It Came Just the Same

This was a year that Ellie believed in Santa Clause. I think it is important to note this event, she's a smart and extremely observant kid. I don't think the belief in Santa will be here long. That being said I have a job as a mother. I have a job to make Christmas as enchanting as possible. I have a job to make her feel the love and magic that is Christmas. This magic comes in my undivided attention, in listening to who this child is becoming, in sharing the enchantment of the season. In truth it gives me no greater joy, but this year was so much harder than I've ever known.

I know it gets one nowhere to write about how stressed they are; we are all stressed. Stress is hard and we all know it. But sometimes stress can be a crippling thing. Some times when you are faced with change upon change upon change the only mantra you find yourself saying is "keep it together". And you try, because you want to feel good again, but that stress is a lingering, permeating sort of thing. You know it's terrible and yucky and yet, there it is. Hovering. Holidays, a new town, new house, new lifestyle, new job, and a palpable, scary loneliness.

To my family and friends, oh my God do I miss you. You have no idea how much I miss you. You have no idea how much I want your familiarity, your loving embrace, your support. You have no idea how scary it often feels to be here in this little town, so far away from everyone I know and love.

In perfect honesty, this move is so much harder than I ever imagined. Ever. It's a whole new beast of change and growth and newness. And yet for as much as I am struggling on a personal level, I have to keep it together. For her, my 5 year old love who trusts me with her world. And for me, the person I sometimes forget needs loving, too.

We live in our choices and today, I live in Salida, Colorado. I look back every single day in complete amazement at how I ended up here. But I did. We did. We can't abandon the adventure before giving it a chance, but sometimes I wonder how it will ever work out.

But it will. It always does, right?

We live in a place that postcards are made from. The beauty is majestic, healing, scary, intense. We arrived, we plotted and we got here.

We are here. And we are okay. Sometimes it just takes a reminding.

"He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!Somehow or other, it came just the same!" 

There's a lot to learn from a child. Her enchantment with this world is the thing that makes it shine so bright. Sweet child, I may be the grown up, but I learn from watching you every single day. 

I am grateful, truly.

The Places that Scare You

In life I want to be open. I want to explore possibilities. I want to share my heart and connect with others. I want to be compassionate, kind, loving. This is who I want to be.

Who I am right now is a scared child. I've had so much change thrust into my life that I have lost sight of my own anchor. I'm in a new town. New job. New people. New house. New school for Ellie. New potential for friends but as we all know, true friendships can only be built through time. I miss my family terribly. I miss my friends. I jumped off the proverbial cliff, landed on my feet, but I'm dazed. Is there where I meant to land?

Each day is wracked with questions of self doubt. "Did I do the right thing?" "Am I doing this right?" "Are you sure this is what you want?" "Are you sure this is what is best for your daughter?"

Earlier this week something happened to my body. It was a terrible, horrible thing. I became wracked with unrelenting nausea and vomiting. I spent the night curled next to the toilet, sweaty but also freezing. By morning I had consumed no water (it wouldn't stay down) and to move my head a mere few inches off the pillow not only racked me with nausea, but it gave me the worst, bone throbbing headache. My husband was hours away in Denver and I was alone with my daughter, as I am for much of the working week. I was too sick to get my child ready for school, too sick to drive. I had to keep her home though the mere act of feeding her was all I could muster. It was one of the loneliest, scariest days I've had in a while. I realized I was on my own island. I had no one to call for help when the thing I craved most was to feel nurtured. It was a really hard day.

There have been a lot of hard days. We are still living out of boxes (we do not close on our new house until next month). Without feeling settled I notice how hard it is to be the kind of mom I want to be, how hard it is to treat myself with genuine love. I feel myself withdrawing into winter, into the dark and cold that starts to permeate. And yet, for her, I can not withdraw. She needs me. Now I see that bravery in the face of change has become a wholly different thing now that I am a mother.

The Places that Scare you is a book I'm reading by Pema Chodron right now. She writes "Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?

I do not choose fear but acknowledge that fear is ever present. I've left behind my comfort zone in exploration of new experience. I remind myself this is hard to do. I remind myself that I am being brave. Though I can be scared and feel so small among these mountains, these new faces, this new routine, I also stand here as a woman and a mother. I hold the hand of my child and navigate these waters, charting a course that is not yet known. I remind myself, because it needs reminding, that we are here now, and that we are actually doing the thing we were craving for so long. 

