Month Of Gratitude November 2

Today I am thankful for:

1. Friends who know me well enough to know how to surprise me
2. Friends who are massage therapists
3. My kids sense of humor
4. Days I feel strong
5. Days I have hope

Month of Gratitude 2012

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. 

-- Melody Beattie

Gratitude. Ugh. I'm having a really, really hard time finding gratitude in my life right now. But I know enough to know that it's the first step in helping myself heal from the trauma I've been through recently.

Last year I participated in the Month Of Gratitude Challenge and each day I listed five things I was grateful for. I don't know that I'll be able to find five daily things this year. I'm still too deep in a depression, too deep in shock, too deep in fear to have the clarity to find five. But I do have enough sense left to know that if I look hard enough I can find five.

So here is day one of my Month of Gratitude 2012. Hopefully each day there will be five items listed. But if not, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I'm doing the best I can do right now.

November 1, 2012

1. Friends who have held me as I cried these past few months.

2. My kids who have rallied together to not only help me but help each other through this difficult time right now.

3. I still get to live in a house I love.

4. Making kid #1 take a Red Cross Safe Babysitting class many years ago. It came in handy today when he very quickly gave another kid at school the Heimlich maneuver who was choking.

5. My mom's voice in my head telling me "this too shall pass".

A Reminder From My Child

My kids don't usually read my blogs. My younger kids never do.

I know my 11-year-old daughter didn't read my post from earlier this week The Leaves Are Dying. And So Am I. 

So when she brought me this picture she made tonight, it took my breath away. And made me cry. Except for the first time in three months they were happy tears.

Tears that when I am weak my kids are strong. And their strength secures me and holds me up when I am falling down.

Last week I wrote "The leaves are dying. And so am I."  Tonight my daughter reminded me "The leaves may fall, but we don't."

The Leaves are Dying. And So Am I

It's been almost two years to the date that I was awestruck by a beautiful tree changing leaves and wrote a blog about it.  Two years ago I was full of grief over the impending death of my mother. Today, I am full of grief over the death of my marriage.

Today is, was, I hoped would be, would have been my 23 year wedding anniversary. Maybe it still was since the judge hasn't officially stamped the marital dissolution papers yet. (Isn't that such a polite term for such a horrid thing?) It doesn't matter either way, the marriage is over. I have been told it many times. It's just taken me almost three months to believe it myself. Almost 23 years of believing we'd be the old people telling our kids and grandkids to just love each other and make it work vs three months of being told it's over and can't be fixed. The cruise we'd been planning to celebrate 25 years is never going to happen.

Here, sign these papers and walk away.

I haven't been sleeping well these past few months and I refuse to take sleeping pills. Mostly because I still have six kids depending on me and I need to be alert for them. But also because there have been a few times I wouldn't trust myself with those pills in the house.

Last night was no exception. I was exhausted from another round of bronchitis and an extremely busy day, yet I woke up at 4am with a version of a recurring bad dream I've had since the beginning of all this. And I sat there in the dark and cried. I finally fell back asleep, and woke up at 7:30am still crying. A couple of the younger kids crawled into bed with me then and their love calmed me down enough to help me face this day.

As the rain cleared later this morning, I walked outside and saw the tree in our front yard. Obviously I see the tree everyday and it must have been changing colors for the past week. But today it really hit me. It really was beautiful. And it really is dying.

I remembered the dharma talk from two years ago where I learned that a tree changing colors is really a tree that is dying for the winter. And once again I started to cry. I feel like that tree. I, too, am dying in preparation for this winter.

Logically I know that no matter how brutal a winter we have or how difficult an adjustment I will have in my new life, I do know that spring will eventually come again. New buds will bloom and life will return.

Many around me have told me eventually I will also re-bloom more vibrantly and colorful than before. I believe them. Mostly. I just can't see it myself yet. I have no idea what my new life will look like or even what I want it to look like. I've been focused on one vision for 23 years. I don't yet know how to change that vision.

Right now I'm dying inside and instead of dropping leaves I'm dropping tears. I don't feel beautiful like the tree. I feel ugly, sad and unwanted.

Spring feels like a long time away.

Love Forever?

Karen & Charles Williams
married 42 years
My mom and dad

This picture of my mom and dad was taken Christmas of 2010, just a couple months before my mom died and a month before their 42nd wedding anniversary.

I'm not naive enough to think it was 42 years of bliss and perfection, but I know without a doubt they were hoping for much longer than the 42 years they had together. I'm sure over the years there were fights and threats, but when push came to shove they loved each other literally till death they did part.

Merton & Jennie Everhart
and baby Maggie
my grandparents
married almost 60 years

My grandparents were married almost sixty years. They were married in an era when you didn't just walk away when things got difficult. I've heard whispered stories of some hellish years my grandfather went through with my grandmother due to her mental illness. But until the very end he would say "I just need to stay alive one day longer than her." He was true to his word. He died about a month after my grandmother.

