Hello, Friends -

I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my positive psychology coaching practice, which I’ve chosen as one of my main focuses as I continue to heal and grow well.

You haven’t heard from me in a while; it’s been over a year and a half since April passed, and a few months since my last post.

In the recent time, I’ve been working on business websites – specifically KnoxvilleBusiness.com and KnoxvilleJukebox.com.  Also, I’ve been learning about, and becoming more and more excited about, positive psychology.

Recently, I took my excitement about positive psychology to the next level, opening a positive psychology coaching practice at psychologypositive.com.

I’m writing to invite you to take a look at my site and let me know what you think.  If you have any questions about positive psych, please let me know.  I welcome the opportunity to talk with you about it.

With much love and appreciation for my friends and family, and those who visit my blog,

Mac Bartine

On Friday, August 20th, the hardest year of my life came to a close.  It’s difficult to believe that April has been gone for an entire year – a very, very long year.

It truly was a blessing that April and I had no idea how close she was to death in her last summer.  We had parties at April’s request, we worked (she was still employed full time by Pellissippi State up to the last Friday that she went in the hospital), and our struggles seemed ordinary in many ways.  It would have been so much harder if we had known that she was so close, if she had not been so tough and positive minded.

She didn’t believe the end had come until she heard it from the doctor’s mouth.  Up to that point – even when Dr. Gharavi told us that she was going through liver failure – she still thought that she was going to be returning to work in a few days.

As difficult as those two years during April’s diagnosis and battle with cancer were, they were a blessed time that I cherish and miss terribly.  I miss April so much.

But life goes on.  As we all know, life goes on.  We don’t have the choice to stop time and reverse to the days when our loved ones were still with us.  We can’t re-wind to say “I love you” one more time, or to do more special things for them to say with actions louder than words that they are loved.  We move forward.

Our year without April has been forward moving.  Babies have been born and conceived; houses have been re-modeled; a career in medicine has begun; business plans have been laid, and new friendships forged.  I can see paths before me that lead to new places and ways of life that I’d never before considered as a possibility.

This is as it should be.  It’s as April would want it to be.  She loved us – all of us.  And she would have been so pleased with each of our victories and treasured moments.

In closing, my dear ones, I offer you words that April would have said at this time, were she able.  Live well.  Have a party.  Eat some chocolate.  And smile to know that you are loved from this side and the next.

Mac

It’s a strange thing to offer thanks in April’s absence, but being thankful is such great medicine for being sad.

On this Thanksgiving weekend, I could try to justify feeling sad, angry and missing April terribly, or I could try to convince you that I’m just peachy – write up some mumbo jumbo about how happy I really am.  But the truth is, I’m sad, angry, lonely, grateful, happy, and amazed by life – all at once.  I could try to go back and forth between the two and come up with some conclusion in 500 words or less, but instead, I’ve decided simply to make a list of things that I’m thankful for.

Here goes:

• Family
• Friends
• Every moment I had with April
• The lovely Daisy May
• Music
• Art
• The ocean (I’m sitting just a few dozen yards from the Atlantic as I write this)
• A clear night sky
• Clouds
• A nice breeze
• Creativity
• Pain that makes you appreciate pleasure all the more
• Funny movies
• Lost (the TV show – I’m totally addicted)
• Doctors
• Good professionals of all sorts
• Air travel
• Places I haven’t been
• Good food
• Good cooks
• Comfortable furniture
• Gadgets
• The Internet
• My computer
• Sharing this blog with you
• Trying new things
• Getting better at things that are old hat
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Nice clothes
• Comfortable clothes
• Playing with my nephews
• Playing in general
• Grass
• The seasons
• East Tennessee, and South Knoxville in particular
• My neighbors
• Rainy afternoons
• Mountains
• Opportunities
• Entrepreneurship
• YouTube, Google Wave, and other cool websites
• Emerging science and technology
• Higher education
• Sunshine
• Love
• Fast computers
• Muscle cars
• Good books
• Libraries
• Living in the USA
• Funny stories and jokes
• Laughing
• A good adrenaline rush
• Being quiet
• Interesting new people
• Conversation
• Hope
• Joy
• Optimism
• Truth
• Justice
• Holidays
• Doing for others
• Receiving gifts
• Surprises of all kinds
• Waking up feeling good
• Architecture
• The conquest of business
• Texas Hold ‘em
• All those who I loved and have past
• Soft kisses
• Completing projects
• Starting anew
• Dreaming big
• Noodling
• Forgetting how to be unhappy
• A good cry when no one is around
• Wonder at the achievement of others
• Philosophy
• Trains going by
• Small kindnesses
• Soft light
• Naps
• A good night’s sleep
• Being able to say ‘no’ when I know that I should do just that
• Saying ‘yes’ to everything that’s good
• Holy places
• Feeling God around me
• Seeing the World getting better in so many ways
• Knowing that one day, cancer will be a thing of the past.

