My Son

I have this kid.

A son. Age 20 (21 in September)

Wonder Boy as he’s affectionately known in some circles.

You know…. thought I’d do a sort of paean to him, a portrait of the kid, lovingly written and full of info.

And I don’t want to. I realize that he is is own person, and that’s why I don’t really use his name or say much about him on here.

Suffice it to say that he has been a huge part of the greatest joy in my life, and the greatest sorrow. He has thrilled me and scared me to death. He has been an angel and a demon. And he has given me the good fortune of being a good and horrible parent.

I think that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. Don’t always like him but, god, love him so hard, so much.

Today I am proud of him, excited for him. Today he signed a lease on an apartment, got keys. This is huge. This is a good thing, This is making me cry. All good, all perfect. It’s time, has been for a while. He needs to be a man, to live life in the real world, to make it on his own. He has always been that kid, doing everything his own way, learning the hard way, not listening….he was born an old soul and it is taking time for him to grow into it; it is painful. It is happening. He has had to endure incredible sorrow in his short life and now, hopefully, he is on the way to great joy. I don’t know. He is on his path and it will be interesting, and perhaps horribly painful, to see how much he wants me to be a part of his new life. I hope he will want me around, but I don’t, can’t know. I know when I was “asked” to move out of my house at 19 I had no time for my parents, my siblings, for a few years. I talked to them but never REALLY.  I didn’t ask the kid to leave, but the circumstances of my selling the house are forcing the issue.

But he’s ready, and has been for a while. Maybe not fully, emotionally, but ready to leave me…yes, very ready to leave me. As it should be at 20. And I am ready for him to leave. Is that bad for a parent to say? That I need a break from him as much as he needs one from me? I think that’s why, although I cannot deny my sadness, my overwhelming feelings are excitement for him, and happiness. He is on a path, he is headed into life. It’s an exciting and wonderful time and I know that it won’t be easy but he’ll learn so much.

And I’m on a path too. I’m not sure if I am heading into or out of life, but I’m moving, somewhere. There is a path that I don’t really see, but I know right foot, left foot, right foot,hup…I’m doing the next indicated action.

But this is about the boy. This is about the wonder of that first apartment, that first foray into adulthood.  I am happy to be excited for him, to hope and wish and trust for him. To love him.

I have been doing that, non-stop for almost 21 years, nothing can change that now.

Bill…..

Oh, I have stories about my friend Bill Goss, yes I do.

I can hear him so clearly in my head, inviting me over for a drink  and a game of dominoes after a wedding at the Church.

It became tradition and we were both so disappointed when it didn’t happen for whatever reason. My husband thought perhaps we were having an affair and would refer to me as “Bill’s girlfriend”. He was awfully cute, and a better man is hard to find. Moral, faithful, honest and so smart. He loved champagne and I loved to get it for him. He in turn bought me a bottle of vodka that we left at his place, so I could pop in anytime for a “taste”. He never had any food, we generally ate peanuts and crackers and talked about everything under the sun.

Bill and Martha both worked at the Church as caretakers, they lived in a little house on the premises  She was small and round and crotchety, he lean and strong, an artisan builder. Perfect for each other. He worked hard al his life, doing work he was proud of. At the Church Bill made sure everything was locked up and safe and made extra money helping with the weddings. Martha helped too when she was alive. I have a wedding picture with Martha in it, way  before we knew them. She was the original photo-bomber. I remember finding it after she died and getting such joy from it.

When Martha died, Bill was devastated, as was the whole church. At her memorial service Tom was asked to speak. Before he started he did a bit..unexplainable here, but the crowd in the Church roared and Martha’s spirit flew free. Bill was always so grateful to Tom for that.

After Martha died was when I started going over for a drink. He was lonely and heartbroken, yet had such great faith that he would see her agin. Never felt like he’d do much to keep himself alive…when the time came he was prepared. It came far later than he thought, but it was always in “god’s time”. I sat with him for years after weddings, just having a drink and some peanuts, talking about the world, gossiping, heady subjects, while all the time the TV was on the background, sound muted, sports on.

I remember talking to him about Martha and how he went on, never thinking that I would be in the same position.

