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I penned this, (keyed this?) a while ago, and I'm not sure if I've posted it.
But I'm posting it again so I don't loose it.
It's something I should read once in a while and remember...
There are so many things in life that we can not control, and for myself, a control freak, this has been the hardest thing to accept.
I drift. I'm a wanderer and roamer at heart. I like exploring new places, ever confident that I can always find my way home. For a while, home was an abstract concept. I knew I could go home to my parents, but it would be as a returning soldier come home beaten and shamed. Now I make home where I will. Home is where I am.
I found my way. Through the kindness of strangers, strength of friends, and the tenacity of will, I have made something of myself.
Somewhere along the way, I made peace with myself.
The clock ticks on the wall.
My grandmother is not aging well, nor gracefully. In recent months, a strange thing has happened where a phantom pain ravages her body. We now know it is a form of Lou Gehrig's Disease, or ALS.
Which is not to say she's senile. Oh no, she is painfully, angrily, defiantly aware of what is happening to her body, a body she can no longer control. And rather than accept that she had a full life, raised two strong girls, watched and helped to raise 5 grandchildren, she has turned inward, angry and bitter, casting the blame for her condition onto anyone that gets close.
Never mind she smoked for 40 some years, or worked in a print house around chemicals that people don't even discuss anymore. No, it's easier to blame the living and to rage, rage against the dying of the light.
My mother blames herself. It's a family trait. We shoulder the blame for things that are much bigger than ourselves, as if by assuming the blame, it makes it a little more controllable in it's lack of control. A thin veneer of control over the insurmountable.
The clock ticks by the seconds of my life on the wall.
The thunder of the second hand rings hollow in my ears.
I know my grandmother sits at the nursing home and waits for death. She has waited for the last few years since her oldest daughter died, stolen as much by the cancer as her inability to recognise her problem. She has had not much thought for the living since then, and it has made her a hard woman.
She is making my mother into a hard woman.
It was hard enough when cancer came and finally took my mother's sister from her. They were close, as close as me and mine. But as hard as it was, my mother was there for her sister, right up to the last day, through the medications and the hospice and finally, the anger at a life not fully lived. Now, my mother can look past the endless nights of little sleep and extreme pain and turmoil to remember her sister as she lived, not as she died.
That situation was borne of circumstance; this is something altogether different. My mother is forced, out of guilt, obligation, and a loyalty of a daughter to a mother, to stand by helplessly and watch her mother spit in the face of life and all of those who are trying to help her. Try to make her more comfortable. As if by remaining so cold and mean it's altering our perception of her lack of control.
She's breaking all our hearts. I want to remember my grandmother - The woman who knitted me slippers when I was young (and not as young,) the woman who brought me to the beach and let me drink Pepsi with lunch. The woman who let me have ice cream before bed when we'd sleep over her house. Not this... twisting of her true self.
My mother is terrified. She sees herself in her mother and is absolutely frightened that she is going to turn into the same thing. "Sarah" she says, "please, I never ever want to be like that." and I tell her that I will help her as much as I can, and that if I have to, I will remind her of this time. She can't see that just by experiancing it this way she is less likely to act out in the same way.
The clock ticks by seconds of my life, a pensive building of things yet to come.
I believe life is worth living. That you have to be responsible for yourself and your actions.
I believe in watching the sunset and living gently with each other and the earth. I believe that we should never take each other for granted because it's only a matter of time before some of us will wander on to the Summerlands. I believe in thanking the power that guides me for the large and small things in my life.
I hope never to get to the point beyond which I have no respect for life. It is possible, as I've been there before, but it is a dark hard place I don't want to visit again.
Gods grant me the ability to balance the serenity and tenacity I need to forge this life.
-K.
3/30/06
But I'm posting it again so I don't loose it.
It's something I should read once in a while and remember...
There are so many things in life that we can not control, and for myself, a control freak, this has been the hardest thing to accept.
I drift. I'm a wanderer and roamer at heart. I like exploring new places, ever confident that I can always find my way home. For a while, home was an abstract concept. I knew I could go home to my parents, but it would be as a returning soldier come home beaten and shamed. Now I make home where I will. Home is where I am.
I found my way. Through the kindness of strangers, strength of friends, and the tenacity of will, I have made something of myself.
Somewhere along the way, I made peace with myself.
The clock ticks on the wall.
My grandmother is not aging well, nor gracefully. In recent months, a strange thing has happened where a phantom pain ravages her body. We now know it is a form of Lou Gehrig's Disease, or ALS.
Which is not to say she's senile. Oh no, she is painfully, angrily, defiantly aware of what is happening to her body, a body she can no longer control. And rather than accept that she had a full life, raised two strong girls, watched and helped to raise 5 grandchildren, she has turned inward, angry and bitter, casting the blame for her condition onto anyone that gets close.
Never mind she smoked for 40 some years, or worked in a print house around chemicals that people don't even discuss anymore. No, it's easier to blame the living and to rage, rage against the dying of the light.
My mother blames herself. It's a family trait. We shoulder the blame for things that are much bigger than ourselves, as if by assuming the blame, it makes it a little more controllable in it's lack of control. A thin veneer of control over the insurmountable.
The clock ticks by the seconds of my life on the wall.
The thunder of the second hand rings hollow in my ears.
I know my grandmother sits at the nursing home and waits for death. She has waited for the last few years since her oldest daughter died, stolen as much by the cancer as her inability to recognise her problem. She has had not much thought for the living since then, and it has made her a hard woman.
She is making my mother into a hard woman.
It was hard enough when cancer came and finally took my mother's sister from her. They were close, as close as me and mine. But as hard as it was, my mother was there for her sister, right up to the last day, through the medications and the hospice and finally, the anger at a life not fully lived. Now, my mother can look past the endless nights of little sleep and extreme pain and turmoil to remember her sister as she lived, not as she died.
That situation was borne of circumstance; this is something altogether different. My mother is forced, out of guilt, obligation, and a loyalty of a daughter to a mother, to stand by helplessly and watch her mother spit in the face of life and all of those who are trying to help her. Try to make her more comfortable. As if by remaining so cold and mean it's altering our perception of her lack of control.
She's breaking all our hearts. I want to remember my grandmother - The woman who knitted me slippers when I was young (and not as young,) the woman who brought me to the beach and let me drink Pepsi with lunch. The woman who let me have ice cream before bed when we'd sleep over her house. Not this... twisting of her true self.
My mother is terrified. She sees herself in her mother and is absolutely frightened that she is going to turn into the same thing. "Sarah" she says, "please, I never ever want to be like that." and I tell her that I will help her as much as I can, and that if I have to, I will remind her of this time. She can't see that just by experiancing it this way she is less likely to act out in the same way.
The clock ticks by seconds of my life, a pensive building of things yet to come.
I believe life is worth living. That you have to be responsible for yourself and your actions.
I believe in watching the sunset and living gently with each other and the earth. I believe that we should never take each other for granted because it's only a matter of time before some of us will wander on to the Summerlands. I believe in thanking the power that guides me for the large and small things in my life.
I hope never to get to the point beyond which I have no respect for life. It is possible, as I've been there before, but it is a dark hard place I don't want to visit again.
Gods grant me the ability to balance the serenity and tenacity I need to forge this life.
-K.
3/30/06
