Four years and Counting

Today is the fourth anniversary of my Mother's death.  I was sitting in my chair, letting my mind free-associate, when it occurred to me how I don't think about my Mom as often as I used to.  I probably think about her at least once a day.  Before it was more, and even now it might not be every day. 

Suffice it to say, she isn't top of mind with me anymore.  That bothered me, more than I truly allowed myself to realize.  So, today, I sort of hit that proverbial wall.  As I am wont to do, I suppress things that I don't have time to think about or would rather not consider.  In the back of my mind, I had been thinking about this day most of last week.  Not top of mind, but there. 

I suppose that my life is "moving on".  Isn't this the dream of all those poor grieving people to find themselves in a place where the loved one they have lost doesn't constantly haunt their thoughts, color every holiday, or basically make them a zombie with grief? Well, for those of you that are struggling, it is nice not to feel the searing pain anymore.  But, this malaise isn't exactly a wonderful place either.

I find myself, more and more, examining my own life and how it will play out.   Will I be remembered? I have no children, and though I have lots of family, I don't have day to day closeness with them.  Have I made a contribution to society, will anyone remember me after I'm gone after just a few years?  I mean if I don't think about my own Mother as much anymore, somone who was just about the most important person in my life, who will think of me?

Sounds self-centered, doesn't it?  Well, this is a blog.  The very definition of self-centered.  I won't add a "selfie" and we will call it even. 

Trauma: The plight of the adult orphan

I think I have written about this before, but I can't recall, so here goes.  When you go to google and type in the word "orphan", you get a long list of websites dealing with this topic.  99% of these websites deal with young children and their plight at being orphaned.  Now, I don't despel that this is a horrible thing.  One of my major fears as a child was that my parents wouldn't come home one day and I would be on my own. 

As I grew up, stories of how close I came to losing my Mother were told to me with staggering regularity.  My Mother, as readers of this blog my know, fought a battle with Hodgekins Lymphoma in her 20s and early 30s.  My mother was given months to live several times.  She survived to raise me, and passed in 2009 of a disease so far away from Cancer is beggars the imagination. 

One of the things I heard over and over again, from very well-meaning people, was "well you had her a lot longer than anyone ever thought you would."  Really?  Would you go up to a 10 year old, pat her on the head and say, "well at least you had your Mommy 10 years.  What more do you expect in this world?  Suck it up, buttercup."  Probably not. 

But that's what adult children who lose their parents feel like.  I have read stories of people who have lost their parents, the parent was in their 80s, and despite the advanced age of the parent, the child feels just as alone and lost as that 10 year old child. 

Losing one's parent is the natural order of things.  It's expected that your parent will go before you do.  But what is lacking among the public, HR departments in employers, and even medical professionals, is that losing a parent is just as traumatic to a 65 year old as it is to a 10 year old.  It's still your parent, its still the person that was your lifeline to the past, its still the person that connects you to your family.

The effect is even worse for the person who has lost their last parent.  I can say that I am not at that point yet.  I lost my Mother about 4 years ago, but my Father is still living.  My thoughts go to when I will lose him.  I don't dwell on it, mind you, but when I sit and think about the grieving process, it comes at me full force. 

I know there has been scientific research on this, some books published (not very many), but I feel like there is much to this story that hasn't been told.  I've always wondered if I could write a book like that.  Maybe I will. 

Sentimentalism is not Sadness

Life in the 21st century has made us jaded.    People are cynical, think that showing any kind of tenderness is weak and try to cover up things with humor.  So when people get sentimental and open, people think :  "Are they depressed, or sad?"

I would scream if I could, but screaming looks crazy in text, so I won't.    It's ok to be introspective, thoughtful and yes, sentimental.  Its not a dirty word.  IT ISN'T!!!!

Sorry, I was screaming again. 

Sorry this is a short one.  I may expound later, but right now, all I have.

Life in Pictures-or Why Pinterest has become my New Thing

If you would have asked me prior to this year what Pinterest was, I would have known it existed, but I didn't quite get the point.  Pinning pictures onto a cyber bulletin board?  Really?  Why?  Has society become so dependent on the interent and so easily distracted that we can find fun just browsing through pictures and pinning them on our boards.   Well, in a word, yes.

I am now a newly indocrinated Pinterest junkie.  Someone who went from three boards, with generic stuff on them to 24 boards with all sorts of pins in about three months.  Yeah, I'm in deep.  So, in a attempt to explain this phenomenon and also to justify my own time wasting activities on this site, I decided to blog about it. 

