Just Say “Yes!”: A Song Writes Itself

     The evening of July 20^th 2006. I’ll always remember Judy Warren, Marilyn Tullys and me, sitting in a restaurant in Canton, Ohio, telling funny stories, giggling, laughing, eating spaghetti and meat balls, and giving Judy our treasures in celebration of her birthday. I was 62, and Judy and Marilyn were in their early 70’s.
     But I won’t remember that evening for that event alone. I’ll remember it for the contrasts, for the way life can feel so warm and happy one minute and so ragged and dark and empty the next. After I returned home from the party, I called Marcia, Phyllis’ younger daughter, to encourage her to get a plan to make sure she didn’t lose the house she and her mother owned together when I had to file for her mother to go on Medicaid in October.
     I was Power of Attorney for Phyllis, my former stepmother in her 80’s with multiple health issues and advanced dementia. She owned two homes, so I couldn’t file for Medicaid to pay her nursing home expenses until I’d sold the home she’d lived in, which I'd done the year before (with full transparency and support from her daughters) and spent down the money to the nursing home. The money would be spent down to Medicaid requirements by October.
     I gave Marcia some options, just to help her to see that she still had them, but they were unacceptable to her. I suggested that she seek legal advice and promised to pay for it from her mother’s account.
     “This would never have happened if Mother had put the house in my name years ago,” she said.
     “It won’t help us to go back there,” I countered. “We can work with what’s here now.”
     “Don’t you have any compassion?” She shouted. “You think you’re better than anyone else!” She called me “sweetheart” in her most hateful, sarcastic tone, and repeatedly curled my former name that I’d changed more than 20 years ago, out on the end of her tongue like it was a maggot-ridden clump of stinking meat.
     She told me that she and her sister and her mother all know who I really am, and it isn’t who I appear to be. I started to say something, then realized that, too, would sound like a Presbyterian missionary. So I remained speechless and mangled, hanging upside down on the other end of the phone line until I heard the click and the dial tone. The attack was over.
     A high-pitched, far away voice in the back of my mind said, “You don’t owe her anything, now or ever.” But my whole body felt shaky when I stood up and started to walk. I wondered who I could call to help get me back, or which room to go into next, or what to do next. Nothing in my house looked or felt familiar.
     Phyllis’ two daughters and her best friend and neighbor Angie had all attacked me like this in the past, always reminding me that Phyllis also hated me. I grieved the loss of love of this family that I loved so much.
     I would have let Phyllis die in her own home without adequate medical care, according to hers and Angie's wishes, except that she had an autistic, retarded 50-year-old daughter Denise living upstairs who would have never forgiven herself if her mother had died on her watch. I knew Denise would need her mother when it was time to begin her life in a new home. Phyllis' two other daughters had told her they hated her and refused to take care of her. I wanted to give them more time to reconcile with their mother. Phyllis couldn't die the way she wanted to.
     On this night, as I had after previous attacks, I lit candles, hoping their warm glow would somehow ground me. And I went against the advice in the dog owners’ bible that warns us not to use dogs for our own human needs, and made my Rottweiler Savannah climb up on my twin bed next to me. I lay behind her with my arm around her, like “spoons” when you’re married!
     So all that night after Marcia’s attack, I was in shock, like you feel when someone dies—wide awake, unable to sleep, but physically weak and exhausted and just not there. The next day, the part I know is me still hadn’t returned. I stayed in my nightgown, walking myself through the routines of feeding my three parrots and two dogs—my Savannah and Phyllis’ 17-year-old poodle, Pierre—letting them out and back in, and mixing smoothies and forcing myself to drink them.
     I didn’t make any phone calls or go out of the house all day. In fact, I was actually toying with my favorite thought when things go very wrong in my life: killing myself. I definitely wasn’t feeling funny or fun.
     And then, in the middle of estrangement from myself, despair and confusion, some words floated into my consciousness in their own personal rhythm. When I found the clipboard and picked up a pen, they dashed onto the page, and then like children lining up for recess, rearranged themselves and bumped each other around until they were in place, standing straight and tall. And then they looked at me and said, “Okay, now sing me!”

Just Say "Yes!"

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Yes, Life, I’m reporting for duty

Yes, I’ll play the rootie-tootie

Yes, of course, I’ll bathe the yahooty

And dance the Patooty

And bring home the booty

Yes, Yes, Yes to what life brings

Saying “Yes” makes life swing.

Yes! I can be wise and silly

Smart and funny and willy-nilly

Yes! You bet, I’ll dress up frilly

And climb the hilly

To see the dilly

Yes, yes, yes, it makes good sense

Saying yes, gets me off the fence

Yes, this little three-letter word

Makes my spirit sing

It scares me out of my freakin’ mind

And shakes my bells till they ring

I say “Yes!” to the Universe

“Yes!” to the unrehearsed

“Yes!” to the possibilities

It’s anyone’s guess

What comes to bless

If we just say “Yes!”

     Even when I’d put the melody to the song and recorded it, I was still feeling estranged from myself. Maybe this song had something to teach me: “Yes! Yes! Yes! to what life brings.” Life had brought me Marcia and her thoughts and feelings, and I hadn’t accepted them. Instead, I’d taken them personally. I’d said, “Oh horrors! Not again! I must deserve this! She must be telling the truth about me! I’m so ashamed.”

     But what triggered her outburst? I hadn’t said yes to her first sentence. Instead I’d made her wrong. I’d told her to leave the past and look at the present. Don’t we all correct each other? How we should be thinking and feeling? Isn’t that okay? Don’t we know better how others should think and feel and live their lives than they do?

     And what about all that nonsense in the song? Do I have to fully understand how someone feels and why, to be able to agree, to say “Yes” to them, to accept them for who they are?

     When I saw clearly my role in the exchange between Marcia and me, I decided to accept not only her but myself for my less-than-skillful behavior. I’m grateful for my belief that my behavior isn’t the real me. I can always make better choices. Gradually, I could feel an energy that I recognized as myself returning to my body.
     Now my song makes me smile. It came out and went down on paper before I knew what it meant! My other songs also have mysteriously appeared before I knew what they meant. In difficult times, they sing in my thoughts and comfort me.
     I decided that from then on, Phyllis’ daughters could speak to Phyllis’ attorney if they needed anything from me. It was good they never called. I could have been the one who answered the phone. I’d already started to work for Phyllis’ attorney. She said I was intelligent, I reasoned things out, and I was good with the public. She’d been working closely with me on Phyllis’ and Denise’s affairs for two years, so maybe she knew the “real truth” about me. Or maybe all we ever know about each other is nonsense! And we just need to agree.