Grace is like Snow

 

Yup and Happy New Year.  How lame I am at keeping this blog up?  I guess life happened and the juggle became more significant because of my own doing.  More and more I am rereading the known comment of “If you are busy and can’t find space to just have down time, it’s a trauma response”.  I am aware of my problem and my default to fill every ounce of space in my life and then find more space to fill.

I have a ton of blog topics that I have been compiling and outlining on the fly through my voice memos to myself while I drive.  But none of them got me to sit down, yet.  It’s terrible it takes an emotional hit in order to reflect - but that is the beauty of emotions and what makes me human.

I don’t remember the last time I cried from sadness and guilt.  I have teared from joy in watching my daughter ride her horse each week to the recent moment where she confidently picked a book and read to me, fully, for the first time – and it happened to be the book I read her every night when she was a baby, in person and over the phone when she was with her dad, as the only thing that soothed her.  I have cried in laughter along with sweating because of laughing so hard.

And now, I’m up before my daughter on a Sunday morning, coffee brewed (yes I still have a coffee pot) and dishwasher unloaded.  I am sitting on my sofa in the direct line of the sun to get some version of vitamin D I feel I need. 

I cried yesterday.  With an overwhelming siege of guilt and reality of time.  I have been so wrapped in my own survival blanket while adding more rocks to the pile that slowly closes me into a cave that I am losing touch of my infinite reality (symbolism for trauma, fear, work, parenting, taking on more than I can reasonably do and enjoy life).  

My day shifted and changed from the plan yesterday and my heart drew me to answer what it has been hammering for the past few weeks.  To see my grandfather.  When my body shows up identifying someone, I know to itch the scratch by texting, calling, or showing up.  The latter is what needed to occur for this one since my grandfather is 92 and never uses a phone.  I have seen him only a few times in the past 2 years with a pandemic and then layer in all the other ‘rocks’ I was talking about and I’ve secured an obstacle course.   My cup gets full when I see him.  However, it drained yesterday in the reality that I won’t have him forever.  My mom has taken on such a task when she transitioned into retirement at exactly the time my grandmother passed away two years ago in January.  Since that moment my mom has only been away from my grandfather for maybe a week.  If you don’t know where mom is between 1pm-3pm, she is with her dad.  I feel sad that my mom hasn’t had a chance to appreciate her ending of a career and the decades of work, parenting, volunteering and constantly advocating for all of us when we couldn’t.  However, this experience has brought a closeness for my mom and her dad.  It’s also shifted her away from being his daughter and immediately into being a caregiver and universal worker.  I’m fairly certain my tears are not only for my immediate reality that my grandfather is preparing to leave this world, but also my future reality that my friendship with my parents will also morph into being the administrator for their end of life process.

I woke up when it was still dark with a headache from the tears.  My body hasn’t known this release at this level for a while and even though I feel drained and I don’t feel good, it is not lost on me how grateful I am to not have tears that have shown regularly in my past.  I go back to the “you don’t know love without pain”.

My beau serendipitously sent me an interview from Stephen Colbert where the script was flipped on him to articulate where his Faith and Comedy collide while interviewing Dua Lipa.  I have now replayed it several times when he quoted Robert Hayden: Faith and Comedy

“We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.  We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstraction police and threaten us…” 

Stephen Colbert added that if there isn’t laughter in the light of sadness then fear takes its place and that’s where evil will find you (I paraphrase).  My evil is depression and isolation.  My grandfather still has his humor even in the light of his deterioration, memory shifts of short and long term retrieval, and loss of bodily control.

What an asshole I am to have one connection with my grandfather after many missed opportunities because of (fill in life reason here), to finally allow the reality I’ve been avoiding hit me and then feel sad about it.  Go screw yourself Syd.  Meanwhile my dad complains about my mom’s emotions and I encourage him to give her grace because she is handling what all humans don’t want to AND something that he completely avoided with his parents and then was shocked to be taken out of the will.  To my dad’s credit, even though he would never admit it, his guilt around his parents is very real and he has paid his penance for that by showing up and being a part of my mom’s parents life more significantly and routinely.  My dad retired over 7 years ago and not only helped take care of my daughter so I could get back into the grind, but he also became the chauffeur for my grandparents and supporter for them moving into the senior living community.  I guess it all comes full circle and redemption is always available. 

What’s my point in this post.  Nothing I guess.  Other than to identify this as real. To claim the feeling of overwhelm and that my sadness is mine.  My grandfather isn’t sad, he has been planning and has paid for his funeral years ago (this is where the humor and matter-of-fact of my family come into play).  He is right with himself. He is aligned with his God.  He is ready to be with his wife he has loved for 75 years.  75 years!  He is prepared to feel healthy and eternity in peace.  I am sad because I’m not ready or prepared, literally, for anything.  I can be prepared to have snacks for my daughter and pull a presentation together in moments but that is the extent of my preparedness.  Lord help me if the world comes to an end or my car breaks down.  I’m also not prepared to lose a piece of my mom when my grandfather has his grand exit.  

So I guess this means I need to align myself better with the life I want to live and the people I want to love in it.  I have some growing up to do.  Some space claiming.  I have so many questions and no idea how to ask them or who, but that’s the point.  I’d like to thank Niall Horan for a song that sounds beautiful from my daughters vocal cords this morning: Flicker

xo.

"All the trees lose there leaves and not one of them is upset about it"