I remind myself that it is okay to feel scared and lonely, but that the things we need will unfold. In time. In trust. I know that we will be okay. I can be a brave warrior as I must for the sweet little girl who calls me Mom.

(Little child you have no idea how hard it can feel to be a grown up.)

a letter to the new owner

Sniff, sniff

This is the part

IF I WANTED A BOAT
I would want a boat, if I wanted a
boat, that bounded hard on the waves,
that didn't know starboard from port
and wouldn't learn, that welcomed
dolphins and headed straight for the
whales, that, when rocks were close,
would slide in for a touch or two,
that wouldn't keep land in sight and
went fast, that leaped into the spray.
What kind of life is it always to plan
and do, to promise and finish, to wish
for the near and the safe? Yes, by the
heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want
a boat I couldn't steer.  --Mary Oliver 

Yesterday we packed, exhausting as it was. We filled the uhaul and our car and headed to the mountains were we will now live. Ellie and I drove the car. She spilled something on her shirt and I had no idea where her clothes were. So she just took off her shirt. I watched her from the rear view mirror, my little child who, without a shirt, looked younger and more baby like then I had seen in some time. Suddenly I was overcome with the bigger picture. Me, mother. Her, child, being led by the hand by her parents. Parents, the ones that are supposed to be wise, the ones that are supposed to have the answers.

We are in the new place now. There are boxes everywhere. But today I am overcome with the enormity of it all. I'm overcome with the loneliness of new surroundings. We moved here to be closer to the mountains, because we both agree, (myself and Mike), that they move us on some level that can not necessarily be articulated with words. But today the gorgeous, majestic mountains outside of my door make me feel small. Scared. Questioning why exactly we are doing this. What chord in our reasonings rang so loud that it said "child, you must go to the mountains.".

This is the part where you have to trust the process. This is the part where your faith gets rocked. This is the part where you simply have to put one foot in front of the other and do what's best for the child.

I'm having a very hard day. I miss my friends. I miss the very bare home that we will, come Friday, relinquish ownership of. I miss the life that I lived there. I miss it all. I miss it so acutely that I don't possibly know how this can get better.

And yet it will. I know that it will.

This is part where you have to trust the process.

Life. There are always multiple ways to get to where you are going.

Wherever you go, there you are

I'm going to miss it here. I know this, deep in my heart, even though we are going through the motions of house selling and moving. This house was never big enough, not once the child came. Still, it holds so much of the dearness in my life. We nestled in here perfectly, built community, built a family. Every day it becomes more and more sparse as we transfer our belongings from one home to another. Every day the echo of an empty home becomes more and more apparent, like the soon to be echoes of a life we once lived.

They say life is supposed to be messy, and you're supposed to go out there and get dirty. Moving to the mountains is something I've always wanted to do. Who wouldn't want to live in the place that enchants you the most? Still, are we doing the right thing? Will the stark contrast of urban living and country homesteading be too much for us? I'm scared, yes. Or maybe I'm simply grieving. Or maybe I'm just being human about everything and owning the one skill that I've never been able to master, the skill of making a true, unwavering decision.

I want to live in the mountains because they make my heart feel as though it is home. But in our call to move onward there is another (rather large) pull to move to California. In California life is beautiful, not in a majestic, mountain sense (although that does exist there), but in a salty, ancient, sun bathed sense. And like all things home, my mother and brother live there. I may be a fully grown woman, but I still want to share the beautiful things that life offers with my mother, with the family of my youth, just as my daughter wants to share the beautiful things she finds with me.

We are moving to the mountains because of a housing opportunity. An opportunity to live a life that we can see ourselves living. I wish the California factor wasn't there, because it makes living with a question mark, as though we are trying it on for size, ready to turn it in if the fit isn't quite right. It gives us an out, but it also gives us more family.

I don't know where life will lead us. But I like that the wheels are in motion. I'm scared and sad and elated and excited. I have no idea if the decisions we are making are the right ones. We are jumping off of the proverbial cliff. We are reminding one another that sometimes we need to close our eyes and just say "wheeeee!!!!!!!!!".