I could go on, but I’m feeling warm and fuzzy, and ready for dreams and that good night’s sleep.  I’m so very grateful for you.

Love,

Mac

Here is the story of macaroni & cheese, coleslaw and chocolate ice cream — three different comfort foods that played a role in two dear friendships.

April and I met at Camp Wesley Woods in Townsend, Tennessee in late May of 1992.  April was 17 that May – about to turn 18, and I was 22 – about to turn 23.  Five years later, when April and I went out on our first date, she told me that she associated me that summer with a spray of gravel, which would have been spitting out of the back of my white 1987 Honda Civic CRX SI: a damn good car for spitting gravel.

She was quite right – I did spit a fair amount of gravel that summer.  And it’s a fine way for you to picture me for the purposes of this story: a bit showy, a little exuberant, and a touch heavy on the gas.

Macaroni & Cheese and Coleslaw

Most folks who grow up in the South have eaten their weight in macaroni & cheese and coleslaw by the age of 16.  By the time I’d reached 23, I considered anything that I’d eaten my weight in to be open to interpretation: is that a bowl of mac and cheese, or something else entirely?  This, to me, was an excellent question that was worthy of exploration.  Enter the then 19-year-old Karen Claussen, who has been a dear friend to April and me ever since that summer.

Karen was my co-counselor one week in the summer of ’92.  I think it was later on in the summer, but I’m really not sure of that.  I don’t remember much about the kids we had, other than I think of them as about half and half boys and girls, and probably rising 6th graders, or there about.  They were probably fun to be around, and tiring at the same time – just as you would expect any group of 10 or 12 rising 6th graders to be.

That week, as every week, the entire camp went on a night hike.  While it was still daylight, Karen and I took our group to the knoll where we would wait for dark to fall.  To get there, we followed a trail that went past the Grandfather Tree and wound up a steep hill that rose towards the unfinished Foothills Parkway.  At the top of that small mountain, with a 30 minutes or so of daylight left, our camp kids played, and Karen and I – both biology students at the time – spoke about the stages of photosynthesis and the Krebs cycle, I think.

After it became dark – no flashlights were allowed – the camp full of kids and their counselors sat on the ground and told stories.  A kid farted and everybody laughed.  We called the  barred owls, and then walked back down a straighter trail, each person holding the hands of two others.

The next day (or maybe it was the day before; I have no clue as to the real order of events) was an average day.  I don’t remember a thing about what led up to dinner, but Karen most likely remembers what happened at dinner.  We had macaroni & cheese, coleslaw, and something else.  Peas, perhaps.  Sprouts – definitely.  But the point is that people didn’t eat much of the slaw, and there was usually left over macaroni, too.  There were leftovers a-plenty that evening.

And here comes the part where you remember that I’d already eaten enough of these things to consider them worthy of other possibilities.  This is where you recall the picture of a spray gravel, and the part about me being showy and impulsive.  Poor Karen: she wore those leftovers with way more dignity than I would have worn them.  She didn’t even seem to bare me any ill will, though April told me it was “a damn good thing” I never tried to put coleslaw in her hair.

Sorry, Karen!  It makes a good story now, but I feel bad for the 19-year-old Karen who, in the summer of ’92, had to walk back to her cabin after dinner with slaw and macaroni in her hair, and deal with 6 screaming 6th-grade girls at the same time.  Well, actually, it made me laugh really hard when I thought of it just now, which is why I decided it was time to tell the tale.

And the Chocolate Ice Cream Goes to…

…April, of course.

My poor Sweetpea.  How unkind of me to have smeared you with chocolate ice cream that Friday afternoon.  A particularly hard week at Camp was over, the kids were gone home, and the administration had organized an ice cream buffet for us – the beleaguered camp staff.  We gave it a gallant effort to clean our plates, but alas, there were leftovers at the ice cream buffet, too.  It goes without saying that I’d eaten double my weight in chocolate ice cream by that point in my life, and so my familiarity with the stuff was such that I was capable of Picasso-like creativity in its application to others.

I suppose it should have come as no surprise to me when, 8 years later on June 16th of 2000 – the day before our wedding, April told me that I would deeply regret it if I even looked like I might be considering smearing wedding cake on her face at our reception.  Thank God, April, and the good sense my parents tried to give me – the intervening 8 years had taught me that she was providing me with the best advice that I would receive on that day.

