Memory

This past week has been all about remembering.  The last year, the changes we’ve been through, where we’ve been, where we’ve discussed going, what our goals were.  It’s always good to re-evaluate your life, your vision, your outlook on life, and most importantly, your memories.  Sometimes memories, when they present some unpleasant recollections, it can be tough to brush away the cobwebs to find the good things that happened.  And all of the good gets blinded by a desire to avoid touching those icky cobwebs in the corner of your mind.

Well, this past week was time for a major sweeping out of the neurons in search of happiness that existed so long ago.  The cause for this hippocampus housekeeping was my mother’s death.  Our relationship was not always warm and fuzzy.  It could be downright difficult at times.  But I always knew that she loved me, and I loved her.  In searching for a way to express just what I’ve been going through, I remembered a song that both she and my father loved – “Memory” from the play/movie “Cats”.  After he died, she would listen to the song often, and cry.  I never quite understood why.  Now I do.

“Memory, All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again.”

It’s been difficult going through this from a distance, as I have often felt helpless not being able to assist my siblings in Mom’s care.  Moving away back in 1989, we didn’t really think about how hard it would be to process the death of a parent from afar.  We found it out soon thereafter, when my father died 10 months after our move.  Seven-and-a-half years later, we found out again when Tim’s mother died, and then 19 months after that when his father died. 

The grieving process is strange, in that it is different for each person, and yet it is no less devastating in each of those different processes.  No one can understand your pain, but they can be there for you as you navigate your way through it, even if “being there” means just hanging back and allowing you to cry, be alone in your thoughts, or just try to keep busy to cope with that grief.  Lucky me that I am blessed to be married to someone who knows just what I need when I need it.

So, this blog about our adventures is taking a detour for this post, to help me get through the process, to  let me pour out my heart, and to blow away the cobwebs.  Writing is my therapy…………and if you’ve taken the time to read this, thank you for bearing with me.  

Cats