Life Rafts

The oil painting hung in our living room for our entire lives, and in my parents' house long after we'd moved away.  The frame was much more impressive than the painting.  My mother loved it because she and my dad had bought it early in their marriage - their first grown-up purchase - real art.  I looked at it many times, but more often than that, I didn't see it at all.  It was there in our lives, but not something I noticed every day.

It is funny how we cling to things when the people we most want to hang onto are gone.  For me, it was my mother's pajamas and T-shirts: as if, when I wore them, I could pretend she was still with me.  Items of clothing that are comfortable, reassuring, and a part of every day life:  these were the items of hers that I clung to as if I could, just by wearing them close to my body, feel her back in my life again.  When my dad died, it was his flag and his ties:  items that defined the impressive, debonair, and imposing person he was in my life.

For my sister, it was the oil painting.  I can't pretend to know what kind of comfort she thought she would get from it.  I can't pretend to know its meaning in her life.  But, I did know how much she wanted it.  I knew that it was more than a painting to her.  I knew that it was her life raft.  And I threw it away.

The painting was promised to her by my mother.  In fact, my sister believed that it had been repaired after the fire that destroyed everything in my parents' home about seven years before she died.  It was kept in a number of black garbage bags and a large box meant for storing paintings.  Perhaps that box gave truth to the lie:  a painting in such a box must have been repaired.  But it hadn't been. 

I had to clean out my father's apartment before he died.  It was sad, it was backbreaking, and it was lonely.  I looked at things they had saved and saw them in the cold light of stark reality and my heart broke.  How could their lives be punctuated by these things I found around me?  They were more special than these things, they were everything and these things seemed like nothing.  And then I opened the box to the oil painting.

For me, it was like opening a door, expecting a portal to my childhood and my parents, and instead finding a decomposed corpse.  This painting which had looked over our lives was decrepit.  It was smoke damaged.  It had holes in it.  Removing the plastic bags led to the removal of paint which had seemingly melted into the plastic.  It was damaged beyond repair.  My heart fell for my sister, realizing that my mother had not attempted to fix the painting all those years ago, and that it was destroyed. 

I wanted to spare my sister, my baby sister, from that pain.  I got rid of it.  Better that I could tell her it was gone, if she should ask for it, then to have her see it like I did.  I didn't want her to feel burdened by it:  unable to enjoy it, but unable to get rid of it.  I thought I was being merciful.  My gut reaction has always been to shield my sister.  For many years, I was her surrogate mother, taking her with me on dates, to parades, and attending her parent/teacher conferences.  This was my role:  to protect her.  I did what I had always done.

People grow up and your truths are not always remembered as their truths.  Despite her place in my heart, in my life, my sister and I grew apart as she grew closer to my other sister.  Though she remained in my heart, I did not remain in hers and I am sure my place in her life became something that I would not recognize, any more than she could remember what her place in my life had been.  It was painful, but it did not prepare me for the annihilation to come.

As we were leaving the funeral parlor, after having buried my father, my sisters, united, confronted me about the painting.  I was shocked, I was hurt, and I was exhausted.  I told her that it was gone, and I tried to explain.  An ugly scene ensued.  They have not spoken to me since.  I am, simply, out of their lives.

Sometimes I am angry.  When I needed them the most, they forsook me for a painting.  Mostly, I am hurt.   We could be, to each other, what we cling to in order to feel our parents back in our lives.  We could be each other's life rafts.

There must be more to it.  There must be years of resentment, disgust and loathing behind this excoriation of me from her life.  I don't know.  But I will not give truth to another lie.  I will not let her hatred change what I feel in my heart.  She is still my baby sister and I will cling to that.

Live in the Moment

Today I am working on living in the moment.  For me, this is a very hard thing to do so I am hoping to acquire a habit of it.  I tend to ruminate on the past and worry about the future.  My justification for worrying about the future is that I need to be prepared in case my fears come to fruition.  The glaring problem with this mindset is that while I worry about the future, I don't do much to prepare for it.  My worries paralyze me and I do nothing.  So what, then, is the benefit to all my worrying?

