Why can’t I just fix things? Why won’t my loneliness go away? Sometimes my loneliness feels so massive that it threatens to envelop me. I was in a vortex the week between Christmas and New Year’s, with contributing factors including family drama, singleness, cancelled plans, and crazy hormones. In retrospect, these are considerable issues, but I never realize how much they impact me until I am sobbing with my friend about how much my life sucks (purely a hypothetical situation, of course).
Here’s
what you need to know about me. I am single and moving towards the
back half of my thirties. While I would love to be married, I enjoy
living as fully as I can within my circumstances. I’m fine to go to
movies on my own and generally try to not let my lack of a spouse
stop me. I am coming out of a time of confusion over work, church,
and my vocation. This experience has led me to seek and pray about
every part of my life. It has led to some fun changes too,
such as pursuing improv comedy. However, some areas of my life feel
very much in process. I’m still figuring it out. (Note: I will never figure it all out on this side of life).
Love and Basketball A Weekly Dose of Inner Peace from an Unlikely Source by Bruce Overby A Liberating Routine
Every Tuesday I drive to my mother’s house and load up my
special needs brother, Eric, who lives with her, and take him to a
local park to shoot baskets. After that we go out for coffee.
It seems like a simple routine, and perhaps it is for him. But for
me, over the seven years we’ve been doing this, it’s become much
more than that.
Eric and Bruce
Welcome Aboard, Little Dude
Eric was born in 1967, the eighth of nine children. Our parents,
gradually discovering Eric’s handicap, which would limit his mental
capacity to that of a 5 year old for the rest of his life, must have
fretted greatly. Extra care would be needed, additional financial
pressures might arise, and they would have to manage it all in a
brood that was already large and demanding.
At the same time, I know they saw silver linings: Eric had no
physical deformity, and while his development would be slow, it would
be steady. And most importantly, we learned over time that his
condition was not progressive — it would not get worse. We had all
learned by example to help care for one another, so we generally
embraced Eric, provided the small bits of extra care he needed, and
watched over him with a slightly more protective eye than we had with
each other.
Brush with Tragedy
Fast forward to the fall of 2010, our mother suffered a ruptured artery in her
stomach that nearly took her life. Her stomach problem was the result
of analgesics she had been using to soothe orthopedic pain. In the
wake of the crisis we put our heads together to think about
relieving her daily burdens so the pain could be relieved without the
medicine. In particular, we considered the central burden of her
life, which was caring for Eric, who was now a 200 pound middle-aged
man with the limited abilities and consistent needs of an energetic
five year old.
We considered placing Eric in a care facility, but Mom was
insistent: “I need Eric in my life,” she told us, flatly refusing
anything that would take him away from her. We all got a stark
reminder that day of not only the strong connection our mother had
built with Eric, but also the very simple fact that Eric is, in every
sense, a person. He has special needs, yes, but he looks you
in the eye and calls you by your name, values his family and his
life, and not only mutters the names of his brothers and sisters
incessantly, but drops whatever he’s doing at the sound of a
sibling’s voice entering the house. And even more than that, he is
a man who treasures, to the extent that he can, the person who has
been the most constant presence in his life, his mother. Not So Different from the Rest of Us In the end, we decided each of us would do what we could to take
Eric out so Mom could have at least a few extra hours of respite a
few times a week. One brother has taken him for the occasional
Saturday outing, lasting much of the day. Each of two sisters take
him for an evening a week, providing him with dinner and activities
in their homes, or a trip to Target or Home Depot. And I, of course,
get him out on the basketball court.
On the court and off, I’ve discovered that as different as this
lumbering, clumsy, sometimes silly man is from the rest of us, he is
also very much the same. He is more vulnerable, certainly, unable to
make rational decisions or move independently through a world that
requires complex thinking and sophisticated words. But like any of
us, he is curious. He cranes his head and leans in to feast his now
failing eyes on any shining, pinging, or glowing thing he sees or
hears. He’s also fickle sometimes, growing tired of the basketball
court we typically use and asking for “a different park.” And at
other times, he’s a creature of habit, ordering the same Javiva
iced-coffee drink every week, without fail. And he even gets lazy
sometimes, taking a day off from the special needs program he attends
or taking a little more time than usual to get motivated for his
outings. And who among us doesn’t get fickle about some things and
habitual about others, or feel a little lazy every once in a while? Freedom But the real discovery I’ve made in these years of basketball
with Eric has been one of complete release and freedom. Because in
many ways, I’ve realized, Eric’s handicap has set him free. He is
free from the burden of difficult choices and challenges to
self-esteem, and the hours, days, sometimes weeks of consternation
that come with them. And the price of that freedom is actually our
gift as members of his family: It is the privilege of providing the
support and care that grants him that freedom. Because who knows what
kind of person Eric would be without the support system he has? Who
knows what might befall a vulnerable innocent like him? The answer
is, no one does, and no one ever will, because he does have
two hard-working, sensitive, empathetic parents, a brilliant and
compassionate stepmother, and eight solid and supportive siblings. (Eric easily matches sibling names to birth order. “Who’s No. 4?”
“Bruce!” “Who’s No. 8?” “Eric!” And
constantly reconfirms his schedule of visitors. “Cindy’s coming?”
“Yep.” “Wednesday, five o’clock?” “Yep.”) The weather is fine in Silicon Valley and my work is painless, but
the distance between the problems I solve and the people I solve them
for is so great that I am often left wondering, why? I meet,
create, analyze, assess, measure and remeasure, judge and get judged,
and after all that, the accomplishment I feel is fleeting, and the
question lingers, what’s the point of it all? But for two
hours every Tuesday I am delivered from all that. The amiable lummox
who is my brother greets me and goes through the routine. Ball and
wallet are zipped securely into the duffel bag. I brush his hair — my
vanity, not his — and he tucks the brush into the bag for later. In
the car, the toughest decisions to make are which Peet’s coffee
shop to go to and whether or not we’ll look for “a different
park.” Out in the world Eric draws the occasional quizzical look
or frown, but he also draws out astonishing levels of humanity. The
clerk at the coffee shop simply smiles as Eric rounds the counter and
sticks his big head right into the cash register. A boy, maybe 10
years old, shares a basket with us and soon takes it on himself to
shag each of Eric’s misses, returning the ball to Eric carefully
while balancing his own ball on his tiny hip. It is a time of human
frailty and goodness, and of lightness buttressed by lifelong
devotion. And this is where I am set free. Life steps down from
ethereal complexity and becomes simple, essential, and palpable.
And the predictable result is that, on those rare occasions when
some conflict gets in the way and I miss my time with Eric, it is a
bad week. Sadness and a sense of yearning creep in during that long
stretch of 13 days, but no matter. For now, at least, there is always
the next Tuesday, which will come along and make everything right.
Bruce Overby is a prize-winning author and writer in the truest sense of the word. He spends his days as a technical writer and his off time as a fiction writer. His writing passions lie in the world of loss, addiction, family, relationships, and the human condition in a technology-driven world. You can read more from Bruce at www.bruceoverby.com. He also happens to be my beloved brother-in-law. I hope you all enjoyed his offering.