I remember when he walked into my house after Tom died and just cried with me. He had come from Oregon for the memorial. Much of what we talked about during those apres-wedding  times still resonate with me, shapes my view of life and death, not the religious sense, but there was a lot there, a trust that touched me and that I hold onto.

I remember he wasn’t afraid of death, his faith was strong in god, and in Martha…when she died I think he began biding his time, and I know that feeling.

I remember when he moved to Oregon to be near his daughter, Margaret Ann and son-in-law Bill. It’s been years, before Tom died. I knew we wouldn’t keep in touch enough, my track record is bad. But I loved chatting with him when I did call, and hearing about his adventures. He lived with his daughter and son in law for several years, but they really cramped his style, so he moved into a senior living apartment, remade his own life. Made friends and lived well his last few years.

I’m not sure of his exact age..95? Played golf until last year.

I picture them together in spirit, happy as clams, finally. I am immensely sad, but I also feel lighter. I figure he’s having a drink with Tom, at least if Martha ever forgave Tom for the joke at her memorial. If she didn’t, Bill will smooth it over. That is his way.

I hope there is a memorial here…he only had his daughter and son-in-law in Oregon. He had a million friends here, all missing him for the last few years, all so blessed by his friendship and saddened by his death.

But also lighter, I think we all are. Because he is now where he has wanted to be for years, with his beloved Martha, with his god, and even though I am sad for me, I am truly happy for him.

Bill Goss had a life well lived, supported by wonderful friends and family. He was a treasure, I will miss him and think about him forever. I hope he’s right; I’d love to see him again. Though I imagine I’d have to play a round of golf with him and Martha, a foursome with Tom.

I think I could handle that.

what the….

I have been at a loss lately.

Not inspired to write.I am so wrapped up in change and loss and cleaning and tossing and making decisions about things that I feel like anything I have to say is dry and redundant.

I am dry and redundant, well, wet and redundant. I cry all the time. It’s such an interesting thing to me. I mean, kind of constant crying, or at least tearing up. Been a while since that happened. I am just going with it, accepting…I don’t dwell most of the time, I practice a certain detachment “oh, yes, I see, me crying, isn’t that interesting”. I try and acknowledge and let it go, a constant practice of mindfulness and meditation. This is normal, this makes sense,   I am not crazy.

I have to detach to get what needs to be done actually done. The plan is to have a garage sale on the weekend of the 19th and an open house, listed on June 2. Those dates are looming and I have to do taxes and finish working and, and…I need to take care of myself. I am eating fairly well tho snacking a lot, vs meals. I am not sleeping well at all. It’s after midnight as I write this and 3 am sleeping is not unusual for me lately. I get a lot done, but do better when someone is here with me, assume it’s the accountability.

It is fucking hard work, and that is emotionally as well as physically. As I am not getting help from my son.I am grateful for the friends that come and help me,even just sitting with me is helpful. It’s really a relationship I am ending with the house I have lived in for 22 years. There was so much joy and wonder and dreams and hope here. That has been gone for a while, but I remember it, always will, and that’s what I already miss.

Sometimes I think I just cannot do it. I know I can, but sometimes I think I can’t. I start to go to the actual leaving and I have to stop it so fast, the future-tripping. I have not made plans past selling. people say iI should look around and get an idea of what’s out there for me to rent, get excited about the possibilities. I have done a little of it and it just depresses me. I will sell the house and then have to scurry to find a new place to live, and that will be ok. It will be the way it has to be. The whole thing feels like flying by the seat of my pants. By jumping and hoping the net will appear. it’s faith, not my strong suit, but it is what it is.

I’m not drinking through it all. That is the good thing. I have wanted to….my cravings come and go very quickly and i am grateful for that. But I drank over feelings at the end, and that’s what I find myself fantasizing…the feelings gone. It takes me two seconds to remember that it had stopped working, and I accept that it won’t work again. But every once in a while….

I don’t do that anymore. I don’t procrastinate as much anymore. I move faster and with more purpose. Things have to be done and I’m the guy doing them (well, and my wonderful, helpful friends).

 

I shake my head and wonder “what the fuck..”

