Doorways

 Doors to crypts in the Galveston cemetery.

The back door to my grandparents' house. Both were dead and gone when I took this photo. The house still stands but it is in a sad state of disrepair.

Lawsie! I was going to get this post up earlier in the week and never got around to it. And now so much more has come up concerning doorways (sorry, be prepared for a bit of rambling)...

We spent the weekend at the little house we have been working on repairing for several weeks now. We've had a lot of help. I have not actually had to do much (have not had the opportunity to do much). My husband has taken a couple of days to go up and help. My uncle has done most of the carpentry work. One of my husband's friends brought a trailer to our house Friday and took a load of furniture and stuff to go in the little house. I could hardly wait till "quittin' time" Friday afternoon so I could get myself up there too! 

We had stuff left from when we were going up there regularly years ago. We had to get a new sofa. I had end tables and a dining table. It is a small simple house so it does not need much. I want to keep it simple. 

We were going to bring my son's double bed up there for our bedroom but when we opened the door to his room to go in there and dismantle his bed, we both realized we were not ready to do that. We shed a few tears and sat down to re-evaluate our plans. We ended up borrowing a couple of twin size blow up mattresses for the weekend. I think I've now figured out what I want to do and we will bring his bed up there next weekend. We still need for his bedroom to be his bedroom and that means (to me) that there needs to be a bed in his room. I have an extra twin bed that I think I am going to set up in there.

Saturday of this weekend marked nine months since he's been gone. We had a quiet day of memories and a few stories about him as we worked around the little house.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the cemetery and sat beside his grave for a little while. The little house in the country is near a lot of my family and the cemetery is nearby and I have many other family members buried there. We had passed the cemetery a couple of times over the last couple of trips to the country but we always had someone with us or we were in a hurry to get back with something we were getting for the house. We were overdue to stop by for a "visit."

As I sat there at his grave, full of gratitude that we have been able to get the little house fixed up again and sorrowful that he was not around to see it happen, I was reminded again that that fear of loss and pain are not valid reasons not to love, or to live. My gratitude for having had him to love is far larger than my pain and loss now that he is not here. I used to scoff at the old saying "tis better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all." I understand that saying in a whole new way now. And I am grateful for the time I had to love him.

I posted part of this on Facebook, about fear of pain and loss not being valid reasons not to love and a friend commented with "I hesitated to press Like because of the poignant & extraordinarily personal & sensitive nature of your posting." The "old me" would never have posted something so "extraordinarily personal" like that on Facebook. Neither would I have written about it on my blog! I would have figured it best to keep things to myself and put my strong face on. 

I was using the notes feature in my phone to make a list of things we needed to bring to the little house next weekend. I noticed an old note from November 6th of last year. It is short but it was a precursor to the coming changes in me. It said: "Need help? Must ask." That was two days before my surgery on November 8th of last year, two days and a month before the death of my son on December 8th of last year.  

I've learned a little about accepting help when I need it. I've even learned a tiny bit about asking for help when I need it. I've been blessed with much support through this journey and I am grateful.

I have been changed by this experience and by the colon cancer diagnosis. On some days I feel like I have been opened up, in a good way. This weekend I was thinking how this past year has been the season of my "grand opening," another doorway of sorts that I have walked through. It's been hard, it's been heart-wrenching, but in some ways, it has been so good for me. What a paradox that is!

(My contribution to the 52 Photos Project prompt of Doorways for week 20.)

Bittersweet Times

I spent a little time tonight visiting with a few of my son's friends. One of his best friends, the one he working with in Pennsylvania when he died, came down for a few days and so there was a good little group gathered to see him. We hadn't seen him since the funeral in December. Another of his friends was there who recently became a father to a precious little baby girl so I got to hold and admire her. There were others around who matter to us and it was good to see them all. One of his friends has a younger sister who is expecting a boy in September. Everyone is kind of hoping the baby will arrive on my son's birthday. It was/is all a bittersweet reminder that life goes on.

These are some of the photos I took in the graveyard at Grand Coteau.

A melancholy angel.

Rows and rows of Jesuit priest graves.

