sueeeus

A collection of fragments until I can find how to process them further.

five years and ten million stitches of love

I thought I saw the hummingbird do a flyby past me on the deck, not long before I got the call to say goodbye.  I felt a surge, a thrill, a sense of hope.

Today I saw the hummingbird for certain.  Bright green.  One of mom’s favorite colors.  And not one, but two.  The other is a greyish brown, so maybe they are a pair.

Reading back on the dreams, I am caught up and overcome with further tears as I realize the one was prophetic, because it was exactly the scene when we were gathered with her to say goodbye.  I read it back and relive those moments, still so fresh in my mind.  In the physical present real world moment of saying goodbye, I felt at a loss, as though I couldn’t find the words to speak and I’d botched my only chance; in the spirit she knew that I was there with her and she knew exactly how I felt and what I wanted her to  know, limitless, undying love which shines around us like a million suns.

Some of the sorrow seems to revolve around wist.  There is no question about her now.  She’s blazing brightly, swimming in heaven’s embrace now.  The wist is for the earthly time, the moments not spent loving and joying, the time lost from all the things that distract us from love and joy.

So of course it comes to mind that if in this present moment I am rewinding and reviewing the aching years of her life and how she could have been more joyful, I can’t help but notice that I myself am often distracted from joy, and my own life is flying on by.

Forgetting to live my life joyfully because I’m busy taking care of or being concerned about something or someone else.  That’s not what I want.

Pot, kettle, black.  So I need to do a better job of living joyfully, of being present, of being aware of the journey.

I’ve been wrapped up in my quilt, soaking up the love and memories.  Every quilt has a story to tell.  Five years and ten million stitches, all at my mother’s hand, thinking of me, sewing her love to me with each and every stitch.  The colors, the fabric textures — she put careful thought into all of it.  This masterpiece has been stored away for years, because I never wanted it to get soiled or stained.   She would consider that ridiculous of me.  It’s a practical item,  meant to be used.

I’m using it now.  I wrap myself close and look at all the details and think about what life moments took place when those stitches were made, and realize how much love and life has been shared all along, in languages that I didn’t recognize.

a hummingbird in December

I’m taking it as a sign of some sort.  It will present itself eventually.  I hastened to clean and fill the feeder, in the hopes it will soon return.  My mom loves birds.

~*~*~*~

I’m going to tell you my dream, Mama.  And some of my thoughts.  I want to hear about your dream, Mama, and what it looked and felt like from where you are.  We will compare notes!

We are in the spirit, so we present ourselves in joyful child form, sparkling little girls.  You with your platinum curls, golden eyes, and milky white skin, me with my wispy brown waves that won’t stay out of my face (I get that from you, by the way).  We are wearing fluffy dresses and roller skates, regular Shirley Temples!  I take your hands and we clasp them criss-cross.  We are in the spirit and I assure you that we can do this.  After all, I saw it done at Teatro Zinzanni!  We are on a circular pedestal and we begin to skate in a spinning circle, round and round, faster and faster.  We are joyful little girls, skating our hearts out, giggling with delight.  I’ve explained to you that as we spin, we are weaving a web of light, and we are opening a portal to heaven.  Because we are getting ready to do some healing work.  We need a strong beam that will serve as a funnel, a tornado of light that will draw the poisons and sufferings out from our beings and incinerate them with the fire of heaven.

We spin together, round and round, faster and faster, and we weave a funnel like a beehive, with thick honey golden coils, but it’s not enough.  We need a pyre with the strength of a hurricane for what we are to do.  The dream changes, and we are no longer little girls.  I’ve summoned the siblings and we are all here, your tribe, all of us, in the spirit.  We are joined together hand in hand, encircling you, tenderly.  You are a slight and elder form, seated on a cushion or a couch, maybe your hospital bed.  You glow with an ethereal platinum light, and we, your tribe, glow brightly with a golden white light.  You are not strong and we radiate a cushion of warmth that surrounds you and holds you so that you can rest and float and allow the poisons and sufferings to flow out when heaven’s gate is opened.  Our hands clasped, we form a tribal circle and dance around a blazing fire.  It’s a magical display, a joyful pow-wow.  There is so much energy as we dance and celebrate and rejoice and love.  The fire blazes stronger and stronger and the golden tendrils of light weave together, stronger, tighter, stronger, tighter, forming a blazing tornado of golden white light.  The tornado blazes, tended by the tribe.  You and I are back to little girl form, two Shirley Temples, seated in the center of the tornado, where it is quiet and still.  My arm is around you and I’m the big sister now.  You feel lost and afraid; you are small.  I hold you and comfort you and assure you that I will protect you, that you don’t have to be afraid, you don’t have to know what to do, you don’t have to know who to be or how to be.  You can just rest and I will hold you and take care of you.  I’ve got you.  We are in the spirit, I say.  See?!  You relax and melt into my embrace.  I brush a wisp of your platinum hair from your sweet face.  Now we are ready.  I hold you, you beautiful, pure, innocent and precious child.  You are wrapped in my embrace, and we are wrapped in the holy blazing embrace of heaven.  We are in the still place where time and space have no meaning.  The space between.  Where our molecules and our energy are distinct, and we swim about through the waves and fields of the essence of our being.  Here we find the poisons and sufferings and draw them out, out, out, like the way a log jam collects and grows and is gently yet persistently carried downstream towards a waterfall, the poisons are pulled through the blazing tornado, seared, clarified, and absorbed into heaven’s embrace.  We swim and stir up the waters to release more sufferings.  We extend our reach to embrace those near us, our beloveds; we are all in the spirit in this cosmic goo, so we beckon their sufferings out and away, to send them back to become one with heaven, too.