This was not my plan. I have neglected to make a plan, so I am hoping and trusting that one will appear. I have no inkling of what it will look like, what it will entail.  Left foot, right foot…one step at a time. No assumptions or expectations, just doing the work and moving into acceptance of the outcome.

So that’s where I am. Why I am quiet.Not assuming anyone is chomping at the bit to read what I write,  but this is a journal of sorts too…and I need these posts for me.

I am reminded daily of the John Lennon quote “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”

Word.

 

(an aside…I found Time and Newsweek with the death of John Lennon as their top stories, New Yorker with 9-11, L.A Times with 9-11, Obama  president, the earthquake….it’s amazing the things I kept. I also found a bunch of old journals and bad poetry I wrote as a teen. UGH! tossed the poems, finally.  Kept the journals. They’ll be interesting to read someday)

de-constructing

People are here at the house demolishing.

Tearing out the spa, the home-made shack, the homemade herb garden, throwing away stuff, stuff. Backyard clean-up.

It’s all just stuff, isn’t it.

Seriously, isn’t it?

Because right now, as I watch the demolition it doesn’t feel like stuff.

It feels like my heart is being ripped from my body. I feel each nail, each piece of wood. The spa goes and I feel every night I spent in their with friends or the kid or, of course and especially, with Tom.

I give away the party heater because someone can use it. I allow the little wrought iron tables to be taken for scrap, those that rested the margarita’s and chips at every pool party we ever had. The gas BBQ that has sat here collecting rot for 7 years, gone. Let it go. The chaise lounges that have seen such better days, the pool floats that won’t be used again by me. By us. The chairs that will be thrown or sold in a garage sale because they are just stuff.

But my friends sat in these chairs. My son grew up with them. My husband and I bought them, together, and sat in them and talked in them. He BBQ’d. I never did, still don’t know how. I’ve been sitting at the kitchen table looking at this stuff and now it is disappearing before my eyes. My wet eyes.

Just stuff. Not real. I have the memories but the tangible stuff is so hard to see go, especially as it goes to trash Trash? My life?

Those things I do not need, that stuff.

This stuff is not my life

A suggestion of a deck will be built to cover the spa hole. A selling point (“all ready for a spa to be dropped in if you’d like !). It will be the new owners choice. When we saw the spa off the bathroom we thought we’d died and gone to heaven. I know that was exactly where we were. Our heaven, here.

Now it’s just a house.

Just stuff, where once it was the stuff that dreams were made of.

How did that happen..how….

I know. No answers. Life. death. Fuck.

 

There’s more stuff. As the back is cleaned so go the files, the drawers. The shredder needs to come. That stuff is my work, slow going. The outside stuff is going fast. No attachment.

 

Stuff.

OUR stuff.

NO. Just stuff

 

I do not want to feel this. I am working so hard to detach and there is only so much I can do.

Boston

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye
from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

Isn’t that beautiful?

It reminds me of The Rumi poem I posted here a while back, Zero Circle, which ends with the the words “when we have totally surrendered to that beauty, we shall be  a mighty kindness”.

I have been thinking a lot about kindness and grace and the way the world works and how we live in it, amidst the ruin and the beauty, and the pain and the gratitude. I am writing this on a day when we have seen, what? Another terrorist attack? A crazy person’s misguided attempt at being heard about something? We don’t know the answers yet, all we know is that there are more dead people, more grieving people, more innocence lost around what has been a safe and celebratory event for years. Today has been so painful, and will not get less so with answers, because those answers, whatever they are , will not make sense of any kind. So much of the world makes no sense, and much of the time that chaotic insanity is beautiful and works. Not so much today.Not so much when something bad happens. Yet, every day something bad happens. All over the world people live in fear and danger daily, and I am talking fear of things like this, random attacks, murder, terrorism.

“Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies died by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breathe that kept him alive”.

We must see how this could be us, how this IS us. Every day is a gift, and we are especially blessed. That is why we don’t see it, because we are relatively free of the chaos that reigns every day in most of the worlds lives.

We need to be kind, we must practice kindness, loving kindness, metta mediation, if you will..daily, always.

I say this for myself. I forget, a lot, but I want to remember. I want to be that mighty kindness. I want kindness to tie my shoes, to shadow me, just like grief has for so long. I KNOW that sadness, now I want to KNOW that kindness, truly.

