There Is a Golden Moment

My tea is always cold by the time I finish it. I get distracted with one thing or another and soon its cold. The last sip is always so sweet though, because all the honey has thickened and sunk to the bottom.

That's my life right now. I'm so busy being busy right now, with Jason and the kids, with my friend "The Wendy Bird" and her two lost boys, tending to myself for the first time in my whole life; that I don't have time for the dirty business of the bitter tea that is my illness.

It is real. Of that I have no doubts. It is no neurological sleight of hand or psychological curse. The pain does exist, and it is constant.

But on days like today and yesterday, I can almost forget that its there. It's like an unwanted odor that lurks in the air. You become accustomed to it until you've left the room and returned.

I don't believe my pain and fatigue has mysteriously disappeared simply because I'm happy. Though I do seem better able to "rise and shine" and I'm able to do it a lot earlier than I've previously been able too. I simply believe that the noise of my illness has trouble rising through the dine of my happy home. I awake earlier and more refreshed because Jason ensures I get to bed on time. I am in less pain because I'm busy and have less time to dwell on it.

I'm drinking up the honey right now. That golden moment suspended, sweet and thick on my tongue. And I'm loving it.There is no way cold tea can compete with the sweetness of love, life and laughter.

Leaps and Bounds

I'd forgotten how good it feels to be here.

I just reread my last post and it was chilling to realize that Mom passed only two weeks after that on Father's Day. It was painless and she passed in her sleep, or more specifically, a kind of coma. Mike was sick again and thus unable to go but dad and I sat by her bed for a long while. We talked about letting go and I suggested she hung on because he hadn't yet given her the assurance she needed. He resisted at first. We both cried a great deal. Finally, he went to her bedside. He's become so stiff in his old age that it was painful to watch him stoop toward her ear. But then he did it. He told her that if she needed to go he would be alright. He gave her permission to die. Then he went home and I went to the hotel. She died at 5am that morning. Both a blessing and a curse.

So much of my life had been absorbed in her struggle that I'm not sure I knew what to do with myself. We prepared her funeral. It was a good turnout. That's what they always say, don't they? As if the population of your funeral had anything to do with how you lived your life. She was a loving, caring, devoted person in health. She was alone in sickness. I understand that acutely now. People didn't avoid her because she was a burden or because her frequent bouts with dementia made her unlikeable. It was because her illness forced them to face their own mortality and there is nothing people like more than blinding themselves to negative or unpleasant aspects of life. My friend TJ calls it unnecessary problems. My own illness has brought a similar reaction from some but not all of my acquaintances.

I remember thinking that the Paster knew nothing about her as he read the scripture he'd chosen for her and that I, a veteran pagan, could have chosen more apt scripture for her.

That's been just about two years now. We spread her ashes under her beloved Mulberry tree. I think of her often, dream of her frequently. When I first became ill I was struck by seizures. After an extremely forceful one I couldn't remember that she had passed. It must have been terrible for Mike to have to tell me again. I know it was awful enough living it twice. People often comment about how they still feel the presence of their loved ones either as a spirit or a running dialogue in their minds. I'm happy to say I feel none of that. I feel that she is truly at rest. The girls spray her perfume every once in awhile and on those occasions the pain becomes sharper but there was never a feeling of leaving things undone or unsaid and for that I am grateful.

I miss you, Mom. Everyday you are in my heart just as you always were. Your memory guides me even though your spirit us at rest.