Remembering The Dead

For me, I end up not being a fan of September. It starts out okay. I love school starting up. I enjoy the easing of the temperatures.  I like fall. I like spring and fall best, but spring tends to be a riotous toddler freshly woke from a nap given to tantrums and erratic behavior. It’s just hard to keep up. Fall is more of a gentle easing. The hot, full, carefree party days of summer are through, though remembered with fondness, and we settle in to enjoy the harvest bounty while looking ahead toward the hibernative nature of the rest of the turning of the wheel.

This is good.

But then, you know, things have happened in September to make it less appealing. Personally for me, it’s my mom’s death. The 21st. This year I was hurrying to accomplish some legal things regarding her death before a time limit ran out. This involved me telling the specifics of the situation multiple times to multiple people who then declined to hear any more about it.

In the midst of this, the 11th showed up to pull the shades down a touch lower.

Sigh.

So I put out a question to my internet friends.

What songs do you listen to for cheering up and endurance, you’ll get through this inspiration?

I got lots of great suggestions, but one in particular hit the spot for me that day.

It’s funny how you forget things.

Things that were a very large part of your existence.

I grew up in a family that was very much into the Grateful Dead.

It was very much the background music of my childhood. And often the foreground music as well. We had lots of family gatherings that centered around us all going to their concerts. The fabric of my life is tie-dyed. Really.

So when someone suggested “I Will Survive” by the Grateful Dead (Touch of Grey, actually) I knew immediately that that was one I needed to listen to. And as I did, it reminded me of those times before.  Those times before I grew up and life got complicated. Before I had known much loss and change. Before she was gone. I listened to a few more of their songs* and felt really close to my mom again.

My heart settled and healed a bit.

It feels good to remember the Dead.

*other songs like:

friend of the devil

truckin

sugar magnolia

uncle john’s band

Self Portrait (satur)Day

I was waiting for my husband yesterday and started goofing around with my photo app on my phone.  

 

Yeah, goofing around. 🙂

 

 

Then I realized that I really look like my mom.

Six Word Friday: Rusty

I know that rusty can mean

a whole entire list of things.

But, for me, Rusty only means

the one single important special thing:

My mom’s best and favorite dog.

We had many over the years.

But mom was never very good

at the discipline of their training.

So often we had to rely

upon their good nature to achieve

Good behavior and long term harmony.

As you can imagine, that didn’t

always work out all that well.

Rusty came into Mom’s life by

random chance or by serendipitous circumstance.

She found him wandering one day.

It seems he’d been a hunter.

Extremely well trained and highly restricted

in his previous life and interactions.

Theirs was a match made in

dog-lover and human-owner heaven.

Rusty came pre-trained and well behaved.

Mom gave him the freedom to

relax and just be a dog.

She was devastated when he died.

When she died, we mixed her

and his ashes and released them

into the ocean together. Together forever.

 

A Day of Peace

It’s not a holiday that get’s much play.

Not a lot of money to be made hawking Peace Day cards, I suppose.

So I rarely hear of it and often forget about it.

But someone on Fb will mention it and I will get the message just when I really need it most.

September 21st is the anniversary of my mom’s death and can be really hard.

I think she would appreciate that it’s the International Day of Peace.

She would want us to remember her and celebrate peace.

Two years is a long time. But 54 is longer. I don’t want to let her death overshadow the fact of her life.

She is at peace.

Hopefully the rest of us can be, too.

Peace be with you.

This morning’s sunrise.

Peace be with us.

Let there be peace on Earth,

and let it begin with me.

~*~

PEACE
BE
WITH
YOU.

♥

Mother. May. I…

She was born in 1956. She would be 56 this year. Just a quick 20 years older than I.

Being as her birthday is the 13th of May, it is always engaged in a dance with the Mother’s Day.

Occasionally they meet up.

Like today.

Last year was the first Mother’s Day since she’d been gone and her birthday was on the Friday before it. I don’t know yet if it’s harder this way or not. I’ll hazard a guess that every year will be hard in its own unique way.

This year, I would have loved for her to see me hanging my BFA Senior Art Show which opened on Thursday. and graduating next month. and, of course, how big and strong and cool her favorite (and only) grandson is growing up to be. These things hurt my heart.

But we will not dwell on them too long, for while they are true, they are not the whole story. The whole story is so much bigger and broader than just that. I talk to her about these things and ask her to help me and watch over things.

and still, that is not the whole story. I am so grateful for the 34 years that we had together even as rough as some of them we were on each other. There are many, too many, people that lose their parent far younger than I did and have an even smaller bank of memories to draw upon to comfort them when they need it. Obviously, I would have liked to have longer with her. I would have loved to have been able to grumble and fumble our relationship into our old ages together. But that is not the cards we’ve been dealt. And you have to play the cards in hand, not the rest of the deck.

