enough

Here’s to You….

, , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

This post is a salute to everyone who has ever touched my life. I appreciate and applaud your friendship, love, comfort, guidance, wisdom and support. After all, where would I be without you? As “they” say, “it takes a village.” Surely, it’s taken an entire nation to get me here. I am blessed.

I was not the easiest child, I can positively say. Since my mom’s passing in July this year, many things have come to an acute point of conversion. I sometimes wish I could be little again, knowing what I know now, and appreciate my mom more than I did. Impossible. Yes. But “they” say, “hind sight is 20/20.” So very true.  The question, ‘If you could do it all over again, would you do it differently?’ First of all, most of us wouldn’t go back for anything, but if I could appreciate my parents more back then, I would do that. I would also appreciate and spend more time with my grandparents, my aunts and uncles and cousins to be sure. I have an amazing family.

I remember growing up, looking everywhere for acceptance, from the time I was young but especially in Jr. high and high school. I have never confided that to anyone. There were cliques and crowds, most of which I didn’t seem to fit into. The struggle and desire to be simply ‘liked,’ was real. If I could go back, I’d pay more attention to school and worry less about what everyone else thought of me. In 100 years, no one will remember. Mom said that all the time. I appreciate now, her words of wisdom then. Salutations to all those who befriended me back then. You truly meant the world to me and still do today. My true friends, you know who you are, thank you.

Thank you to my children, without whom I wouldn’t have excelled in patience and compassion. You are all the reason I was born, I’m positive. It was hard; there were times I wasn’t so sure we would make it, but we’ve all come out on the other side. Adults now, I pray your dreams and aspirations come true. I wish you kindness, wonder, and humility.  And, for Heaven’s sake, live like there’s no tomorrow because we don’t know if there will be.

My sisters deserve my utmost respect. They become your best buddies somehow even when you used to think they were just a pain in the butt. When you’re the eldest, they are more like shadows that never go away. Then, when you are mature enough to appreciate ‘sisters’, you’re grateful you have them. They now are “qualified” to know my secrets and dreams like I never trusted them before, seriously, not on your life. I never had a big brother (secretly wished for one every night), but my cousin filled the bill for me. I appreciate and love him like a brother as much today as I did when we were little. I wanted to be like him, blow up tiny anthills with firecrackers like him, ride a motorcycle like him and make a ‘machine-gun sound’ with my voice like him. Sadly, I’ve only ridden a motorcycle (my own Sportster), but not like him. He rides with the wind, on a mission I don’t fully understand. Here’s to the war-hero Veteran I knew he’d always be.

And finally a toast to my husband for always putting up with me and giving me the most beautiful life a person could want. I don’t know where I’d be if he hadn’t come along. “They”say, ‘everything happens for a reason.’ For me to be sitting here writing this, I have him to thank. Living on a little lake, understanding my need to be in the Virgin Islands and sending me twice a year sometimes, doing the best he could with the kids I already had, giving more than he asks for in return and even buying me a little crown (haha), loving me through my multiple sclerosis and never complaining; I couldn’t ask for more. I’m 54 and finally got my crown!

In this month, the first Thanksgiving without my mom, my children scattered across the globe, and me here in the Northwest in the freezing cold, I’m thankful for so many things and am blessed in ways I never dreamed possible. I wish all of you a bountiful Holiday with all the love and happiness you can handle.

Always, All My Love….

enough is never enough

, , , 0 Comments

I experienced a very emotional day today. As if the rain was not enough, I went to the memorial of a woman I never met. She passed away on her 50th birthday from brain cancer (glioblastoma). She was an amazing woman, as I read daily on Face Book, an accounting by her husband (my ex brother-in-law ~ but in my heart he always will be just that). He told the story of of how she lived, which hit me like the proverbial ‘ton of bricks,’ and how he remembered his last moments with her. I shed tears openly for him, my nephew, and her teenage son.

I found that I also cried for MY son, life lessons, and the insanity that sorrow embeds in your soul.

My son is entangled in the conflict of his life, a contest of good versus evil. A potion of drugs continues to lacerate him from the person he used to be and the addict he has become. As I listened to the pastor, the prayers and the echo of falling teardrops all around me today, I wept too for the boy I raised. When you imagine a shameful family secret called drug addiction, you never imagine it will be a story about you and your child. It never occurred to me that my child could or would be an addict.

With too many young people succumbing to drugs like Oxycontin and heroin, to name only two, I KNOW I am not alone. I feel alone though. I haven’t seen my son in months. I don’t know where he is or how he is living. I do know he is using and I am panic-stricken that he is in the clutches of the most nefarious monster known to any parent. There are too many I know who have lost their children to this monster, the little boys and girls our minds still depict them as.

I am afraid of this outcome for my own son. I struggle to understand addiction and what it means.

As I contemplate the life of a very brave woman, who fought her cancer until the end, I wonder why? Why do some have to leave and others don’t? No one seems to have a reasonable choice or a good reason. She is missed tonight by so many and the sorrow of that is overwhelming. I’m especially heartbroken for her son.

To the ones who leave and don’t want to, who fight till the end; and to the ones who are trying to wipe out the pain with whatever poison or process they can – I don’t think we will ever understand what they are going through. If they could interpret or somehow define for us the agony of their sickness or struggle, perhaps we would be able to grasp a small piece of understanding. I know I’m praying for understanding.

In the same breath, how can we clarify the loss we feel when they are gone or when someone you love is bent on self-destruction? If we could only explain to THEM how much they mean to us, if they could only know in their heart of hearts the love we have in ours, would it make it all different?

My son is not gone, he is alive at least, and I am blessed to have that. I miss and love him more than he will ever know (all my texts go unanswered). A woman I never met is now in Heaven, with the brightest light enveloping her, warming her soul and she knows no pain. When is enough ever enough? The time we spend with our loved ones here on Earth will never be enough, we can never give enough love to our children, and we can never understand enough to make the pain go away before it is irreversible. Are we supposed to want less? Is that enough?

My heart breaks for those we have lost and those who are lost.

I’m just a mom and its all I know how to do.

seahorse-jpg