From Lemons to Lemonade: My Journey from Loss to Renewal

by Gerri Mungin

Overview

Lemons to Lemonade is a story of loss and more. It is also a love story and a story of renewal. Gerri Mungin grew up in the middle of 1960s New York City. There she found love, married her childhood sweetheart, Ted, and went on to live her version of the American dream.

Gerri and Ted moved from New York to the San Francisco Bay Area, the first in their families to leave the nest. On the West Coast they laugh, cry, love, argue, kiss and make up, and raise two children. They retire to the beautiful community of Huntersville, North Carolina where they live an idyllic lifeuntil death comes knocking.

A warm, honest, sad, deeply moving as well as hopeful and thought provoking story, follow Gerri as she deals with the challenges that will face us all one day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504350457
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	02/25/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	120
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

In 2014, Gerri Mungin lost her husband and son within five weeks of each other and was catapulted from deep grief and loss toward a search for happiness. This memoir documents the first year of a life lived without the most important men in her life and her quest to find out whether she can smile, laugh and find joy ever again. She authors two blogs: I’m Retired—Now What and On a Journey and teaches yoga to seniors in Huntersville, North Carolina where she lives with her daughter.

Read an Excerpt

From Lemons to Lemonade

My Journey from Loss to Renewal

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By Gerri Mungin

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2016 Gerri Mungin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-5044-0

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CHAPTER 1

Journey

A strong woman believes that she is strong enough to face her journey, but a woman of strength has faith that it is in this journey that she will become strong.

— Luke Easter

It was a warm, sunny New York City day in April 2014.I stepped onto Eighty-Eighth Street, and my senses were immediately assaulted with sounds, smells, sights, and people — people everywhere.

As I walked to the corner, a screaming ambulance came barreling down York Avenue, the sound making me plug my ears with my index fingers. I looked around. Everyone else was just walking. Did they not hear the same horrible noise I was hearing?

A little boy riding a scooter ran right over my foot — his parent, a half block away from him, was paying no attention. Dogs eliminating right in the middle of the sidewalk made it necessary for folks to navigate around them. Most owners picked up the big stuff, but what about the residue and smells left on the streets where mere mortals had to walk? And what about the "Curb your dog" rule that used to exist in this city?

As I was crossing from York Avenue on my way to First Avenue, I had to hop, skip, and jump out of the way of the Eighty-Sixth Street crosstown accordion bus as it navigated the turn from York to Eighty-Sixth Street. Half of its body was on York Avenue, and the rest was already making the turn onto Eighty-Sixth Street.

As I passed First Avenue, I heard a young man coming up behind me. He was talking on his cell phone. "Hey, dude. It's been a long time. How are you? I thought I'd stop by after work. Maybe we could smoke some weed."

I quickened my steps to get out of his air space, and coming toward me was a woman screaming into her cell phone, "What the f — k do you mean you can't make it?" Was I stuck in an alternate universe?

As I continued to walk west, I could see the Lexington Avenue train station ahead — not far now, only another block to go. As I got closer, I saw what looked like a bubbling cauldron of humanity washing up out of the subway station. Everyone was coming up, and I needed to go down. This was way too much for me. What in the world was I doing here in the middle of New York City? Where was my beautifully green, bucolic North Carolina life?

I bypassed the subway entrance and kept walking. Maybe I would just do something else today — something not involving the subway. As I walked west toward Central Park, I felt my cell phone vibrate in my purse. I pulled it out. Caller ID said it was my longtime friend Alice. I hit "Accept" and heard her melodic voice. "Hi, Deanie. I was thinking about you and thought I'd call to see how you're doing."

How was I doing? Good question.

CHAPTER 2

What Does Legacy Mean?

I would want my legacy to be that I was a great father, son, and friend.

— Dante Hall

On January 24,2014, my husband, Ted, died. We were married for forty years and had grown up in the same neighborhood. He was my best friend. Ted waged a valiant battle against duodenal cancer. From diagnosis to death was a short ten months.

