December 22, 2013

December 22, 2013

From Stan Kustesky:

I was going over to our local mall on Tuesday and I saw two really young guys on the sidewalk.  One was sitting there with a black puppy and the other facing traffic with a sign that read: “Traveling.  We are 3.  Ugly.”  They weren’t hitchhiking; rather looking for gas money. There was really nothing ugly or guileful about them, but I went on toward the highway entrance.  Then it hit me:  there’s nothing I really need at that mall except birthday wrapping paper, so I continued past the entrance and went around a large block to return to the kids and the dog.  I guess when you go over a certain age, anyone under 50 is a “kid.”  All I had was a $50 bill which the bank had given me and I didn’t realize it until I opened my wallet.  Then I said, to myself, naturally, “So what?”  I remember that age when $ was at a premium and I just wanted to get where I was going.  So I gave it to them.  From what I could see in my rear-view mirror, they were thrilled beyond words.  I knew I had done the right thing.  And now I will stuff the stocking with it.  

Merry Christmas, Fueglein Family.

--Stan

From Alex Kreher:

Hello Jamie, Karla and Lula,

I hope you are all well and Karla, it was great seeing you a few weeks ago.

I have been thinking of Theo a lot lately and yesterday I decided to bake a big pile of Crepes filled with banana pieces and Nutella and walk down my block to give fresh, hot crepes to random people and businesses along the way. Some people were hesitant at first but then I told them I am doing it in memory of Theo and told his story.

Big hugs to all of you and a merry Christmas!

Best

Alex and Zoe.

From Doreen Haase:

Dear Karla and Jamie,
I’ve been an Au pair in 2008/2009. That was the time I met Alex and Zoe. I saw Alex’s video post on Facebook. I watched it and it was so sad... But in the other way... So beautiful! How you handle the situation and also the big pain!

A really good friend of mine died of cancer in beginning of March this year. We spoke on the phone on Tuesday afternoon. I had to work this day. The next morning I drove to the hospital. I had this self-made soft animal with me. For him. That he is not alone. When I arrived there I tried to find him. After 30 minutes of searching, they told me he’d died this morning. That was a slap in my face. I never could give him the last big hug I ever wanted. Never say him again that I love him. That he always be in my heart till the end of days. So I hadn’t the chance to say good bye.

At the funeral I gave his mom the soft animal, because that she is not alone. I miss him every single day! He is every day in my heart and my memories! And so he is not dead. He’s just in the other side, where I cannot see him at the moment.

I try to act kind as often as possible. Yesterday I helped a mom out of the door with her baby stroller. This is not much! But it made her day better.

Keep your son always in your heart... Your memories... So he will never be forgotten and always loved. The world needs more humans like you! That give strength, warmth and hope to the others!

I wish you a merry Christmas! Happy holidays!
Kind regards, Doreen from Germany

From Anonymous:

Mr.F,
I was actually thinking about emailing you again, but I was hesitant because I kinda did the same thing as I did last year. I had one swipe left over and i remembered Theo’s stocking so I went to Shafer and swiped a full pizza and a liter of soda. The lady was nice enough to let me get the pizza because the pizza cost 2 swipes and I only had 1. So after I got the pizza and soda, I walked straight to Monroe Park and gave it to a group of homeless people. They happily accepted it. It wasn’t a lot, but the feeling of committing a random act of kindness was rewarding in itself. Happy Holidays to you and your family Mr.F.

From Katie Allen:

I donated goods to my church’s (Redemption Hill) Thanksgiving drive and I donated so my friend could go on a December mission trip. 

From Anonymous:

Hey, Mr. F!

I found a $50 bill on the ground and gave it to a homeless person with a dog. I figured he needed it more than I did. Thank you for sending this to everyone again. It’s such a great way to honor your son, Theo. 

Happy Holidays! 

From Cara Vu:

Mr. F,

To one of the best instructors I have had at VCU, I hope you and your family are doing well. For my act of kindness, I will from January 4th-11th, 2014, travel to Honduras with an organization called Students Helping Honduras to help build schools for children who are not as fortunate as we are to attend schools in a safe, sturdy building.

In addition, my mechanic has been having financial issues lately. His shop is a very small garage, but he always takes care of his customers’ cars and takes the time to check a little more than asked for to ensure the car is in tip-top shape without charging extra despite his already cheap prices. I went to see him to fix a few things recently when he told me of his financial  woes so I decided to tip him an extra $30 for the holidays in addition to doing such a beautiful job fixing up my car. (If anyone needs a fix up on their vehicle, call (804) 254-3838 and ask for Hamid Madani! :))

Happy holidays everyone, and do good not just for the holidays or for Theo, but also to help make this world a better place.

