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Reading in Grief
V-Grrrl mentioned in her comment that when her parents died (within 6 weeks of each other! God, Dad, be careful!), she had to put all photos of them away, couldn’t drive past their house, couldn’t bear to be reminded. Not that doing these things helped her to forget, I don’t think anything could do that…but she was too raw to cope otherwise. Which made me think of the different ways that people grieve. My uncle made me a lovely collage of photos of my mom, and I find comfort in looking at it. None of the pictures are of her when she was sick, they’re all of her in her…
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For Want of a Nail
The race was lost…and with it, the latest attempt at the first Triple Crown victory since 1978 (not 1979, as ESPN claims…how pathetic is it when I know more about a sports statistic than ESPN?). Sorry, Big Brown. And, I must add that the trainer’s petulant bitching about how the loss was all the jockey’s fault rubbed me the wrong way from day 1. Asshat.
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Belong to Me
We think our parents are in charge, right? Like they know what they’re doing? But the truth is, they’re making it up as they go along, just like we are. Just like everyone. If we judge them by their worst mistakes, they’re all, like, gargantuan failures. Maybe you should try judging your mom by her intentions, by whether she, like, loves you and is doing her best. Such is the young teen wisdom of a minor character in Marisa de los Santos’ new book, Belong to Me. It is wisdom that spoke to me in my particular moment of grief, and made me think that perhaps my mother might want…
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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
It’s so smokey and hazy around here lately. We sleep with our windows open, and I fall asleep and awaken to the smell of smoke. There are hundreds of fires in Northern California right now,  and they’re contributing to making the air quality pretty darned bad. So folks with asthma and so on need to stay inside. Thankfully, the fog has come in and cooled things off a bit, because otherwise, we’d be in even deeper shit than we are right now.
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In the afterlife…
Do you think there’s food? I mean, with no body, no hunger, no need for nutrition, there wouldn’t be a need for food, right? And yet good food is such a wonderful part of life as we know it. Hmmm. I was thinking about my mom, and how much it sucked that she had lost her appetite and her enjoyment of food after her surgery, because one of the things she was so looking forward to in coming to California is the wonderful produce. And when I brought it to her, she ate a little bit, but she didn’t enjoy it like she used to. She even gave some of…
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Uh Oh…
I’m not sure what brought this on, but we’re all in trouble now. My brother has a blog.
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My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes
So, I’ve been talking about this book off and on since I first heard of it on NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. I had it in mind for awhile, and then decided to wait to read it until I was ready to take on the Non Fiction Five reading challenge. Since Non-Fiction and I don’t get along that well, I thought this would be a good one to keep until I was ready for it. My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes is a collection of essays by contemporary Iranian writers, discussing everything from feminism to photography, from film-making to reading Exodus. Collectively, these essays…
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Mom Weekend
(My uncle put this collage together for me, and one for my Grandma, and one for my brother.) Did you know that a week on vacation in Hawaii lasts about 15 minutes, while the week between the death of your mother, and her services, lasts about 15 years? That’s how last week felt, at least. Somewhat surreal. Lots of down time, but just overwhelmed by sadness. A good day, followed by a very bad day, followed by a good day. Just a hard week overall. I certainly wouldn’t say that I’m glad that Ted lost his job a few weeks ago, but it has been very helpful to have him…
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Mom’s obit
Joycelyn Ward April 23, 1942 – June 15, 2008 We mourn the loss of Lilith Joycelyn Ward. She leaves behind her daughter, Julie, her son, Richard, her brother, Forrest, her sister Lori, her mother, Virginia, her Aunt Florence, and her many nieces and nephews, and their children. And of course, she was Maya’s Granny. Joycelyn was born in Oakland, CA, and moved a great deal in her lifetime. She lived in California for much of her life, most recently in Sacramento and Citrus Heights, but also spent many years in Stockton and Berkeley. She lived in Juneau, Alaska from 1993 until February of this year. She devoted much of her…
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I had a dream
Art by my brother, Richard Ward. I had a dream the other night. We decided to take my mom off of all of her meds, not just her antidepressants, and she got out of bed and was walking, walking like I haven’t seen her walk in about 25 years. Fast and with a spring in her step. She looked much younger, too…perhaps about 40 years old. She had her hair in two long red braids, and was wearing a tie-dye dress and looked so happy. Carefree and healthy and in her prime. Then I woke up, and for the briefest second, I was truly happy for her. Then it hit…
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Happiness
Finding happiness in difficult times can be a challenge. I suspect that to be happy when the world is going to hell around you, you either have to be the type of person who is generally happy anyway, or insane. I hope I fall in the former category, and not the latter. Because yes, I am generally happy. Things are bad right now, with my mom not recovering as well as I wish she would, and all that that may imply; with Ted losing his job and the uncertainty of where that will leave us. With a winter and spring that pretty much kicked our asses. Despite it all, and…
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What Is Love?
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=v6nB71tqgB8[/youtube] Last night in yoga class, I was tied up in my own world and thoughts and pose, and then I looked over at Maya next to me, all twisty herself, and I thought, “child, no one will ever love you the way I do…”. And then, when my brain was supposed to be empty, or at least focusing on the pose, I drifted off into thinking about the different types of love. I mean, no one will ever love a child like their parents. No one. And perhaps mother’s love is different from a father’s love as well. And, no one will ever love a parent like their children. …
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Save the Trees!
Several years ago, a neighbor gave me a Christmas gift, which was a little glass vase, used to ‘force bulbs‘. It came with some rocks to hold the bulb, and a bulb for a pretty flower, whose name I know not. Anyway, I forced the bulb, enjoyed it, and put it in the ground after the flower had died off. But I still had the little vase and rocks. Perhaps a year after that, I was slicing an avocado for our salad, and it occurred to me that I could perhaps use the vase to grow a little avocado plant. So I popped it in there, added some water, and…
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Doublememe Palace*
Awhile ago, I signed up to be a ‘weekly geek‘, and take on the challenges put forth on Dewey’s blog. Alas, thus far I have sucked at it. I find that given a subject to write on, I kinda freeze and succumb to writer’s block, which is why I quit my brief stint at a mommy blog that I briefly contributed to quite awhile ago. Anyway, the prompt this week was pictures, and since it’s mostly book folks participating, it seemed like a good idea to post a picture of a book. However, I’ve already posted pictures of the books around here, twice actually. So I’ve been mulling it over.…
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Lonely Boy
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCOS2vOxuXE[/youtube] I was looking at Greeblemonkey’s blog the other day, and she had a song from her youth up there, which was about eleventy-billion (thanks Nance) times cooler than this song. But this is, indeed, a song from my youth. (Not teen youth, but kid youth, just to be clear.) A song that for some inexplicable reason is on my iPod, and any time I dare push shuffle while listening in the car, it comes on. I hate this song. Really. I mean, listen to the stupid lyrics…this kid’s life is ruined, and why? Because his parents had another child. That’s right, he lost his only child status, and became…