There were other dreams.  So many dreams.  I showed you my chedvah place with the bright pea pod green grass and blue blue sky.  I showed you my sleeping diamond-skinned dragon mother-ship.  We climbed inside the ship, two little girls, and hid and played.

And I helped you see, from my eyes, how worthwhile your life has been, how you always did the best that you knew how to do, how your part brought about deep and widespread blessings, and how thankful I am for you.

~*~*~*~

Somewhere in the night I had a moment of conviction in which the clear act of faith is to go ahead and book the vacation rental house for our summer celebration of life and family, and to boldly assume that we will celebrate her birthday together in February as planned.

I hope she feels strong enough to continue earthly living.  For myself, I think about the sunset years, and there is a hope to share the sweetness of age with my dear sisters.  I wish for my mom and her sister to be able to share more of their sunset together.

And selfishly, we all wish for Mom to want to hold on, because we’re just too tired to process more loss right now.

He has gone back to the river of souls.

~*~*~*~

Sail on, little bird.  Sail on, my dear baby brother.  Thank you for shining your brightness in the world, for the time that you had to shine.  I’m the lucky one, that I got to be counted among your beloved.  We are the lucky ones, your beloved.  We love you so.

~*~*~*~

We are so connected, my tribe.  We seldom see each other, or speak with each other, but our ties run deep, not constrained by space and time.  We feel each other, as though we are networked together.  And so we are.

~*~*~*~

Such an inescapable anguish!  We know he wouldn’t wish this on any of us, my brothers in arms, and we are so acutely aware in this moment that we don’t ever wish this on each other, this inevitable part of living.  We don’t want each other to suffer.  We love each other too much, too deeply, and want to protect each other from such anguish.  To the extent that we chide with each other that we need to make a joint pact such that we can all just go at the same time and spare each other this part of things.  And then we laugh.  Because we know that it’s all just a part of things, and the thing that is important to remember in the here and now is just that, the here and now.  Live fully, here, now.  Joy in this day.  In this very day.  Love now.

~*~*~*~

I’m trying to find a way to describe with words the expression of these feelings.  Something like the way that all colors blend into one to become pure white, in a similar fashion, all emotions blend into one to become pure white love in its most raw and ragged form.  It’s blazing with a radiance that can almost not be looked upon, and the flames are ragged and jagged explosions, bursts, that radiate outward from the core, which is, I suppose, the main line, the spirit of God.  Exquisitely unbearable.  It’s a feeling that’s almost too painful and too exhilarating to feel, each extreme emotion pulled to its outermost ragged limit, to the point of shatter, and there they all coexist, all the emotions, as all the colors, on the verge of explosion, barely contained.  Raw.  Pure.  Love.

When I retreat to find that place of healing, I think it’s my version of prayer.  I described it, in part, before. 

There’s another version in which I’m not in the physical plane at all, so there’s no figure, no spinning, no tornado.  My non-physical self finds the heart-spark and I visualize breathing on it, deeply and gently, carefully coaxing the ember to emerge and grow.  I breathe my emotions out, feeding the glowing white ember, and it becomes stronger and stronger and warms me and nourishes me at the same time.  There’s a flow happening, kind of like a toroidal Fibonacci thing, and I suppose that figuratively my heart is at the center, and there comes a point where the center opens up (sort of like the way the jaws on a chuck open to release a drill bit), and the flow becomes more like a fire hose, bright white light, sort of like that scene from the 5th Element, where she completes the circuit.  Then I am breathing long deep steady breaths, and it’s as though I’m a vacuum cleaner, this firehose stream of bright light, pulling people’s struggles out and away from them.  It’s sort of like lucid dreaming, in which my physical body is doing one thing — the breathing — and some part of my mental self is monitoring the whole scene; it knows that my soul self has gone out to take care of a few things…  My spirit (?) then scans for anguish and sends tendrils out from the main stream to reach out and connect to those pains so that they can flow out from where they are causing suffering.  In those moments, it seems as though I’m channeling, that I am in the spirit, and that I draw those sufferings away from these people who are crying out in their innermost hearts, and those sufferings are drawn into the stream where they dissolve and become shiny new energy, ready to launch new dreams.  All the while, tears flow, and I feel as though I am healing (because my own emotions are flowing out and away from me), and that I am helping others to heal as well.

