What Week is It Now?

Truth is, I don't care a bit. 

The last two weeks we have been slowly feeling our way back into school. I decided to keep the kids on track with their math, science reading and history reading. We are continuing with our Wednesday co-op for my younger daughter and her friend. It's just the two of them so it's very low-key and a great thing for her to look forward to each week.

The things that require a whole lot of "Mom" we are putting on hold until I am able to juggle it all. Right now, I am truly appreciating the quiet and time alone or with my husband and kids.

The school work is getting done--no one feels under a tremendous amount of pressure and the kids seem to really be enjoying what they are learning. They are also enjoying my willingness to be with them, to really do things with them like watch a movie, lie and snuggle, sit and color for long stretches of time...I too am enjoying these things. They are soothing and healing.

For nearly two weeks after my mom's memorial service I found myself in a kind of fog or perhaps it was more like a bubble--as though the world was going on and I couldn't participate, but I could watch, and indeed there was part of me that really wanted to be around people and activity, but I didn't want to participate. Thankfully, for the most part, my close friends seemed to understand this.

C. S. Lewis described it like this in A Grief Observed:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. 

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I wan the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

Suddenly, it was as though someone turned off a faucet and the inexplicable weeping stopped and I began moving through the days, but still felt a bit numb. Then one day the kids were having their music lessons and I heard them. It's not that I couldn't before, but I really heard each song, each note, the voice of the teacher instructing them, and their voices and notes in response. It was like coming out of a long sleep or a strange illness...and I felt alive again. Since then every fall color pierces my heart, every song, my soul, small activities take on much greater meaning, and the mundane feels perfectly fine with me. It is all coming back to me...what it means to really be alive. To feel again without a constant haze of worry and sadness hanging over me. I didn't realize just how heavy it has been or for how long it has been part of me, but I'm guessing it started about 5 years ago when Mom really started to show signs of Alzheimer's.

I am continually receiving news that Mom's affairs are being settled, accounts being dissolved and final accountings being made. It all seems so final. So strange. That soon there will really be nothing left to show that this woman ever lived, only proving that all of life is truly just a breath.

Day by day we will live and love and carry on, hopefully with renewed purpose and intention, digging deep to plant seeds that grow fruit that will produce far beyond our own usefulness and well into the next generations...It's what she would have wanted...

Breaking the Silence

I have been in a writer's slump for quite a while, but it has been due to a much greater preoccupation with things that were more important than blog-keeping. It was this thing that sucked dry my well of thoughts and reasons to write. My mother was reaching the last stages of her battle with Alzheimer's and I had her on my mind. All the time. The way I felt about it all was to retreat into myself--I hated talking about the A-word, or the struggles my mom was having near the end. This was her dignity, and I felt deeply private about it all. I still do.

On Tuesday, October 7, my dear mom went home. My sister, brother and I were with her constantly for her last two days. My brother was with her when she took her last breath. 

The remainder of the week we made preparations for her memorial service and fielded all the phone calls. My husband mercifully took the week off to be with me. Friends blessed the kids with invitations to play, tended to my emotional needs and have taken time out of their schedules to cook, shop and or just be with me if I want.

It has not been quite two weeks since her death, but I still feel as though I am in a fog...a thick cloud bank that is exhausting to navigate. The kids need to get back to school work, but I could not feel less motivated. I suppose tomorrow we will attempt to return to some sense of routine. I will get back to writing sooner or later, I suppose. I find it more comforting at the moment to write on real paper with a real pen. The thoughts that are deepest and most private belong there. This is where I belong right now.

Week 4: My Favorite Season

The weather this week was a bit dreary--clouds and rain, drizzle and a not-cold-not-warm dampness that I don't love. On the back side of it however, we are seeing crisp, cool October weather and big, lovely blue skies that make October my favorite month of the year.

We decided to celebrate the arrival of fall with a field trip to the National Zoo. We had a lovely time, and both of the kiddos had a friend with whom to enjoy the day.

Wherever we went the animals were very active. We especially enjoyed seeing the Pandas in the indoor enclosure, as it was not crowded at all and we could have a really good look. We even saw the baby, but I  couldn't get a good picture because she was curled up in the corner on a ledge sleeping and we couldn't see her sweet wittle facie. We could only see a mound of black and white fur that kept shifting positions into a tighter little ball as she went about the serious business of napping. Mom on the other hand, ate bamboo, walked around, stood at the door and looked out the window "asking" to go out," pooed a giant-sized panda-poo, and did all the things you would expect from a panda. Another highlight was seeing the lions--6 cubs pouncing and tumbling, scratching on trees and being adorable. The Dad lion was just hanging out in his area, but all of a sudden he got up, stretched and then started roaring. It was very unnerving and resonated so deeply, I felt like it was in my belly. I won't deny that I considered the possibility of the poor guy having a hairball...

Here is a video of what we heard, though this is not the lion at our zoo.

Otherwise it was a pretty normal school week. Matt finished his first paper, and I was very pleased with the result. Molly continues to work steadily and build confidence in every subject. She is expressing interest in writing beyond Writing With Ease and learning how to write paragraphs. I will certainly oblige her!

This week we will take another field trip to a Kennedy Center show and the National Cathedral.

On, on! And let the October skies prevail over clouds and drizzle!