Random Thoughts

Objective? Who am I kidding. The problem of saying goodbye to someone you love is that a gaping hole is left where that one used to reside. Not just in your heart, but in every room in your house, in the car, in the back yard. I've heard that amputees can still feel their missing limb. It's been eight years since my mother passed away and there are still times I feel her presence every bit as real as if she were sitting on the stool across the room from me watching The Price is Right. Today there was no need to get up and open the back door. No need to mess with the dog food. No one standing at my feet hoping for a morsel of turkey as I clean the bones for soup. No collar rattling. No dog to trip over in the dark hallway. No poo on the rug. (Well, okay, this is probably not something I'm going to miss.) I don't know much about physics. Who am I kidding? I know nothing about physics. But isn't it some Newtonian law that a space will fill itself up - that a vacuum d...

"Grieving is a very necessary process." Andrew, Touched by an Angel I'm beginning to feel a bit like the Angel of Death. Not a dark and scary angel. More like Andrew from the TV show Touched by an Angel. You always knew someone was getting close to dying when Andrew appeared in the scene wearing his all white suit. Even though you knew the goodbye was going to happen and you'd probably need a couple of tissues, there was something comforting about watching Andrew lead the dying one across to the great unknown. At one point in my life, because I'd never experienced the actual death of a loved one - you know, actually seeing the lifeless body - I was really scared of being in the room when it happened. In the way (S)He does, God put me in the right place at the right time so that I'd have practice before I was called on to sit by my mother's death bed. Each and every time has been anything but scary. In the last few years I've also been present when som...

I really shouldn't be sitting here. Dad seems to be sleeping soundly so I should be doing stuff like laundry, putting away the good dishes and whatever else needs to be done. But I just don't feel like it. I'm feeling a little depressed. We're barely past a day which was set aside for giving thanks and counting our blessings and Christmas is still a month away (I know that 30 days will travel at the speed of light, but still it's not tomorrow) yet there seems to be a collective frenzy going on to get things to put under a fake tree that smells more like pine sol than fresh evergreen. I have to admit, the idea of getting up early and joining in the craziness appeals to me on a level I don't even understand. I don't get sleeping on the sidewalk for days just for a piece of electronic equipment. Yet every year, as we sit around the T-day dinner, feeling more stuffed than the bird that fed us, I kind of want to see what the madness is all about. As if I don...

"There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze." Etty Hillesum "The sky is falling!" cried Chicken Little. "The sky is falling!" Most every day the first email I read is from "gratefulness.org". The daily quotes are always uplifting and thought provoking. When I read the Hillesum quote above, my mind went to a woman Terri has blogged about who is struggling with her own personal darkness. Since Terri has had some experience with the aftermath of one extinquishing her own flame, not to mention her big ol' compassionate heart, I sent the quote on to her. My mind was on people I don't even know who are suffering in a place I've been. It didn't really occur to me to think about my father, until I came back to check on him. He's had a few pain-filled days. New pain medication seems to be zapping him of the little bit of str...

My Sweetie and I had an actual date tonight. We got dressed up, went to dinner, then went to the Symphony to hear Brahms' German Requiem. Good company. Good food. Good music. I must say it was all quite delightful. At one point in the concert, I quit trying to watch all the musicians and closed my eyes letting the music take hold of me. I could feel my body relax and my spirit soar. I can't wait to do it again. Wishing for you unexpected pleasures, Merry ME

Can anyone see the strings attaching me to the Divine Puppeteer? I kind of feel like I've being moved about by forces I don't usually notice. I don't go on Facebook much but I went there this morning after reading Terri's blog , Honor Yourself. Today is the anniversary of someone close to Terri taking her own life. Someone young, with a full life ahead of her, who didn't know how to hold on or who to turn to. In what had to be a moment of pure agony, she felt it was better to go out into the unknown than live in the pain she could no longer bear. Our mutual blog buddy, Pam, went on FB and declared this "YOU MATTER" Day in honor and remembrance of that girl who hadn't lived long enough to know that no matter what else happened, she mattered. I don't know what drove this girl, or so many of the other teens (no to exclude the adults) we are reading about in the news. Suicide, it seems, is becoming an epidemic. Ironically, in a world where there are so...

There are few things that can make the mother in me want to turn and run. For instance, I can, at the sound of a young child standing at the edge of my bed in the wee hours of the morning, crying, "my stomach hurts" go from sound sleep to full speed in a matter of seconds.I've learned "my stomach hurts" is usually followed by projectile vomiting. Or, though more gross than anything else, is the coughing, hacking sound, usually emanating from another room that you can't get to fast enough, of a cat hacking up everything it just munched from its food bowl. Cats seem to think this ball of bile-covered, unprocessed cat chow is like a gift from the Gods that should be left in the middle of a rug for all to see and admire. Then there are the sounds of a college student, full of excitement and wanting to share. Let me just say some things are better left alone. But up there at the top of the list is the sound from a child wearing Mickey Mouse ears, carrying a stuff...