Sometimes I wonder if this is my calling, the thing that I’m supposed to be doing.  Maybe I’m a healer.  Nobody needs to know that I even exist, for me to do this work.

There is another version of healing trance that I can describe.  It’s like the first one, in which I visualize myself spinning, arms spread, spinning around and around, sending waves of light, love, comfort, and harmony out from my extended hands, weaving a tornado of protection around me.  I stand in the center of stillness and catch my breath and gather my strength.  When I am filled with strength, I envision myself, sort of like an Olympic figure skater, spinning so fast and then pulling the body in tighter and tighter, spinning faster and faster, tighter, so tight, all that spinning energy gathering speed deep and close in.  Spinning faster, faster, tighter, smaller, more and more concentrated, a cyclone, like nuclear fusion, faster, tighter, smaller, until it’s almost infinite energy bound in an infinitesimal point…   ….and then POW!  It’s a pulse explosion, and I send a blast across the cosmos and it surges over and through everything in its path as it radiates and washes a blast of healing energy out through the dimensions, cosmos, layers.  It sounds megalomaniacal, now that I describe it.

~*~*~*~

Those have been the forms my prayers have taken, for some years.  I have two new forms that have emerged since Tuesday last.

~*~*~*~

It’s like the others, in getting the ember going, and the tendrils of light are like threads, and I begin a looping crochet stitch, weaving a chain mesh until I’ve completed a circle and then begin the next circle, interweaving each new loop, and the chain begins to take form and grow strong, and then new weavers come, all of those who are pouring out their love right now, their spirits find this thread and they all begin to weave their light threads into a web of healing light, a fortress of love pouring into my brother, seeping into all the areas where strength and healing are needed.  All of the looping and interweaving continues, building a glistening, radiant cocoon, while concurrently, the beloveds are all joined arm in arm like a ring of children, dancing in a circle, singing a loving song, spinning an outer shield of pure white light up and around the weavers, around the cocoon.  We are all in the spirit, channeling our love together, nourishing him, nourishing each other.  We heal each other as we heal him.  And he heals us.

~*~*~*~

The other vision begins like the figure skating one, only we are here together, and he’s on a hoverboard  or skateboard thing and I’m on skates.  The first time, it began with just me, and then we found each other and teamed up.  Now, we meet back up and say, time to get back to work.  This, because I keep falling asleep from exhaustion.  I am so fatigued that my body just stops.  It’s been such a long time since I’ve been able to sleep deeply, and now I don’t have a choice.  I wake up, and go about my day in a sort of a detached state, doing the things that I have to do, but with a sense of hurry, because I need to be able to stop and be quiet and still and try to find my way back to that place, because we have so much work to do.  I get back, and we skate about, looking for all the places that need to be attended, and we infuse, we fortify, we weave new connections.  The beloveds have arrived, and we’re all skating up, down, in, around, our trails of golden light fusing new pathways.  It’s kind of like the enchanted cleanup scene from Beauty and the Beast, where all the enchanted ones dance about in a joyful and exuberant display, pixie dust sparkling here, there, twinkle, poof, all the while the place being put back into order, tip top.  He leads the way on his hoverboard, spinning loop-the-loops and figure eights, this way guys, follow me!  We laugh and skate and make a golden new network to let the love flow where it needs to go.

Swimming in tears and music and love.  It all flows and swirls around me.  So many joyful thoughts and memories.  So much beautiful living we’ve experienced.  How blessed we are.

So let that wonder take you into space
And lay you under its loving embrace
Just feel the thunder as it warms your face
You can’t hold back

Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams
And let your love show and you’ll know what I mean
It’s the season

Let your love fly like a bird on a wing
And let your love bind you to all living things
And let your love shine and you’ll know what I mean
That’s the reason

Sometimes it takes tragedy to remind us of love.