From Haley Welch:

Mr F,

So far I have held a door open for an elderly couple at Denny’s and let people walk across the street instead of me driving super fast and being a jerk. My boyfriend donated any change he had in his pocket for paralyzed, wounded, and homeless war veterans. And a friend of ours had a plane ticket arranged for my boyfriend to come home for Christmas because he originally couldn’t.

From Tyra:

I was thinking about random acts of kindness and what I could do to dedicate it to Theo. I was thinking and thinking, but then life got in the way and I started doing other things. Then this past week my mom asked did I want to come to church to cook for the homeless and I said yeah! So I went to church and helped prepare meals for the homeless for the following day. I then realized that the best acts of kindness sort of happen when you don’t realize it, or it’s just an instinct that makes you do it without out thought. I don’t feel that I have done many random acts of kindness, but then again I have a bad memory. This one is memorable though not only because it was for a good cause, and made me feel good inside, but because it was in memory of a little boy who I am sure would’ve done the same and much more. I know your son is looking down on this movement that you’re doing and smiling. Thank you for opening this opportunity to us it definitely has made me want to do more to make an impact while I am still here.

From John Kim:

During finals my roommates and I found a cat shivering in the winter cold. We found her near our front door and once we opened it, it just ran in to escape the cold. We let it stay for a while since we couldn't let such an innocent animal be cold and hungry outside. We fed it, groomed it and let it sleep on my bed. Although we put up ads on Craigslist and Facebook looking for an owner, we received no response as of yet. We decided instead of giving it to a shelter where we cannot know her fate for certain, we decided to instead give it to a mutual friend's mother. We felt that was the best decision we can do because at least we know the cat will be in a loving new home.

From Michael Barnes:

Hey Mr. F.
I have an act that I did a few months ago that I thought of Theo when I committed it. I’m a part time delivery driver while I’m in school, and on one of my deliveries, the woman was short a few dollars for her order so I offered to just pay the difference so she and her family could have their food and enjoy their night. I remembered the stocking for your son from freshman year and thought I would share it with you now. Hope to see you around campus soon!

From Laura Gariepy:

Jamie and family,

Your email about Theo’s stocking moved me very deeply. I so enjoyed reading a bit about Theo on your blog this morning.  My daughter was also in the mohawk camp when she was a couple of months old.  ;)  I hope I can send you several more emails over the next couple of days about other random acts of kindness I commit, and that the one I’m sharing with you now is just the first of several.

This morning, my husband Dan and I made a small donation to the MISS Foundation in Theo’s honor after learning about it on your blog. What an incredible mission. I hope this group brought (and continues to bring) you tremendous comfort, and we’re honored to be able to support the cause.

The way you commemorate Theo’s memory through his stocking is beautiful. Thank you for encouraging us all to do something wonderful to keep his spirit alive!

Wishing you the very happiest of holidays!

From Kathryn Thompson:

Hi Jamie,

I gave a man a few dollars the other night to help him buy gas to get home. I pray your family has a blessed holiday!

From Theresa Kennedy:

Jamie -- 

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find something and I’ve wanted to send you guys something for years but have never run into a great opportunity.  And then yesterday, in the parking lot of Costco, a very *small* opportunity presented itself. 

A woman was pushing a huge cart full of stuff out to her car when a box fell off of the bottom of the cart.  She stopped and I reached down, grabbed the box, put it back on the cart, and then tried to stabilize some of the stuff that was on the cart for her so it wouldn’t fall again. And then I thought of Theo.  

So, something very small -- no big deal -- but I did it in honor of Theo.  

Thanks for the opportunity!  Merry Christmas! 

I was thinking of Theo...

I was thinking of Theo…

“I was thinking of Theo,” my friend Nicole said yesterday.

“So was I,” I said, and couldn’t help but smile, struck by how I’d been longing to hear someone say I was thinking of Theo without even realizing I had wanted it. Nicole had given me a present.

I didn’t mention to her that I think about Theo every day. Thinking about Theo is, for me, much like breathing. It’s a constant. At the same time, thinking about him sometimes socks all the air right out of me. Sometimes when I see a flaxen-haired boy of eight who’s been lucky and skillful enough to reach the age Theo would be were he alive, I need to lean against something solid and focus on expanding my diaphragm to breathe. It’s a precarious balancing act some days, a faltering dance. I think of him, I breathe; then I think of him gone, absent, dead, and I can’t breathe.