“before you know what kindness really  is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth”

Today this has happened publicly, loudly, once again. Yet it happens every day, to each of us. Surprising us, taking us unawares even if we had known for the longest time.

We need to be kind. To ourselves first. To each other, To our communities. To our country, To our worlds. Kindness trickles out.

Choices are always made, let’s make the kind one, always.

“then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore”….

namaste

Another dead person…

Oh, I am not getting anything done today.

Dribs and drabs, things thrown out, pictures put in boxes , basically moving piles.

So I’m writing.

 

I deal with death a LOT. Personally; in my groups. I know what to say and do, I think. But when it happens close to you there is still no real template. It depends on the person, the closeness, the history. It’s often-times easier with a stranger because then you can offer support not tinged with knowing. But knowing is great support.  When Tom died the support was amazing, but my one friend who was a widow was able to help me in ways no one else could, or maybe that’s because I could look at her and know she had been through it and thus made it easier to believe her. She didn’t lie to me or sugar-coat. She helped me get down to business, and told me I would never not be in pain again and that it was ok. That doesn’t sound comforting, but it was.

A friend of mine died yesterday and now I can be that widow friend to his widow. But it’s complicated by years of bad blood, though a tentative relationship has been re-forming between me and his widow over the last year. But I don’t feel like I can swoop in, like I would with others, like they swooped in on me. There is a distance that has to be crossed, and I think at her level of comfort. Its a little frustrating to me because when I heard this morning I wanted to get in my car and go there. Something holds me back. I hope I am not mis-reading; I hope that she is not expecting me to swoop when I am cautiously offering. My schedule is open though through the weekend and she knows it. I told her ANYTIME and meant it. That’s all I can do, even though it doesn’t feel like enough. But she is not me, and I am not the me that I was, and our relationship is not what it was.

So. I wait. For whatever she needs in her time.

The realities of life for me are now that people will start dying. I have quite a few old friend, meaning.good friends who happen to be older than me. In their 70s and 80′s. I treasure them. And they will die. The reality is, of course, that we will all die. My 30 year old friends are , sadly, just as likely to die as my 80 year friends. I cringe when people go in for surgery. I am beginning to notice clearly my own frailties and curse the little changes I see among my friends…hearing aids, hip replacements, back problems, health scares. There is no getting around it. We come here, we live and we die, and we have this very short span in between. And it is no worse if a young person dies than an old person; to those that love them it makes not one shred of difference. Death is death…one more dead person, as a fellow widow is prone to say, with a shrug.

Is that  a bad attitude? Cold, callous? Or just realistic, and a way of making sense of it. One day someone is in the world, the next not. How does that happen and what does it mean? Does it mean anything? Another dead person (shrug).

I know why I am thinking about all of this now. I do grief groups. I listen to people trying to make sense of it every week. I have been dealing with my own grief once again because of the move, the shedding.  And then, as they are wont to do, people die.  Yesterday it was Mike. Today it’s someone else. Tomorrow…who knows. Maybe me. No guarantees, no stopping the inexorable march toward death, no changing the bargain that some people believe we sign up for upon entering our bodies.

Sometimes it scares me, often I find it comforting, the idea of death. Today I am sad. Sad for myself, for my newly widowed friend and her children, sad for all the people in my groups, the parents and the spouses. I get it. I know.

There will never not be pain, but it will be ok.

Back to work. I have things to do to move ahead in my life. I decided a while ago to stop slowly killing myself and to wrest as much life as I have left out of my morsel here, so that’s what I must do. Marching forward, looking back.

One day I’ll be another dead person , we all will be.  Not today  (shrug)

Yesterday

Yesterday I had one of those days.

Well, let me rephrase that.

Yesterday I had a few of those hours.

The ones where I see no reason to do anything, no hope in living.  The ones that make me feel I would be better off dead. Better off dead really translates into how much easier that would be than to do what I need to do, what I have to do to move forward.

In those hours I judge myself, hate myself, tear up every few seconds, worry about everything, get so far ahead of myself that the awfulization of the future makes perfect sense to me.

