Bittersweet Mother's Day

I need to read over what I have written so that I don't repeat myself.  Being the procrastinator that I am, I haven't bothered to actually do that yet.  If I am repeating myself and anyone can tell the difference, I'll bake you a cake.  However, I'm pretty sure I have not written about this before.

My brother was born the day before Mother's Day in 1968, on May 11.  She always joked that he was the perfect present.  When he grew up, his only child, a son, was born on my mother's birthday, Nov. 1.  It was pretty special, and by far the best birthday present she ever got.  This formed a strange kind of triangle for  us all when she died on May 11, 2004.

That day I called my brother and he spent his birthday driving as fast as he dared on a motorcycle for 3 hours trying to get home in time to be there.  He didn't make it in time, and I spent those hours feeling horrible because I hadn't called him sooner.  I should have insisted he come sooner. I should have known this was it.  I should have.......if only..........maybe I could have............well.  It's just a thing I have, a heartache you could say, that is still tied to my raft on the river of life.  I've let it out so that it follows a distance, I've set it on fire and even filled it full of bullet holes, but I have yet to cut that particular heartache loose.  I am working on it.

That was 9 years ago, and yet every time I pick up the phone to call him on THAT DAY, it all comes back to me.  I tell myself that I just have to keep doing it, and eventually it will not be strange anymore.  Eventually we will have more memories of it not being THAT DAY, and it won't be strange anymore.  Because I'm THE OLDER SISTER and our dad never could remember our birthdays, even when we were little, and I cannot just let his birthday pass without calling. That would be.........unacceptable to my mother.  This is what I tell  myself, and I think it's probably what my brother tells himself, too.  After 9 years it's still hard for me to make the call, and I am afraid it's still hard for him to get it, because usually I leave a message and he calls me back.  The next day.  I guess we will never get over THAT DAY, but I also know that on THAT DAY we are both aware, every second, of what day it is.  We have no need to actually talk to each other, we are brother and sister.  No words are necessary.  

Thankfully, I have 4 children, plus a bonus daughter and 2 pretend grandchildren who made my Mother's Day this year much easier to get through.

Friday night the boys and my other "adopted" 4th son decided to help my get some limbs cut and make a bonfire in the backyard.  I did pretty well when I came out to find one cutting limbs that the other one in the tree above the limb.  I took it in stride.  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth is my motto, so I acted like it was all normal.  It was a big jump, without the lower limbs, for the one up the tree, but boys will be boys and  there were no injuries.  It was a good day.  We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores and sat around the fire till late, when it had burned down so that we didn't have to worry about setting the neighborhood on fire.  Those boys told me that was my mother's day present and I told them it was THE BEST present ever!

The next day I made meatballs, marinated in the blues by Stevie Ray Vaughan, and took them to my bonus daughter's reception for graduating college. So exciting!!  The Beautiful Redhead was supposed to be at the reception, but was not, despite repeated text messages.  Just as I was about to leave she called and said she had fallen asleep but was awake now and wanted me to come there.  This is so.........her.  And I love her.  And she is my only daughter.  So I drove to her apartment and we went to the Olive Garden, even though I had just eaten, and we had a really good time, just us girls.  She had to work Mother's Day anyway and couldn't come home for the actual day, so this was good.  It was good mostly because I was really tired, had had a late night, early morning, busy day, and still an hour and a half before I would be home and able to collapse.

This brings us to Mother's Day, when The Rock Star was coming with his beautiful and wonderful girlfriend. They brought me candy and we got some time at home without the house being full or me having to cook, which is the perfect Mother's Day in my book.  

After they left I sat and drank in the quiet and realized that I could relax now.  It was over. I told Mom I had made it through another one, but that it was just never going to be the same as it used to be.  

She smiled her quiet smile and said "That's true. But you already knew that a long time ago, babe."

That's what being a mother means.  Going on, even when you don't want to, carrying all your memories and making more and never letting anyone know any different.  It's just the way life works, when you're a mom.

