Looking Back

I would have liked to write this on December 31, but unfortunately as soon as I made arrangements with the funeral home for my mother I came down with a terrible cold. It was coming on the 30th, but held off until I had that done, then it hit me with full force. I have been in bed since sometime on New Year’s Eve, and I am still sick but also working off a NyQuil hangover. Why do they think it helps you to wake up refreshed?

So, shitty year. I have had many to say something like 2014 was so awful for you and your family, I hope 2015 is better. I can’t speak for Shaun but it won’t be for me. It’s like saying that you got sent to Hell, and so that was the worst part. Nope, because if you follow the storyline of Hell, you get there yes but then you burn, constantly, forever. I’ve never read a story about Hell where there were coffee breaks. And no it can’t be worse. What else besides the death of my child is worse? Nothing is the correct answer. I wake up and live and relive it daily. It sucks. Go on and add some fire, nothing changes.

Maybe some people “get off easier” than I have on this topic. I don’t know, but nothing much is lost on me including how every f”ing thing in 3rd dimensional life has now been ruined just by the simple fact of calendar dates. Here’s my timeline…

May 1-15 2014: Erin goes into hospital for unexpected surgery due to inflammation. While we are there, Shaun’s brother Greg is found dead. Our 17th wedding anniversary was on 5/11. We decided to celebrate anniversary with my birthday coming in August.

August 14, 2014: Erin died.

August 18, 2014: Erin’s service. My birthday 🙁

October 16, 2014: Mom’s birthday, first one celebrated without Erin.

October 31, 2014: First Halloween without Erin.

November 27, 2014: Thanksgiving without Erin. Shaun’s dad’s birthday. We did not celebrate with him.

December 11, 2014: Erin’s 11th birthday, without her.

December 25, 2014: First Xmas without Erin. Mom had been admitted to the hospital critically ill. We were out of the country trying to forget Xmas.

December 29, 2014: Returned from out of the country a day early. Mom died 10:23pm.

January 1, 2015: Shaun’s birthday, first without Erin as well as New Year’s Eve which we always celebrated as a family. Had it not been for the holiday, Mom would have been buried on his birthday but instead it will be January 3rd.

Looking forward to February 14: Put Mom in a nursing home that date in 2014. Tried to have a nice Valentine’s Day, but Erin was in so much pain. We were admitted to Children’s the first time on Feb 15, 2015 for what was to be the beginning of the end.

As you can see, this darkness has claimed every day that could or would have been special for normal people. You have to love the irony. I can’t even have a nice Memorial Day. That was the event of a nice trip Erin and I took with Anna Kate and her Mom in 2014.

I guess the question is now, how can I make the best of my own little slice of hell? I have no idea. I think I am already doing it day by day because otherwise I would not still be alive.

On Dying

Ugh, I don’t want to have to be with anyone else while they die. I have been with nearly all of my fur babies, and that was so hard. I have begged many times for them to just die in their sleep peacefully, but only Nicholas did that for me. I know it was his gift, because I could never have had him put to sleep. I would have made him a cyborg cat before losing him. Sounds like a joke but it’s not. I even considered having him cloned, but I didn’t have the money. The others, I had to hold them while they passed. And now both my daughter and mother have passed with me holding their hands in the last 5 months. Some may think the moment of dying is beautiful, but it’s a marking of the separation that we as 3rd dimensional beings cannot penetrate. And you wonder if they suffer, if they are afraid, and so many other things. I just don’t want to do it again. I will, because it’s the right thing to do, but I don’t want to.

On Being Alone

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

If you read the passage above by Coleridge aloud, make sure to draw out the word agony so as to sound like Margaret Lawson, English Teacher Extraordinaire.

While it’s untrue that I have not had saints take pity (there have been many), I now have the realization that I am all alone. I have no immediate family except for Shaun. I have Aunts and Uncles and Cousins, but everyone who would traditionally be next of kin is gone. Did a gypsy put a curse on me as a baby? That wasn’t a joking question. I have no one to leave my assets to, my personal stuff, etc. No one. Well I don’t want it to go to the state so I will have to find some one, but you get the picture. Even when you don’t have a good or close relationship, when someone is alive it is a much different world view than when you are truly and utterly alone. But that just goes to show you that it’s all perspective doesn’t it? Social programming does the rest. I have now grieved my mother three times (I’ll write about that later), but this time is the final time. The sad thing is, I have nothing left to give in regards to grieving. I say it’s sad because I feel sorry for her spirit. Every soul wants their children to love them, and love is somewhat a measure of being sad someone is gone. Nonetheless everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone. No discussion. It’s the highest form of kindness that we can give. Yet every part of my spirit loves and yearns for my child. So yeah, I feel a tad bit “bad” or guilty.

In retrospect, 2014 has shown me much. While most of you know I am not religious, let’s not get hung up on terminology and look at the message in the poem below (author unknown):

I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity and God gave me brawn and brains to work.
I asked for courage and God gave me dangers to overcome.
I asked for patience and God placed me in situations where I was forced to wait.
I asked for love and God gave me troubled people to help.
I asked for favors and God gave me opportunities.
I asked for everything so I could enjoy life.
Instead, He gave me life so I could enjoy everything.
I received nothing I wanted, I received everything I needed.

While it pains me to say it, this is exactly what I have gotten this year. I have begged the universe for wisdom, for strength, for courage, for love, and for peace. Mostly, for whatever I needed to be of service to the All. And what did I get? Not what I expected. I actually asked for everything conditionally, that Erin and Shaun be safe and healthy. That I not be asked to leave my family, or to have to worry about them. First and foremost I learned that I control nothing, but can adapt to most anything. I learned that I will never be given anything asked with conditions set upon it, or if I am given, it will not be what I thought I asked for. These are things that I already knew, but failed to acknowledge most of the time because of fear. That fear is gone now. It died August 14, 2014. I see the wisdom but am not sure that I can rise to the occasion to see it bear fruit.

These are just the musings of a sad, childless mother. Or should I say, no longer a mother, no longer a daughter, and probably at this point a poor excuse for a wife. If I could snap my fingers, I would go to the remotest sanctuary on the planet and live in robes and silence for the rest of this prison sentence. I don’t need for you to feel sorry for me, but I do want you to understand. And I guess I want to understand, or I wouldn’t bother to write.

The best I can hope for is better understanding and more wisdom in 2015. And a nice large piano to fall on my head next time I walk by a tall building. But I am not that lucky and must always do things the hard and long way.

Peace and Namaste,

#missingerin