Reflecting on past moments of crisis, and  how I navigated through them, it seems that I kept on doing the thing that I was doing.  I went to work.  I think, maybe when the emotional stuff is beyond what I am able to process, I shift it behind a veil where I can keep an eye on it while continuing with life as usual.

So today I worked and dove into very focused and detailed tasks, to keep my mind fully contained.  It helped me today, but now it’s night, and now I am finally alone with my thoughts.  Now I can let tears fall down my face as I begin to wrangle all of me into concentrated loving attention that I can send out in waves to the people I love most in this world, my family.

I’m startled by every text notification ding.  I’m afraid to look and I’m desperately hopeful to look.  I’m similarly alarmed by the sound of the phone ringing.  I realize that I must hold my breath and not release it until I know who’s at the other end and why they’re contacting me, because I find myself exhaling when the determination has been made, and after that it’s difficult to catch my breath.  I can’t get enough air.

We all feel so helpless.  There is nothing we can do besides love and hope.

He wants to live!  He sure got a lemon of a vehicle, and figuring out its quirks has taken such toll, but he’s tried so hard to figure it out and give it what it needs.  He’s doing his part!  He’s done everything the doctors have told him to do.  He wants to live.  Or he wanted to, before this.  I don’t know if he wants to now, because this…  …this one’s ravaged him hard.  Is he in there, pounding his fists and shouting at us, hey, I’m right here, don’t worry, I’m just looking for that danged short so that I can fix the circuit and get this machine back online.   I hope.

There is so much love!  A steady stream of friends have come to the hospital to see him and wish him well and give their love.  He is a fine, fine person.

My family is aching.  The arms of my heart are wrapped around them, holding them tight.

I just recognized another interesting thing about emotional crisis.  Exhaustion.  Feeling like I’ve only barely begun to process the emotions, yet nearly overcome with exhaustion, to the extent that I feel that I could collapse or pass out.

I left, to save myself.

I didn’t stay, to protect them.

~*~*~*~

I read somewhere recently about human survival instinct, how a drowning man would pull you down to save himself.  It was a cautionary tale, not to advise against heroicism or altruism, but more to be aware of the tendency in some people to out-prioritize their own needs with others’ needs.  There can come a point where one is over-depleted and can no longer help others or themselves.  Don’t get to that point.  It could be a long journey back.

~*~*~*~

Right now, he is fighting for his life.  Maybe he’s not fighting.  Maybe he’s just in between right now.  He IS alive.  His heart is beating.  He hasn’t woken up.  Maybe it will be like a reboot, and things will just come back online soon.  That is my hope.

I keep waffling between my inner knowing and my outer doubting, through the certainty that he’s coming back, born again with important tales to tell of his time in between, in the allness, of being in the light and being the light.  He will be renewed and convicted and impassioned by the things he learned in his time away.  He will want to return, to share these important things with us!  And then the physically constrained thoughts surface, in the form of doubt and despair, that his physical body is overwhelmed, that he will decide he’s too tired to fight to come back.

Some of my siblings are assembling.  Those who can are on their way to be with him, in person.  I’m home.  I took the day off to be still and weave an entangled web of love through the ether joining with them, healing with them in the only way I know how to help right now.  I can’t go.  Not yet.  My physical self can’t be around them, where I will be faced with the outer doubting and crumble in the combined fear and sorrow and helplessness.  My internal self is with them, where I am strong, where I can draw from the energy of heaven, and build my strength, as I’m joined through the ether with them, weaving a golden web of light around us all.  Healing us.  Protecting us.  Nourishing us.  Warming us.  Strengthening us.  All of us.

~*~*~*~

So many of us, my siblings and I, seem out of phase with our physical selves, these vessels that contain us, like we are strangers in a strange land.  Foreigners.  These physical bodies seem so unfamiliar, like we just can’t seem to align our mental selves with our physical selves.  We are bewildered when we encounter health issues, surprised by their appearance, which is no surprise at all to those on the outside looking in.

~*~*~*~

An epiphany.  Wanting and needing so desperately to focus my thoughts and intents on him, this brother I barely know, finding my untamed thoughts constantly turning this into something about me, wrestling with the ensuing self-disgust, jolting my thoughts back.  What about them?  How terrified and shaken they must be, especially those closest in the lineup, those who grew up with him.  Recoiling at my self-absorptive ugliness forced me to think of them, to look at things through their eyes, and to have compassion for the turmoil of their shaken hearts in the face of this tragic uncertainty.  We have so many complex interrelationships with and amongst each other, some alliances, some factions, some solid, some fragile.  Through it all, we have a certain thread that bonds us all, something deep and internal.  How they need assurance and hope and comfort.  This I can do.  What they need, I can give.  This is where I am strong.  I tap into that thread and connect it to the mainline and let the love and healing flow.  We feel each other’s love, which isn’t constrained by time or space.  We are connected.  I send them strength, from the inside out.