On grief and fog

Mysterious grand piano found on Biscayne Bay sandbar - Miami-Dade Breaking News - MiamiHerald.com#storylink=omni_popular#storylink=omni_popular#storylink=omni_popular

So, a grand piano has been found abandoned on the highest point of a sand bar in Florida. 
I love this story for several reasons.
To begin with, who is not wondering what the story is on this?
Was this someone's reaction to their ex getting the piano in the divorce?  Did the person who played it die and this is a kind of memorial?  How in the world did they get it there?  There must, MUST be a good story behind it. 
But I don't really want to know what that story is.  To know the truth would ruin the whole thing for me.

I prefer to believe it was left as a kind of memorial. 
The picture, to me, perfectly illustrates the state of being known as "grief".  The once grand and beautiful, gleaming piano sits on the sand, abandoned, used and ruined for all practical intents and purposes.  But someone once loved it very, very much.  That someone would not be put off by the piano's appearance now.  That person would only see all the wonderful memories this piano holds for them.  That person would see beauty in the waves rolling in around that piano.  I would like to see a picture of it with that happening.  I would like to see a picture of it with fog rolling all around it.
Fog is similar to grief in my mind.  Grief comes upon you like a wave and knocks you off your feet.  It does this regardless of whether you know it is coming and have had time to prepare for it. 
There is no "preparing" for grief. 
It comes and you are suddenly floating upside down in the tide of life, hearing the scraping of the shells and the sand, and not even caring if it drags you down and takes you away.  Being taken away can seem like a pretty good option in this state, but of course, in your heart you know it could never be that easy.  You know in your heart you are going to have to stand and endure it even though you would rather hide away and forget it. 
You move in a fog of grief.  You speak slower and softer.  Everyone else seems to also.  The edges of all things are blunted by how disconnected you feel to, well, pretty much everything.  You are lost in the fog of grief.  It is like a coccoon, sheltering and obscuring you to others.  You are not alone, but you wish you were.  You sense other shapes moving but can't make them out.  Perhaps for the first time in your life, people finally leave you alone.  So you can sleep.  Trouble is, you can't sleep.  And every time you do, there is a horrible "remembering" because your grief is the first thing in your mind when you wake up.  You have to get used to it all over again.
You are suddenly aware of how many things you could not care any less about.  The world keeps spinning and you are amazed by that too.  It seems like time stops when you get hit by grief, but it turns out this only true for you.  Time does not really stop, you just cease to care about it.
The fog lifts gradually.  You don't really notice it going away until one day you are transfixed by some thing that has been illuminated in a ray of light that has made it through the fog.  You realize you just felt happy and then you immediately feel guilty for feeling happy.
Then one day you realize the fog has gone, you have kept moving long enough to simulate the living of a normal life.  The pressure is off enough for you to look back and assess the damage.
The thought that you are the only person who truly knows what the damage is feels like another responsibility that must remain a secret.  You wonder if you will always feel so alone and realize that the answer is probably yes.  You wonder if you will have to keep pretending your whole life.  You wonder if everyone else is just pretending too.
Does grief ever pass?  Not to my knowledge.  It just becomes a part of you and you alone have to decide how much a part of your life grief will manage to claim.
The good news is, with grief comes stark, brutal truth.
Everyone who is born must some day die.  We know this. 
The trick to dealing with grief, for me, has been to not lose the lesson of dying. 
The lesson of dying is how very beautiful our lives are.  Even the most miserable life is surrounded by breathtaking beauty in this world.
The lesson of dying is to do the very best you can every time, no matter what the cost, because when your time comes you want to be proud of your life and how you lived it.  You want to have no regrets but for the temporary separation of you from your loved ones. 
It is a temporary separation.  This is the hope that will help you get up every morning, face your brutal reality, and keep moving to simulate the life of a responsible person.
While simulating this life, look up.  Look up and see how beautiful this world is.  Every moment of our days and nights there is beauty all around us.  Learn to be thankful for beauty and joy, and do not feel guilty.  Your loved one would not want that.  They would want you to have the full experience that you have been put on this earth to fulfill. 

Everything that happens to you, good or bad, shapes you.  Use it all.  Be willing to adjust to the changes God puts in your life.  Ride the current, rather than wasting all your strength fighting against it.  We only get one ride.  Make the most of it.
And when you pray, pray the only prayer you ever need to know:  Thy will be done.
Then just trust. 
The fog will lift, eventually.  Grief will become part of you, making you more than you were before.