One thing that I have been practicing is being mindful of where I am.  Sometimes, when my anxiety gets the best of me, I try to fill my senses with my present surroundings.  I tell myself where I am, what I can smell, what I can feel with my hands, and what I see.  This helps.  It grounds me to the present, and helps me see that there is nothing at that moment that warrants my debilitating anxiety.

All of this requires an attitude adjustment.  I really believe that adjusting my attitude will bring me benefits.  As I read some of the blogs that inspire me, I see that the wisest people advocate changing your attitude.  This is not a new idea for me.  I have always found Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, to be one of my favorite inspirations.  The book presents his philosophy that you can change how you feel about things, how you react to things, how you view things, thus exercising your free will in even the most horrific times.  What is new for me is a concentrated effort to live this way.

So today I am making conscious choices.  I am choosing to be happy, to live in the present, and to be mindful of where I am and what I have. 

Fear

I have been wracked with fear.  I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing, gasping for air.  During the day I am so afraid that it debilitates me.

Some of my fears are legitimate:  I am not currently employed, unemployment is running out and I don't have any of my savings left.  At 48 years old, with a young child, this is truly frightening.  I get that.  I am doing what I can to update my career credentials so that I can go back to work, and my former employer seems committed to having me back when this is accomplished, but I worry about how long it is taking.  I know that I should "let go and let God," but this past year, with the suffering and death of my father, I have lost my faith.  If I let go, who is there to help?

My father.  My hero.  My friend.  He died in August after nine months of rapid decline and ill health.  For nine months I was constantly in a state of fright/flight.  Every single day I had to fight with someone:  the doctors who couldn't say definitively what was wrong, the nurses who ignored him, the nursing home that neglected him, the insurance company that denied coverage, the family members who were of no help to me, and even my Dad who hated me because he couldn't stay in his apartment alone and blamed me for it.  Then there was the false hope that he would rally, that we would have more time together, that a miracle would happen.  There is nothing that sucks the life out of you than the realization that the hope you've been clinging to is a chimera.

I have been cold with fears of death.  In my darkest moments I have seen my future as one slow march toward nothingness.  I have been preoccupied with my health and convinced that I harbor cancer or life-threatening organ damage.  At one point, when I was really at a dark place, I felt that death was all around me.  I could not shake this preoccupation with death and my fear of it.

I recently read (and I wish I could credit it, but I will be more careful about that from now on) that grief sometimes takes the form of a fear and preoccupation with death.  It has only been months since my father died, and it is possible that I have not processed it all.  Or, this could be just a stage of my grief. I am going to be more cognizant of my feelings and try to deal with them in a healthy manner.

It is 2013 and the past eight years have been the toughest of my life.  My life is such a mess that there are times when I don't know how to get through the next minute.  Really.  I am at a point where my survival is minute-by-minute.

2013 has brought a yearning in me.  I want to enjoy my life again.  I want to smile genuinely, look forward to something, feel contentment, and be at ease.  The trouble is that I have forgotten how to do these things.  I have been so unhappy for so long that everything is a burden, my worries overwhelm me and, though I am lonely as hell, I want to be left alone.

A voice inside me tells me that it is a hopeful sign that I want things to be different. 

Since I don't know how to get to the place I would rather be, I have decided to just journey and hope I wind up there.  My journey is going to be reading all that I can on changing my outlook, healing my wounds, forgiving those who have hurt me, finding my faith in God again, and moving toward my goals.  At this time I cannot afford a therapist, so I will cull the Internet for articles, quotes, prayers and advice and use this forum to comment, journal, and hopefully, grow.

I have to believe that moving forward has got to take me away from where I stand now.  Baby steps are better than no steps at all.  I just can't remain where I am right now.

Learning to Deal

One thing that I have learned since my mother died is that unkind people feel that it is okay to be mean to you once your mother is gone. Maybe they hold their tongues before because they fear retribution from a protective mother; maybe it is out of respect toward a mother's love. I cannot begin to guess. But I did not see this coming.

It began with people who I thought were friends. Soon after my mother died, some of them began to treat me badly. I felt betrayed. It was so flagrant I thought I was surely losing my mind. Then my healing began and I saw that as hurtful as it was, it made it easier to see who my real friends really were. Heck, my mother died. My best friend in the whole world was gone. I had survived that and I was slowly healing from that. I would absolutely get over being stabbed in the back from a few phonies along the way.