The shadow of a cross reflected on on vault. 

And a tilted cross...

Six Months

Today made six months with my son gone. I had a difficult day, and not all because of this anniversary.

No one really knew. Life goes on. Today someone forgot that six months ago, I lost a son. Today people had a splendid day for their family. Today people complained about trivial things. All the while unaware of this remaining hole in my heart. 

I finally found a couple of quiet places in the day and told a few people. We talked and commiserated and shed a tear or two. I said something on Facebook about it and several people offered thoughts and prayers and love.

Just do me a favor and be kind and gentle to all you meet, for we never know what pain and burdens others are carrying and hiding behind smiling faces.

Today, I was the one smiling while suffering great pain. 

 (Pictures taken at a cemetery in Galveston. More on that story in another post.)

Guarding the Tomb

In all my cemetery travels, this is the strangest guardian of a tomb I have seen. When I first married so many years ago, I really, really, really want a Cigar Store Indian, just like this guy. We never found one we could afford and my tastes eventually changed although I have to admit seeing this guy still kind of makes my heart swoon!

I don't know if I mentioned here that I had signed up to participate in a Photo Walk in a town about two hours away from mine and when I got there, I couldn't find the group! I was so disappointed! When I got back home and email the sponsor, it turned out that I was right on top of where they were supposed to meet! I had walked around a little while, thinking surely the area where they were going to be was so small that I had to run into them eventually but, alas, I am talented at missing the obvious!

On the way home, I stopped at this cemetery in the middle of nowhere. I am not sure I could find it again if I wanted to (or if I wanted to return and ask this guy to come home with me)! This was about the only statue of interest in this particular cemetery.

Loyal

 The vase came in last week and they mounted it on the vault. You can barely see it but it is a cross shaped vase on all four sides. It wasn't until I got away that I realized I did not get a good picture of the vase. I was enamored with the fact that I could sit on my grandmother's tombstone  and rest my feet on my son's vault. I don't think she would mind. :) Three times up there and I'm just now figuring out how to make myself comfortable! Red geraniums please me to no end, even if they are just silk.

 Don't know if you can see it but my grandmother's name was Loyal. Seems like a fitting place for me to be a sitting. My husband took this photo for me. He took it about five times before he got it like I wanted it. We were unusually patient with each other. He doesn't usually participate in my artsy-fartsy escapades.

I have realized with great sadness that I don't have a recent picture of just me and my son together. Neither one of us liked having our picture taken and both of us were very crafty at avoiding having our picture taken. Now, thanks to our silly stubbornness, I suppose this one will have to do.

Right Regrets?

I forget I can blog from my phone! Such fun! I was going to put this up on Friday but I was too busy at work to be playing around with such stuff!

This was the first calendar page I saw on my first day back to work. December 13th was the day of the funeral. Today I spent some time writing thank you notes for when I was in the hospital and for the funeral stuff. My husband and I did split up the funeral notes but he has been done all of his (I don't think that grammar is quite correct). 

I thought I liked this little saying but now I am not so sure. 

What are "right regrets"?

(Time for me to get back to writing thank you notes.)

I miss him so much...

Big Girl Procedures (Old People Procedures?)

Today I had my first screening colonoscopy. I fretted a bit about having to do it but everybody I talked to said it would be a relatively easy procedure. I suppose it was. But today I learned something about myself that I did not know.

In the course of my lamenting and kvetching to a therapist friend about having the procedure done, I mentioned my fear of undignified situations, and how, for me, an undignified situation equals being out of control, and how being out of control means I feeling vulnerable and I don't like feeling vulnerable. He suggested I think of myself going into the procedure as a child and knowing the adults were there to take care of me. 

We were sitting in the room where they take your blood pressure and double check your meds and all and I hear the man next door telling the nurse he woke up too early last time he had the procedure. I thought that was no big deal, it meant he got to go home earlier. But no, he meant he woke up during the procedure! I silently cursed the man for putting that thought in my head. 

