An unnamable emotion has my innards sloshing like those of a sea-sick-queazy kid. My back feels steely, my gut is equally hard. What is this feeling?
Mostly everything is going along just fine - I’m enjoying my work with families at camp, my work with clients and kids is going really well. My honey and I are getting along sweetly with a deepening love that keeps refreshing itself as we witness one another’s triumphs or hold each other thru the sad times. What is this yucky background color that’s got me all knotted?
Sure the house could be tidier, cleaner, even. There are cobwebs I can’t reach without going to get the ladder. The garden could be more well-tended and productive. There are termites gathering in the rafters upstairs and raining down wings and wriggling bodies onto the carpet. There’s termite poop gathering as they eat the oak threshhold of the patio slider door. The squirrels have eaten all the apples, all the figs, and all the blackberries. There’s a melancholy that those gorgeous grapes are gone. At least we got some of those! Grasshoppers have strip-mined the kale to nothing but spikes and the collard forrest is fading fast as white flies suck their green blood - turning them a whiter shade of pale. Still, these lossy-things are not the cause of the ooky feeling I cannot name.
Night comes sooner. Days get shorter and although my heart quickens as I write this and think of the enormity of the task of buying, wrapping and mailing holiday gifts to the hoards of nieces and nephews - in a timely way for the coming Season of freakin’ Joy and Light... again it is not cause enough for the unrest in my midsection...
No, it seems to have to do with the impending birthday October 6. Ah! That’s it! Will you still need me? will you still feed me when I’m 64?? AND... this is the first birthday of my life when my mother is not on the same plane. Her’s took off last February first and all the days in between have been the first of that date for me to live without her. There’s a poignancy in it that makes my eyes swim in their sockets and my brain a little foggy. Yes, I’m still her baby and I miss my mama. It would have been her 93rd birthday August 23, her 51st wedding anniversary with my step dad September first, her first born’s 70th Birthday September 8... yikes she was only 23 when she birthed my bro! And here I am, sad at the thought of celebrating without thanking her by hugging her tight. Still, I’ll give her a call... let’s see that’s Heaven 4- 6321, right?
At least I now know what’s been making my middle murky. Grief has no logic to it - only thorns and barnacles, brambles and sticker pokes - sort of a whole-body event of discomfort.
Sigh... I know how to get through it. I just don’t like it. No one does. Just one of those human tasks... gettin’ through ‘til it’s over or easier.
By the time I’m officially a Senior Citizen this time next year, the pokes will be softer, the tightening less intense and the unnamable will be named and tamed - a bit.
Oh Melinda, (((hugs))) to you in this moment of another first. My mom, gone 4 years Oct. 3rd - visiting her resting place (with my dad) today. The firsts are so hard. I was lucky in that on my first birthday without her, my sister had found the card my mom had already purchased for my April birthday. It was tucked away in her dresser drawer with a sticky note holding my name. So, my sister wrote me a note and mailed it as my mom would have. So touching for me.
ReplyDeleteA Getting through is certainly a task to be considered. Yet, as time goes by, the difference in the closeness felt to your loved one, while making things 'easier', also is missed. It feels weird to say, but, embrace and enjoy(?) this time of deep, deep missing. And hold your Mama in every way you can. I miss my Mama too, in my 4 years later way. I'm her baby still. :)
Big hugs to you as your tummy settles into this time.
And a very Happy Birthday to you! You are still well loved and needed at 64!
Here's a little song for you from me and someone else recently passed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O7jj0kq_bo