Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1205 (SoD #1964) - Five Years Ago

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1205 (SoD #1964) - Five Years Ago

Hi Mom,

Here we are again at another July Fourth, the day you left this earth, now five years ago in 2015.

I am still holding on to a lot of guilt for not being at your side and choosing, of all things, to try to play D&D with friends instead of continuing to sit vigil as you were dying.

I am all right. The grief is just a fact of life and has been for years. But it's there, and I miss you at the weirdest times, like when I use your measuring cup or when I am eating applesauce or when I hear screaming children next door, and I want to ask if I screamed that much when I played outside at their age.

And it's strange to be here, five years after your death.

I could not really imagine you dying at all, and I certainly had not vision for what it would be like to be here, still alive myself, after living five years without you.

It's surreal and strange, and yet, it's also the new normal.

And yet, grief cannot be about wallowing. Grief creates paradigm shift. It helps clarify what's important. And what is important is living life.

Recently, one of my students wrote a paper on quality of life and argued for the four day work week. He cited an often referenced adage that he would "rather work to live than live to work."

Since working through the most painful days of grief, the first 100 days after your death, (I also had a reckoning at 90 days after), I have dedicated myself as much as possible to living life, though I acknowledge that I work much too much.  WORK, WORK, WORK!!

Mom contemplating death
Her family's grave marker
May 11, 2011

CARPE DIEM! SEIZE THE DAY!

I try, Mom. I am working to improve my work-life balance; to reserve ample time and space for self care; to act on my best priorities, which are my family first, then my friends, then my work and avocations; to maintain this blog, and keep my writing muscles limber; to be the person that my dogs believe that I am; to love, learn, give joy, find joy, and embody the central principle of my life at all times: the golden rule.

And, so, LIVING.

I went kayaking on Coldwater Lake today, Mom. It's a lake formed by the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980.


Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1033 - Mount St. Helens trip 1805.03

It's not a thing you would have done in a million years, Mom, even when you were younger.

And yet, I feel closer to you there, in nature in general, but in that place in particular.

It feel right to me. It's the right thing to do on this day, after five years without you.

I wish you were truly here to see it, in the flesh, and yet, I feel you were watching.

The day had mixed results.

The temperature from our home (68) dropped by 15 or so degrees (to 54).

We did well with strapping the kayaks to the car and getting them off again once we got to Coldwater Lake.

We rowed out about a mile, and it was fine, serene.

We turned around and started back in a head wind. The waves were not white capped or anything, but our kayaks felt very tippy and unstable. It felt like we could capsize at any time.

I had hugged the shore rowing out, and after trying for a more direct route back, I made toward shore again as the wind was a little less severe in the shallows.

It went all right, and we both stayed out of the water.

The whole adventure would have been perfect had I been able to get out of the kayak, but in my attempt, despite good advice, I toppled over and cut my knee badly.

But with some first aid, we managed, and lashed the kayaks back to the top of the car and returned home.

you can just see the blood on my right leg from my cut knee

GRATITUDE

On this day, like on many days in any year, I think about how grateful I am for the upbringing that you and Dad gave me, Mom.

Here's one of my best gratitude posts:

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #217 - Gratitude
I think today is a good day to reprint the following:

LAST WORD ON THE GRATITUDE THING: I got the idea for the gratitude prayer (meditation, list, incantation, catalogue, rumination, reflection, or whatever you want to call it) from a movie called The Secret. I am not quite promoting the movie as a "true" exposure of an actual science. In fact, many of the stories in the film are a bit fatuous. However, I like watching it. I showed it to a class (my second viewing) about a month ago, and the idea of the daily gratitude thing struck me. In the movie, one of the interviewees (I forget which one and it's not important) explained how he had a rock in his pocket. At night, he would set it on his dresser with the other contents of his pockets. The next morning, he would retrieve it and remember to list the things for which he was grateful as a daily routine, like a prayer. He had a visitor from South Africa and told the man about his rock and gratitude practice. The man called it a "gratitude rock." After returning to South Africa, he wrote his American friend and asked for some gratitude rocks to be sent to him because one of his children was very sick, and he did not have the money to seek medical care for the child. The interviewee balked at sending "gratitude rocks" because, after all, "they are just rocks," he said. But he found three nice rocks and sent them to his South African friend. Months later, the South African wrote back. The rocks worked! His son was healed and recovered. They paid for his medical treatment by selling a hundred gratitude rocks. People believed in the power of the gratitude rocks.

I found this story inspirational. I do not use a rock, but every day, I make my gratitude list. I send energy into the universe. I focus on the positive and try to limit or dismiss the negative.

I think it's working.

Thank you, Mom.



I no longer enjoy Independence Day, which is okay, because I never really enjoyed it anyway. It's nice to have an excuse not to work.

