Only now
Part of the power of NaBloPoMo ending was to send me shrieking from the computer. It’s a truly odd juxtaposition to last year’s early December posting when the month of posting so energized me that I wanted to carry on and on. And it’s a good reminder in how things change, even the things you think will always be the same.
This too shall pass, my mother used to say. This too shall pass. Sunny weather and rain, good times and bad. At first I found it a sterile saying. A platitude. And then I realized its power for hope and held it to myself when I felt lost and afraid. Much later I learned that it also holds within it a warning not to rely on the good moments remaining forever. They too are fleeting. This thought holds within it both halves of all possibility. All this shall pass. Someday, it will be different. Not good, not bad. Not worse, not better. Just different.
Things are so different now then they have ever been before that I am truly, for the first time in my life, fearing the future. I never did. The future always held promise and potential. Now I am scared of it, fearing it holds sadness and loss. Part of this is the slow evaporation of my mother. To watch her dying by infinitely small degrees (because Alzheimer’s is a disease — and one that will kill her eventually) and to not yet be free to talk about it, to look ahead and know that before this mourning can possibly end there will be terrible, terrible times, makes the future seem bleak beyond all description.
Yet this too shall pass. All things will. And I am both hopeful and afraid.
I have missed you.
And I have nothing to say except that I, too, remind myself that all things, good and bad, come to an end.
Take all the rest you need. We’ll still be here when you get back.
I hope in RL you can surround yourself with people who are understanding and very kind to you. I find the hardest thing is to admit when things are bad, but it’s amazing how people rally when I do.
I’m so sorry.
When people go on a journey, I like to tell them ‘traveling mercies’. It’s a line from an Ann LaMott book. Where she got it I do not know, but what I am suddenly stricken by just now is how these same words can be for anyone moving forward in time for whom you might want to wish a little light so, traveling merices, mama.
I know that you are strong enough to get and use the help, love and support you need for you, and all your family to come through this in the best possible way. Good Luck.
I once read this at a friend’s funeral. It helped me. Hope it helps you.
Lossa love
R
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
Good to see you back though.
love
Nick
I hear you about the future. The older we get the more we (and our loved ones) run into The Bad Stuff.
And that Bad Stuff? It does pass though always leaving traces behind.
Your blog, your writing, is really a gift. Thank you.
Stay hopeful. Take comfort in the small everyday pleasures that are too easy taken for granted.
Life is truly a gift.
Last year I felt like I was on a roller-coaster that I couldn’t get off of, one that I knew was going to crash into a solid concrete wall at 180 mph, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. And the terror of the future that I knew was coming was like nothing I’d experienced before.
So it did crash, and I couldn’t stop it, and it blew my life to smithereens for a while, and I’m still picking up the pieces. And probably always will be. But it made me look at what’s left of my life, and sometimes it feels so sweet I can’t even breathe. I never had that before. And I think my mom would have liked that.