Tag Archives: Family

MISSING YOU!


Today I am attending the funeral service of a friend, my baby sisters mother in law and my heart is hurting for my brother in law and his family, for their mother was a very special woman who believed that quote ‘everyone could be redeemed if loved enough.’ end quote.
Planning on attending has been difficult for I have  for two years now avoided all funerals, I can barely think of attending this one, it brings up so much emotion.
I have also been reading others posts, those that are chronically ill, caregivers for those in great pain and close to the end, mothers who have recently lost their child or children in the last few years , seems we are all suffering so much.

I have struggled to not be  morbid, dark , negative or dwell too much in my blogging as when I first lost my daughter I wrote of my feelings and so many gave negative remarks, they hurt at a time when I could take no more. I have since been blessed with a following on my blog of good caring supportive people yet fear of losing them has kept me from writing what my heart is feeling…until this moment when I sit here at four a.m. unable to sleep.

 

I have dreamed of my daughter Klysta lately,  just seeing her in my sleep, her walking with those long legs stretched out in such large steps, she was tall for a woman 5’10″ and thin. Beautiful black hair with streaks of gray . She would tell me she wanted to quit covering up the gray but wouldn’t until it looked like mine (I am nearly white-headed) and I would laugh knowing, hoping she would have many years to get there. What a slap in the face that she will never see her sons marry or be a grandmother, let alone go gray. She wanted more babies and when she couldn’t have more began to look forward to being a grandma and in the mean time doted on her nephews and others children.
I miss her so much, my heart screams out for her and I want to scream with the pain of missing her. Like being repeatedly being stabbed in the heart, losing my breath and feeling like I am drowning all at once.
The emptiness in my heart is so unbearable it causes my body to have pain in unimaginable ways.
I want to cry and I do,  it is at times like these when I can’t sleep that I do, if my hubs finds me crying he starts crying too thinking he has hurt me in someway (due to Alzheimer’s), or if I tell him I am thinking of Klysta he begins to cry  and that hurts me that he is hurting. Such a vicious cycle, I can not talk to my daughter DJ about her sister it upsets her so and AM has not been around since her sisters death. My sisters try to understand and be there for me but….
It doesn’t matter, nothing and I mean nothing takes the pain away, the yearning, the longing, the wishing life had been more fair to her and to me.
We didn’t always see eye to eye and we had our spats but I would give anything to have to pick up the phone and say I am sorry for something I said than to not be able to. I would give the rest of my days here on earth to have another week, day , year, moment to tell her how much I love her.
The hurt is so deep and when I try to explain to others how it feels or why I say or do what I do; and they don’t understand, that hurts too for then I feel negated, insignificant, like I shouldn’t have these feelings, but I do.  I can’t just turn off and on with my emotions I am human I am emotional and I am dictated to by those emotions. The pain, of physical, sexual, mental abuse and even abandonment by my parents, I have endured all this in my life and it has made me quite strong but nothing prepared me to be strong enough to lose my child and maintain a steady handle on reality anymore. I feel as if the last two years, one month and 21 days has tested my sanity level and I come up way short;  at this point I really don’t care I just want to wallow in my grief and pain and take care of it for me, instead of having to be so strong around others and for them. I really love my family but I wish some how they could all see how much I need them in my grieving process. I am tired of holding it in and going to this service today is going to be super hard, I can only pray God will give me the strength to get through it without making a fool of myself.
I am so afraid, so hurt still and I know I will never get over it …I wish I didn’t have to go but I owe it to my family to be there for them.

DADDY’S CROSS


http://kellieelmore.com

The call came early in the morning, Dad had fallen and had a heart attack, and he had been left alone in the restroom for nearly an hour and a half. He tried to get back to his wheelchair by himself and knowing the stubbornness and quick level of frustration he could exhibit, I am sure he was really stressed and probably in his mind cursing the person that left him there, the consequences of the incompetence of the person that was to help him and that stress caused him to die on that bathroom floor. They said the EMT’s revived him there and again in the ambulance, but just before arriving at the hospital he was gone again.