On February 28,2014, my son, Lateef, died of complications arising from grand mal seizures. He was forty-one years old and left a wife and two daughters: eight and thirteen years old. One great loss after another, with not enough time to breathe in between. I was devastated.

This devastation made me think deeply about legacy. What does the word legacy mean to you? How important is it? I've attended several corporate trainings where we were asked to write the obituary we'd like to have written about us. An academic exercise for some, it was one of my favorites because it made me think about the type of person I wanted to be. I had thought about legacy before, but now it had a much deeper meaning.

Legacy is what one leaves behind. Ted struggled with the concept of legacy, and though he was sure that part of his legacy was the children he would leave behind, he had a tendency to think that if he wasn't financially successful, he really had nothing of great value to leave behind. I'm not sure what Lateef thought about legacy because we never discussed it, but I do know that he took his job as father and husband very, very seriously. I believe legacy has nothing to do with money or success. Even those of limited means leave behind a legacy — a mark on those left behind.

I have been interested in death and dying since I was in my forties; I read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and other authors on my own, and for no other reason than that I was interested in the strength it took to deal with loss and grief. I told my grief counselor that I should know how to deal with this. His answer was, "Reading the recipe for a cake is not the same as baking it!" Simple and so, so true. I was not prepared for the double-barreled pain of losing my husband and son within five weeks of each other. One would be terrible enough, but two? Unbelievable! What it has done, though, is encourage me to think more deeply about legacy — Ted's and Lateef's — and what I'd like my own legacy to be.

Ted lived a good life and has left his mark on so many people. He was healthy and loved working out. He loved children and was a big brother to two little boys who needed a positive male role model in their lives. He loved photography and left thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of pictures to remember him by. Someone just called me the other day to discuss putting together a retrospective of Ted's photographs — a big project but one that we will complete in time.

Ted was the extrovert to my introvert, the right-brained creative thinker to my left-brained organized thinker. He was the idea man; I was the implementer. He was the Aries ram; I was the Taurus bull. So we locked horns on many occasions, but through all of that, we were a great couple — complementing each other. He loved travel, and were it not for him, I would not have traveled to Europe (including Iceland), South Africa, Central America, and many Caribbean islands. He was a mentor to many and has inspired our family to travel, learn about other cultures, and be fiscally responsible. His life meant something. I regret that he lived only sixty-seven years, but he packed a lot into those years. We were so very happy those last seven years after retiring from Northern California to Huntersville, North Carolina, and for that, I am grateful.

Ted had a great sense of humor. Because I'm so literal, sometimes I didn't get his jokes. (He was more to the Far Side spectrum.) He cracked me up one day when he brought me a light-up Buddha. When I scoffed at the dichotomy of a battery-operated Buddha, he said, "I thought you'd really like him. He's enlightened." Then there was the time he bought me a silver ring with a dime on it. He knew I wanted a diamond ring and thought diamonds were a waste of money, so he bought me a ring with "a dime on it." Funny! I returned the gesture when he begged for a dog and I bought him a stuffed one. We had fun.

My son, Lateef, was a fun-loving young man who wrote for a living. Not many people can do what they love and get paid for it. Lateef was a journalism major and loved writing. He made friends wherever he went. He was the peacekeeper and could always make you laugh, no matter how low in spirit you might be. His legacy? He left behind a wealth of articles, essays, and videos completed while he was a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and CNN. He and a friend wrote a socially conscious three-volume comic book series when he was twenty years old.

I just recently came across several recorded hip-hop songs showcasing Lateef's rap skills. I had no idea that this was one of his skills. Neither Ted nor I took Lateef's love for rap seriously. I remember Ted telling Lateef that he needed to focus on school and that he needed to cut out that "rap crap." I knew that Lateef dabbled in rap, but now I understand that he was really good. He was good at putting together rhymes quickly. As he said in one cut, "He was a rhyme writer — his rhymes were liquid." I'm continually hearing from people who loved and respected him, including a note from a young man whose organization, developed to help at-risk youth, got awards and donations due to Lateef's in-depth reporting and notes from friends he grew up with recounting funny stories about Lateef.