I really was not as nervous as I thought I'd be but when they wheeled me out to go to the operating room and left me lying on the gurney for a minute or two, I thought about the child (little girl) trick. So there I am, a fifty-something grown woman without her glasses on lying flat on her back pretending to be a little girl. And all these faceless adults I was hearing as they whooshed by me were there to take care of me. I couldn't see too much but I could hear plenty. I heard water running and a sucking sound and thought, to my horror, that they were working on someone just off to my left, with only a curtain separating us! But it was just a woman washing out a big tub.

I shrunk, lying there pretending to be a little girl. I could not tell what was going on, could not see who was coming up behind me and let me tell you.The longer I laid there, the more nervous I got. I learned pretty quickly that my little girl self is far less trusting of people than my adult self. She wanted to high-tail it out of there! I had to go back to being my adult self and I had to reassure my little girl self that everything really was going to be all right. In spite of her not trusting that situation and wanting to leave, my little girl self is tough and scrappy, but she does not like to be cornered into situations where she has no control. Sometimes more so than my adult self, I believe.

So they wheeled my adult self into the operating room and started the procedure. I woke up during the procedure! My little girl self must have been the one quietly watching the screen while my adult self was trying to hear what they were saying. I could not make out the words. The screen was quite interesting, I saw this loop thing but then it started getting uncomfortable and I mentioned to them that I was awake. They said they would give me more medicine and they did. And the next thing I knew they were talking to me again. Now I wonder if that was not some drug-induced dream but I think it was real. And I think part of the reason I was so calm was because my friend Cyn said next time she had hers done, she was not going to take any meds and was going to watch the whole thing. I figured I was awake, so I may as well watch at least a little bit of the show. Weird, huh?

I think the loop thing I saw was the tool they use to cut polyps. I had several of them cut off and one partially cut off because they could not get to all of it due to where it was located. So, yeah, I am waiting for a call about the biopsy and praying all will be clear. 

And now, what I really want to know. Do any of you have other versions of yourself that you are aware of that help through certain things? Or am I the only one? 

Wordless Wednesday 08/31/11

Anthropomorphic Carvings

I think this is one of my all-time favorite cemetery statues.

Is that despair or mourning or regret I see?

Someone said they thought she was praying.

I wish I'd had more time to spend with her. She might have had something to say to me, and I to her.

Beautifully Different

December 8 – Beautifully Different.
Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.
(Author: Karen Walrond)

I really am a bit eccentric. But then again, aren't we all? My dry sense of humor seems to "light people up."

I could make a bullet list of ways I am different, but I'm not really that different when you get right down to it. Then again, maybe I am!

Here are a few photos from a cemetery I visited this weekend. I think maybe my skewed perspective is one of the things that often makes me different. . .

I love the texture on this post topper.

 There was a fence around the small grave and this was on the gate. There are many beautifully different things to see in cemeteries.

These apples were on the grave of a young child. I wonder who left the apples there, and why.  This cemetery is in a rural area, near a Baptist church. There were many graves that had things left on them, little figurines and mementos for the dead. I  wonder if they put new apples every once in a while. The two on top seem to have no damage at all while the ones on the bottom have lost their lustre. I can identify with them!

This headstone has a pretty little picture at the top with the words joy and love inscribed. I try to see joy and love and I try to spread it too.

I also try to find the bright spot in gray areas. And I try to be the bright spot for other people. We never know what burdens other people are carrying.

Rough Sunday

We had a man fall out in church at the beginning of the service this morning, not three feet from where we sit. People did CPR and prayed and when the ambulance people arrived, they gave him oxygen. I think he was already gone when they loaded him on the stretcher to take him to the hospital. It was an unsettling event. The man was alone, his wife was recently committed to a mental hospital. He had been under a great deal of strain recently. I don't know if they had any children or not.

Distractions

I am both fascinated and appalled by this statue. The hands on his back are what get to me. Yet I love both photographs. The teacher in the online class I am taking says the background is too distracting and it takes away from the focal point.

Technically that may be true. But metaphorically, isn't this how it sometimes is in life itself? Too many background details pulling us in too many directions? And how often are those distractions things that are dead, things that we should release, so that we can move forward?