The call was unexpected, he had been doing well I was told in my weekly call just a few days before to the facility. I called at the least once a week, but when really missing my Dad I would call more often. It hurt me that I could not be there with him but living over six hundred miles away and just having had heart surgery I could not yet travel. I know that he probably wondered why I wasn’t visiting twice a month as I had been, I wrote letters and sent cards, clothing and just that month for his birthday had sent him a transistor radio so he could listen to his ball games (do you know how hard it was to find a transistor radio in this day and age of technology?), and a new set of magnetic alphabet and numbers for his cookie sheet. Dad had his Larynx removed several years before due to cancer and could no longer speak and refused adamantly I might add to use the device given to him to help him speak, he could be

so darn stubborn, so he used the device I improvised for him to communicate. He once requested a ‘m.f.’ from the CAN and she thought he was calling her a name when what he wanted was another muffin served at breakfast.

After giving permission for the hospital staff to take him off life support and making arrangements with the funeral home that day, I collapsed and went into a depression even more so than before; remember I had faced my own mortality with my own heart condition. I never even thought about my father’s belongings at the facility I could not care less about them I was grieving the first man to ever love me, my Daddy.

It wasn’t but a few days later I received a package in the mail, it was my father’s ashes, death certificate and what he had with him at the time of cremation. Inside the envelope with all the legal paperwork was a much smaller envelope, sealed, when I opened it my heart leapt to my throat and I then began to sob uncontrollably for there was the 14 kt gold cross with the emerald (our birthstone) in the center that I had given him for his 60th birthday, he was 72 when he passed. I had not seen him wearing it and had actually figured he pawned it or was stolen from him when he was out drinking. To think that he still had it and was wearing it meant so much to me, I have it put away to give my grandson Eric someday, he never knew his great grandpa but I wish to tell him about the man that loved me unconditionally and taught me to swing a hammer, tell a 2×4 from a 2×6, although he could not teach me how to read a tape measure LOL.

 

I HAVE LIVED


I have spoken many words

Words that cut as sharpened swords
some soft as whisper- words of love.
I have traveled many miles
Worn holes in leather cowboy boots
Walked along those miles with many smiles

I have cried many salty tears
Heartbroken and grief stricken
Over death of loved ones
Of an animal or someone’s child

Over my many, many years
I have laughed in utter joy
Feeling the warmth of a child’s hand
Handing me a favorite play toy
Or a joke at my expense again

I have watched a mountain avalanche
Snow falling in rushes as the waterfalls
Of majestic cliffs and islands glistening

I have laughed at the oceans tide
Chase waves onto burning sand
Crabs and Seals scurrying to the side

Fished in a favorite hole on a farm
From a piece of driftwood I sat
Poison Ivy clinging to me giving harm

Felt the warmth in rays of the sun
Slept in a meadows sweet grass
Watching rabbits and mice run
Through my looking glass

Laid in the bed of a pick- up truck
Wrapped in grams quilt of old
Protecting me from the frosts cold

Been warmed by a bonfire of gathered wood
Drinking a cold one from a cooler
Danced in the rivers dirt made bank
In the smokey black night dark and dank

I have sang at concerts -me so off key
Yet others stood right beside me
Singing and dancing in glee
I have been blessed by many loves
Man and child , greatest of these
My beautiful daughters all three
Grandsons are  too my legacy

Now in these winter years of my life
I can say without troubling strife
I have lived a wonderful life
I have lived , I have lived!

Now in these winter years of my life
I can say without troubling strife
I have lived a wonderful life

I SET YOU


I set you down on earth
With all its love and sorrow
Just remember you are on borrow
Your life journey is your destiny
Set forth by none other but Me
Now take flight on your gossamer wings
And if you sorrow I will be there right by your side
Welcoming you with open arms very wide
Years ago I sang you a lullaby

Beautiful baby girl of mine

Placing you in arms divine
Call her mother, mommy, momma
She will protect and love you
While on your journey
Teaching you along the way
Until you return to Me someday.

