Lunching with an old friend

I finally called Mom's closest and dearest friend and proposed an outing.  We've been in touch on and off since Mom died, but I seem to collapse into tears every time I see her or we talk because she makes me think so much of Mom.  But I decided to do it anyway, despite raw emotions.

Husband, Daughter and I picked her up and went to a restaurant that was one of Mom's favorites.  We had  soup and sandwiches and yummy dessert and coffee, but mostly we had good conversation and laughter.

Nothing special, just chatting about church, and what was in the paper, and the rest of the family, and of course, the Phillies.  And it did make me tear up and miss Mom horribly.  But it also made me so happy to be with someone who shared Mom's history, someone who could tell Mom stories, someone who had been a part of my life forever.  And once we got past the sadness, there was pure delight, and I liked it a lot.

She said it meant a lot to her to have something to do, to get out, so we're probably going to do it once a month from here on out. We might pretend we're doing it for her, but I know my motivation is selfish. This will be a gift to me, and  I think it will be a welcome new routine. Mom would be tickled.





*not my photo nor my food.....but it looks pretty good!

The things you learn...

          We've been having a lovely visit with 'Nudder Mudder.  It's been second nature to shift back into having another soul in the house.  Since she's my mother-in-law, and not my mother, there are different things I do to make her feel at home.  I'm sure you know all about that.  In hubby's family, being a good hostess means having ready access to lots of bowls of candy and sweet desserts, which we never had in my growing up.  So, I've been filling the candy bowls and baking far more than we need.  But it makes this Mom feel like I'm taking good care of her baby.  
          Oh...and gravy.  A good meal always includes gravy.  My husband agrees, but for the better part of our marriage, I've spaced the gravy out a little bit more.  But 'Nudder Mudder is a southern farm girl, so a couple kinds of meat (and gravy) and a couple vegetables and a couple desserts are standard fare for her and the sign that her son is not starving to death.  So I've been trying to put on a good show.  But she's 96 and can barely chew, so I'm scurrying for proteins that are fork tender and trying to stay away from all the "odd" foods that we eat on a routine basis (like pasta and vegetarian fare and anything with an ethnicity or a spice.)
          Actually, that's not been tough. I like a good challenge.  The "tough" part of the week has been the memories of Mom that have been churned up by having another elder one in the home.  Just the touch of her skin, so soft, so fragile, so thin, carries me right back to Mom.  And the memory circles!  We've had the same conversations many times each day, every day.  The 96 year old brain has a limited repertoire of material.  I'm right back into exercising my patience and over-utilizing my smile.  I'd forgotten a bit.  And there's the talking louder, the steadying of the feet, the repeated explanations.  All routine.  All temporarily forgotten.
          The hardest part for me has been using the baby monitor again at night.  I really hadn't thought about it until the first night when she asked me how to call me if she needed me at night.  So out it came.  She hasn't called for me yet, but we keep it on, and my sleep has been a strange mix of memory and dreams with that static sound running in the background all night.
          So, it's been a learning.  A time to enjoy family, and a time to pause and reflect about the passage of time and the changes in life.  I'm just more and more aware on a daily basis of how precious our days and years are.  I'm grateful for the briefest tender moments.  And I'm thinking I'll fill the candy bowls a bit more often even when 'Nudder Mudder returns home.
         

'Nudder Mudder

          When one of the kids in my family, maybe me, was being born, my oldest brother was shuttled off to live with my aunt for a couple weeks (this was long before dads could take parental leave to help out at home).  When he came home, he had started referring to my aunt as his "other mother," only he said "Nudder Mudder."

          I thought about that this morning as I puttered in Mom's room awaiting the arrival of Bob's Mother who has come for a visit.  We fluffed and cleaned and dusted and made space for new things, and gradually brought the room back into the land of the living.

          It's kinda nice to have the windows open, the sheets fresh and music in the air again.  Life returns...in the form of a 'nudder 90 years plus mudder....and once again we will enjoy sitting and talking and remembering.

         Life is good.  All is well.