Nicole is wise and kind enough to know I think about him every day even though I didn’t say so. Generally, I don’t talk much about Theo. One minor reason is because some days I feel like I can’t breathe (see above ↑ paragraph). But this hinges greatly on another reason: no one really wants to talk about a dead child. After all, what’s there to say? How’s he doing? How’s his teething? How’s soccer camp going in the afterlife? If someone were to ask how I am coping having a dead child, I could go on and on, and there’s danger in that. While I don’t expect anyone to therapitize me, a pretty shabby feeling people who have kids can identify with is when your child is ignored, disregarded, forgotten. Especially when you miss the child so much that at times you can’t breathe. I’ve been enculturated to understand that talking about a dead child kills the mood in every room except in those few specially designated rooms where people purposefully go to talk specifically about dead children. Such rooms exist, and most people, luckily for them, need never visit. But try it—over dinner, or, say, on a date, at a party, or even in church! of all places—bring up dead children, and see if you don’t get the stink eye. The mood shifts; you can feel it in your skin. The barometer drops. Eyes dart, fingers twiddle, and you can see your breath in the air as someone clears his throat in uncomfortable recognition that he will one day die like all the rest of us poor slobs. We’re in this together, after all, though people don’t generally conduct their day-to-day mindful of this understanding, and within a minute, someone changes the subject, and the topic drifts back to something pleasant for everyone else to be comfortable again: sports, food, new plastic stuff to buy, the dreaded I was on Facebook and I saw a picture of this cat… The one who is most afraid of death tries hardest to crack the first joke following that pleasant rebound.

So it’s brilliant that Nicole said “I was thinking of Theo.” She was being bold and she was being mindful. Until she said this, I did not know how I much I’d wanted someone to appear before me as if by magic, providence, or kismet to say “I was thinking of Theo.”

Turns out, you are right now thinking of my son; thereby, you are giving me a gift as well. You, then, are a mindful person. It is amazing, really, that you are here reading this, enduring such jolly holiday tidings, breathing in and out, hopefully comfortably, perhaps contemplating what you can do to make the world a touch better and to fill the stocking for Theo, for your loved ones, for yourself. That’s the job of the stocking: it is for Theo, it is for your loved ones, it is for strangers, and it is for you. You, reading this now, are here because you are mindful.

Some of you have come here for years, and yet you know so little about Theo. What is there to know? He lived for nine months. He lived for 271 days. He only lived for three relatively healthy months in which he was able to laugh, cry, smile, swing, eat, stretch, poop straight, and babble. Then came the concluding six months, bedridden, tubes and tape, shunt and port and machinery and “Careful if you touch him, you may pull this tube out… Watch out for that wire…”

I will tell you that in my experience there is little that can surpass the great beauty in the mundane act of watching a healthy baby sleep well.

Since I have you here, now, being mindful, breathing in and out, and since you may know so little about him, I will tell you a few things about my boy Theo.

Thelonius Luther Helbert Fueglein was born with a mohawk. It was tall, bright yellow, and it refused to stay brushed down. People asked what product (as if) we used to make his hair to stay up like that. I have a hundred pictures of him with his giant yellow mohawk. When the surgical prep team shaved his three month old head to resect his lemon-sized brain tumor, they left the middle path of hair intact, seeing no reason to disrupt his life any more than it had been. I have a hundred pictures of him like this also. He was eighty-nine days old when they shaved the sides of his head.

Theo loved to swing. When he was two weeks old, 75 days before the tumor hit, we found that nothing would calm him faster than strapping him into his blue car seat and swinging him in wide arcs through the air. His eyes would open wide on the forward swing, narrow as he arced back. His mother Karla talked about how he was going to love roller coasters when he grew up.

Theo loved his mother. Often when she entered the room, his ears would prick up a bit, and he’d follow her movements. Babies so young don’t track with their eyes, but if he was watching anything, it was her. He knew when she was in the room. She was protector and she was food. After the tumor was resected, she was just about the only thing he’d respond to, if weakly.

Theo loved ceiling fans. As his newborn eyes adjusted to the life whirring around him, his eyes grew wider for sightings of Mommy and of ceiling fans. He was mesmerized by them. Maybe they helped calm the brewing pressure in his cranium. I am convinced that this is why swinging helped him feel better when he’d whimper and cry.

Theo loved the hum of the kitchen stove hood vent fan. When swinging him below the ceiling fan wouldn’t calm him, I would dance him in slow circles in the kitchen, on each revolution swooping his bitty body beneath the hood vent fan. I would sing to him a simple song:
         Where are you my darling boy?
         Where are you my Theo?
         Here I am, here I am
         I’m in the kitchen in daddy’s arms.
         When the sun has gone to sleep, we will find our rest
         On the hillside, on the soft warm ground
         And the moon will settle us down
         As the world spins ‘round and ‘round.