Springsteen's song "Independence Day" is not strictly a mirror of missing you on this day of your death, but there are remarkable connections.

"Independence Day" by Bruce Springsteen from The River

Recorded three years before you died, Mom:

INDEPENDENCE DAY 

Album version

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Well Papa go to bed now, it's getting late
Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now
I'll be leaving in the morning from St. Mary's Gate
We wouldn't change this thing even if we could somehow

'Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too
But they can't touch me now and you can't touch me now
They ain't gonna do to me what I watched them do to you

So say goodbye, it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day all down the line
Just say goodbye, it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day this time

Now I don't know what it always was with us
We chose the words and, yeah, we drew the lines
There was just no way this house could hold the two of us
I guess that we were just too much of the same kind

Well say goodbye, it's Independence Day
It's Independence Day, all boys must run away
So say goodbye, it's Independence Day
All men must make their way come Independence Day

[Sax solo]

Now the rooms are all empty down at Frankie's joint
And the highway she's deserted, clear down to Breaker's Point
There's a lot of people leaving town now, leaving their friends, their homes
At night they walk that dark and dusty highway all alone

Well Papa go to bed now, it's getting late
Nothing we can say can change anything now
Because there's just different people coming down here now and they see things in different ways
And soon everything we've known will just be swept away

So say goodbye, it's Independence Day
Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say
But won't you just say goodbye, it's Independence Day
I swear I never meant to take those things away

https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=independenceday

Info

INDEPENDENCE DAY is a song written by Bruce Springsteen and released on his 1980 album The River. The above lyrics are for Bruce Springsteen's album version of INDEPENDENCE DAY as released in 1980.

And, as usual, the annual recaps (here in a reprint): 

Mom - Mother's Day - 1976

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1176 (SoD #1596) - Marjorie Tower - RIP - 07-04-2015

Hi Mom, Living without you is getting easier with each year that passes. I never thought I would survive it. Does surviving losing you mean that I can survive anything? I hope so. I feel stronger and yet weaker at the same time. But though I am both stronger and weaker, I move on ahead into each new day. Those days come whether I want them to or not. Sometimes, I feel helplessly adrift in them, and at other times, I feel I am in control of those days, wrenching the life juices from their fabric and reveling in the gifts I have been given. And I have been given so many gifts. I feel lucky. I am blessed.

When I am not thinking of how much I miss you, I think about what your life might have been like if you had never gotten the meningitis or if we could have caught it earlier and stopped it before it stole your mobility, independence, and much of your freedom. Or what if it had happened to me instead? I wouldn't be here in the Portland-metro area; I wouldn't be married.

Mostly, I am unapologetic for my feelings or in still writing about grief and loss from time to time on this blog. People misunderstood how the blog was about life and not about death, how it was about living and not about grieving. There's just some grieving in the blog because there's some grieving in the life. People will still misunderstand. People will read the headline and nor the text. People will judge. But I am not writing for them. I am writing for me and to you, Mom.

I could have written about something else today, but I feel like that would be a betrayal not just of you and your memory but of myself. I cope with my writing. I practice good self-care with my writing. And somehow, I know you hear me, Mom. I still feel you with me, beside me, all around. I want to be worthy of your love and care, this life you gave me. I want to pay tribute to the living you in me, practicing the lessons you taught me in loving those in my life and showing them the white, pure light of the love that made you who you are and me who I am.

I am doing all right.

To close, I want to include a few more pictures and links to the last three posts on July 4th. There wasn't one that first year, 2015, as I started this blog series two days later, July 6th.

SIDENOTE: I am amazed that I have written 1176 in this series and nearly 1600 overall, when added to my 365 T-shirts posts, I have nearly 2000 blog posts on the Internet, which feels like good work for the last six years give or take.

At the end of that first year, 2016, I rode the Kal Haven Trail with Sue Creager, stopping along the way at the time of your death.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2016/07/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-363.html

Mother's Day 1994

In 2017, I didn't do much of anything. I just made a post explaining my emotional and mental state as of the two year anniversary of your death.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2017/07/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-728-two.html

Coldwater Lake Hike 1807.04

In 2018, I had moved to Woodland, WA, and I hiked Coldwater Lake as pictured in part above. Being in nature was even better than my first time, the bike ride, in 2016.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2018/07/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-1094-three.html

This year, no nature.

I went to see a showing of the new Ari Aster film Midsommar and had Vietnamese food. I walked the dogs, watched the neighborhood fireworks, and tried to keep the dogs calm. It was still a good day.

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- Days ago = 1461 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1907.04 - 10:10
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It's been FIVE YEARS.



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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you soon, Mom.

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- Days ago = 1828 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2007.04 - 10:10

NEW (written 1708.27 and 1907.04) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. Dropped "Talk to you tomorrow, Mom" in the sign off on 1907.04. Should have done it sooner as this feature is no longer daily.