Becoming an Imaginist: My Story of Survival

I am a natural born optimist. Perhaps I was born sunny side up. Maybe I get it from my mother. Maybe I watched too many episodes of The Brady Bunch as a child. However it happened, I prefer life on the sunny side, and always have. This I am grateful for.

The first time I heard the term ‘Imaginist’, was from Don Whittemore. As he delivered his incredible TEDXBoulder talk that evening, I sat there completely frozen in my skin. If only I had understood how vital a life skill this would be to me many years before.

“Odds are, many of us will confront an unimaginable situation. We may then be pushed to the edges of our experience. If you’ve never imagined yourself on that edge, never imagined what you’d do when you get there, I assure you, you’ll have a much harder time coming back from that edge. Become an imaginist. Imagining what might harm you, might just save you” –– Don Whittemore

What happens when a natural born optimist is forced into becoming an imaginist without any warning?

March 3, 2007
Wheels down LAX, our last stop stateside before Costa Rica. With three hours to kill before our next flight, my husband Patio and I headed to the bar and set up shop. With laptops at home (iPads and iPhones had yet to be a thing) we sat chatting excitedly about our pending trip. How excited we were to meet up with some of our dearest friends for a week of fun in the sun Costa Rica style. In just a few hours we would be beachside and ready to rock. As I finished my last few sips of wine, I reminded Patio to touch base with his family, and started dialing up my mother. “Yep, I emailed you our itinerary. We are staying at the Casa De Manuel, in case you need to reach us. Will be sure to take lots of pictures. Love you!”

From the people, to the landscape, to an overall feeling of well being, Costa Rica is nothing but amazing. We spent the first few days soaking in fun poolside, beachside, and zip lining over the jungle. We had recently moved to Oregon from Vermont, away from our tight group of lifelong friends so reuniting with them in such an exotic place was even more special.

It’s never good when the house phone rings in the middle of the night in your vacation house, in a foreign country. At sometime after midnight, it rang. My friend Doug tapped on our door with “Sue is on the phone for you”.

“Hi Court. I’m ok, we are all ok, but I need you to put Pat on the phone now, please.”

“What’s going on? Why can’t you just tell me? What’s going on?”

“Please honey. I love you. Please give the phone to Pat”

At this point, I had no idea what the hell was going on, but I knew it was horrific. I handed the phone over to Patio and watched the look on his face as Sue was giving him unimaginable news.

My mother, Patricia Kelly Foster, had died in her sleep two days before.

Instantly shrouded in sorrow, confusion, shock and trauma, we all took in the news as best we could. Many of our friends had also grown up with my mother, and knew her well. Castle and Doug probably spent as much time with my mom during their teenage years as I did. It was an unimaginable life event. Having them beside me, I am incredibly grateful for.

Motherless
I’ll never forget how perplexed the grief counselor was when I explained to her on that first visit, that I had never once imagined my mother dying. Until that point, the thought of her death had never really entered my mind. Of course, I thought about her aging, and what that would be like and how my siblings and I would take care of her. It’s not that I am afraid of death, or in denial to the fact that it’s where we will all land. The truth was that I had not imagined a world without my mother, or even more, my life without my mother. I never really considered how her absence would have such an impact on my relationship with my siblings, my father, my friends, colleagues and my husband. I never thought how it would touch my every feeling, of every day for many years to come — or how her death would immediately define me– shoving me into a category that I never wanted to be in — motherless.

I don’t remember much about the next 48 hours. A call with my sister Kelly. Tears, blinding tears. Hearing Patio on the phone for hours trying to arrange our travel back to Vermont. A final walk on the beach with Patio holding me up. So many tears. Staring at the ticketing agent in the San Jose Airport like a zombie as he handed me my boarding pass. Waking up at our friend’s apartment in Boston. Collapsing into my brother Joel’s arms outside the Burlington airport.

Community
My mother lived in Waitsfield, Vermont for nearly 20 years. She was incredibly active in her community, and those that knew her were grateful to call her their friend. Waitsfield was also a town that for me, offered a bittersweet return. Growing up there, it was a town that I loved but couldn’t wait to leave, and being forced into the series of events to come in this little VT town, was like being catapulted into a land of confusion.

There was an overwhelming outpouring of support and love for me, my family and my mother over the next few weeks. I’ve never felt more love from a community. Especially one that I had worked so hard at pulling away from. People say that tragedy brings out the best, and the worst in people. Looking back, I am so grateful, and will never be able to thank all of the wonderful people that make up the sweet little Mad River Valley enough. Thank you for your love, kindness and support. Thank you for sharing your wonderful stories of my mother that I never would have known. Thank you for welcoming me and my family back into your tight knit world, no questions asked and with nothing but love.

Emotional Auction
My mother was a very loving, very practical yet wonderfully optimistic woman. Her smile could light up a room, and her laugh was infectious at times. She had a fun way of keeping things real and bringing things down a notch or two when necessary. One thing she wasn’t, however, was an imaginist. She didn’t have a plan. She wasn’t prepared. No one should have to know how to be fully prepared for their own death, but everyone who leaves anything, anyone, or any spirit behind does need to have a will prepared. My mother, as far as we know, didn’t have one.

The first day my sister and I spent hours in her house searching for her will. Where do you think she would keep it? Under her mattress? In with her other important files? Tucked into her collection of classic books? We were left clueless, exhausted and confused. What do we do now? Legally, is there something we are supposed to do?

My sister, being the eldest, was made executor of the estate. It’s not that my mother had a ton of assets that needed to be divided accordingly. Actually, her assets were the easiest to deal with. What wasn’t easy to handle was all of her personal things. They were just things, of course, but all things we each felt some attachment to for whatever reason. Her jewelry box, her antique sweater chest, her collection of books, her grandmother’s punch bowl set. We sifted through each room, item by item, with emotions and memories of each little item casting a spell of sadness over us. It was devastating, to try and make the case for why you felt attached to something, and why you were the best candidate to keep it. Some sort of sad, emotional auction. Those four days were some of the darkest, most painful days of my life. Still to this day, I have yet to unpack many of the items I now own to avoid that darkness. If only she had been prepared.

The Question
What do you think her last wishes were?

We were all very quick to agree that my mother never would have wanted a traditional burial, in a casket, in the ground. Looking back, I am not sure if going through that process of laying her to rest would have been a comfort, or would have sent me into an even deeper tailspin of sorrow that I couldn’t control. Thankfully, the decision to have her cremated was an obvious one. What wasn’t obvious, and still isn’t, is what to do with her remains? It’s been six years that my mother’s ashes have been with my brother Tim, waiting for us to decide where her final resting place should be. Why didn’t she have a plan?

How does an eternal optimist become an imaginist without losing their spark?
It’s been six years since my mother passed, and I can say with clarity I have no real understanding of grief and how it’s all supposed to play out. There are changes in me, for sure. I am a more guarded person, with a much deeper appreciation for the little things in life.

Don Whittemore shared his story of survival, and how letting his imagination take him to the edge actually saved his life. He suggests we know the tactics for survival, based on our mind. Although his story is more of imagining one’s own death, how can we use this tactic to get through life’s most unimaginable events as they happen around us?

Please understand I am not suggesting you set up camp in the land of gloom & doom governed by the Grim Reaper, but I do believe its important to let yourself go to a very dark place and imagine the unimaginable even for a brief moment. It will only make the sunny side that much brighter.

And please — get yourself a will.