Here’s the thing about being sober. Before, I would have started drinking and fueling those feelings. The more I drank the  worse I would feel about myself, spiraling down into more shame and self-hatred and more assurance that only bleakness and despair lay ahead for me. Adding fuel to my self-loathing fire, stoking it and believing those things I would tell myself. It was an insane little game I played with myself, insane and deadly. Because the truth is that, by the end, I did want to die. I saw no other way around the feelings that were making me feel insane. My solution, to drink away the feelings, had stopped working….now I had to die.

Being sober changes everything. First and foremost I have learned that feelings are not facts, they are only feelings. Since I drank at the slightest hint of a feeling this was a lesson I did not learn quickly, nor believe totally. I do believe it now though, and I do still have feelings, lots of them. But my solution is not to drink them away but to experience them. It’s why I changed my opening sentence. I did not have a DAY…I had a few hours. Even in those hours I was out and working and doing things, those feelings did not stop me from living life, just living it happily, in the moment. By the time I got home I had my last cry and was ready to change things. I can’t stay that down and uncomfortable for long anymore. I used to thrive in it, now I hate it. So I meditated a bit and started cleaning my office. Action. And as my desk came clear once again, my mood lifted and more got done. The cycle of fueling the fire continued, but in a new and healthy way…I fueled the fire of self-esteem and worthiness. As I shredded papers I thanked the universe for the experience those things provided me, versus cursing it for what I don’t have. The attitude adjustment when I get into gratitude vs. regret is instantaneous. I learned that in sobriety. I learned that by fully believing that today is all we have and we might as well make the best of it. I don’t practice it every single day, but  I try, god I try! And in the practicing I get better at it.

The real truth is that I am in the midst of a crazy time…selling the house, divesting thing after thing with no idea how to do it. I need garage sales and estate help, I need contracter’s and painters and plumbers . My life has to be disturbed and entered in ways I’m not crazy about. But I am not sitting in my office (the dirty one), pouring Jack Daniels out of a bottle I keep in the file drawer. Instead I am moving ahead, albeit slowly. I am inviting help and change into my life. I am staying current with the duties I have and managing the stuff I have to do. I am dealing clearly with my son and  my expectations of him. He will not live up to them, and I am dealing with that too, by having a back up for every plan I have with him.

I am operating in the world differently. Not perfectly, not always the way I think I should be, but differently, better. So when I have those days/ hours/minutes I feel the difference and hate it, and that gets me out of them sooner.  I let those feelings pass through me now instead of holding on to them for dear life, they no longer ground me, they suck me under and I cannot afford that, do not WANT that any longer.

I told a story the other day about my wedding day. the happiest day of my life, and , until I was handed a glass of champagne for a picture and toast at the time of cake-cutting, I had not one drop to drink. I never finished the champagne either. I was so happy, so fulfilled, so high on just being alive and in love that alcohol meant nothing. That certainly was not the case in later years, but the memory sparked something in me, a new hope, new determination that each day, as I stay sober, I move forward into those moments of deep joy and fulfillment that I never thought would ever be possible for me again.

They are.

Today.

So Hum….

So Hum is Sanskrit for I am.

It was my meditation tonite, and it is one of my very favorite Sanskrit phrases.

I am.  I am. I am.

Repeat it on the breathe..inhale so, exhale hum.

Soothing, right? Clear, concise. I have no trouble remembering it.

I am writing this late in the evening on March 20. So late that I imagine it will spill over into tomorrow, which is perfect. Because this is a post for tomorrow. This is a post for March 21.

March 21 is a clear, concise date that I have no trouble remembering.

Two years ago, on March 21, 2011, I went to an AA meeting. Not my first nor my last, not the best. Just one close to home. When I got home, for the first time in years, I made a conscious decision to go to bed and not have a drink.

Day one.

One day at a time I have risen every morning with the intention that I will not drink today. Just today. That is my choice. As my sweet friend says tomorrow I can get trashed, but not today.

It’s not been easy.There have been times where I thought I’d rather die than NOT have a drink. But I didn’t do either (die or drink).