 

ENABLER


Misery loves company they say, whoever in the world  ”they” are.

well I have enough misery for many a lifetime in this one she thought,

ungrateful kids always with the hand out then you don’t see or hear

till the next payday from them.

Serve them right if I just packed up that old Chevy and went down the road with no forwarding

address.  Ahhh but the grandbabies leaving them would tear her heart out so she just

keeps on doing what she can and doing without for herself.  She can’t explain to anyone that

asks why she does it, they call her an  ’enabler’ ok I will grant that she says to herself.

Once upon a time she had it all, a good man, career, friends, big showplace home then she became ill and when her

children should have looked out for her they got tied up in their own lives and forgot about her.

Her hubby took care for as long as he could but taking care of her ended his life early. ..worked him to death,  she did.

So now alone, sick and lonely having to beg for a little help around the old place or pay out of her meager

monthly check, not enough to live on, too much for welfare, not that her pride would let her, starve first she would.

Didn’t trust church people so no help there. Hypocrites all, oh sweet to your face when your in church but talk about you

behind your back and those damn preachers , their hands are out more often than all of her kids combined. Phtt! Three hundred

dollar suits for him and his wife and she going to beauty parlor every week for that fake blond rinse just to look vain up on the pulpit with the preacher.

While how many in their congregation gave their last dollars and eating potaoes all week with little else.

No wonder people steal from one another, can’t survive any other way now a days.

She moved out on the porch to rock for a bit and grumble on and on about her miserable life, she sat there a long time

then got up went inside, peeled a potato and ate it raw …no reason to waste gas trying to cook it she would tell you; but truth

she hadn’t had the gas on for over a year. No heat no hot water but she is doing ok if she can just keep electric for lights

if not well she had some old kerosene lamps she had picked up at  an auction many years ago, back in the day when she could afford to  buy

that way.

Time for bed she crossed the hall hearing the old wood floors screech like an owl catching a mouse. She had made her bed in the old recliner belonging to her late husband, it was comfortable and smelled like him the arms were bare down to the backing of the faux leather that he always believed real. It was ok if he thought he had a true ‘leather’ recliner. It was broken down now but she couldn’t give up sleeping there, it was the most restful two hours she spent in slumber.

They found her looking peacefully asleep two days later, when she  hadn’t answered her phone or the door when her son came for the first of the month  check knowing she would give him what he needed . Now the old woman up and died on him guess he better start looking for something to do for money. “Son,” asked the EMT“ would you like for us to call other family for you?” ” Naw, he responded ” let them find out from the paper ” as he walked off down the street with the EMT standing there agape.

Sad ending but so true in many households.

I’VE LEARNED TO LIVE…


I’ve learned I am stronger than I ever imagined I could be
I’ve learned I am weaker than I ever imagined I could be
I’ve learned to live each day since the loss of you

I’ve learned that when my world is spinning out of control
To lean into the curves so as not to fall to the ground
I’ve learned to live each day since the loss of you

 

I’ve learned that even when there is so much pain
I have to hold it all together I cannot go insane
I’ve learned to live each day since the loss of you

I’ve learned through all the tears I have cried
That crying does not ease the pain tho I have tried
I’ve learned to live each day since the loss of you

I’ve learned that framed pictures are not the same
Memories are allright, rather hear you call my name
I’ve learned to live each day since the loss of you

I’ve learned that no one understands my grief
Except another mother with a cemetery wreath
I’ve learned to live each day since the loss of you

I’ve learned a life can be taken with the blink of an eye
And only God knows the when, where and why
We didn’t get to say I love you and good-bye

I’ve learned to live each day since the loss of you

Dedicated to Shirley Sanservino and Brenda Lewis

 

MY PURPOSE IN LIFE AND YOURS?


