My Journey Continues

It is December, the ending of the year but the beginning of the holidays.  In the past, Christmas has been so magical, exciting and extraordinary.  I never lost my childlike wonder for this time of year, until now.  The sky is crying and creating puddles of cold water all over the ground.  The dampness seeps into my bones and I take two showers a day to stay warm.  Thanksgiving is over, but I have not visited the tree farm or decorated the house.   Every morning I wake, and I remember.  Anguish washes over my mind and into my body. My daughter is at deaths door and I am terrified.  It is a small victory each morning, when I check to make sure there was no bad news overnight that she was sent to the ER or suffering further setback.  As long as she has breath, she is alive.  She has physically deteriorated to something I call existence, not life.  I cannot fathom what she is thinking in her deepest soul.  I look at her ...

Time has flown in this most recent chapter of my life.  Sometimes I feel like a piece of moss in a river, powerlessly swirling and drifting along the current.  Until one day, I snag on a log, and watch helplessly as the rest of the world evolves while I stay immobilized, stuck in one spot. So much of my daily activities mirror each other, and I vary my time by finding joy in friends, family and doing creative things I love.  But for my mother and daughter, health has brought life altering changes in a way that having the mundane things in life seem like a blessing. My mother is losing her mind.  She was diagnosed with early onset Dementia with an eighty percent chance of  morphing into Alzheimer disease.  Two months ago, she was living a nice retirement in her beautiful condo with a view in Issaquah.  She had a healthy pension and money in the bank.  Her days were spent exercising, shopping, creating things and visiting with family and fri...

Lately, I have been working on understanding grief and mourning.  Grief is ever changing, always morphing into something different, but ever present.  After nineteen months, I had naively imagined that I would be moving on with my sadness.  But instead, this invader into my life has learned how to hide and shift, and to continuously grow and survive inside me, no matter how I try to evict it. Instead of being a constant companion, always present in a conscious level, it hides in my subconscious, then strikes at any given moment.  It could be a thought, a vision, a memory, or a longing.  In a moment, I am blinking back tears, silently dripping rivulets down my cheeks or openly keening.  Grief has so many forms, it cannot be killed.  Its not just about losing someone, it encompasses unrealized dreams, forced life changes, refining friends, losing family and fear for the future.  I ask myself "Why can't I be happy?" but all I hear is silence....