Gratitude

Things I'm thankful for:

Katie will be moving in the next couple of weeks. I threw myself on the mercy of the school board, told the woman in charge my long, sad tale and she outdid herself. Busing has been arranged, the budget is in place, we just have to rent an apartment and move her stuff.

My friend Cathy, I am deeply thankful I have known her for the past seven and a half years. The doctors are stopping her chemo, the cancer is too aggressive for treatment. I've never had a friend die but I'd rather lose her than never have known her, even though it hurts.

The headache I've had for the past two weeks is receding, ever so slowly.

Saw a divorce lawyer and I'm moving forward with my life, finally.

Still no snow on the ground and amazingly warm days, for Edmonton.

Watching Venus in the Eastern sky every morning.

My book club and my lovely friends tomorrow night.

What are you thankful for today?

“Death is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time.” Susan Cheever

I went down to the river today. Katie and I have been going once a week for awhile but I haven't been by myself in a long time. It's peaceful down there. The river is starting to form ice but the ice is still flowing with the river. You would think it would be noisy, watching the ice move as swiftly as the river, but it's not. It's so quiet, it's almost eerie. Lovely too.

It's not even six weeks until winter solstice and the sun is low in the sky, turning ordinary dead leaves into pieces of stained glass. Beyond beautiful.

The river, the trees, the peace, it fills me up and slows me down. I can breath down there, by the river. I felt my shoulders relax, just a little as I wandered the paths, glancing up at the blue, blue sky, feeling the sun on my face, still a bit of warmth left in it's glance.

Life is hard right now. Katie isn't feeling good, not eating, looking awful and she can't tell me what's wrong. When she feels awful, her behavior gets worse, although she felt so bad last night she didn't even have the energy to really pinch me. She only wanted me to put her to bed. So I did, at 5:30 poor thing. She ate breakfast this morning thank goodness.

And me, my face hurts. Not sure what's wrong with it. The left side of my face, my jaw and up to the top of my head just ache all the time, wakes me up in the middle of the night and grinds me down.

I think it's stress. Saw a divorce lawyer last week, waiting to hear about Katie moving out, my son calling me from prison. Really? The days are piling up on me, wearing me down.

But the river and the trees, they make it better. I'm thankful for that.

Reprise

Today marks the anniversary of Armistice Day, November 11th, 1918. World War I was known as the Great War, it was a war to end all wars. Sadly, that was not the case. A single day, a single document could not put an end human fighting. November 11 is a day to remember those soldiers who died, giving their lives in wars. But for me it has always been a day to mourn the loss of my father, a man who came back from World War II without external injuries, but with demons that he carried with him and fought until the day he died fifty-five years later.

War is never a good thing, there are no winners and even those that escape injury do not come home unscathed. They will carry their memories until they too die. Memories of horrors that we cannot imagine. We think we can but we cannot because we were not there. It breaks my heart to know that there are still men and women fighting today, repeating the mistakes that generations before them made, knowing that they too will come home with some part of them deadened.

My father was not a bad man. He was a young man who signed up to fight a war. He was told he would see the world, protect his nation, he would be doing the right thing. And then he was shipped off to Sicily and Italy to kill men he had no quarrel with. I think it gnawed at him everyday of his life. I know as he lay dying, he cried and told me he was scared of going to hell for what he'd done. I told him that God did not work that way, and I believe that. I don't think he would be punished eternally for something he had spent a lifetime punishing himself for.

So today I remember my father. He was not killed during the war, but a part of him died there. That part of him that could comfort his children, the part of him that could be kind and loving, that part of him that was a soft place.

What my husband doesn't know and what I'm trying to learn.

"When you’re self-contained, psychologically separate, you don’t look to another person for completion. You don’t identify with others and you’re not victimized by their projections. You know where you stand and you live by your personal truth–come what may. You can survive cold shoulders and you can take the heat. You have what Jung calls an undivided self. Well, more or less.

When you are self-contained, you have your own sacred space, your own temenos. You might invite someone in, but you’re not driven to, and you don’t feel abandoned if the invitation is declined. You respect the loved one’s boundaries, their freedom and privacy, even their secrets; you give them space and you don’t knowingly push their buttons. You don’t judge and you don’t blame. There is interest in, and empathy for, the other’s concerns, but you don’t take them on as your own. Shoulders may be offered to cry on, but there is no plaintive plea from one to the other to be “understood.”

Make no mistake: understanding what someone is saying is different from being asked to understand who is saying it. The former depends on your thinking function, and may overlap with feelings of empathy and compassion; the latter is an unconscious bid for power. Understanding oneself is difficult enough; understanding others is their responsibility, if they are inclined to do so and have a mind for it. What one can know of another is just the tip of an iceberg; the far greater part of anyone’s personal identity is beyond the ken of an outsider. For that matter, those who have worked on themselves enough to be comfortable with who they are–as opposed to those arrogant souls who are simply narcissistic–do not need, nor do they ask, to be understood by others. I am what I am; take it or leave it.

The appropriate attitude for a long-term working relationship is not understanding, but acceptance (74-75)."

Daryl Sharp, Jungian Psychology Unplugged

Two of the greatest qualities in life are patience and wisdom.

I've been dragging my feet, literally, tripping over my own feet, falling down stairs. Being a nurse I immediately suspected some dread disease like ALS, I'm like that. My counselor had a less terrifying explanation for the dragging of feet, perhaps it is about emotionally dragging my feet, not moving forward, not making decisions. Between the counselor and crazymumma, I realized that I have been dragging my feet, avoiding dealing with my marriage. Last week I called a divorce lawyer and made an appointment, but then I was terrified to tell my husband. Hard to believe I'm a grown up.

But I did tell him, finally and he didn't really have a problem with it. Maybe just relieved that I went ahead and started the ball rolling so that he didn't have to be the bad guy, leaving a wife with a handicapped kid, doesn't look so good on the CV but the wife leaving, well, that's not so bad. It's optics.

All day Monday I dragged my ass around, unable to concentrate, unable to sit still, just felt sad and twitchy all day. My daughter and I had a mild dust up in which we both apologized and both admitted to feeling sad. She was surprised to find out that I was sad about getting divorced. I explained to her that even though I want to get divorced, it's still a sad thing.

I had a meeting with Katie's social worker today and the agency that let us down last month. The social worker suggested I at least meet the team leader/miracle worker that is the reason they want to place Katie on the other side of town. So today I met the team leader and loved him. He's gentle and he did a wonderful job of explaining how they turned around another client's life who was supposedly too violent to be cared for. But then there was still the issue of school and busing but to my surprise when I called the school this afternoon, I was told that busing shouldn't be a problem. The whole thing might actually work out. Which feels weird and makes me wonder if maybe I do have some dread disease.

I put myself on a dating site and have had some rather odd emails to say the least. It's time to move on with my life though. When I told my husband that I was going to start dating, he asked "Who?". I mentioned that there wasn't exactly a line up at the door but I was hoping to meet someone who would like me. It could happen. Right?