Memorial Day

This holiday was meant to acknowledge those who have given their lives in service to our country.  I give a nod to those who made the great sacrifice.

It is also a day for remembering those who we have lost for other reasons. In that vein, I think of my mother.  Jack, my step father.  My grandmother, Jack's mother.  My father as well.

Why is it that we don't appreciate our family members until they are no longer part of our lives?

I strongly suspect that K will experience that regret when I am gone.  There's nothing I can do to prevent that.  I've tried everything to reach out to him.  I don't think that anything else that I could do will make a difference.

Treading water for a while

I have continued my break from the grief prompts.  I didn't like the dark places I found myself in as a result of the intensity of every day focus on the topic.  I hope to do at least one or two this weekend.  I have a lot going on then, so hopefully those activities can help me bounce back from any ill effects.

The color of memory

Red is the color of my true love's ...   No.  This is not a poem.  This is not about romantic love.  This is about maternal love.  Imperfect though that may be, since mothers are only human beings.   Memory is also imperfect too.  But I want to remember.  What do I remember? Red.  The color of your eyes in the hundreds of pictures I took of you as a child, since the flash always made your light eyes show up red. White. The color of your bathing trunks when you learned to swim at the YMCA pool.  Your dad and I took turns taking you.  I took pictures of your skinny little body as you laughed, getting out of the pool. Blue.  The color of your eyes, at least after you'd been awake for a while.  When you would first wake up your eyes were a very washed out gray. Orange.  Purple.  Green.  All colors you liked when they they were bright and attention getting. Orange was also the color of basketballs.  I can't see one without thinking of you.  You loved playing basketball.  We even got you a freestanding hoop when we lived in Bedford.  How many practices and games did we take you to?  How many camps? Purple was also the color of the the silly silky cylinder pillow that your grandmother got for you.  I took a silly picture of you with it on your head. Brown was the color of your hat when you worked at the steak house, as well as the color of the first hoodie that you wore to death. Red is the color of anger, right?  But I'm only angry when I get frustrated with the situation, with not understanding why you've dropped a wall between us.  A wall like a guillotine, chopping my heart in half.  Red is the color of blood.  The blood that we share.  The blood that I feel like I should be bleeding in gallons so that the world can see the pain that otherwise leaves no visible mark on me. Black is the color of words on a screen, in emails and texts that you do no answer; in cards and letters that I don't know if you've read.  The color of a powered down computer monitor or television.  How many of those in our lives and relationships? Black is the color of desolation.

Out of whole cloth

While I know that my situation with my son, K, is not unique, I've never really KNOWN someone who has gone through an estrangement.  An acquaintance once shared her experience around her estranged daughter to try to make me feel less alone in my grief.  It did help somewhat.  Another friend introduced me to someone who was going through something similar.  Again, hearing her story helped a bit as well.  However, in neither case did I know these people early on in their situations.   I would love to have a role model on how to best survive my feelings of frustration, guilt, and loss.  Perhaps I can invent someone to admire.  That someone could be based roughly on me, but perhaps my "better self".  Her name is Ellen. Ellen never shied away from the topic of children.  She enjoyed hearing stories about other people's offspring.  When asked if she had children, she would briefly mention her daughter; but she would beg off talking about her unless she knew you well.  You always knew when Ellen considered you a friend, because she would talk about her daughter with you.  She would tell you that she and her daughter stopped speaking years ago, that she missed her daughter every day but that it no longer hurt her deeply to think about her.  While she did not understand why her daughter cut all ties with her, Ellen was proud of the adult her daughter had become.  And, even if her daughter refused to communicate with her, Ellen knew that her good parenting contributed greatly to the creation of the smart and independent adult her daughter had become.  She still hopes that one day her daughter will reach out to her, that they can again be part of each other's lives.  Until then, she treasures her memories of the seedling she nurtured and imagines how gloriously it has blossomed. Ellen is made of stronger stuff than me.  Someday, I hope to be like her.

The break I just took

One of the reasons that I started writing this blog was because I signed up for 30 day writers workshop called "Writing Your Grief".  While I'm not explicitly spelling out the daily prompts, you can probably get an idea of what the course involves.  Some of the written explorations can be pretty painful to dredge up when you're hurting.  So, after several days of wallowing in feelings that I've been trying to avoid, I went into self-protection mode and stayed away from the whole thing for a few days.  I'm not sure if I'll do all of the intervening prompts, but I do plan to try to catch up in the next couple of days.

Wish me luck!

"Be to my sad self, hereafter, kind."

The kindest thing that I can do for myself is to stop replaying situations in my head where I wish I had done things differently.  "If only I had (or had not) ..." That is a cruel and pointless game.  Of course, I think that one of the reasons that I constantly replay such scenes in my head is that K won't tell me what I did this time to make him turn his back on me again.  The last time this happened, he gave me a lengthy laundry list of my crimes.  In that situation, I readied myself for a follow-up encounter where I could give my own version of the "crimes" he held against me.  But, since he never gave me the opportunity, I got to replay my presentation over and over in my head. The kindest thing that I could do for myself would be for me to do for myself what I would have him do for me:  To forgive myself for whatever fallabilities which may have contributed to. Perhaps some day, K will come to realize that it is better to have flawed individuals in our lives who love us, than to not have such individuals in our lives at.  I accept him as a flawed individual.  I need to be better at accepting myself as a flawed individual.  If he cannot do that, his life we be much less rich without me in it; and someday, he will regret his banishment of me. In the meantime, I need to learn from those sentiments myself.  I should not sit around an wallow in self pity and regret.  The kindest thing that I can do for myself would be to forgive myself.  While I cannot control how K treats me, I can control how I treat myself.l

Allow me to introduce my soulmate

What's that?  You think she looks just like me?  Well, looks can be deceiving.  Greta Griefnurturer has one goal: to remind me of my pain.  You see, so long as I relive the pain of losing my son she gets the gift of continued existence.  If I could get passed the pain, she would disappear. Everywhere I go, I can feel her behind me. I try to ignore her, and succeed most of the day. But she is a vigilant bitch. She watches and quietly waits. Her silence is daunting, since I know that she uses the silence to calculate her next attack. She waits for when she knows that it will be most effective. She cannot be happy as long as I seem happy. She is impish in her surprise attacks. Anytime she recognizes something that could make me think of him, she whispers into my ear.  She never sleeps either.  When I'm asleep, she keeps her wits about her so that she can sneak into my dreams.  Sometimes she replays memories of my son for me.  Sometimes she really screws with me by creating fantasy scenarios where all of this estrangement is behind us.  Those dreams are not too hard to dismiss, since they are too pleasant to fool me into thinking that they are reality. Maybe she'll tire of her games with me at some point.  I thought I had gotten rid of her last year when K was back in my life for six months.  But even then, she would hang around reminding me that he'd probably cut me off again.  She's so cynical, but she turned out to be right. Maybe I should refer to her as my soul-sucking mate?