Ten minutes of any syllabic babble usually did the trick, until he was three months old. Then the tumor hit, and everything changed.

            Theo cried for hours after he’d had his stroke while we waited for the anesthesiologist from another town to come to the big city put him under for an MRI. We still had no idea what was wrong with him. Since he was crying, he could not be dead, the only comfort. Half his body moved differently from the other half that would not move. No matter how I tried to distract him, he would not look at me. I remembered wondering if he was blind. On that night, he was not. Blindness would come later, after the chemo. We rocked him and swung him in tiny arcs in cramped quarters. I sang him the song::
                    Where are you my precious boy?

         Where are you my Theo?
         Here I am…

I asked Karla if she wanted to sing. She did not—the first time she’s ever been unwilling to sing! Only then did it hit me what these words could mean. I’ve never sung that song since, and I never will again. We didn’t turn off the kitchen vent fan until after Theo died. 

Theo loved his Calming Vibration bouncy seat that displayed in an archway before him a tiny aquarium scene between two clear plastic panels of a happy starfish and two kissing fishes. Real water pumped through this small aquarium, spinning the smiling starfish! Two animals hung from the bottom of the aquarium scene for him to play with: a green seahorse/dragon thingy and an orange fish. When he grew agitated in his massive blue steel cage hospital bed, we’d secure the base of the chair on the bed and strap him into the seat, mindful not to pull out any of his various tubes and wires, and hit the on button: he’d vibrate to the tinny version of Brahm’s Lullaby.

Theo lost his mohawk to the first and only doses of cytoxan and vincristine chemo he got. After his eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair fell out, his head from behind resembled a dented baseball, red stitches from the shunt and the resection arcing from the base of his neck up around his ears. One might find the comparison somehow wrong or mean. More than anything in the world, I will remember Theo’s battered skull. It will be one of the last things I see before I die, I am certain of it. I will love his head always.

I remember how Theo’s head smelled during the various stages of his life, the various shapes it took on: from the copper-scented conical dome he was born with, fuzzily soft and smooth, that assumed a rounder shape the longer he was out in the world with us; to the flatish backside that resulted from his first three seemingly healthy months lying on his back, to avoid some sudden infant death, when it smelled like Dreft and sweet new baby skin; to the broken ball smelling of surgery and gauze and Betadine and tape it became when his cerebral cortex collapsed and the occipital plate sunk in and upward. I see all these shapes everywhere. I see his head in cloud formations, in the pattern of wood grain on telephone poles, in oil stains, in the black and gray patterns of slate rooftops on distant houses, in the river as it flows over rocks and fallen tree branches, in hubcaps, in streetlamps, in dreams. I see these things and I think: Thelonius… Sometimes I imagine Theo’s head growing right out of my own. It pops up out of my right ventricle, his head with eyes and smile and mohawk. He travels with me, up on my head, looking at all the things I look at, thinking of the things I am thinking, and we are of one head.

            The shaved side patches grew back once the toxic chemo left Theo’s system.  Some hairs grew quite long behind his ears. But nothing ever regrew where the mohawk had been. For the last three months of his life, Theo had a reverse-mohawk, an anti-mohawk, puffy on the sides, bare down the center.

I love the shapes Theo’s skull took.

            Another thing to tell you about Theo: he taught us many things during his brief stay with us. I figure he taught us more things, or, at least more crucial things, than we could have ever taught him.

He taught us patience. .5 mg. lorazepam (working its way up to 1 mg, then 1.5) crushed into .5 mg/ml phenobarbital, followed twenty minutes later by a 10 mg/15 ml. solution of morphine. Twenty minutes later, 5 ml. formula mixed with .5 ml of lactulose and/or docusate. Thirty minutes later, fentanyl nebulizer. Set up the feeding pumps. Wash the syringes. Where’s the chloral hydrate? Clean the Hickman port with the proper dose of heparin. Ativan, methadone, Zofran, oh my! Twenty-four hours a day, our dining room was his hospital.

He taught us endurance. How many long nights did I hold him, wondering if he’d die in my arms before sunup? I could count them; I could break it into minutes. I'd rather not, though. Sometimes it feels like it is still happening. It feels like it was decades ago; it feels like it was yesterday. We still endure.

He taught me how utterly critical the simplest motion can be: once per second for hours I stroked with alternating thumbs that small space between his eyebrows to comfort him after his gastrointestinal tube placement surgery as he was withdrawing from morphine. Those minutes and hours were the most crucial hours in the world.