Thinking out loud

           I know I'm supposed to wait...wait....wait for God to show me my future....but knowing that God works in the strangest ways, I continue to talk to friends and wise folk and my husband and myself.....and I continue to sit in the quiet and listen.....kinda like priming the pump so that when God's ready for the water to flow, the pipes will be ready. 
          In the midst of the silence yesterday....as I sat meditating in Mom's room....it occurred to me that I not only missed my Mom, but I just plan missed having a sweet old lady living in the house.  I had kinda gotten used to a three generation family, and to the daily ebb and flow of having an elder under roof. 
          Hubby works in elder care ministry and one of the things he struggles with is helping financially challenged elders find home like settings that they can afford so that they can avoid institutions and expenses that are not what they would choose.  I began to wonder what it would mean for us to make space in our home for someone else...to provide room and board and companionship to someone else's mother.  I'm intrigued.
           It certainly wouldn't be a money maker, but it could take the edge off some bills and mostly, it would enrich our lives immensely while helping another.  Fill the house up again.  Makes some sense.  Kinda exciting.  Hmm.  I'm going keep praying on it to see what God thinks.
           Meanwhile, I've been in conversation about some other non-traditional ministries that might just be right up my alley.  So, I'm trying to wait....wait....wait....for clarity as I sort these lentils and consider the possibilities.

Sitting up with myself

          During Mom's final months, I was awake all night and dozed during the day.  I was turned inside out.  But the midnight hours were the ones when I would sit and breathe and think, and when I did my blog writing and soul searching.  Those quiet hours got me through somehow.
           I'm at my post again tonight.

          After months of figuratively taking my life apart and imagining how I might put it back together again, the real life wheels are now turning.  After a period of waiting and thinking and then talking and deciding, the real work of disassembling my Mother and Father's house is beginning.  My siblings and I have begun the work of dividing up my folk's belongings and this weekend the actual physical moving begins.

          And so, while we have lived with our things co-mingled with my folk's things for the three years we lived together, I am now wandering the house gathering up trinkets and mementos and art work and furniture and clocks and lamps and moving them into a sorting area from which they will be picked up or shipped.

          The choosing and the separating really has not been the least bit conflictual, but the act of stripping apart the house is much like ripping huge bandages off wounds not yet healed.  Even if a piece of art has no particular value, its familiar placement here is hard to let go of.  The clock that has been ticking on the walls of this house all my life seems to be screaming its ticks and tocks as I listen, knowing that soon it will be gone and quiet.

          And so I find myself unable to sleep, wandering back into my Mother's room to check on things rather than her.  This quiet vigil is familiar, and the tears run down my cheeks as I sit here in the way I did so often a year ago.

          I'm ready to move on.  Ready to claim some new normalcy.  Ready for the rest of the family to share in these pieces of our lives, and yet the quiet and the dark of this waiting time is heavy on my heart and it is tough to face into this process.

          I have to admit to being scared.  Not scared of the loss of any item, but frightened of the unknown days ahead without any sense of sameness or predictability in the area of family.         

          These last months, my first without parents, have been a time of  growing awareness of how startling different the reality of family is from the myths we create as children.  I've really had time to re-examine my beliefs and assumptions and to begin to create a new story of who I am now.  But the rearranging of the literal furniture and the redecorating of this home put flesh on something that has been, up til now, rather vague and untouchable.

          So I find myself unable to sleep.  I find myself wondering what it will be like to live in this house when it is only a house and not "my folk's house."  I wonder what it will feel to live here, no longer anyone's child, but only as an adult, relying on myself in a new way.  I wonder, and the wondering keeps me up.

          I have the sense that whatever God has in store for me in the future cannot emerge until I've cleared space in the present for it to appear.  And I think that moving on boxes and furniture and knick knacks and memories is one way to make space.  So it's good, but it's also a shaky, uncertain time.  One that requires some midnight quiet, a cup of tea, and some time to write and reflect.  

        

Avoiding idleness

Working on a new life plan without knowing what it is,  so until the Holy One declares into what direction I should head career-wise, I am trying to faithfully tread water.  But reality says it's time to get back into "earning" mode.  So.....

I knew I needed to do something flexible, at home, something that allowed for frequent periods of quiet reflection, something creative....so I looked about and saw my fabric stash and decided to whip out some handbags.  Nothing super special, but fun. Lots of local opportunities to sell them this fall, so I'm piling up some inventory, enjoying the quiet, and trusting that the real work will become obvious as I keep my fingers busy.  

My spiritual director says its just another way of sorting lentils... doing something while I wait to do something.  So far, so good.  I'm clearing out the stash too...or at least making a dent in it...but now I'm hungry to go fabric shopping.  Most control these impulses!