~*~*~*~

I had to save myself, to help them.

I’ve been trying to figure out when and where I got the notions for how a life should be lived.

For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a wife and mother. Certainly a mother, forever. I can always remember wanting to have children of my own. I don’t remember if the wife-and prefix always accompanied the -mother part.  Probably, because they went together.  People weren’t supposed to be mothers and not also wives.  That was a given, back then.  At some point, that particular notion solidified more, and my Plan A was to become a devoted housewife and stellar mom, and Plan B was to become a teacher, in case I needed another occupation, if a devoted husband didn’t come along.

In those bright eyed days, I knew that I could and would do a much better job at partnering and parenting than my parents did.  I was nice, after all.  I would be nice to my husband.  Therefore he would be nice to me.  We would be nice to each other.  We would like each other.  Anybody can get along if they’re kind. There would be children.  Of course there would be children!  Children are the most amazing things in the world!  They are fresh new people.  They like colors and sounds and shapes and feels.  They love to discover things, and there are new things to discover every day.  We would play.  We would laugh.  We would make things.  We would discover things.  We would learn things.  We would all like each other.  We would all be nice to each other.  We would all be comfortable with each other.  We would live happily together.  Happily ever after.

This is the part where the soundtrack cuts in and there’s a screech like the sound that a record needle makes as it’s dragged across an album abruptly.

I sure made a lot of grandiose assumptions back then.  I look at my boys and wonder what traumas I’m planting in them, in this revolution of the circle of life that we’re tumbling through right now.  That whole husband notion thing didn’t pan out very well.  Apparently there’s more needed than simple human kindness to keep a relationship afloat.  So far, I haven’t given them a childhood in which they get the benefit of a healthy father figure.  They get precious little interaction with their dad, and my heart breaks to think about what their hearts hope for, with him.  Because those are two more broken hearts to chalk up to the masses of children who grow up with parents who don’t know or care how to make their children feel loved.  As for the parade of men who have come and gone through their young lives, I only hope that they remember the fun times and that they never catch on that there was ever a competition in place, between them and those men, for my attention and affection.  As if there’s not enough for everyone.  Please.

I wonder how many men actually ever grow up.

The question that I think I’m trying to answer for myself is whether I truly want to be with someone, or if it’s a false notion.  I know that I need solitude, down time, quiet time, time to be in my head time, lost in my mind time, time to wash emotions through me time.  I think that maybe I don’t know how to be me around someone else, or maybe I don’t feel free to be me around someone else.  Or maybe I just  haven’t been with someone who really wanted to know me, what makes me tick and how I work.  I know that I  have been more lonely with someone than I’ve been when I’m alone.  Why this persistent yearning, this deep ache?  What is missing and why is it needed?

I think about the kinds of relationships that my kids will form when they’re older.  How will they treat others?  How will they be treated?  I haven’t been able to show them an example of a healthy adult couple.  I haven’t been able to give them the family life that I envisioned as a youth.

Instead of Plan A or Plan B, I’ve ended up following Plan C, in which I’ve spent a lifetime in a technical profession, devoted to my fellow working brothers and sisters, leery of the leadership.  Sort of parallels my childhood, now that I look at it this way.  I’ve given my work so much of me.  Sometimes I think I’ve given too much of me.

I think that I want to lead a simple life filled with simple pleasures like walks down country roads, smooth coffee, freshly baked bread, star gazing, cloud gazing, tree gazing.  Seems like nice things to do with the people you love.

Today I am being a mom.  Sure, we are swimming in an ocean of grief right now, but I am shaking my fist at the sky and choosing to let love and the breath of life prevail.  I saved myself a 3+ hour commute and stayed home today.  Thank you salaried-job-gods-of-payroll.

live

When the kids return from school, they will be greeted with a smiling mother with open arms.  The house smells of freshly baked banana bread.  The washing machine is contentedly agitating the residue of fun times from their skanky dirty clothes.  When dinner time arrives, their tummies will be filled with the warm yumminess of ‘taco rice’…   …whatever the heck it is.  They love it, and by golly, I’m serving it to them tonight.  Their stepmom or grandma makes it, and they both rave over it.  I’m pretty sure I can come up with something at least, if not more, tasty.

Yes, I know that I am filling holes with bandaids.  But that’s the thing.  We are alive and breathing and we have today.  I am embracing today with all the love and all the energy and all the gratitude that I have.  I don’t get to be a stay-at-home mom every day.  But today is special.

Today I do.