24 hours later, when the time came for April and me to entwine our arms and feed each other cake, I looked at her with 99.9% love, 0.1% mischief, and spilled nary a crumb on her beautiful wedding dress.

An Introduction to the Sucker Punch

A sucker punch is one thrown when the recipient isn’t looking, and that’s how I’ve come to think of grief.  When I was a kid, the sucker punch was a coveted asset of bullies and chickens alike, as it gave the bully an added edge over the kids they chose to pick on, and it gave the kids who got picked on a chance to punch and run when the opportunity provided itself.  All is fair in playground battles, I suppose.

The Danger of the Sucker Punch

The problem with a sucker punch is that the thrower of the punch never knows how the recipient will react.  When my life-long friend Pete and I were roommates at Tennessee Tech in the fall of 1987, there was a tall, skinny, quiet kid who lived in our residence hall on the floor below us, which was known for housing the freshman football team.  Some of the football players took to picking on the tall, skinny guy, whose name I don’t remember now, and who was quite obviously not a member of the football team.

For the purposes of brevity, we’ll just call the tall and skinny kid, ‘Nerd’.

One evening I found myself ascending the residence hall steps with Nerd ascending a half-flight in front of me.  I heard two of the bullies – I believe their names were Omnipresent and Raucous - descending the stairs several flights above us, as did Nerd.  I remember seeing him tense up and then relax when we heard them coming.  By the time we met the two football players on the steps, Nerd was just walking, not showing any concern.

Raucous made some smart comment that Nerd responded to in a more smart manner than Omnipresent thought respectful, causing righteous indignation in the bully couple.  And so it was that as Nerd passed the two on the steps, he received a wicked sucker punch in the face.

What followed was a flurry of Nerd’s fists and feet, a seamless stream of Nerd curses and taunts, and two scared and unhappy football players attempting to flee to safety down the steps soon there after.  I was quite proud of Nerd – from a safe distance – and Pete and I and our various friends in the dorm had several good laughs over his unexpected victory.

So that’s the danger of the sucker punch.  When you launch one, you could just as easily be the recipient of an old-fashioned ass whoopin’ as you could be the recipient of an ignoble victory.

Where Grief and Nerd Meet

I get a regular heel-rocking, head-shaking sucker punch from Grief these days.  I open a local restaurant menu and see April’s favorite item.  Sucker punch.  Daisy greets me when I come home, and I think how April used to react in kind to Daisy’s enthusiastic greetings every day when she’d get home from work.  Sucker punch.  I clean up some little stash of April’s things.  Sucker punch.  And the thing is, a sucker punch from grief leaves you no one to fight back against except yourself or the absence of the one you love.

Or that’s the way I first perceived it.

Slowly but surely, sucker punch by sucker punch, I’ve built up my personal armada of weapons to respond to these sneaky attacks by grief.  A small task, a friend who is only a phone call away, awareness of the pure Will Farrell-like silliness that accompanies crying over a book store receipt that would be nothing but a random piece of trash in every circumstance but the one that I am in at that moment…these are my battle-tested defenses that bring me back to OK and send grief scrambling to safety down the stair case.

Mine are not the manliest of weapons.  But it’s a beautiful thing to send the bully packing, whether it’s with skilled hands and feet or by simply dropping a banana peel under the feet of sad memories.

Last night, my Love,
we were swimming in the ocean
below the gentle swells,
the Moon turned down low.

“Don’t be afraid of the Hydromedusae,”
you said to me softly.
“See? They don’t sting.”

I agreed with a nod and reached for your hand,
while whales sang bass medleys, and the
Hydromedusae said “Your money is no good here,”
as they gracefully waved goodnight.

Dear friends and family – here are some pictures of April that I love and wanted to share with you.  If you have pictures of April that you love and would like to share them with me — with everyone who reads the blog — please do.

If you don’t know how to post them to a website, you can email or snail-mail them to me, and I’ll take care of it for you.  Much love to everyone -

Mac

I was just thinking about the strange way little things sneak up on you when you’re grieving for the loss of someone to whom you were very close.  It’s an odd thing to be OK, then open a drawer and suddenly find yourself crying over an almost-empty Super Glue.

Every nook and cranny has something in it that has suddenly become very ‘April’ to me, and each of those things have happy, sad and nondescript memories related to them.  Some of the items are every day (thanks for the memories, Super Glue!), and some are little things that were big to April, like her Biology 110 dissection kit.