I drank for a long time, and I drank insanely for the few years prior to stopping. I drank secretly, ashamed of the simple fact that alcohol was the solution to all my problems, all my feelings, and my horrible life. I functioned, I did my work and cared for my son and maintained friendships. But I drank before I went out, drank while I was out and really drank when i got home.  I hated myself, I dropped balls that had lasting consequences out of fear or lethargy or whatever else I was feeling at the time because the simple fact was that I wanted to feel nothing. Alcohol helped me with that, until one day it didn’t. At that point I was left with a terrible habit and no way to escape the feelings, and then I really was in hell. I isolated, going for days not leaving the house . I kept trying, I kept chasing that feeling of being dead, but I began to realize that  the only way to get that feeling again was to actually die.

So Hum. I  am.

I don’t know what caused me to come home  that night and not drink. Grace? I love that word grace…grace allowed me to step through an invisible door where one side meant drunk and the other sober. A quote I read when I was “researching” sobriety calls to me. “first the gesture,, then the grace”. My gesture was going to bed. That’s all Idid. Grace happened in that moment.

Sober, I am. So Hum.

I am grateful beyond measure for the people in my life who love and support me now, and who loved and supported me then. Many of them are the same.  A surprising number of them live in my computer in an incredible on-line group of sober people who help me every day. I do the work of AA, it’s what has resonated for me. Not all aspects for sure, but enough that I could get a sponsor and be willing to throw pre-conceived notions out the window in an attempt to save my own life. Sweet Jenny and a posse of sober women who drag me around and keep me sane and make me do things I don’t want to do, those are my lifelines in the program, and, increasingly out of it. Because I didn’t get sober to not live my life. I got sober to see what life I had left to salvage.  Turns out quite a lot. Not all easy, much of it really hard, but, even so, so much better. I don’t now how I got so lucky. Grateful though, so very grateful.

This is my 2 year birthday post. I am proud to be posting this, it’s been a hard and wonderful, frustrating and graceful, beautiful and infuriating 2 years. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It is what  it is

I am who I am

So Hum

Continuing on…

that’ what’s happening here, work is continuing on.

yesterday and today I have workers here finishing up our once unusable bathroom. The plumber did his work and now the walls are cleaned up and being painted and the shower has new tiles and it’s starting to look great.

I had the thought that my realtor is very smart in telling me to do as little as possible around here to get it ready to sell. The fact is that whoever buys the house is going to want to do a lot of their own things, but the other fact is that I can see how I might just fall in love again with my little bathroom, newly cleaned up and ready for use. I could get some pretty towels and cute hand-washing accessories and, and…the attachment comes back.

I am very lucky. The woman who is contracting for me is a friend and I trust her implicitly . I trust that her prices are fair, her workers are competent and safe and that the job will be completed properly. There is no price tag you can put on that for me. I have no idea about any of this stuff and  peace of mind means a lot to me. Just another way of letting me know the timing is right, things will work out, jump and I’ll grow wings (or the bathroom won’t flood..whatever).

I have found myself not using my forced time at home very well, in terms of getting things accomplished. However I have to respect the process here, and sitting with a cup of tea listening to the work going on is working on my subconscious self, preparing me for the further continuation of this process. There is much to do and it feels very overwhelming. Yesterday I walked around the backyard with Jules (contractor extraordinaire) and she calmly gave me some ideas of how to manage the cleanup of my back yard. Pile all the good things that could go in a garage sale on one end, the trash on the other. Call for the big dumpster, get a couple of guys over for a day’s work and load that dumpster, make a decision about taking out the spa and that goes too. It is a step by step process and needs a quiet mind, a non-attached mind, to handle it. I even said to her I should just pack up my car and disappear for a week, allowing others to come through and clean and toss. As I said it it sounded good, in reality I realize that I can’t do that but the temptation is there. How nice it would be to abdicate all responsibility for the sorting of my life in this house?

The problem is, of course, it is MY life and I am the only one who can know. I was meditating last night and could not get my monkey mind to STFU about xmas decorations. Really? Really. It’s just a example but pertinent. I have a lot, some valuable. I need to sell them and some should probably go on ebay. The last 2 years of a small Charley Brown tree have liberated me from the need to hang them all, but not from the need to keep them all. We chose them…every year new and special and meaningful to us….me, the boy and Tom. So what do I do? I imagine I will let the kid choose whatever he wants, I will take the ones I cannot bear to not have, and the rest go on ebay and garage sale status. The problem is that, as I put them away in January I knew all of this, but did nothing about it. It could have  been done. Yet there goes monkey -mind again, beating me up for not making a decision at the right time, or the convenient time. Well, fuck it. I couldn’t. So now I have to. I have found often-times  I am better in the have to then the appropriate.  I could, in fact, be sorting through that stuff right now…. And so it goes.