Don't all marriages start with hope and promises? And then the years go by and something happens. The hope fades and the promises are forgotten or sometimes outright broken. In today's throw away society, it's easier to throw it away then it is to do the hard work to fix it. Pay some court fees, sign the papers and be done with it.

I remember when my husband asked me to marry him. I was young, naive and thought I was oh so sophisticated at 20 years old. So I told him I was keeping my maiden name after we married. I've never forgotten his response, "but then we're not a real family."

And now, 23 years later, I have to make the decision whether to keep my married name or go back to my maiden name. Does it even matter? A name doesn't make a family. Hope, faith, kept promises and hard work keep a family together.

My name may or may not change. My family has been forever changed.  I have been forever changed.

Forever doesn't last as long anymore.

End Of An Era

The large play set in our backyard has been torn down. It's gone. Destroyed.

July 2006

I remember when my husband and I first bought this house, our first home. Our sixth baby wasn't even walking yet and we were confident enough to make this huge investment in our future. The play set was already in the backyard when we bought the house. But we made it one of our first priorities to fix it up and make it nicer and stronger. Safe from outside forces. A place where our family would be secure forever.

I look at the pictures of us painting the play set just six years ago. I remember how happy and full of hope we all were. The kids were so young, and we were all a bit naive. But we had love and I was confident life would be kind to us.

The play set is rotted now and with great sadness the decision to get rid of it was made. What happened?  We took it for granted that it would always be there even without our attention and dedication. We allowed outside forces to influence it's stability. We stopped caring for it.

September 2012

So with nothing more than some tears, a saw, and a crowbar the play set was torn down and thrown away. Despite its years of loyalty to the family, it's now been rejected. Thrown away like trash. I know that rejection. I'm living it daily.

I've wailed, cried, begged, pleaded, bargained and argued. All to no avail. There were nights I couldn't take the thought of the only life I've ever known ending that I considered ending my own life. But that's not me. I am in a kind of pain I never experienced before, but I won't abandon those who do still love me, want me, need me and depend on me. I can't be that horribly selfish to just walk away from a rotted mess. I will find a way to heal the rot.

If nothing else, the past 25 years have taught me that love is a choice. Every day we wake up, we have a choice to make whether to love or not. I'm not going to claim that I chose love every day. Too many days I chose not to allow it. But when push comes to shove, always choose love. Always.

There's a big empty void now both in my backyard and in my life. My heart physically aches when I look at it. It's a big open space and I have no idea what, if anything, can or will fill it.

Most of the old play set sits tonight in the burn pit awaiting a bonfire. A symbolic burning of the old and a hope that a new future will arise out of the ashes. Out of destruction comes a new creation.

But I can't let go of the memories. I refuse to believe that today's rot negates the happy memories we did have. Although the memories often bring me to my knees in tears, I won't let go of all of them. I have saved the boards where the kids wrote their names on the play set and hung them up where I'll see them daily. A new place and a new purpose. A reminder of happier times.

A reminder that there was love. And love still exists.

When Sleep Won't Come & The Nightmares Won't Stop

I'm so tired. Exhausted. Drained.  My eyes burn, my head hurts and my body is weary.  Yet I'm afraid to try and go to sleep.

I've tried all the tricks for a restful nights sleep; warm tea, a hot bath, exercise, reading, darkening the room, lowering the temperature. Nothing works. My brain is on overdrive right now and it won't shut down.

My body needs the rest, and once I lay my head down I will fall asleep. I'll probably stay asleep for about four hours. That probably doesn't sound like much, but it's much more than I've averaged lately. The problem is at hour four I'll wake up with a bad dream, some of my dreams even qualify as outright nightmares. Last week I called out in my dream and my 17-year-old came in my room to wake me up and be sure I was OK. How horribly sweet and horribly sad.

I don't need Freud or a psychologist to analyze my dreams. They are pretty obvious. I'm in a place in life I never saw coming, never expected and never wanted. I'm scared and uncertain of my future. I'm scared and uncertain of my children's future. Certain parts of my life are completely out of my control right now, and for a controlling person like me that is hard to handle.

As I walk the house and check on my sleeping kids at night I know logically we are safe. The locks are secure and I've added deadbolts to the doors. I've got two big dogs sleeping soundly, yet ready to sound ferocious at the first unusual noise. The danger though isn't in the form of a boogey man, but rather in the unknown.

In a strange twist to my insomnia and nightly nightmare dilemma, last night I finally dreamed about my mom who died about a year and a half ago. I've been stomping my feet since she died pissed off that she hasn't visited me in my dreams or in my waking moments. Finally, last night, in the middle of what was one of those dreams that qualifies as a nightmare, she finally came to me. What she told me in my dream has been in my head all day. Did she say what was the truth of the future? Or did she tell me what is already in my subconscious? I guess only time will tell. I do remember even in my dream being grateful for the opportunity to talk to my mom again. I only wish our conversation had been about a more pleasant topic. I realized as I awoke from my dream I was crying real tears onto my pillow. The tears were for my nightmare, my current situation and for my mom.

"The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets."

-- Poppy Z Brite