, present, or future I know that everything will always be okay because of Carol’s love and confidence in me – a confidence that I didn’t even have in myself when we first met. She makes my highs higher and my my lows seem not so low at all. She has always believed in me and in our family. She is the glue that holds us together. She is my Carol and I am thankful for her every day.
 
It also doesn't hurt that she's pretty easy on the eyes : )

 
And I love her

 
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

 

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