I don't pretend to understand why things like this double loss happen, but I do believe that adverse circumstances like this can provide opportunities for growth. Therefore, one of the things I'm doing is looking at what kind of legacy I'd like to leave. Another thing I'm doing is remembering Ted and Lateef in print. Their lives deserve to be remembered. They are forever in my heart.

The license plate on my car says, "ONAJERNY." This is, indeed, a journey. If you're interested, I could use the company. Come along with me.

CHAPTER 3

Remembering Ted: Early Days

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I can't remember when I actually met Ted. He liked to tell people that I was promised to him in the womb. A cute story, but that was untrue. I think I knew his sister Helen first and met Ted through her. We both grew up in the same Manhattan neighborhood in New York City. He lived on Sixty-First Street, and I lived on Sixty-Fourth Street. Three blocks made no difference — all the kids congregated in the playground on Sixty-Fourth Street or at "the barrels," which were play structures closer to Sixty-First Street. I know that we were boyfriend and girlfriend in junior high school, and I'm sure we knew each other before that.

Ted was one of a trio of boys who hung out together: Ted, Darryl, and Gregory — later they were joined by another boy, Luther (called Junior). What got your attention first was Ted's walk. Ted, Darryl, and Gregory would walk down the street together. They were all fast walkers but Ted stood out. He had a long stride and a loose-gaited, bouncy walk — arms flailing all over the place. Darryl walked on his toes with a bounce, and I can no longer remember how Gregory walked, but they were all really cute. When you saw them walking, it looked like they walked in tandem, a three-pronged teeter-totter, two heads up, the other down, and then repeat. These young men had exponential swagger before the phrase was coined.

In addition to this, Ted was a cool dresser. He loved fine clothes and shoes. One of his early jobs was in a downtown shoe store named Feldman's. He talked a lot about what he learned from his mentor, Joe Fines, about dealing with the public while delivering the beautiful, fine leather shoes that Feldman's was known for. Joe Fines played an important part in Ted's life. Joe was the father and teacher Ted never had. Perhaps Joe helped fashion the father Ted would become. I remember Ted told me that Joe taught him to keep his hands out of his pockets, to always look busy. At Ted's funeral, Lateef listed "hands out of pockets" as one of the important things his father taught him. It's interesting how things get passed on and what people impact our lives. Ted worked hard and saved his money. He was one of the first of our group to get a brand-new car and his own apartment in the Bronx, complete with cool seventies beads hanging in the doorway. He was absolutely too cool for school.

A date with Ted was not just a movie and pizza. He introduced me to my first play (a play about Jack Johnson the boxer) and my first modern dance show (Alvin Ailey). We went to museums. We rode bikes in Central Park, though I was far from athletic. We saw Sly & The Family Stone in concert in Central Park and spent an evening listening to Nina Simone. We did things that other young African American kids were not doing. Ted was always different, and so was I. We fit together very well.

We talked a lot about our dreams — good jobs, a home in the suburbs. I say we talked a lot, but actually Ted did most of the talking. I was a great listener. As the years went on, I became a better talker. He would conceive it, and I could figure out how to make it happen. He was the thirty-thousand-foot person; I was closer to the ground — the detail person.

Many times, and on many things, we disagreed. I wanted the finer life, and I wanted it fast. Ted wanted the finer life, but he was content to get there slowly. He believed in saving for what you wanted. He was averse to using credit cards. We had more discussions about delayed gratification than I care to remember. Somehow we met in the middle after many stumbles and, thank God, with no major falls. It was a while before I figured out that it was only natural for a ram and a bull to butt heads — given their natures. I was stubborn, and he would not stop until he got his point across. We both wanted things our way.

Luckily we did meet in the middle and were able to navigate forty years of marriage with some scars, of course, but no major wounds. As the years together ticked up, people asked us what the secret to a long marriage was. Once we had decided that divorce was no longer an option, everything became easier. In the early days and years of our marriage, I would throw around the d word very easily. I was struggling with the concept of partnership. I was raised in a single-parent home, and my mom made all the rules, so I really had no time for making decisions by committee. Ted was methodical. No decision was ever made quickly. His favorite answer to a question was either "No" or "I'll think about it," which usually meant "No" also.