I’ve probably rambled on for long enough.

I love you, Mom.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO YOU! (and the Grandmas)

I miss you.

 

Six word Fridays: Return

I wish that you could return.

These crumbs left behind? No feast.

For the entire cake, I yearn.

My finger’s burned……

…….The lessons learned.

I wish that you could return.

Healing Susan

So.

This morning a friend on Facebook posted this link.

http://toddlerplanet.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/how-did-we-get-here/

I went and read this post by the strongest bravest person I’ve seen in quite some time.

If you have a moment to click through and read about her journey and send her some healing thoughts or prayers, you won’t regret it.

For me, the comments are what got me.

When I read it there were 245 comments all saying something very close to the same thing.

Dear Susan, we love you. You are surrounded and bathed in love. You are lifted in healing light. We are thinking of you and sending you love and prayers.

The love I could feel coming off the screen was very nearly palpable, but that wasn’t what got me.

You see, my mother was named Susan.

Reading comment after comment about how Susan is loved and lifted in the light hurts a little, but mostly heals my heart.

Dear Mama,

I love you.

You are surrounded and bathed in love.

You are lifted in healing light.

I am thinking of you and sending you love and prayers.

♥

Banned Book Week

Today I was running around trying to get ready to go to school. We started up today. I was looking for a shirt that I like to wear, but I couldn’t find it. (In the time allotted. 🙂 ) Failing to find that shirt, I decided to wear a shirt that was my mom’s. Luckily she liked to wear baggy clothes so some things fit me. I was looking for that shirt (which is black) when I noticed a black shirt on top of a stack of shirts on the shelf in the closet. I grabbed it thinking it was the shirt I was looking for. It was not. It was a different shirt of my mom’s.

Which reminds me:

It’s Banned Books Week!

September 24 – October 1, 2011

bannedbooksweek.org/

Thanks, Mom! I would totally have forgotten. ♥

No more, No less

This day is just a day like any other

even though a year ago I lost my mother.

It doesn’t hurt more today than it did yesterday

Nor, I imagine, will it hurt any less tomorrow.

Marking off days on some tally stick

Doesn’t really do the trick.

It doesn’t ease my sorrow.

It’s been a year.

We’ve made it through.

Survived each and every day of it without you.

Some of them really weren’t that bad

Many were  the worst and hardest we’ve ever had.

I mark this anniversary wearily.

I’m tired of the heartbreak and the heartache; tired of you being gone, really.

I take this moment to acknowledge how far I’ve come

in muddling through this healing process thing.

To acknowledge that I still have miles to go.

One thing I know for sure

is that this one year pales in comparison to our 34.

♥

“If you get there before I do

Don’t give up on me.

I’ll meet when my chores are through

I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

 

I’ll see you again by Westlife (YouTube)

Love Me by Collin Raye (YouTube)

Cloud Shaper

My mom was a writer. That was her medium as an artist for nearly as long as I can remember. She was never published, but she should have been. I am a writer, but so far I haven’t had the staying power to write more than a long essay. My mom wrote books. She also wrote short stories and songs and things.

Later she started exploring some other art medium. I remember her telling me that she felt art should be impermanent. That’s one of the reasons she used chalk on cardboard. I am not too familiar with her artwork. Much of it happened after I moved away and while I was still a self-focused twenty-something. And then we began our disagreements and neither of us was sharing much with each other. Then it was too late.

She was more artistically interactive with my aunt, I think. In July, at mom’s memorial my aunt shared that mom would always tell her that she didn’t have to explain her art to anyone. Immediately after mom died, she went into her studio and made three pieces which were far more abstract than she usually is. Then she didn’t make any artwork for nearly a year until the sand memorial that she built.

After we released mom (and rusty) into the sea, my other aunt was distraught and so I was telling her how mom wasn’t in any pain anymore. How she was now with family that had gone before her.

And how she had probably been put in charge of cloud sculpture.

Which is what this post is really about.  Because yesterday, in the midst of great thunderous storm clouds, my mom cleared out a bright shiny window and sent a puppy gallivanting through it. Maybe it was Rusty in his childhood puppy cloud guise. I do admit that it looked a little more like a Scotty dog, though.

That’s cute, mom. I see you.

Thanks for peeking in on us.