Reconciling the Story of Life and Death

(Grief is a strange thing. Don’t let anyone ever tell you time heals all wounds. Time lets you learn how to carry your grief, how to live with it without it smothering the life out of you. I’m walking my third year in grief and I’m learning. There are questions I still have, and times when I think it is all so damned unfair. This is one story I remembered from my son’s life after my friend helped me out a bit with one part of the story of my son’s death.)

There was once a tree in the center of my front yard. It wasn’t the only tree in my front yard—there are two live oak trees that still stand. The tree that is gone was a Bradford pear. It was given to me shortly after my brother died in 1994, a memorial gift. We planted it in the center of the yard and I imagined how pretty it was going to be when it was mature enough to bloom pretty white flowers and then to have the mottled red leaves in the fall.

The tree did not survive because one day, my son, who would have been around eight at the time, came careening around the corner on his bicycle, yelling, “Look, Mom!” He was riding “no-hands” and he curved into the drive way and hopped right off the bicycle. He thrust his hands straight up in the air in a victory celebration and we both watched as his bicycle kept on going as though under its own volition, right straight into the tender trunk of my newly planted Bradford pear tree. I imagine both of us were pretty wild-eyed looking, though for different reasons, I would imagine. 

I rushed over to see if maybe the trunk had somehow not been broken clean off at the ground, but that was not to be. The trunk was cut smooth off, right at the ground.  My son gathered his bicycle and was appropriately regretful but there was no fussing from me that day. It wasn’t really something we could have predicted. It just happened. Beyond the power of either of us to interrupt it.

When my son was older, we often had deep talks. Several times he indicated to me that he didn’t think he would live to be very old. I remember when he turned twenty-two, I breathed a sigh of relief that he’d made it past twenty-one. But I often told him that he could not keep doing the things he was doing, that one day his heart would just give out. 

This is basically what happened. His heart was enlarged. The coroner said his heart was like the heart of someone who had a history of untreated high blood pressure. 

I’ve wondered about this in the last couple of years. How could he or I know those things? Did we know them, or was it all coincidence? I don’t know. I wondered, at times, why my love was not enough to save him. I just don’t know. 

What I know is that I needed to somehow get these things straight in my mind. I needed a comforting narrative and it needed to better than something like “God needed another angel in heaven.” 

And one day, when I’d written the umpteenth email to a friend, trying to unravel these things, he said something that is so simple and yet so profound to me, something to which I think my son would totally nod his head and say “Yeah, mom, that’s it. It’s just like what happened with the tree. Beyond our power to interrupt it.”

(In my head, I'm hearing my son's voice saying this, and we are hugging each other. It is so real to me that I smell him.)

My friend said, about my son’s life, “It just played out—beyond the power of either of you to interrupt it.” 

Lord knows we both tried. And we both loved hard and fierce. I wish things had turned out differently and I miss him every day, but we did the best we could and this is how it all played out. 

Easter Wedding

Easter Sunday was also the day of my son’s best friend’s wedding,

a bittersweet event.

There were tears of joy, there were tears of grief and sadness.

People asked:

Why?
Why have a wedding on Easter Sunday?

Don’t they know people have other things to do on Easter Sunday?

Oh, how I love this young man. 

He hugged on me and loved on me and kissed me and patted my back 

and stomped his foot and said:

“Dammit, he shoulda been here.”

And we all cried at the poignant truth of his words.

Still, what better day than Easter Sunday to celebrate love and a new marriage?

There is so much good with the bad,

so much happiness with the sadness,

or maybe it's the other way around:

much bad with the good,

much sadness with the happiness,

I don't know.

What I do know is that life goes on.

Beautiful brides still smile as they hold the hands of their husband to be

and speak their vows of love.

Even as mourning mothers watch,

their eyes brimming with joy and sorrow.

The "Brutiful" Winter is Gone

It's been a beautiful and a brutal winter, both literally and metaphorically. "Brutiful" is the made-up word I saw sometime today on a blog post somewhere. Yes, that. We had "snow days" on two different occasions. On one of those breaks, it actually snowed! It was enough to blanket the ground in a solid white that lasted a couple of days. I was grateful to see snow again! But the cold weather seemed to last forever. The cold and the dark was not good for my soul. I said more than once that I did not know how people up north survive the length of winter with its lack of light.

The winter was brutal on my exercise schedule and I got off track with that. I am slowly trying to get back around to a regular walking schedule. Progress is very slow. 

But now spring seems to have arrived around here and I am in a somewhat better frame of mind (or I hope to be, very soon). I have stories in my head that I want to write but they seem to be stuck and the words won't come out. My thoughts don't seem to be sticking very well and I can't remember sometimes if I have written about certain things or not.