Brave face

Dear life,
It's not always easy is it?
We greet and part, kiss on the cheek,
hand in hand slowly slipping away.
We rise when we must
sometimes wondering how we could possibly handle more.
I've seen so many families
locked in the impossible stare of Grief.
Grief, a bold faced beast.

I've never seen a more beautiful organism
than that of family.
Never a more delicate flower
a more peaceful day
a more turbulent storm.
All we have is each other
until we no longer have that.

Dear heart,
I know you are breaking.
I know you are watching your father die.
Letting go of your mother
and Lord help me
saying goodbye to your daughter.
I can't help but wonder
how can our hearts handle so much?

I am but a small voice, one nurse,
doing my best when my best is no where near good enough.
I can't make people stay.
Sometimes, I can't even make the pain go away.
My heart breaks too.
I have to relive my own losses,
grieve for the losses that I will one day endure.
I see it all in you.
I tell you that you are strong.
And you are because you have no other choice.

I will help you through this, because it is what I have chosen to do,
because I've always known on a grand scale
that our lives are meant to go away.
But sometimes grand scales are hard to see
in ordinary moments.
Even though we know that we must,
letting go is the hardest thing we'll ever do.

It's only in facing the great beast of Grief
that I've ever understood
what "brave face" means.
I will keep wearing mine,
and I will gently remove it where thankfully,
I no longer need to be brave.

On being a hospice nurse

Sometimes it's time to go.

Though I have seen countless people die, there still remains something jarring about the visual of death. It still feels unsettling to see bodies that so recently contained souls I had come to know. I just lost my friend and former patient. (I wrote about her earlier in my blog.) I saw her the day before she died. I put off seeing her, knowing her situation had changed, that she was closer to death. My defense mechanism to stay away and not deal kicked in and I dreaded that last visit. But I made myself go. Death had already starting seizing her and her beautiful smile was diminished by a mouth that wouldn't close, eyes that wouldn't move. Still breathing but barely. I told her goodbye.

I try not to get too emotionally invested in my patients. It's my own defense mechanism to staying sane. But the young ones always get me, always. I like my role of being an educator and nurse to people that are dying, but sometimes it's hard to watch it happen. Slowly and steadily people lose their grip. As a nurse I understand this needs to happen. As a human I sometimes want to help them hold on, keep their grip a little tighter, a little longer.

Once someone dies there is a family that goes on grieving. My friend that just died leaves behind her mom. I love her mom and my heart aches at what her new void has become. She is strong. She knows her daughter is free from a deeply battered body. She knows this and yet at the end of the day her daughter has died. And in the history of the world there are countless mothers that have lost children, but you hope and you pray that it is never you.

Sometimes the sadness of my work builds up. For all the BEAUTIFUL connections I get to make with people, I always have to say goodbye. Saying goodbye to this young friend was hard. Seeing death with such regularity can start to feel immense. I see humans for the transient beings that they are. Our bodies will fail us.

If you are my friend you know that sometimes I go away. Sometimes I don't call you back for a long time. Sometimes life can feel very heavy and sometimes at the end of the day I just want to go home and not talk. Thank you for being my friend even when I "go away". Thank you for being there when I always come back.

Life is hard and messy and sometimes kind of ugly. But it's all we've got. I love it so much I can barely contain it. And I hate saying goodbye.

But that's life.

.

You're going to have to let go

Someday something you love will slip away.

Nothing is forever.

You're going to have to let go.

 I mourn places I've lived,
connections and friends and an idea that life could be a certain way.

The world keeps going around,

and people and notions grow further away.

 I want to hold and contain them.

They are sand through my fingers
and closeness becomes subject to a
moment in time's ever fading memory.

But wanting and missing and craving and mourning

are too jealous for this world.

There's no room for such emotional immaturity.

The world marches forward, only forward

Maybe we march together,

or maybe our roads go in opposite directions, as most eventually do.

Hands don't stretch that far.

You're going to have to let go.

My daughter just turned 5

and I still let her sleep in our bed

and I still pick her up and carry her places like a baby.

Picking her up feels like we're hugging,

her sweet, fresh hair, buried into my neck. Stop.
I want to suspend this moment.

Her long dangly legs, heavier by the day

but still, she's my baby.
And my heart aches at the memories of my baby. My baby. She'll always be my baby.

You're going to have to let go.

My hospice patient can no longer walk on her own

and it pisses her off. "I was so independent" she tells me.