Then my cousin attacked me. This is a woman I had always admired, idolized even. She called me the most selfish woman on earth for adopting my precious daughter. I was speechless. No one, not even my loveless sisters. had ever questioned my adoption. I still don't even know what to make of it. On a basic human level, she has no reason to attack me, to hurt me.. On a primal womanly level, she insulted me. Who the hell does she think she is to question my reproductive choices? She is a multimillionaire. No one would dare question her choices to plan her family. What gives her the right to have a say in how I planned mine?

And of course, there are my sisters. My babysister who revealed she has to "work so hard" at a relationship with me. Really. Loving her comes as naturally to me as breathing. Every parent/teacher conference I went to for her, every date I took her on, every gift I ever bought her, every special outing we had, every homework assignment I helped her with, planning her Halloween party, her Sweet 16 Party, all were from the love in my heart, not obligation or responsibility. She was mine as much as she was my mother's. She was, as we used to call her, precious. Loving her, and having a relationship with her has never been hard work. But I guess, with no one to tell her she is being mean, she feels she can speak her mind without any filter.

I don't even feel that way about my other sister with whom things have always been contentious. She insults, she hurts, and she alienates. I have put up with her bullying and abuse out of respect for my parents for years upon years. I don't have to anymore. But I don't have to be mean about it. I am done with her, but out of respect for my mother I won't be nasty and abusive like she is. I can just say my own good-byes to all the hurt and humiliation.

My mother is gone and there are mean opportunists who want to take advantage. But as I heal from the worst wound of my life, I am stronger to deal with the petty bothers that life has in store for me. Because after losing my mother, all the rest is just petty bothers.

Mother's Day

It has been a year and four months since my mother died. In this time I have learned that though I actually can move on, and I can handle my life, I will always, no matter how many people are in the room, feel a loneliness, an emptiness, because I can never again call my mother and ask her advice, rehash the day's events or run something by her. I have learned that I will never enjoy a cup of coffee again as much as I did when laughing over one with her. It is exactly as William Wordsworth wrote and which, as a young and naive college student, I thought I understood but could only guess at:

The rainbow comes and goes,	10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;	15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

I have learned that grief is not linear, but fluid. It does not progress from stage to stage, from a beginning to an end, to a moment of understanding. There are days when I feel as though I am healing, that I am reaching a state of peace and my grief comes unbidden from a depth I did not know I possessed. The finality of it hits me all over again. The sweetness of my mother's soul comes back to me. The craziness of her sense of humor. The absolute depths of her love for my children. How she helped me through every crisis of my life. Gone. How can it be?

My mother and I used to have these crazy adventures. Actually we would just go out, maybe to an auction, or shopping, or to this inn we loved. But they always turned into crazy adventures. We started calling ourselves Lucy and Ethel because of the hijinks we would find ourselves in, our sides hurting from laughing so much. Sometimes I can actually smile when I think of it.

Tomorrow when people are taking their moms out for brunch and dinner, buying them flowers, showering them with love, I am going to be thinking of the strong beautiful woman I was so very blessed to have as my mother. God, keep her close, and bless her. I love her dearly.

This one's for you, Mom

A Mother’s Love's A Blessing

An Irish boy was leaving

Leaving his native home

Crossing the broad Atlantic

Once more he wished to roam

And as he was leaving his mother

Who was standing at the quay

She threw her arms around his waist

And this to him did say

A mother's love's a blessing

No matter where you roam

Keep her while she's living

You'll miss her when she's gone

Love her as in childhood

Though feeble old and grey

For you'll never miss your mother's love

Till she's buried beneath the clay

And as the years grow older

I'll settle down in life

And choose a nice young colleen

And take her for my wife

And as the babies grow older

And climb around my knee

I'll teach them the very same lesson

That my mother thought to me

A mother's love's a blessing

No matter where you roam

Keep her while she's living

You'll miss her when she's gone

Love her as in childhood

Though feeble old and grey

For you'll never miss your mother's love

Till she's buried beneath the clay