It's amazing what a few minutes and blank page can do for me. It seems this is the moment I come alive. The words that rest deep in my soul find a way to flourish and come alive, in their own unique way. I've resisted the chances to take a seat in this black leather chair, and spend some time releasing all that I hold inside.
I was hoping this year would bypass that "day" that comes very year, on that one Sunday in May. Unfortunately, just by my simple existence, I was reminded. I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. I was fixated intently on that one thing I needed from Target. The aforementioned was not accomplished. I was out, sat in my car and cried. I cried in frustration and helplessness. I asked myself, "Why?" I closed my eyes for a moment, searching for a memory to hold onto, and I just cried harder. I started the car in attempts to distract myself, and then the horrid reality of grandma. I miss my grandma so much. I really miss being her little girl and how excited she would be just to see me. How she would huge me and wouldn't want to let go. Her constant agonizing over the idea that I needed anything, and what i said "no" - her supply of detergent and household goods would consume my backseat. I don't think I will ever understand what cancer was supposed to mean in their lives. In every positive way, one could see a "new beginning, something learned" - but that isn't good enough for me. As I spent some time with my brother, the reality ached me even more, because he misses his mom, just like I miss her. He claims I got to know her long that he did and in years, yes, I have that - but how do you explain the distance I managed to keep, in every effort to remain independent? Seeing him question and asking me to recall aspects of mom, that isn't fair either, again, death isn't fair. He kept asking, "what did she look like with hair?" All I could say because of pictures...was that it was long and sort of wavy, she had good hair. He only remembers her sick, and my thoughts are consumed with the same images.
I'm constantly amazing by how much I remember them, and how often I want to just fall to the floor. Instead, I'm captivated by a few silent days at work, doing what I have to do for kids, and returning to my usual state, when i convince myself for the hudredth time, I'm never going to have an answer to my enduring, "WHY!" I really hate that, you know. Things just happen. How logical does that sound? Why does this world have to be so much out of control? Yet, the irony is in certain aspects we have control? None of it makes sense.
They will rest somewhere in my sphere, I dont' know that I have reasons to doubt I will forget them completley, but man, does it hurt when you remember. It hurts to stop for even that brief moment and smile because you remember the way would trace my hand out of tortilla dough, and I would have my own hand-shaped tortilla with butter. Or, to thing of mom and how helpess she felt raising me. I'm angry and saddened all at the same time! Circumstances steered my decisions to crawl inside myself and remain angry and put out with the world. Yet, she didn't know what it took to get me to "talk" about anything wihtout bursting into rage. How guilty I feel that I never allowed those moments for my momt o know, and I to know her. I know, that she loved me. I cna't deny that, I have been reminded by countless people, of how my mom adored me and the things I did and continued to do Her praises never ran short, behind my back, so to speak.
It seems when these moments of finding time to write, I still find myself battling the same battle of missing them, of losing them, of wondering how to start anew. I want an answer, I know. I'll never get it, I know. I'm just wasting time, I dont' want to know that part. I see the progress time has provided, and I don't think its due to any of my adapting - but time has a funny way of moving circumstances along.
No matter, hwo close you want them to remain, they aren't going to stay that close anymore...and although, I could stay curled up on the couch with grandma's blanket, it no long becomes that favorite blanket, because its no longer her house. I'm hesitant to touch it because it still doesn't seem "right." I shouldn't have it, it belongs to her. Time will continue to provide those outs, those outs I am trying desperately to hold to, because its really scary to think I'll move on, and do certain things, and there's nothing to share. Yeah, they're dead. It still pains and frustrates the hell out of me, when I'm sitting in a room, and people are talking about their mothers - more than the simple act of talking about their mothers (I can handle that) it's when they start talking about their age. Well. I'm 57 and my mom is 72 and reallyhealthy. i just get really frustrated. Why do those people have second chances. what did they do that was so right?
Honestly you know what scares me the most? The word forever. That's the word I can't seem to write without words and shudder consuming my being. I remember one day before school one morning, and my grandpa while I was in elementary school would always walk me to school. Well, this one morning we had breakfast, dropped grandma off at work and came back to the house and he sat at the breakfast bar and I sat at the dining room table. Somehow we started talking about death. I eventually shared what I thought death looked like. I said, "we come back right, Papo?" He said, "OH no, Amy when you die that's it, you don't come back again." I remember for months, I could not sleep alone. I would wake up in the middle of the night in tears and run to my mom's room and I would crawl in bed with her. She would take a shower, and I would cry, because I didn't want to be apart from her. The night I did that, she got really frustrated with me, and she said "WHy do you keep crying?" Then I told her what grandpa and I talked about, and she said, "Amy, I'm not going anywhere." I often wonder if she remembers that time? The time I was naive to how this world worked that I thought people never die. Since then, the concept of "forever" runs a little deep.
I really try not to be consumed with my life and the events that have occured in my life. More often than run, I try to walk briskly, becuase I understand nothing will ever replace those times. That time, will eventually erase the heartaches, fears, and disappointments and somehow bring peace that does pass all understanding. Much of the time, it does seem I have the world fitted in my hand, that words have this way of expressing themselves in an elegant sort of way. All of that, will never measure up, to the battle I face. The battle of identity, what to do, how to do it. Nothing ever seems quite right, because I'm in this "place" and I'm missing my family. I'm missing the one integral person who gave me birth to that birth grow-up. To know my grandma, (you would have to know her to understand) you can't find a more generous, loving, kind person on the face of this earth. I would have friends who did not have homes and were in college and she would cook for them and act as if they were part of the family. I guess, I am really glad I spent so much time with my grandma, considering they lived just down the street. I loved it there, from card games to just sitting and watching the Spanish station. (Who knows what they were saying :) )
The question remains: "Is when will it stop?" When will the sense of "forever" not bring me to tears, because I think I still have unlived fantasy that our lives will rehappen and somehow they will pick up at the most perfect time, and we will reunite. Not that, I will die...and that will end the existence. Now..the fefar...death. I can imagine death by my own hand, but because time chooses it? Death? Who is he?
