The day to day is lived in tiny increments. I try to start each day putting myself on a positive path, reminding myself of all that for which I should be grateful. I thank my guides and my angels that helped me sleep through the night and I pray for the continued safety of my family--for our health, peace in our hearts, love. I try to forgive myself the mistakes I will surely make throughout the day and hope that I am leaving lasting memories, good thoughts, proof of my good intentions in the hearts of my girls. That I am arming them with a sense of this dimension and the others and interconnectedness all while serving up pasta, reviewing homework, demanding clean up of the play room, and directing the nighttime program in that killer 5:30 to 8:00 block.
I am incredibly conscious of my actions, my deeds, the things I say, aware that I play a starring role in their early childhood memories and that these moments will be mined for information, for truth, that they will be distorted and contorted to tell the story of how they were loved or how they were not, maybe because those thoughts from my own childhood flood into my mind still. Most especially when I am having a particularly good or bad moment with them, I think, 'God, I hope they know how much I love them or 'Please don't let them think I didn't. ' I am present, conscious, real, and flawed all the time except for when I am not. And so it goes.
Since visiting with my husband's father this summer, we've been talking about the small ways in which he was letting go, in which he was straddling here and now and forever. Our visit provided the girls, who'd only seen him in photos or in the case of our oldest had met him just once when she was a toddler, a chance to spend real time with him. Though he had people who came every day to check and administer his medications and others who provided him with appropriate meals for all of his health issues, with us he had company. There were slow broken conversations in English and French. The girls sang songs and made drawings for him. Jean or Papi as he is called, was feeble and disconnected, a little lonely and frustrated. He'd become annoyed at times, disoriented at others, happy and full of wonder at others. We lived with him in 3-D, wandered his home looking at journals and incredible memorabilia from his travels. The girls looked at him and his home with awe.
One evening, after I'd put the girls to sleep, I started to walk down the stairs when I overheard my husband and his older brother having a pretty deep conversation with their father. A conversation full of longing and need, revelations of secrets and stories from long ago. They were pleading with him for information about their father's family, his boyhood, his hopes and dreams. They were asking for connection, drawing for memories. clues. I stayed at his desk at the top of the stairs and let the boys and their father share a moment. I feared my interruption would give everyone an unwanted distraction, an escape from that incredible connection. I hoped they'd file that memory to pull up when they needed to recall him.
These tiny moments add up to make a life. They leave an imprint, serve as mile markers. I leave little ticks and grooves in my girls' stories so that when I am gone they might say, "Wasn't that such a beautiful moment with Mom" or "I am so grateful that we had that time together or that conversation or saw that sunset/sunrise/incredible earthly moment together." I try to shore them up with self-love, self-respect, identity. I've begun to slowly trace the roots of both families that intertwined to create this branch of the larger family trees. I tell them secrets, our secrets, whisper to them about the people full of hope, love, and promise that came before them.
Before my mother's mom passed, we all spent a last summer on Hilton Head Island and I watched her sit at the edge of the ocean on the sand watching the sun set. I knew it wouldn't be long. She too. I went with my mother a couple of weeks later to move my grandparents' things from their home to the nursing home they were meant to move to. She never made it there. I knew she wouldn't. A week before my father's mother passed, I'd called her rather unexpectedly to tell her I loved her. It was Mother's Day. I chose that evening to tell her about my then boyfriend, now husband, who was, up until then a secret, whispered only in strict confidence, spoken only to help myself believe our love true. She was so tired but so present. I'd never have thought she was soon to leave us. I think of her so often, speak out loud about the mundane, ask her questions. I miss being able to ask the questions. To get the answers.
When someone dies, they are elevated to the heavenly realm, the eternal, esoteric, almost immediately. Remembering how they were in life becomes an exercise, a quiet search for moments real and true. In our mind's eye the memories are pulled and twisted in the murky quicksand of the earthly realm. They are still with us, of the earth, on this plane, only we can't find them. We are so full of longing, living in those dreamscapes, hoping to be with them, see them, hear them speaking to us as they really did, with weight and seriousness, but also humor and humanity and humanness just one more time.
After a 1/2 day of school, a lunch at the pub with friends, ice cream at the parlor for dessert, ballet, homework, bath time, and dinner, the girls and I tucked ourselves in to bed for the night. The day patched together with sweet moments and a whole lot of chatter. My husband's tiny steps took him to his parents' home where he sat in silence, their presence all around him, longing for one more word. The funeral over. Attendees to the service gone home. Flowers laid. I hope that he and his brothers were able to pull up those saved moments, let them shiver through their bodies, feel the life shared with their dad coursing through them before they said goodbye to him and released him to the infinite.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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