It wasn't long ago that I stopped and took these photos of an abandoned fire tower located in a field on one of the roads we often travel when we go to the country. They make me remember that part of what I am doing as spring comes is to look around and survey my grounds to see what damage winter has done and to see the places in my life where my attention is needed most.

My blog is one place I want to direct my attention. Comparing myself to others (and coming up short) is one thing that keeps me from here. It is a debilitating self-consciousness that keeps me sitting quietly in the corner. Right now, I have three stories that I need to tell. I need to relax and get them told. Maybe now that the weather is improving and light is returning to the days I will open up and let the stories flow. I want to. I surely do. It seems to me that a commitment to just showing up would be helpful.

Maybe now that the light has returned to the skies, and to the days, I will throw off that dark cloak of winter and choose to show up again, here on the blog, and in my life. I desperately need to.

I am grateful for the light.

Photographs and Memories

Tonight I've been laying around with layers and textures in PSE. I really want to learn more about using masks but it is proving to be  difficult for me. I remember I had a tough time grasping the concept even when I was in school and taking a Photoshop class.

These are tangled leaves skewered on a stick that I saw on my last walk on my trail in the woods. Black and white with a little bit of light on them, possibly proving there is always at least a tiny bit of light available.

And the vine is entangling one leg of the tree, not yet choking it though, possibly proving there is always something to be grateful for.

My art room has been under siege for months now. First we moved a dresser out from there up to the country. That meant I had things emptied out all over the bed. Then my youngest had a couple of friends who stayed several nights in there. That meant my things got emptied out all over the desk and the floor and whatever smooth surface there was available. I got back in there and started trying to organize things a bit. I found a venomous "love letter" note. It is based on a template I got from a substance abuse counselor, basically you work through several emotions and it tends to end up positively. At first I didn't know to whom the note was addressed but I finally figured it out. I hadn't put a date on it, either. I finally figured out who I was writing to but I still don't have a clue as to when I wrote it!

Then I found scraps of paper with half-written poem ideas on them. One was a haiku that went like this:

Waves roll, wash footprints

away. Memories remain,

sparkle like sea glass. 

Weekend Reading

I am a tiny bit hooked on perusing Amazon for free books for my Kindle. It's a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack and requires some patience (and it makes for an eclectic reading list). Recently I snagged a copy of The Woman's Book of Resilience: 12 Qualities to Cultivate by Beth Miller. It is a very interesting book!

When I finished reading it I realized I had no clue what the 12 qualities to cultivate actually were! I found the qualities listed underneath the chapter titles in the table of contents. I felt a little obtuse for not having noticed them sooner, and for not having absorbed them while I was reading the book!

Here, from Beth Miller, is the list of qualities:

1. I will admit and embrace my vulnerabilities.
2. I will practice and increase my ability to connect.
3. I will find parts of the problem that I can manage.
4. I will discover and get my needs met.
5. I will recognize and develop my own special gifts and talents.
6. I will develop my ability to say no.
7. I will increase my ability to transform resentment and forgive.
8. I will develop and use my sense of humor to help me through stressful situations.
9. I will explore the range of responses and possibilities to improve things.
10. I will endure suffering.
11. I will find meaning in the crisis.
12. I will stand alone, independent in thought and action, but I will not be afraid or reluctant to rely on others.

I think I've done relatively well at developing many of these qualities. I think there are a few of the qualities I need to work on. I am now re-reading through the parts of the book I had highlighted.

"I often wonder what our world would be life if each one of us committed ourselves to the inner shadow work, the work of looking for, admitting, and consciously integrating the darker aspects we all carry." ~Beth Miller, The Woman's Book of Resilience.

Unfinished Story

I read this in a free book I downloaded to my Kindle, "Crones Don't Whine." I'd recently been joking about being on my way to cronehood and I'd also recently accused myself of whining, so the book seemed meant for me at this time. It was free when I got it, but I see it is now $9.99. Score! For me, at least! Anyway, the book is very good (though I don't  know if I'd pay $9.99 for it).

I've been discouraged and in a bit of a funk lately, and needed the reminder that the curtain has not yet closed on my story.

Playing Around

I have Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off this week for Mardi Gras. We had a freeze last night and it has been raining most of the day so I will not be partaking in the festivities this year. I have been staying inside like a hermit. I've also been staying up late and sleeping in a little in the mornings. I installed the latest version of Photoshop Elements and have been fiddling around some with that. Here are a few things I've worked on.

 The ice was quickly melting when I finally realized how much there was! I went out and took a few photos with my good camera. Nothing too spectacular but still, fun.

 This is an old one I'd take at a plantation garden in New Iberia. I've added a texture layer and played around with the impressionist brush a bit.

And this one is a donkey I'd seen at the Christmas tree farm. I removed the fence bars in front of his face and did some expressionist painting on him then I added the photo to a larger canvas and put the text below.