He taught us how to value time. When things would careen south with him—stridor breathing, gagging, crying—time would speed up, everything would become utterly crucial. He'd calm, and time would slow to a crawl. A trip to the hospital: anything could go wrong. The way time moved while we were with him was like regularly experienced life-time, but incredibly intensified. What he taught us is knowing how and when to adjust. Someone told me it seemed like forever ago that Theo died, while it seemed to me in that moment that he died yesterday; the next minute it felt like he'd died seven years ago. Sometimes I think he’ll die tomorrow. To this day, he is still teaching us about time. He is teaching us that time does not heal wounds: what matters is what we do with our time, how we spend it, how little of it there is.

There was a word on the one-piece, snap-up, soft fleece sleepsuit we buried him in, medium blue with dark banded collar, a solid, strong color on him, featuring a childlike rendering of a mighty orange lion, maned thick brown. Next to the lion, the word “BRAVE.” His dying took forever, and then it ended in an instant. It took all the hard-won qualities Theo taught us to be able to hold him and watch him breathe his last breath on Feb 20^th, 2006, at 3:33 in the afternoon.

It is very frightening to be brave. Theo taught us what it was to have to be brave for a little while.

We remember all this because of the most important quality, the sum of all these pieces: Thelonius taught us to be mindful.

These are the things I have to tell you about Theo. And so we dedicate this stocking in mindfulness to Theo, to you, to your loved ones, and to strangers we’ll never meet who are anyway our brothers and sisters. As wise man Stan Kustesky once said on this blog, “When you really get down to it, all we have is each other.”

I am grateful to you for being here, reading this, and I am grateful to be the father of Theo and Lula.

Go be mindful and have a fantastic New Year.

— Jamie F.

January 11, 2013

From Alex Kreher:

I hope you had a nice holiday, and a lot of people who thought of Theo! During the Christmas time and beyond I thought a lot about Theo and every time I did something good, I thought of him even more. It felt so good. I gave the change I had in my pockets to a homeless man while I walked pass him, I bought two other homeless people a couple cans of soup and drinks.
Thank you Karla for the kind words on your blog about me, and I really thank you for sharing this story with me and letting me capture it!!
I hope you are doing good and that you both will have a great year!

From Haley Cowan:

a couple weeks ago before i went to my focused inquiry class here in Virginia i meditated and did yoga with crystals to prepare myself for the day.  i carry my crystals  almost everywhere i go.  they are used as reminders for myself to always be mindful and as a reminder to disperse any negative energies that come my way.  the crystals mean a lot to me and i have almost 20 different beautiful ones but i never keep them for too long.  like anything in the world, if you cling onto something then lose it, you will suffer.

          after my focused inquiry class i went to lunch with two of my friends.  in the middle of eating i realized i had forgotten one of the brand new crystals i had taken in the classroom i was just in.  it was a big chunk of calcite that i had just bought with my own money that was surprisingly a little pricey for something that came out of the earth.  running back to the building, i realized that there was another class that came in right after mine so i was thinking about how much i was going to look like a complete freak when i barge in there asking if anyone had seen a large rock sitting on the desk.  

          when i came in and asked, one girl who sat in the seat i was previously sitting in claimed in right away and sounded sad when I came back to retrieve it.  at that moment i decided to just give it to this random person who'd i had never seen or met before because i realized how fixated she had become with it.

          after saying that, i knew that whole class was surprised, i could feel it in the room.  i detached myself from that crystal right at that moment because i noticed how happy she was to now have it.  i hope i gave these students some form of inspiration and reason to not to cling onto everything you own and realize how amazing it is to give someone a little piece of you.

          before and after that time, i have given many people i personally know crystals.  i want to teach people that giving something to someone random gives you the same feeling when giving a gift to someone you know personally.  the feeling of giving is one of the most amazing feelings.  when you detach yourself from things you cling onto and once you lose it doesn't seem so bad.  you start to realize that there is reason why it's not in your possession anymore.  maybe someone else needs it more than you.   

January 8, 2013

From Bre Spain:

For my random act of kindness I used my left over swipes (89) and dining dollars (32) to feed the homeless in Monroe Park. Instead of letting them go to waste since they do not roll over to the next semester, I helped feed the needy and give back to the less fortunate. It was a great feeling.

From David Pandolfe:

I think of you often, and I think of Theo’s Christmas Stocking each year. With regard to acts of kindness, I try to teach my kids that the less fortunate around us on the streets are not invisible or scary. That we can not only stop and open our wallets but we can also say hello and ask how they are doing. I hope my kids learn from the experience. I think they do.

Hope you’re doing well.

Best wishes.