I see an old woman starting her journey to death

with a personality that is jamming her feet in the sand as she is pulled closer to death's door.

She was a dancer. A mother of 4. She was widowed for 20 years. She can take care of herself. She's got a can do attititude

Except now she can't

You're going to have to let go.

I've lived in this house for 6 years.

I've been married, suffered a miscarriage and bore the most

miraculous daughter.

No house of mine has ever contained such memories.

I sit here now, aware of how small this space is and how ready we are.

But that's where she learned to walk.

That's where we learned we lost the baby.

That's where we nearly got divorced but didn't,

That's where I said I love you and really really meant it.

It's all in here, it's energetic memory bouncing off the walls. Our walls.

We're going to have to let go.

The wind comes in and dies.

The ocean kisses the shore then leaves it.

The Earth doesn't stop moving.

But there is no mourning.

The Earth is the wise one. 

It has learned to let go. 

The observer.

Sometimes we don't let our brains stop and think.
Sometimes we let the world stop them from connecting back to the themselves, the brains to their owners, the heart to the soul. The observer gets lost in the business.

I do observe, and sometimes the things that I see need time to settle, or need to be reviewed. My brain functions in my own unique way, carrying it's own form of sadness, strength, solace, numbing abilities and renewal. But that is my brain.

My inner observer does nothing but observe. She watches the beautiful face of my nearly 5 year old whenever she can. She notices how enchanted I become. She notices that the swelling in my heart could never be put into words, that no love could ever be documented, only observed and felt. This love carries with it it's own kind of brain activity, and the observer in me notices how worried a human I can be. And she notices how terrible it feels to worry.

My inner observer sits on death beds. I realize this is a strange observation, but I sit at the bedside of the dying for 12 hour stretches. I observe my own empathy, my own occasional indifference. I observe that my empathy is strongest when the family is there, and the person dying becomes more than just a failing body. I observe a curiosity to know that the dying are really great life stars, going out into the ether, becoming untouchable to us. I observe that often, at the end of the long day of watching death come, my heart and brain want to numb themselves and not reflect.

The observer in me knows that I do not always want to observe. Sometimes I don't want to feel things, and sometimes I observe how adept at numbing my own brain I have become. I have to observe this, and not judge this. The observer is the ONLY aspect that does not judge. She only watches. Neither with love or self pity. She just looks on. Notices. And occasionally her noticing catches the attention of the brain, and the noticing and the brain can align, if only for a few moments.

My observer knows that there is an undertone of melancholy that exists in life, in my life. But I do not observe a resistance or an avoidance to the melancholy that creeps in. My observer knows this is a an important time for my brain and my observer to align. Sometimes there is sadness. Sometimes there is joy that is so rich that it makes me nearly sad. It's like tides in a moon cycle; I can observe how easily affected I am. How my brain finds such solace in music or how, when alone, I can allow myself the space to release through tears. My brain knows that without exercise the delicate balance of keeping it together becomes unraveled, and that through physical activity I can renew myself, again and again.

I find it all good, truly, the sad and the joy. The observing and the avoiding. Light can not know itself without dark. Life is full of so much. My observer watches it all and says it's all okay.

She is the wise one.

Fairydust.

I bought some bright red galoshes. This past week they have taken me through complete wonder: splashing through the Pacific Ocean, hiking through the freshly fallen rain filled redwood forests, kicking through tide pools to search for treasure. This world is fantastic. It is bright and colorful and electric and mysterious. I'm a small visitor to a grand place. Last week I tapped into the feeling of enchantment.

I am in love with this world. Really in love. And like any love, you can't contain it. You can't be jealous or resentful or territorial. You just have to love it. Accept it. Be a part of it.

Being surrounded by such beauty brings epiphanies, or rather, helps you to remember things you deep down know to be true. This is it. This. This now. This typing. This reading. This moment. This is it! Now my brain is sprinkled with these beautiful memories of trolloping through redwood forests, but really, it is nothing but fairy dust anymore. You can't contain beautiful moments. You can't package them up and put them on display (well, you can take pictures, okay). The most gracious thing you can do is to be present, for those moments in the tide pools, the moments in quiet solitude, the moments with your friends and family.

Sometimes I think this life is just fairy dust. Our moments are sprinkled behind us. They are shiny, intangible memories.

