SubscribeAll I want is to stand in a field
and to smell green,
to taste air,
to feel the earth want me
~Phillip Pulfrey
Welcome to my latest blog! I hope you had no problems finding your way over to my new locale.
Why the new blog? Well, my previous two blogs have begun at the cusp of new beginnings in my life. Momentous journeys that I was embarking on. Now don't get too excited.. there are NO PLANS for any further adoptions from India (or anywhere else for that matter.. but it has always been India for our family)! This is more of an internal journey for me.
We have recently begun a new year and a new decade. I have recently lost my mother to breast cancer. I am a mom of two amazingly glorious crazy wildly-entertaining young children (ages 4 and 2 - both adopted from India). My life has been quite the roller-coaster during the past several years, and I have suddenly found myself feeling as if I am standing at the edge of something.. a road? a cliff? an ocean? I feel like I have been through a tremendous change and am embarking in a new and unexplored direction.
Why do I feel this way? I know it is pretty obvious that my life has gone through major adjustments lately.. so maybe you think that is a dumb question. It is just so wierd - this place that I find myself in today. I feel like life has been hurtling me forward at an ungodly (and rather unwelcome) fast pace. I feel like I wasn't in control of anything (ok, I wasn't..). I feel like suddenly this has all come to a screeching HALT!
And here I am.
Where am I?
Hm. I'm not entirely sure. There are no road signs here. I do not have a map.
Suddenly I am without a mom.. and I'm still getting used to the idea (she passed away on November 22nd). I keep thinking 'I would call mom and ask her about this' .. 'Mom would love to hear this story' .. 'Mom would love that - if she were here, I'd send it to her'. And on and on. If any of you have lost a parent, or anyone super close to you, I know you understand. So maybe part of this strange new feeling is the fact that 'I' have to be the mom now - more than ever. I can't call my mom for advice. I have to make tough decisions and be confident in myself. I can't call my mama and whine about someone or something that I think was unfair or upsetting to me. I have lost the one person who was always on my side, whether I was being irrational or not! Well, sometimes she had to talk me into understanding the fact that I was irrational. And maybe sometimes she should have just slapped me upside the head instead of listening to me and acting supportive. Who knows. But the person who always had my back isn't here anymore. It just does not feel right.
Aside from the fact that I miss my mom horribly.. the fact that she no longer is sick and needing assistance, I am no longer terrified that something is going to happen to her while I am away (I am a 2 1/2 hr flight from my hometown), and I do not feel like I am in a huge rush to get back to see her and spend time with her because I know that the sands are moving faster and faster through the hourglass.. I have had a huge stress removed. I did not realize just how much this was stressing me out until just yesterday. {duh, I know} I felt 'happiness' yesterday for the first time in - I don't remember. Months. Maybe more.
I feel like I just crawled out of a dark, dark cave and into brilliant sunshine. I feel like challenging myself now - mentally and physically (I am doing so - training again for triathlons and enrolled in some Masters classes). I feel like 'spring cleaning' my house. I feel like I can do anything and I need to do everything.
Psychoanalyze that and you will probably tell me that I've seen first-hand how fragile life really is - and it is causing me to make changes in my life and live life to the fullest. I would have to agree with that analysis. I also see what happens when someone passes away, and how important it is to have your life together - your 'stuff' together, your wishes detailed, etcetc.
I have seen a woman fight until the very last breathe - fighting and fighting against the disease that had already taken over her body - and I realize that I have seen strength, determination, and love in a person that changed my perspective of them to 'extraordinary'. And dammit, I will be extraordinary too! I owe it to my mom. I owe it to my husband and my kids. I owe it to myself.
While I want to do all of these things that I am embarking on, I also feel the need to just lose myself in nature. Take a hike into the mountains and simply revel in the beauty. Stand at the base of a huge waterfall and know my place on this earth - that it is small, fragile, and short-lived.
I'm feeling very much like I need to write things out now, and I bet that this blog will see many posts in the near future as I move forward. I'll apologize now for the fact that I seem to lose track of what I'm saying and veer off on tangents! Time to take those first steps into the unknown and see where they lead me.
Feel free to tag along.
Green days. Deep deep in the sea. Cool and quiet fish. That's me.
~Dr. Seuss, 'My Many Colored Days'
2 comments:
I get it. I still think to pick up and call my mom and she has been gone for 4 years! I still talk to her and I sense she is present, but certainly not in the way I wish she was. My defining moment after her death was to go to India to adopt my baby...that's when I became that grown up MOM you speak of. Good luck. I hope this new blog helps to work through your loss and find your future.
That's how I felt for years after my Mom's mom (who I was very close to) passed away. I remember washing dishes one day several years after her death, looking out the window, and just missing her so fiercely -- and thinking, whoa! Where did that come from?
I pray that you're able to take each grief moment as it comes, and roll with it. And I hope you know that you are already that "mom" person for your girls.
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