(Author’s note: I’m working on a post about a major breakthrough in dealing with my own physical pain, but it is taking a longer time to write than expected. It concerns new theories about chronic low-level inflammation as the root cause of numerous disorders, conditions and diseases.
But I need to write today, anything, just to keep my face in the sun so to speak. If you deal with depression of any kind you’ll probably understand that sentence, and facing the sun.)
The little things that keep me going. Little wonders in life that I can grasp for a moment and seem to remember forever.
This morning I’m remembering the 3 hours sitting on a windowsill in a private hospital room in Kansas, watching the 4th of July fireworks with my mother. It brings a smile to my face, even though it would be her last, this quiet Sunday night in 2021. Not so long ago, really. We were so at peace in that moment.
It’s a one week period I need to write about, a week that started with her driving herself to the hospital on Thursday, and ended with her passing 7 days later. The problem with writing it was it turned out more disastrous than need be, with lack of care on her last night, and lack of caring on the part of my brother.
If I write the story down it will leave me bitter, and angry, and too sad…way too sad.
Instead I’ll just cherish that memory of just the two of us, my 94 years old mother with her youngest, her “baby” on the very last fireworks display she would ever see. At 94 she had contracted a virus in her respiratory tract that would fill her lugs with a disease so they could no longer hold air.
I believe she died from a broken heart though, having to spread my older brother’s ashes on the Atlantic Ocean. She always said “no mother should have to outlive a child.” John was 72, and had a very short fight with cancer. We we’re all distraught, of course.
But that evening was just…special. We were just lucky her hospital room was on the 3rd floor and facing in the direction of the local university stadium. It was were they shot of on massive firework after another, all sizes and every color, high enough and loud enough for the entrée town below to see.
We talked, and laughed and cried a little. It would be hard put to say it drew us closer, as I had adored my mother forever. No one could give a hug like this little five foot tall and a hundred pound woman.
I might one day write about that week, and the week that followed that ended with my brother and I breaking all the bonds we had ever had. Maybe putting on paper will heal those wounds.
For now I prefer that cherish that one memory. And remain angry at the rest, so I don’t think about it anymore. Avoidance is a great defense mechanism.
Yesterday the little wonderous thing was simply a small plant growing all alone surrounded by nothing but white gravel
I believe most folks think I’m a bit touched in the head, marveling over the smallest little things. A spiders web that spans the garden, or the touch of a straw flower. The stone with the odd hole eroded by river waters over 250 million years.
Or simply smiling at like small nasturtium I found growing outside my fence, in the common area of the shared condominium property. White gravel surrounds the entire townhouse complex, like we’re our own little island..
I had been doing some work along the back, shoring up holes under the fence that hinted at the presence of an unwanted visitor under the deck. More than likely a rat had taken up residence under the deck. At first I mistook the small plant as simply another weed, but upon further examination, I knew exactly what it was.
I was growing these beautiful flowers in the back this year, and it’s that time when the flowers drop their petals and produce one hard seed which will fall to the ground and reseed. Somehow this seed had managed to make it’s way 20 feet from it’s mother plant, a long way from home for a seed.
It had made its way thought the gravel bed, germinated and taken root. I don’t think there is enough summer left for it to grow big enough to flower, but you never know.
The miracle of life that we overlook everyday with our nose in a cell phone.
These little things…. something to remember.