I have been working hard on the idea of attachment and how it doesn’t serve me. I practice detachment at every given opportunity, and often I fail miserably, but I am seeing progress. The house is big, the next step in life is bigger, the letting go and moving ahead is fucking huge. I can’t fault my little mind for running around creating chaos and drama where there is none, because that’s what it does. I can only try and deepen my practice of non-attachment to outcome, of trust in the process and reliance on the wisdom and help of people who have been there before.

Gratitude plays here too…for friends who understand that I am torn and conflicted and are willing to wait on me to get it together, and not judge my process. I imagine it’s very frustrating; I don’t now, I’m not in their heads. It’s very frustrating in my head though, so it stands to reason it’s not easy for anyone else. I have had so many offers to just sit with me as I sort. I love that. I know they mean it and I will abuse it….I will need not only a witness but a judge, someone to help me acknowledge that many of the things I am holding on to are way past their time and do not serve me. Help me let go. I guess i need the dumpster for that.

Sigh….

I want to say “why is life so complicated”, yet I know it is ALWAYS complicated and always will be. Accepting that and working to keep it simpler is my job right now. Divesting, letting go, NOT erasing, is my path.

Really fucking scary.

Really fucking liberating.

And so it begins….

Spending the day at home with a plumber.

A roofer was also supposed to come and mix it up with us, but he’s sick and cancelled. He only needed to check one thing for me and I have a 5 year guarantee on less than a year old work, so…

I expected a few hours, and so far it’s been 6..other plans going to hell. Expectations can get you in ALL areas of life. I’m grateful I did a laundry last night, since I may have to wait a couple of days to do another one. His quote was good so I told him to start, and, as usual, the rabbit hole appeared, although I am grateful it doesn’t seem too big. It’s gross though. Plumbing business is gross. I am grateful I am not a plumber. I will happily pay for that service! He’ll be back tomorrow to do stage 2, which is the unexpected rabbit hole. Lucky next people who live here.

 

It speaks to the bigger issue of the house though. It makes it realer. (Not a word but I like it). I am sitting here writing, have done some wedding work, have eaten 2 meals,have wasted plenty of time on-line, have stressed and fretted, have let it go…..all sorts of regular stuff except that a plumber is here doing work that needs to be done so I can sell my house in the best condition possible. THE!  The house. Stuff in the 3rd bathroom. The dog’s bathroom. Tom’s bathroom….where he would retreat, where he collapsed years ago. The bathroom we don’t use. But the bathroom we used so beautifully for years, where the kids would change for the pool and then run back  to rinse off and change after swimming. Where I used to put Xmas lights around the mirror and cute Xmas towels for our big holiday parties. Where  we crated Sally when she first joined our family. There is always something, good or bad, like all attachments. I could go through this house inch by inch and recall a happening, or a thing or another attachment….it would never end.

It makes me really sad. Sometimes feelings ARE facts. But feelings won’t kill me and that is also a fact.

This will be a long process, no matter how fast it feels like it is going. I am not adept at letting people in too deep, I keep a lot close to the vest, or close to a very few others whom I love and trust. I don’t think I can continue doing that, because already the plumber has seen me cry. Who else will see me cry during this process? Clerks at Target and  Home Depot,doctors and grocery store checkers, the gardeners at the nursery as I flower my little bed, bank clerks, other workers…I may as well garner support from friends rather than weird sympathy from strangers. This letting go is hard and necessary but hard, fucking hard.  One attachment after the other. What will be left? So many unanswerable questions. I am caught in the flow, trying to relax and let it take me so I don’t drown. It feels like I am drowning.

 

When I got up this morning all the daffodils had opened. There are open daffodils on my kitchen table. There are open daffodils in my window as the plumber plumbs and as I write and as I mourn.