My job is to stay enchanted.

Portraits of a beautiful person.

In my job I am blessed to know some amazing people. I meet them in an intimate setting: as their nurse as they navigate their terminal illness to the end. It can create personal heartbreak, yes, knowing that the people you grow so fond of are not long for this world, but it all feels worth it. I meet amazing people that do amazing things. I meet people ready to see the end, people fighting their diagnoses, and people that simply live each day to its fullest, with a unique intention that a terminal illness can bring.

I have been blessed with the honor of knowing a woman named Christi. Christi is very much alive, and during my months as her nurse her optimism has been simply enchanting. She was dealt such a crappy card in this life, but she smiles like no one I've ever seen. She is kind, she is appreciative, and really, I have grown quite fond of her. I have returned to my favorite local hospice agency, so she is no longer my patient; she is now my friend. As her friend she has given me permission to photograph her, not only the beautiful, shining self that she is, but the harder, more sick parts that are very much a part of her reality. She does not hide her cancer, it is a part of her now, just as her pain pump that is constantly infusing medicine into her is a part of her. Just as her colostomy and nephrostomy tubes are a part of her, the cane that she must use because her gait is too unsteady to walk without it. Just as the smile that she gives when she sees you is a part of her. The compliments she always doles out, and the attitude that keeps on looking at the positive; these are a part of her. She is multi-facted. She is beautiful. 

Thank you Christi for letting me take these special photos of you and your mama. Thank you for letting me be a part of your life. Thank you for making my life even more meaningful having known you. You are a special human being.

 

 

 

February

We made it out of February, some more unscathed than others. 

Winter brings out the blackness. The long days, the mornings where every ounce of your being wants to just lay in bed, the bitter cold forcing it's way into your bones. This is February.

I have a friend that is hurting badly, full of a profound grief and glaring introspection. I want it to not hurt so bad for him. I want to take the hurt away.
I have a friend with advanced cancer. She was my hospice patient and now, with a restructuring of my job, she is now my friend. And like all my friends, I love her. And I want to take the hurt away.
We had a nephew that only blessed this world with a week of living.  My sister in law and brother in law are hurting. And I love them and want to take the hurt away.

This has been February.

February, for being the shortest month of the year, feels like the longest. February, in all its coldness and its forced recluse, gives us the opportunity to reach deep inside and pull up the things that need to be dug out. When I lived in Maine (where it is VERY COLD), I called it my black month.

You can't avoid February. It comes every year. Some sensitive types, like myself, feel the pressure of February a bit more than others, but no one can fight off the seasons, the ones of Earth, and the ones of our hearts.

I was gone from my writing in February, lost to my own routines and tightly curled up hurts.

But the sun, the glorious sun, has started shining.
And the sun, the glorious sun, is what gently uncurls the hurts.
Spring is rebirth. And we get the chance to be reborn again and again.

Soon February will be a distant memory. Or maybe, for the people that have experienced tremendous loss, it will be a milestone. An unthinkable time that hopefully will be less traumatic with the healing sun gently easing the pain.

I, myself, give thanks for February, for the dark and the light. And for the Spring where we all get the chance to be new again.

Spring is a gift. The sun always comes back.


FEBRUARY
BY DAR WILLIAMS

I threw your keys in the water, I looked back
They'd frozen halfway down in the ice
They froze up so quickly, the keys and their owners
Even after the anger, it all turned silent
And the everyday turned solitary, so we came to February

First we forgot where we'd planted those bulbs last year
And then we forgot that we'd planted it all
Then we forgot what plants are altogether
And I blamed you for my freezing and forgetting
And the nights were long and cold and scary, can we live through February?

You know I think Christmas was a long red glare
Shot up like a warning, we gave presents without cards
And then the snow, and then the snow came
We were always out shoveling and we dropped to sleep exhausted
Then we wake up, and it's snowing

And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together
You stopped and pointed and you said, "That's a crocus"
And I said, "What's a crocus?", And you said, "It's a flower"
I tried to remember, but I said, "What's a flower?"
You said, "I still love you"

The leaves were turning as we drove to the hardware store
My new lover made me keys to the house
And when we got home, well we just started chopping wood
Because you never know how next year will be
And we'll gather all our arms can carry, I have lost to February