The world has amassed a huge amount of pictures of just about anything you want a picture on.  To be more precise, yes a picture is worth a thousand words.  Pinterest is more than learning about someone's personality by viewing what pictures they find interesting and "pin worthy", but this is a chance to see pictures of things that, frankly, may have rested on the bottom of someones closest forever or on a back shelf in a library. 

  To my shame, I personally get a thrill when I see tons of people I've never met repinning pictures I share or start following one of my boards.  It has absolutely NOTHING to do with me of course, just that I must pick nice pictures that people want to share.  But it still feels good.  And I think that's what this site is about.  It feels good to look at nice pictures.  It makes us feel good and a little more secure to see pictures of shocking things that may have happened to others, or makes us feel good to think about our favorite rock star or movie.  Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, all have the same aim, to make its users feel good.  Lately, Facebook has started to wear on me.  Getting my belly full of too much politics, agendas and the like.  On Pinterest you can just browse pretty pictures, pin the ones you like and move on.  If a picture offends you, so what.  You can move past it to a slew of others less objectionable. 

To be completely honest, I started getting more interested in Pinterest because of Freddie Mercury.  This man could quite possibly be one of the most photgraphed people I've ever seen, and I intend to get them all!  Yes I do!  It has become a competition.  I look at other boards and see if they have more pins and I have to get more.  Luckily Freddie liked to be photographed because I need pins baby!!
I, however, refuse to pin pictures snapped of him by the paparazzi when he was sick.  That just makes me angry.

I actually would like to start a blog that goes along with Pinterest.  The story behind the picture.  I love to analyze pictures and wonder what was going on in that picture and what people were thinking.  Maybe that is my next time killer.  Who knows!

The Wild and Wonderful Ways of Grief

Something weird happened to me about a month ago. I had a dream about Freddie Mercury. Now to stop my groaning friends that might be reading this blog and have tired of my recent glut of all things Freddie, I am not going to do into a long examination of my love and affection for the Mercurial One. I just want to show how the most odd things can bring you through the wilds of grief. Not odd in itself that I should have a dream about him. I have always found him fascinating, egnimatic, and just plain wonderful. But the intimacy of the dream and the timing were what took me by surpise.

  The dream, as I came to find out many days later, was less about him and more about me. As most people know Freddie died of aids in 1991. A disease with degnerative qualities, that causes other diseases, it made me think long and hard again about the loss of my Mom as we round the corner to year 4 since she died. Not so much that she DID die, but how she died. It was quite a horrible way to go, and I don't wish it on anyone. But walking the road down the death of Queen's frontman, examining his life and his lack of connection to people, his sometimes ebullient joy at just living, and his shaking the hand of finality has made me examine my own walk I made with my Mom.

Mom loved life. Always did. She lived life with such joy, trying to wring every little bit of it out for herself. A sickly child who became a sick young adult, she never expected to make old bones. So she never did anything half way. From pushing me to try all sorts of things, to decorating her house for Christmas bigger and better than anyone else, to making sure my wedding was Better Homes and Gardens worthy, Karen K. Kirby-Jones sucked the marrow out of life in a way that I wish I could sometimes.

  So, I should not have found it surprising that she made it through Cancer, Heart Disease, and a slew of brushes with death, only to die of one of the most rare degenerative diseases out there. 90% of people I meet have never heard of the disease she died of. That was "so" Mom. The doctors couldn't even agree on what she had and all of them said she was probably suffering from two diseases. Really? Only my Mom could be that different and special. Not a great way to be special, but it exhibited a point that I am making here. Walking down the road to your final reward isn't always pretty or easy. Sometimes people die gently in their sleep. Some, struggle with heaving horrible gasping breaths. But in the end, we all die. Each of us has a decision to make. How will we live on the road to eternity?

   Don't get me wrong, death is horrible and I'm not making light of it here. But what I am saying is that while we are living, we need to remember that life is fleeting and death even more monumentous than birth. We can die badly or we can die well. Even though the last days of my Mom's life were tragic and hard, she fought the good fight--and for that, I will always remember those days as the hardest but the most meaningful of my own life up to this point. My Mom would have agreed with Freddie. My smile may be fading, my make-up may be flaking, but my smile still stays on. The show must go on, my dears. Make it a good one.