To cherish our family and friends
is our purpose in life.
To live on this earth in peace, harmony
 and love.
To protect and provide for one another

To never allow hurt or inflict hurt
on another, never to stand by watching another
Human being suffer for any reason.

To never harm a child or an animal
to understand that to do so, makes
us less than human.
We must realize that actions and words hurt
forever, more than a slap or kick, therefore
we do not/should not.

To love and care for our fellow
citizens of earthis a divine purpose
with the knowledge that our reward
Is in the good we do, not monetary.

We are to open our hearth and home
To less fortunate family and friend
Asking only for respect in return and
In kind should we ever need
In this our purpose of life
We gain favor with our Lord
and Savior. Our true reward will
come when we meet Him face to face
we need not look for any other reward
His is sufficient.

 http://patcegan.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/barn-raisings-and-leaky-faucets

LIKE DANDELION DUST


Dandelion

Dandelion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

A  movie I actually sat down to watch tonight, it was a ‘viewers choice monday movie’ read the guide for Lifetime Movie Network. I didn’t care I just needed oblivion for a while, the hubs is angry today he was reminded that he forgets things which nearly brought blows from him towards our 21-year-old grandson this morning, and it has been hell all day.The alzheimers is getting worse and he is in such denial and my big huggy bear has turned into a grizzly more and more lately. I’m sorry I was going to tell you of this movie titled “Like Dandelion Dust” I don’t know any of the players as I don’t keep up on things like that, anyway it is about a young couple trying to reverse  adoption of their child, a boy, and all that entails, father in prison signature forged .The adoptive parents are very well to do upper elite’ and they are devastated of course. It all comes out in the end  with the child staying with adoptives. A scene in the movie though started me  to thinking, the birth mother has picked a dandelion and told the little boy about the wishes to be made and to blow, of course he wishes to be with the only parents he’s ever known, not his birth parents.  It made me think our lives are like dandelion dust we sprout up quickly with no full head then suddenly we have a beautiful head of yellow shining like the sun and as we sway in the grasses on our stem we get trampled, sprayed with many things, we are plucked, dug out and sometimes burnt. Yet we continue as long as there is a bit of root to sprout again and again until we dry of age and we become gray-headed and now we know we can make it.We learn we are strong and can survive, then as happens in life, someone comes along with a lawnmower and mows us down, then sprays weed killer so that our roots are no more .  Is this not like our cycle of life?

 

MOTHERS WISH


I can’t help but wish you were little again

I’ve watched as you faced turmoil and strain

You could have buckled under the pain

Yet it only helped you to grow stronger.

 

I remember the joy and laughter

Memories filled with pride over the years

As you grew from toddler to teen

I remember my emotional tears

I thought it would take much longer.

 

Now you are no longer a child,

A woman, with your own style

Beautiful demeanor, smiles to beguile

A friend to many, always a smile

 

Proud as I am I can see

As you have grown you

No longer need me

 

With a child of your own

To love and nurture

My advice I will give

Cherish each moment~~live

For to fleeting your child will be gone

Taking the heart you thought you had won.

 

TRANSISTION


Image

The hospital bed was so uncomfortable now
It had been her twenty-four hour spot
For too long now, it was uncomfortable and hot
Sheets wrinkled, pillow flat, blankets in a bunch
Not strong enough to turn, or give pillow a punch
Family left her here getting on with life of their own
A mother, wife, grandmother, sister, aunt but alone
Love professed over and over through the years
Now lying here with an aching heart and tears
A good heart , a good woman, yet alone now
Meeting her savior today, alone how will they feel, how?
A circle of life complete with faith love and peace
A smile upon the wrinkled leathered face
Transistion so near no regret no fear
As a silent crystal bead rolls down her cheek
The diamond tear.