~ lunch, a veggie&cheese omelette with whole
wheat toast; plate from Jolly Old England ~

Annette noticed that I don't write here often, or much, these days. I've been thinking about that and can only figure out that I'm in one of those cyclical periods that come in a person's life, where they don't write much at all, period. I do make the odd attempt to keep some semblance of "flow" going, so I do pick up my paper journals once in a while and find it easy to knock off a few handwritten pages. Or I write into a computer journal that is private.

I could do the same here by just getting online and letting myself ramble. Something would always come of it. It's just a matter of deciding to make the effort.

A lot of my sensibility as I go through the days is only notable because it is plain and simple grief... a kind of deep-sighing resignation. Most of us have experienced similar states of being; I wouldn't be telling you anything new by regurgitating more. I don't want to come across as feeling sorry for myself or as someone who thinks they are the only person who has ever felt this sort of loss. Also, I don't want to blame my general lethargy on Mom's death; she'd be appalled.

Written on my birthday, Saturday:
I miss Mom today, more than I have in a while, or am thinking about her a lot, I don’t know how to articulate what I feel. I couldn’t get warm all morning and after getting dressed I laid on the bed with a green wool blanket (thanks for that too, Mom) thrown over me. It was when I pulled it over my head and everything turned black and warm that I thought “Hm, maybe it’s only natural that I’d long for Mom on the anniversary of my birth, which she and I shared so closely.”

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Then there is the time issue. I realize that we all get the same number of hours in a day, and I neither work full-time nor have small children to care for. But whenever I do write, it is taking time away from getting paying work done, or time away from cleaning the kitchen (which has to be done or I'm not happy, but takes one to two hours from a day), or time away from cooking and staying on top of food issues (eating well is important to me, but there goes another hour), or time away from doing yoga or going for a walk.

I cannot figure out why it is such a struggle to find time for all these most important things, including reading and writing, when I only work 20 hours a week. Am I perhaps slowing down that much? Or is there too much to fit into each day? Most likely it’s a bit of both.

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I have probably, now, at age 48, lived at least half of my life.

While laying down Sunday afternoon I thought about death, and about the process of dying, which scares me. I fear pain and helplessness, my body not working. I remind myself that I cannot avoid dying; everyone before me has died, no one has lived forever. Mom said it bluntly when she got her terminal cancer diagnosis and we spoke for the first time on the phone and she held herself calm and matter of fact: “It’s going to happen to you, too.”

We have to accept that this is the way her death is going to be, she said; we must accept it, not spend our time struggling against it in anguish. She wanted to make the best of the time she had left, to enjoy her family and friends as much as possible.

And that's what she did. She took it right on the chin. She didn't make a tragedy of it, and I don't want to either.

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Haven't been notified lately when I've written something new? Email me and I'll try again to get my notify list up and running properly. A lot of my addresses (your addresses) are on my old computer and I can't get at them since the monitor quit. Or if you haven't joined the official notify list, do so below; I'll get your address from there.