I don’t mind the grief that comes with the little things, because so many other little things are reminders in a good way.  Her shelves of books all over the house; binoculars for bird watching; a CD she played frequently; her favorite piece of cloth for its texture and design — all little things that remind me so well of who she was, and why I loved her.

Today, I’m going with friends to see UT play their first game of the season.  Football was distinctly not an April thing, which is one of those little things that I’ll always remember and love.

When I spoke at April’s service, I told a small story of mine and April’s private lives together.  I want to put it down in writing on the blog, too, just in case you weren’t able to make it to her service.

“Honey, what turns you on?”

Being a typical guy, I asked the above question of April early on in our marriage.  April just loved a good biology conversation, and so I felt sure I would get a great answer to my rather pointed question.

April smiled and put her hand on my forearm, and said, “Your best bet is always out of the way romantic acts, Sugar.”

Out of the way romantic acts?  I tried not to look disappointed or too confused, and said with as much charm as I could muster, “That sounds nice, Honey…what, exactly, are out of the way romantic acts?”

April smiled again, kissed me and said, “you’ll figure it out, Sugar.”

OOTWRA (Note to self that you’re welcome to adopt, too)

April was a private person, as am I, so I’ll leave the intimate details of the above pursuit of knowledge cloaked in a cozy little blanket of mystery.  But I do have more to say on the general approach to ‘out…romantic acts’ (OOTWRA).

This being a Note to Self is simply me saying that I’m not asking or suggesting that you live this way, or that you aren’t already living this way yourself.  This is just me reminding me what I already know, and choose to live by.

OOTWRA is not just a way to get in the pants of a mate.  What I learned from April is that it’s a way to show your love for all sorts of different people, situations and things.  And the result of putting OOTWRA into your interactions with others is that you get lots and lots of love, and the pleasure of deep, meaningful relationships with family, friends, co-workers — even complete strangers who you’ll never see again.  And if you’re in business or service, treating your customers with a surprise OOTWRA every now and then is pure gold.

The “doing” part of OOTWRA is the easy part.  The hard part is paying close enough attention to the other individual or situation to understand how you can give love, support and little kindnesses for others to accept and enjoy without any effort, stress, or worry on their own part.

But typically, even the hard part is easy if you’re really thinking about how to do something special for another person, and not how your actions are going to benefit you.  You’ll come up with an OOTWRA with a minimum of muss and fuss.

No amount of money, attention or other tangible rewards will ever come close to the intangible wonders you’ll receive from applying this to your life among others — when and where ever you can.

OOTWRA for combating fear, pain and grief

Taking the OOTWRA approach is so very helpful and effective when you’re caring for someone who is in pain, or who is grieving, or who is afraid — because you’re helping that person to focus on and push their own personal happy buttons.  You’re giving a gift of time, love and attention that is tailor made to make a loved one forget what ails her, and focus on what is good and pleasing.

In closing…

I would so love to hear how you have used OOTWRA in your own life, or how others have done them for you.

Love to all,

Mac

I was thinking yesterday, as I luxuriated on someone else’s well-maintained boat (thanks again Sam, Brad & Ben!), about what April said to me regarding the possibility of being taken early by cancer.

I had been to see a licensed clinical social worker/counselor named Vicky Henderson (she’s absolutely wonderful) late the same afternoon that April and I had this conversation.  April asked how it went, to which I responded that Vicky and I had discussed my feelings of anger and grief because April was so much younger than the average cancer patient.

“Well, I can tell you how I am dealing with it,” said April. “I look at my life from a biological perspective. Everyone is born to Earth, lives, and dies – without exception. So nothing has actually changed for me, Honey, except that my personal time line may be a little different than another person’s.

“Once I understood that really nothing had changed, I felt a lot more at peace about whatever my personal time line turns out to be.”

April’s love of living things and how they fit in our world was part of her strength in many difficult situations:

• Kids are restless and grumpy?  ‘Have you ever seen a real, live salamander?’
• Don’t know what you’re looking at?  ‘That’s a Hydrocybe Marginata mushroom!  They only grow in Southern Appalachia.’
• Mourning for the imminent loss of your soulmate?  ‘It’s among the most natural and common occurrences in life.  Nothing has changed, Sugar.’

April applied her understanding of the natural world to so many varied and wonderful things, and she never shone so brightly as when she was learning something new or sharing a tidbit with someone she loved.

And so it was that as the boat motored past beautiful, green hills yesterday, I smiled at the thought that April is now part of the trees, air, earth and waters around us.  She is the photosynthesis in my garden, the metabolic pathway in my cellular respiration – my omnipresent tie to the natural order of Heaven on Earth.

Thank you, my love, for the peace that comes with understanding.