Goodbye To All That

I have taken a leave of absence from this blog for quite some time. I simply didn't have the time, the inclination, or the wherewithal to put words onto the screen so no one could read them. Most of my writing and communication has happened on the social-media mecca that is Facebook.

But Facebook is not conducive for everything. I am put on my guard there against over-sharing or writing too much for that limited-space platform. I think the time has come where I need to start writing again and get back in that habit. There are things that ought to be put on paper. If nothing else, writing is a way that I can process things that happen and start to make some kind of sense.

It has been almost four months since my mother passed away from metastatic cancer that started two years before at the ampullary node which is like a junction of the liver, pancreas and duodenum. Those two years were a difficult time of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments, sickness and tiredness and loss of weight and strength, medications that helped or did nothing, stubborn drive and fight that is the height of human bravery, an uncommon grace, and a perhaps mercifully short "active dying" phase (as the hospice program terms it).

At the funeral, my brothers and I all spoke. Our words were uncoordinated --- we didn't really have time to read what the others had written --- but meshed well by joining the differing aspects of my mother's life. I wrote with the song "Change of Time" in my mind, and I had an acoustic version of that song played as I finished speaking.

There are so many memories. There have been so many tears. There are fleeting dreams. There are the indications of Signs... little moments of occurrences and flashes where you can feel something is at work just beneath the surface... which may or may not be mere coincidence but provides some small comfort at the possibility.

I'm not sure how the family is dealing with this. My niece M. seems to be handling it in stride. She cried when she was told that her Nana had died and was upset that she wasn't there on that Monday afternoon. I suppose it's easier for children to move forward and block out some memories, and although she had some questions about what happened and will no doubt have more (which I have assured her that I will always answer if and when she walks to talk), I think she can intuit a lot of things and deal with them logically. We have spent a good amount of time together when she's at home, playing, watching television, walking Ruff to the corner store for ice cream, when I'm making a dinner, quizzing her in advance of her Friday spelling tests.... Like my other niece and nephew, she has taught me a new depth of the importance of family and the next generation. The time that I have to spend with them and other other family has been the most joyful moments of a difficult, cold, long and dark winter in New England. I have to admit that my 'biological clock' has ticked with a tinge of regret that I've waited this long to even start thinking about relationships and hoping that it's not too late. Once upon a time, I had visions of living out a Spartan life, and yet I now think I would go batty if I were alone for any length of time. A cousin said to me in the days before and after the funeral that when her grandmother, who she was very close to, died rather suddenly a few years ago that she "turned from someone known as the Ice Princess into the bubbly and chatty person here with you today." When we experience a deep loss, our personalities and our priorities can shift fundamentally. 

I am currently writing from North Carolina while visiting and helping a friend. The weather is warmer than the Quiet Corner is experiencing --- including an 84-degree forecast for Friday(!!!) --- and the break from the scenery at home has helped a bit. It was nice to be able to drive and think (or not think, at times) and put some distance to it all. Loss is not something you can outrun, though.

I've had so many things I've wanted to share, lay down and unburden myself of, and perhaps be able to transition from grieving and start healing. That has not happened yet. I don't know when it will. There is someone down here who went through a similar loss and I hope to visit and talk with her and maybe by helping I can be helped.

This is also a bit of an exploration for me, checking out the South and seeing what's what. Northeast Connecticut has been my home for all of my 34 years, but it may be time to move on. The state is becoming more and more unlivable with huge property tax increases, one-party rule, and the state government spending up to the hilt and far beyond which will mean more tax increases. It's a fairly nice place to live if you can afford it. My mum would always be browsing real estate listings in Maine or New Hampshire or North Carolina with an eye toward where she and my dad would spend their retirement. Connecticut was way too expensive, she'd say. She didn't get to retire; she worked at UConn up until three months before she passed (and I must mention here how great her co-workers and bosses were through all this time and how much the "work family" meant to her).

I don't know how long of a timetable this will be. The idea of picking up and moving away from the place I've lived all my life isn't easy. But neither is the prospect of remaining.

“Technology has altered our flow of time.... So many of us have the sensation that time’s arrow is pointing everywhere and nowhere at once." --- Abha Dawesar

"Curiosity is the spark behind the spark of every great idea. The future belongs to the curious." --- Author Unknown

"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds." --- Georges Lemaitre

Kris Delmhorst - "Hummingbird"

A tune I find myself repeating and repeating and repeating this summer is Kris Delmhorst's "Hummingbird" from her album "Songs for a Hurricane."

Besides the soothing vocals, it's the universality of an unrequited love / crush that every human being has had at some point and the simple lyrics that make this song so great.

Blood from a Stone

By James Dufresne

All forms of the expression I have read
make mention of not getting life from something dead,

Not being able to tax or borrow from emptied accounts,
or are flowery words from a heart that's been pained.

But to have the thing happen as forces of gravity and physics collide
and a stone 'neath the stone picked up, with fingers twixt the divide

Provides a moment of expletives, rue, and hurt in goodly amounts
as upon the wanted boulder, the sanguine fluid drained.

You can get blood from a stone.