Life...and those Other Plans

It was strange to read the radiologist's report as they gave my mom a new IV, her notorious pulling them out, and being a bad stick...provoking heart-wrenching vocalizations. Hard to tell what's happened now, but so evident what happened a year ago. If one's brain changes, do you too? Is who you are as maliable as biology? I wondered who my mother really was, deep down all of a sudden. What kind of heart and soul got lost under these layers of subordination, humiliation, subjugation, resignation....what craziness created mothballs in her mind...where does she hide when she needs to be safe.

I kept looking over my shoulder for my dad thinking, well he'll be showing up here anytime...then remembering; oh yea, he's already gone.

The sad, sinking feeling of being just us girls suddenly came upon me. The hospital is cold, cluttered...the West has a strange idea of healing. I manage to get into my share of verbal altercations. I just can't suffer the BS. You'd think I'd at least try....

The points I must connect, to keep it all flowing don't seem to really include me, sometimes, and it's then I realize what she feels. That stark invisibility I remember growing up with- mine, hers... our mutual attempt to shy away from the men, even as we were dependent on them. How desperately I sought my way out, and she followed through my tale of escape, marveling at the distinction between my choices and hers.

The random timing of death is weird. Maybe that's the point. To surrender to ultimate lack of fundamental control is the highest trusting thing, the hardest. It asks everything of us since none can report, prepare us...trust is the process to harden us, break and soften us up. To open us wider, to receive the force of energy that would move our identity from version to version of the same soul. What would she have become if she went to college, married Milton, and became the true warm, wise empath...do even smart and spiritual crones end up this way? If so, we have our work cut out for us...does anything prevent the 'inevitable'?

I escaped to Gold's in Ft. Lauderdale, and had to get special clearance from my "home" gym, some more BS, but ran 5 miles on their Cadillac treadmill, watching CNN with the sound off....the ipod cranked high. I run so slow, painfully, its ridiculous to imagine doing the damn marathon...and I hated everything for a good 2 miles before, as usual the strange metamorphosis happens when my body settles in and my mind shifts focus....even at the gym.

Thank god(dess) for the artist in me. Because when out on the open road there's always plenty to see, to satisfy my insatiable curiosity. Maybe the difference is I want to participate in the process...Does Mom feel dragged, and snagged on the tumult of tragedies? For me, it sucks just enough. But then it all blossoms like honeysuckle vines tumbling with the fragrance of the glorious earth.