Bits and Pieces

Yesterday was the 13^th anniversary of my brother’s death. I don’t think about it so often anymore, but thoughts of him always come to me around this time of year. I find myself wishing I could sit and visit with again for just a couple of hours. The picture above is the back of his tombstone. He and his wife had no children, other than the four legged kind in the picture.

The anti-depressant has made everything flat. The sadness is no longer overwhelming, but it is still here. It’s like I no longer care about anything, and I don’t care that I don’t care. It will be all right. Eventually.

It would be easier without the stress of Christmas breathing down my neck. Nothing is done. Yet. I read an article in today’s paper that said Protestants once eschewed the celebration of Christmas. Maybe I will become that kind of Protestant! I don’t know how long ago this was. My parents certainly celebrated the holiday, and I believe their parents before them did also.

The temperature is supposed to be in the thirties in the morning. It's cool and breezy outside now with the wind coming out of the north. I love it. But I think the temps are supposed to climb back up again before Christmas. I think it is a pure-dee sin to have a Christmas that it is so hot we have to wear shorts to be comfortable. Yuck.

Caribbean Cemeteries

I am in a slump of sorts. I can't seem to think of anything of substance to write about so here are more pictures.

Though I am somewhat like my mother who loves to peruse old cemeteries, it was SpookyRach over at Skewed View, who influenced my fascination with taking cemetery photos. Here are a few from cemeteries on Barbados and one from St. Lucia...

I did not hear nature stand up and say anything at all to the world, frankly, but I do sometimes wish my own elements were a little better mixed.

You go down steps to get to the door of this vault. I don't kn0w why I did not think to get a photo of the steps themselves (probably because I was worried about hurrying up and getting back to the bus, because the driver make it quite clear he had no qualms about leaving us if we were late.)

This door looks mighty thin to get a casket through. Notice the ocean in the background. They have a lovely view!


The pink and black theme of this one reminds me of a fifties kitchen or bathroom!

At The Swimetery

When my daughter was younger she had trouble with her ears, which resulted in some interesting mutations of the English language, because she was not hearing correctly. Some of the mutations have taken permanent residence in the vocabulary of our family. For instance, “Happy Birthday” will always be “Happy Buttday” around here.

My brother died when she was three, and on the way to the cemetery, she was fretting about the fact that we had not brought our “babin suits” (bathing suits) with us. It worried her that she was unprepared for this trip. It worried me, trying to figure out what in the world she was talking about. Finally, I wised up and realized that the most direct way to understand something is to ask a question, and I asked her why she thought we needed our bathing suits. Her answer? “Because we’re going to the swimetery.”

Here are a few photos from last Saturday's visits to several swimeteries.

There were several of these metal monuments. I am amazed that the names and dates can still be read. There is a sheet of glass protecting whatever the words are printed on. I thought it was paper, but logic tells me that paper would have deteriorated by now.

This one is hand carved. Can you imagine the work that went into carving this? I wonder how long it took and whether the carver knew the dead person.

Though I admire his qualities, I can't decide whether all those things would make for a likable person or not. One thing is for sure, I could use some of that antique courage. The lack of punctuation bothers me, and the poetical part of me would have taken slightly different line breaks.

I include this one for Spooky Rach's inspection. I am curious to see if she has ever seen in all of her Texas cemetery travels a cowboy hat tombstone complete with cowboy boot vases.

And finally, I conclude with a photo ripe with symbolism. There are several of these monuments in two of the cemeteries we visited. I think they have something to do with Woodmen of the World, which I know today is an insurance company.

What's his problem?

This statue is in one of our local cemeteries. It disturbs me. He looks to me as though he is recoiling, trying to keep from going somewhere he does not want to go. You can't see his face, but it has a haunting grimace on it, a terrified expression, as though he is recoiling from death. I don't feel any comfort whatsoever from his presence.

This is my favorite hand. He seems to be reaching for something that is just out of his grasp. (Hey buddy, I can identify with you on that one).

On the other hand, this is a particularly peaceful cemetery. It's not at all old, as far as cemeteries go. It is laid out well for walking and soothing the spirit, if you don't mind being in a cemetery.

And here is his foot. No shoes. Seems he was not quite ready for the journey.