life on earth

A whole month has passed since I wrote here
(thank you deeply for all the warm messages sent
my way in response to my last post), a whole month
of mostly depressed spirits and emotion bubbling up
over and over again....but the sun is shining again in
my heart and I am just very simply
grateful for it.


I have been afraid to write here...to expose my
raw feelings, the depth of my struggles as a caregiver,
the little and big things that fill my mind and my heart...
but I think that has passed. Yes, there are people facing
much harder realities than mine and there are people facing
my reality and handling it in a more peaceful way than I. But
I need to write this journey and I need to be honest about
it, so that is what I will do here. Perhaps this is one of the
good things that will come out of the emptiness left as
friends have disappeared and illusions of many kinds
have been unmasked...one must get it out somehow.


I may write everyday....sometimes I imagine finding
a blog online written by another woman caring for her
mother with dementia and trying to do so positively
and beautifully and authentically...and how comforting
and connecting it would be to follow the ins and outs
and ups and downs of her daily life. I have searched
and searched for such a blog....having yet to find it, I
will just have to make what I am looking for...knowing
it will do me good and hoping it will do something
beyond that.


But now, it is almost time to leave the library and
pick up my mom from her afternoon at respite car....
as good a reason as any not to edit this rather unexpected
post. I thought I would be catching up aboutwhat I have been
reading and the latest chapter in the Great Toothbrushing
Debate-and so I shall. But my heart was in charge of
my fingers today (perhaps it always should be?) and
this outpouring feels like another of the healing
rain-showers our parched part of the earth has
been given lately....and that reminds me of a poem
I shared at The Bower last year...


And between shower and shine hath birth


The rainbow's evanescent glory;


Heaven's light that breaks on mists of earth!


Frail symbol of our human story,


It flowers through showers where, looming hoary,


The rain-clouds flash with April mirth,


Like Life on earth.



Mathilde Blind




..."like Life on earth"....that is what I am living, what
we are all living and what I want to put down here
in the days to come.