Love You All

Thank you all for your kind words. It helps so much to know that there is such goodness in the world. I'm so grateful to all of you, many of whom are going through so much right now. I was thinking recently that Death is no mystery. It's as certain as Sunrise - even more so. It's LIFE that can be so damned confounding.

I heard this song today on a cd I had burned for Annie to listen to during her chemo treatments, and I thought, that's just the plain truth. We're all in this together. Sometimes we're not that wild about all of our traveling companions through this world, but if we're lucky we meet a few like minded souls who make the trip fly by.

Thank you again for sharing your love, for sending healing thoughts to my friend and her family. I know that it meant a great deal to her.

The Good Fight

Our amazing, brilliant, beautiful friend Annie passed last night. We were able to see her on Wednesday, to hold her and tell her we love her, and we shared both tears and laughter. She fought this battle with everything she had, and loved her life so much. She was fierce and glorious in her fight to stay with her family.

She had so many gifts - she was a talented actress; a generous, wise friend; a homeopathic physician; a loving wife to her partner Anita; a caring, devoted daughter and sister, and one of the best moms I've ever met.

I'm so grateful to have known her. And I'm so thankful her weary body is finally done with the pain.

My throat is tight with tears that can't come right now. I want to cry. I need to. I just don't think I can wrap my brain around the bigness of this loss.

As Anita said to Charley recently, "Love is all".

A Good Life

Our dear friend Annie has been moved to Bailey Boushay house in Seattle for palliative care. They are doing their utmost to keep her pain under control, and to love and uphold her and her family during this time.

We so want to be with them, but physically that may not be possible. We don't want to intrude on this precious time, but we are with them in our every breath and thought.

I've been thinking about this recently. I've been feeling overwhelmed with love for this life of mine. It's not perfect, it's not what I expected, it's sometimes challenging or annoying. But it's the only one I have and it's beautiful to me.

Here are my essentials: I have good people around me. People I love. People who are as imperfect as I am, but who attempt every day to do their best, to give the world the love that is inside them. To channel goodness, to laugh at the way the world sometimes works, to challenge untruth and to let go of the rest. I love them with everything I have.

I have good strong love to give. I do my best to give it freely, without condition. I don't always succeed. Sometimes I am judgmental and I mutter in my soul. And in my car. I am working on this.

I have work that I love. The people I work with are challenged in many ways. They may not be able to process or communicate the way the rest of the world does, but there is so much light in their eyes and hearts, and I'm honored to be with them.

I have the most amazing family. The family I was born to, and the family I have chosen. My brothers and sister are dearer to me with every day that passes. My love for my husband goes so deep and we are so connected. I am grateful to have this life with him. It's not perfect, but it's the imperfections that make me treasure him and our marriage all the more.

My son. I look at him now and wonder how we wound up with him. He's listening to headbanging rock music and he loves hockey and he's sometimes sassy and disobedient and lazy. He's also kind and brave and silly and beautiful and whipsmart and wiser than most forty year old people I know. He's only eight. I treasure seeing his darkness as well as his light. I honor who he is, and realize my hopes for him need only be these: that he is as happy in his life, that he is a good, kind person, and that he contributes his best self to the world. Of this last, I have no doubt that he will.

My goal is to see just some of it come to fruition. I have no idea what the future holds, or if I will meet that goal. But I know in my heart that he carries my love for him like a force and a shield, and I believe that is the best thing I have ever done with my life.

Tough Old Broad

It's true what they say about our pets: that we learn more from them than they do from us. It's certainly the case with our old cat Lulu. She has not been beautiful for a long time, she wheezes, she sneezes, she has pooped on the carpet for about eight years (I need to write a really glowing review of my Spotbot on Amazon - it's the hardest working machine out there), and she has the most unpleasant "meow" you've ever heard.

But she has taught me so much. About asking for what you need, about telling people what you need and about TAKING what you need if people aren't listening to you. She started the pooping business when Joe-Henry was about four months old. Right in front of his changing table. I stepped in it. We've taken her to the vet at least once a year for the last eight, with the vet saying, "well, I don't know what to tell you. there's nothing physically wrong with her". And you'd think that we'd maybe give up on her, or try to give her away, or find her a home where she could just sit on someone's lap and be petted non-stop until she got tired of it and moved. I'd be lying if I said we'd never even think of such a thing. Truth is, we did try once to find her a new home. It was right before we moved. We thought she wouldn't be able to handle the changes of a long trek. I put up an ad on Craigslist, but got nothing but grief, so after an hour I took it down. She was, for better and worse, our cat. I couldn't let those nasty people have her. Yes, she was a crabby mess, but she was our crabby mess. She drove in the car with my husband who headed up a month before Joe-Henry and I. She crapped in the car twenty minutes into a two-day drive. The car still smells nasty. Not like poop, but not like anything good, either.

Joe-Henry has been her savior on more than one occasion. We've all been driven to moments of madness by her messes. Especially dear Charley, who shares a bathroom with her. He has had the lion's share of cleaning to do. But even he loves her. He has given her his heart, and she has given hers to all of us, as well. If it doesn't come wrapped in a satiny bow, well so be it. It is what it is, and she is who she is, and that's just been our life with her. She still gets on our bed every night, she still snuggles up at story time with Joe-Henry, we all stroke her mangy head and love her and tell her she's beautiful. Then she usually wheezes and sneezes and yells at us to pet her better and more. And we comply.

But the last few weeks, there has been something different about her. She seems confused. She's gotten much skinnier. Even though she has missed the litter box for eight years, she has always managed to keep things in the vicinity of it. But not lately. She's bringing her business upstairs, and this morning I found a big mess in Joe-Henry's room. And the bathroom. And the hallway.

I didn't feel angry at her, I just felt like she was telling me it was time. She's unhappy and in pain and done.

So this afternoon we are taking her in to the vet. We're saying goodbye as I type this. Joe-Henry is petting her, and I will have a good amount of time with her too. As frustrating as our relationship has been, I love her so much. And I will miss her wheezy old self.

Lulu, I have learned so much from you. Thank you for that.

Heaven

Heaven, Heaven is a place
a place where nothing
nothing ever happens.
Talking Heads

This has always been one of Joe-Henry's favorite songs. So you would think that those lyrics might have influenced his ideas about the great beyond.

You would be mistaken, my friend.

According to my son, Heaven is a HAPPENIN' place. There is much to do, lots to see, and I for one hope I get in.
This is the conversation we just had at bedtime:

Him: "Mom, what do you think Heaven is like"

Me: Using my supermommy powers of deflection of tricky subject matter when I don't have all my wits about me "Well, I don't know. What do YOU think it's like?"

Him: "I think it's really beautiful. It's like a castle. Like the castle of Naboo, only prettier. And there are tombs there. But not, like, Mummy tombs, but tombs where you can pick them to be your favorite color. And they have them in a special room and you can sleep there if you want. And there's Angel Guards..."

Me: "Do you mean Guardian Angels?"

Him: "No, Angel GUARDS. They protect you and keep the bad guys out. And some of them are on top of the castle, and some of them row the kayaks in the river, and you can jump from this cool bridge that opens up like this (demonstrates his arms pulling away from one another) and into the kayaks and go for rides. And there are these faeries who wave these special wand things. They fly, because if they walked they'd step on the tombs and be all like 'ewww, get me a towel, I just stepped on a tomb'. But they wave their wands and dandelion poofs go out into the sky and it's really pretty."

Me: "It sounds so nice. I'd like to go to that Heaven."

Him: "Be good mom. I bet you'll make it."

Me: unspoken "I'm already there."