This was the seventies, and I, like many other women, was struggling with identity issues. Sometimes I felt like I was giving up who I was to be a wife. The mother thing I got very easily; it was the relationship part that was difficult for me. Ted often said being a father was the most difficult job for him. I bristled at this because I read his statement as "I don't like being a father." Of course, that was not what he said and not what he meant, but as was my wont in those days, I had to confront him. We argued about who was right. We were both right. Both roles were difficult. They were just another thing to argue about, partly because in the early days we thought there was only one right answer. I eventually figured out that there was a comfortable way to be a wife and still be "me."

Ted was patient — even when I continually tried to get the bank to put my name above his on our joint checks! Those were the things that made me crazy. Of course, my name never made it to the top of the checks, and soon enough it made no difference to me. In the early days it was all about who had the power. I remember telling Ted if he just admitted that I was the boss, everything would be okay. Well, you know the answer to that! So we stumbled along, and before we knew it we were coasting. As I think about those times now, I'm reminded of a Maya Angelou quote: "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better." Eventually I learned how to do better.

In the early days I loved to hear Ted talk. He could talk for hours on so many topics. He had a head for economics, finance, geography, and history and was not shy about letting you know what he knew. In the early, stars-in-the-eyes days I loved listening; in the middle years when I struggled with my sense of identity and descended into the throes of alcoholism, not so much. In the last year when he became silent, I would have given anything to hear him drop his knowledge. As Lateef said at Ted's funeral, "I think he had talked enough. If you had not listened, that was your fault." There was no more to be said.

CHAPTER 4

Time Stood Still

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

— Helen Keller

We left New York in 1973 for the San Francisco Bay Area. Ted worked for a British-based oil company, and it was relocating its headquarters to San Francisco. They would move us and pay for Ted's college education. We could not afford to pass up such an opportunity, so I left my oil company job in New York to find another in the West Coast mecca of San Francisco. What an adventure. We were the first of our family to leave New York. This was a big move: three thousand miles and an entirely different lifestyle away.

We settled in, made friends, and started the serious jobs of raising a family, buying our first home, and building our careers. Ted was in sales, and I was in information technology. We raised our two children in Concord and Walnut Creek, California, two idyllic suburbs of Oakland, California. Our son, Lateef, was born in New York in 1972 and was eighteen months old when we moved to California. He always seemed to have a city edge to him. Our daughter, Rashida, born in California in 1976, became a Cali-girl born and bred, complete with a valley girl accent.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from From Lemons to Lemonade by Gerri Mungin. Copyright © 2016 Gerri Mungin. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface, xi,
Acknowledgments, xiii,
Chapter 1 Journey, 1,
Chapter 2 What Does Legacy Mean?, 3,
Chapter 3 Remembering Ted: Early Days, 7,
Chapter 4 Time Stood Still, 11,
Chapter 5 The News, 16,
Chapter 6 Good-Bye, My Love, 22,
Chapter 7 Celebrating a Life, 25,
Chapter 8 The Hospital, 28,
Chapter 9 My Son, Lateef, 30,
Chapter 10 Good-Bye, Lateef, 35,
Chapter 11 Two Deaths — The Aftermath, 38,
Chapter 12 What Is Grief?, 41,
Chapter 13 365 Days of Happy, 49,
Chapter 14 Out and About in New York City, 54,
Chapter 15 Guidance, 57,
Chapter 16 Taking Care of Myself, 63,
Chapter 17 Are You Ready for This?, 67,
Chapter 18 Milestones, 71,
Chapter 19 October, 73,
Chapter 20 November, 77,
Chapter 21 December, 80,
Chapter 22 January, 86,
Chapter 23 February, 90,
Chapter 24 Now What?, 94,
Appendix A Son's Tribute to His Dad, 99,