Graphic Change

Minor irritations. Opened up the weather app on my phone last night to find they'd changed the graphics. Harrumphed to Dearest One about it and thought how I dislike even  minor visual changes that appear in a touch of a finger.

Saw my grief/loss counsellor yesterday armed with a collage assignment completed. Stupid things really. Make me feel silly and childish cutting images out of magazines and pasting them to paper. Except when I was done I wanted to weep. I stood there puzzled at how a random assortment of pictures with jagged edges could evoke such feelings. I didn't let myself look too long or hard at what had appeared so innocently under my fingertips.

We look at the collage together and he tells me he has never seen one so linear. I've even numbered the pictures. We talk about linear and labyrinths and wanting things to proceed in an orderly fashion. True. And then he posits that life and my cancer journey is more like a maze. My hands fly to my face in horror and I tell him I would never arrange the pictures in a maze. Dead ends. Changing directions. Being lost. My worst nightmare. Except the journey has arranged itself in exactly that way without my permission. Which is the crux of the problem. The place I kick against until my toe bleeds.

Silent tears spring from somewhere far below the jagged mastectomy scar that runs across my chest.

He points out the colour of the poster board I've picked to paste my pictures on and it's the colour of the heart chakra. The place of emotions.

And so something as silly and childish and innocent shows the very deep child wound within me. The one who cried for order and control and the ability to predict what would happen next.

He rolls up the collage and hands it back to me with instructions to write a little every day about the pictures and my thoughts until I'm ready to tackle writing the story in a bigger burst of creativity. We put off cutting up the individual pictures and selectively burning them as the time is right. Symbolically burning and letting go of what they represent. And a torrent of tears roll down my face unleashing my child into a vast land of opportunity and growth if I can just embrace the graphic change in front of me.

Speaking Out Loud

"I feel like I speak a foreign language."

That 's what I said to Dearest One tonight after running into a long ago friend earlier today. She commented to me how glad she was that I was in a specific person's life right now because that person needs God. She thinks I'm going to open my mouth and tell that person of their need. Um. No. It hadn't even crossed my mind to mention God to this person. How presumptuous of me it would be to think I know what they need.

As nice as it was to see this long ago friend I told her that if she was waiting for me to do the reconnecting I didn't have the emotional energy to reach out. That felt much better than making small talk and nodding my head in agreement about how we should get together soon.

And she most likely grates on my nerves because once upon a time I really thought that if I could just sneak the word 'Jesus' into a conversation that I was doing my part to save the world. And so I tried.

Recently someone died who I long ago thought I would 'witness to.' You know, find the right words to nudge them into the kingdom. I spoke at their funeral about the time years ago when they put love into action and how I still think about and recognize those actions as much more loving than any words I could say. At the funeral lunch I said to friends how humbling it had been to find the person I would have thought at one time I needed to witness to, witnessed to me with their life. I was into words and they were into actions.

Guess which spoke louder.

Needing Some Lovin'

** Thank you for all the lovely comments. I just needed some reassurance in this tippy world we call our temporary home.**

Today I'm wondering what keeps you coming back to my blog.
Why do you bother?

I keep coming back to writing because it's how I process my life.
I used to journal instead. And granted, journalling was way different than what I write here but it was still a way to empty my thoughts onto a page.

Many years ago I was about to give up on blogging when I got an email from a stranger telling me how my writing had affected her journey. I leaned my head against the wall beside my desk and bawled my head off. I often forget that strangers are reading what I write. I think about the handful of people who I know read here regularly and forget that they are not the only ones.

Sometimes I see the reader numbers and wonder who are you?!
A comment would be lovely.
I will unabashedly soak them all up.
Some days are like that.

But It Wasn't

I watched as he gently arranged the thick blanket around the old man's shoulders, tucked it in between his legs and the edges of the wheelchair until the old man was wrapped up like a cocoon. Only then did the young man turn  and wheel him out the door. A twenty something and an old man bonded in their grief going out to have a smoke in a spring snowstorm. The young man was my son. The old man the father of someone my son had close ties to once upon a time.

This past week has been hard.
Really hard.
Two deaths in two days.
One funeral.

Tears streaming down the old man's face, his aged hand, shaken by a stroke, zig zagging its way to until the kleen*x finds his tears. A parent burying a child. Another parent burying a child. Both parents of the age where by all appearances, it very well could have been the other way around. I want to write that it should have been the other way around.
But it wasn't.

And nothing makes sense.
And nothing makes sense.
And it never will.

Unbloggable

Sorry for the silence.

Unbloggable things are happening to other people. Can't take the risk of it showing up in a search engine out of respect for the living. What a reminder that things happen every day to people unnoticed by the masses.

I hate this. I said the word "fuck" over and over again yesterday for half an hour straight. Some things are too horrendous to fathom. And yet we must wade through it.

It's jolted me awake to see that I am going to be just fine.
Prayers appreciated.

PS - I celebrated 25 years of sobriety on Saturday. Gratitude running over.