Breaking the Seal

Springtime always makes me nostalgic. Hopeful, happy, and wistful... This year, with so many monumental changes in my life, just seeing the trees yesterday caused me to out and out sob. I am serious. They were so green, and so fresh! Beside them, the first goslings of the year were toddling about on the newly mown slope that led down to the lake and I lost my shit under a sky so blue it was blinding. With my windows open and upbeat music playing, I had to pull over and let the grief  over the swiftness of life wash over me.

I know I can't hold back the emotions when they hit. At least, not for long. If I am feeling overcome, keeping my tears inside doesn't help anything. It's such a release to just bawl, knowing it won't be permanent. Just as nothing in the springtime lasts for much longer than a moment, my pain for everything I have lost (and am going to lose) doesn't have to stick around too long, either.

I hadn't really gotten emotional during our read through's for the Listen To Your Mother show. I mean, I was really upset in August when I learned of the upcoming ending, but it was still in the distant future and I was overwhelmed with so many other losses, that this one didn't take precedence. The other day, Melisa and I read through the final version of our script and the last words that we will ever read on stage and...nothing. I didn't cry.

"Crap. I really need to cry," I told her. I knew that if it didn't come out beforehand, it would be too much on stage on May 7th. I needed a pre-cry!!

I started listing all of the things that I would miss about the show, and all of the people I was in contact with that I wouldn't be talking to as much, and that I probably wouldn't ever be working with her on a project again (she moved to Knoxville!)... And then the seal was broken. It isn't the stage, or the attention, or the sharing of my own stories that I will truly miss (though I love all of that, so very much). It is knowing that this portion of my life, with constant contact with people that I love, will be over.

And I'm ok with it. I AM. Shut up. I AM. Just like I'm "ok" with my kids growing up and life changing and, gulp, the death of my dad. I'm ok with it in that I have no control over any of them, and so I HAVE TO be ok, otherwise...what would I be?

The sheer beauty in the greenness of those trees and freshness of the goslings is the impermanence of it all. Life is precious because it is fleeting. If my babies were to be babies forever, the joy of new discoveries wouldn't exist. I treasure the peaks of joy in life because they are just that: peaks, surrounded by valleys. Up and Down and up again...

I cry a lot. I always have. I feel the moments pass and the emotions overwhelm me. Joy and pain are just opposite sides of the same coin and I KNOW that I cannot have one without the other. And so I choose to enjoy this moment in my life. Climbing this current mountain of hope and happiness and trying to enjoy all of the small moments that Life presents to me.

New Year

Christmas came and went and we survived, even though it sometimes hurt so badly I couldn't see. And then it didn't hurt and then it did and and then it didn't and back and forth and the waves keep coming...

Life. It is so incredibly messy and twisted. We build these foundations of "security" that are just fabrications. Our minds cannot cope with the knowledge that everything is absolutely impermanent, so we create little security blankets of twisted bits of thread. The illusion of control and safety is what allows us to rise each morning and move through each day, working and cleaning and fiddling our lives away with the unimportant necessities that living in a society require. All the while we are holding this threadbare-blanket over our heads, like toddlers in our cribs, hoping to keep the monsters away.

There is a huge, gaping, ragged hole in my blanket and I am unsure if I even want to try to stitch it together again. If I keep staring through the holes in my safety blanket, if I acknowledge the monsters every morning, perhaps the inevitable destruction they WILL bring won't be as much of a shock. As I've always said, and thought I understood; it's not IF someone dies, it's WHEN they die. If I am truly grateful to see someone each time we get together, knowing that it's never a guarantee, will it help to keep my eyes open to the fragility of this entire experience on Earth?

~~

Separate brain rant: If I hear one more person compare the death of their loved one to something mystical and beautiful, I MAY JUST SCREAM. It was not peaceful, it was not beautiful. I did not feel grateful that he finally left and that his pain was over, because the pain didn't go away, it just transferred to all of us. Death from cancer was messy and ugly and cruel. It took so much from him and us and took so incredibly long... Knowing that people are experiencing our pain right now, every day, over and over again, just rips me up.

~~

And now it's 2017 and it's a new year and the end of the year that my father last lived. 2016 was his last year, and that year is over... And I honestly just want to take one more picture with him.

Well Fuck.

I'm procrastinating like it is an Olympic sport today. I am a gold medalist in this event.

