Light in the Dark

They say light comes out (and in) through cracked vessels. Maybe light comes out (and in) through the torn holes of our soul. And maybe sometimes we have to break a window to free our our soul.

Did I say that one of my son's friend's mother lives across the street from my mother, and on Mother's Day I wanted so badly to go knock on the door and ask if the friend could come out so I could hug him? He's built about like my son except a tiny bit thicker. Tonight, I saw him sitting on the porch and I went over to talk to him. I got a hug.

It was like a tiny spark of light in the darkness.

I am grateful for light in the dark.

(This is my response to the prompt for Week 6 of the 52 Photos Project.)

Pink

I'm thinking of trying to do this project. I did "Wordless Wednesday" and "Photo Friday" a while and then I stopped. I don't know that I will do any better at playing along with this one but I think I'd like to give it a try. 

"Pink"

(Hopefully I'll be back before too long with a real post!) 

Mother's Day Memories

Many years ago, when he was still in preschool, my son came home with a small asparagus fern they had planted. It might have been a Mother's Day gift, I can't remember. We brought it with us when we moved from Texas back to Louisiana. It grew and grew for many years. I finally decided that I needed to divide it and re-pot the thing but when I went to do it, I discovered the plant was full of ants. I was going to throw the whole mess away (the plant had dwindled down a bit due to my neglect) but my mother wanted to take it home and see what she could do with it. She's had it for four or five years now and has several baskets of the plant growing in her backyard. Today she gave me this plant for Mother's Day. She told me it was from the original plant my son brought home from preschool so many years ago. The day went well in spite of the underlying sadness for us all.

I remembered this photo I took of him Mother's Day 2010. He's got the tongs in Dad's barbecue pit, helping out. I think most of the meat had been taking off and he was taking care of a few pieces that weren't quite done. It was a sweet time when things were right and he came early and stayed late, visiting with us all. It was a good day.

One of the things one of my daughters gave me was this little sign:

I did.

On That Day

I consider myself fortunate that peace and light and hope never totally left me in my days of death or darkness or loss. I know it is not that way for some.

But still, I feel the loss sometimes in a smothering way. It's never really fully gone from who I am these days.

And of course, with Mother's Day tomorrow, well, it's another of the "firsts" of the first year and it's hard and I'm sad.

To lose a child and face major surgery for a serious disease all in the same few months--I don't know--it just makes you think.

I've heard people talk about writing their own obituary to help figure out their priorities in life. I work around accomplished and intelligent people. Through my own experiences, I came to wonder "what would they want to be remembered for?" Everybody says nobody wants to say on their deathbed "I wish I'd spent more time at the office" but what is it that we truly want to be said about ourselves when we are gone? And once we figure out the important things, "what daily decisions do I have to make to get there?" (Patti Digh, http://www.37days.com/2012/05/oh-daddy-thirty-two-years-ago-today.html--you have to listen to the audio to hear the quote but it's worth it).

My list of things I'd like to be remembered for has changed over the years. It's far less idealistic than it used to be. It's a simpler list. But here's my problem: I can make the list but I have trouble staying focused on the "daily decisions" implementation. I'm short-sighted (near-sighted, literally and figuratively-that thought popped into my head and it amuses me for some reason).

What I figure is that under the circumstances, it's normal for me to be thinking of the ways I'd want to be remembered, or to have thoughts about what marks I want to leave behind. It's sometimes hard not to feel insignificant when I start thinking of those things but, really, no one is insignificant. We all have our stories. I want to own mine and accept some of the ones I don't particularly like (because they don't show me in a good light!). I want to be more open with them too. But to do that, I have to "get over myself" and be willing to allow my humanity to be seen.

I know I've rambled a bit in this post. In fact, I wrote all of the above and when I thought about being willing to allow my humanity to be seen, I thought of this other problem I have and I left this writing and went off to work on creating this "thang." 

I'm making progress. I am alive. But I am also far more aware of time constraints than I was five months ago. I don't want my dying days to come only for me to realize I did a lot of thinking about how I wanted to live and to be in this life. On that day, I want to know...

(I've written myself into a corner. I don't know where to go from here--I'll have to think...)

Wordless Wednesday, 05/09/12

Five Months Today

This poem continues to comforts me...

Let it Grow

I've been feeding my parents' "grand-dog" while they are in Houston getting ready for another surgery on my Dad's eye. He has glaucoma and they have not been able to get the pressure adjusted so they are going in to put in a shunt on Monday. Today I took my camera with me and took pictures of the flowers she has growing in her garden. This was one of them, a very pretty one.

I am also charged with watering her tomato, cucumber and squash plants, along with a new clematis vine she has started in the back of the yard. I hope I have watered it well enough that everything will survive. It looked kind of cloudy this afternoon. I was kind of hoping it would rain and take the heat off of me!

Wordless Wednesday, 05/02/12