I don't want to see the fear in my dad's eyes and wonder if this chemo treatment today will actually make him feel as awful as the treatments he had 30 years ago. The medical staff insists it won't. They've repeated that his first chemo was one of the hardest and most brutal regimens, and that it isn't even CLOSE to what he will be receiving today...and he has zero belief that they are telling the truth. Honestly though, if I had a traumatic medical experience and then someone said "let's do a treatment with the same name, but it ISN'T the same, we promise"... I probably wouldn't believe them, either.

It's not natural to know that someone you love is going to die. I mean, we ALL KNOW that EVERYONE we love WILL DIE; it's the only guarantee in Life. But to know that a particular person will most likely pass before you do messes with your head.

I cannot describe exactly how this feels... it's a thousand moments of pain each day. Knowing I can do nothing substantial, aside from being there, being present, doing the daily things that need to be done... My sisters, Mom and I are all in the same boat. It is a sucky, holey boat, but it's the only one we have right now, and my dad needs us to keep paddling and bailing it until he says he's done...

FUUUCCCKKKK!!!!!!

I need to cry for a few minutes, wash my face, find something cheerful to wear, and pack a bag of books, snacks, and drinks for a long day at the hospital. I need someone to tell me it will be ok, even though that's impossible because the only way that would happen is if someone could save my daddy...

FUCK YOU CANCER.

It's Not Enough

I'm one of those "lucky" people who remember their dreams. I have vivid, in-depth, multi-chapter dreams which are sometimes so real, I wake up believing in whatever scene my mind concocted. It's not usually a great way to wake up; either I am petrified from the natural disaster that I obviously didn't go through or I am elated (and then destroyed) from holding a newborn baby that never actually existed. Both scenarios aren't super-awesome starts to a fantastic morning. Most of those dreams never actually "leave" me, either.

One particularly horrific nightmare takes place on the section of I-80 that crosses over an enormous quarry. It's so massively deep, you can't see the bottom, no matter how hard you stretch your neck as you're zooming over. In the dream, I spin out, and my van teeters on the edge, dangling but swaying in a way that I know means we are going over, and nothing I can do will save me or my children. The entire dream consists of me looking back into their eyes, reaching for their hands as we start to fall, and calming the panic that is trying to make me pass out. And I repeat, "I love you. I LOVE YOU. I love you..." I can feel the acceptance of the knowledge that this is how my children's last moments on Earth will be, and all I can do is try to make it peaceful...

~

Corinne has a tendency to ask me deep questions. Shit, all of my kids have that tendency. The main ones being "Why are we HERE?" and "What happens when we die?" These questions are usually asked at the most convenient times possible, i.e. in the van as we're pulling up to a sporting activity. 

My answer to the former is, as always, that we are here to love each other. End of story. We are not alive to build skyscrapers or create "masterpieces"; we do not exist to worship deities or "change the world." We exist simply to love. I know that when I die, I will hold this truth in my heart; I have loved many, I have loved fully, and I have been loved in return. What more can anyone ask? 

My answer to the latter is, as always, that nothing in the natural world ever ceases to exist. It just changes. Trees become logs that burn and become ash; it floats away with the wind, lands on the Earth, and becomes nutrients in the soil so that new trees may grow again. Boulders become sand, and glaciers melt into the oceans. Everything on Earth becomes something else, including energy. Why then would anyone think that the energy that fuels the human heart would ever cease to exist? Just because we cannot fully comprehend what it is exactly that happens when our hearts create their final beats, doesn't mean that the answer to the most existential question is "A Void of Nothingness."

~

Justin did some shopping for me at WalMart yesterday. He hopped back in the van and said that the one item he couldn't find were the molds for the popsicles I wanted to make at home. "I asked TWO workers, and no one could find them! They think they sold out because they were such a great price."

I told him it was ok. We could figure out a different way to craft the frozen yogurts I was going to make for my dad. Justin loves to cook, and was giving me ideas on different foods to test that are high in protein to help my father build back some of his weight. The idea of him trying to cope with the potential upcoming chemotherapy without even a bit of strength doesn't seem possible. I explained to Justin how important it was for me to do something, ANYthing, for my dad; "And I really just want him to be able to enjoy eating again. Everything tastes bad for him and he just can't palate it. He has to put on weight.... I just want to do something for him, and this is all I can do..." 

I am constantly amazed at how quickly I can go from "ok" to choked up and unable to breathe. Knowing that this tiny little thing I am able to "do" isn't going to make any real difference in my dad's terminal outcome feels like I am looking back at my children in my van dream again. All I can do is look at him and say "I love you. I LOVE YOU. I love you..." But it's not enough.