My dad went back to work today, which is good for him. So I'm sitting in my family room while a gentle rain falls outside from a darkly clouded sky. The past few days have been kind of surreal. I have felt this overwhelming peacefulness (except for an awful crick in my neck). My dad and I have had some good times together; talking, making arrangements, watching movies, crying. But it doesn't always seem real that mom is gone, moreso that she's just at the nursing home, or just away for awhile, not that she's gone forever.
Then yesterday, I was putting some of my stuff away in my room and my bathroom and started clearing stuff out to make room for my stuff. As I'm sorting through old medicine bottles and jewelry boxes, I had all these questions, "Should we keep this? Is this sterling silver? Where's the jewelry cleaner to get this tarnish off? Do I just need to soak it or should I scrub it?" These are questions that my mom would know the answers to, and I can't ask her. So I lost it for a little while and told my dad and we lost it together. That made it more real.
The piano tuner came yesterday to tune our Baldwin baby grand--such a kick-ass piano. My mom had set up the appointment and the tuner was asking who played, more specifically if my mom played. "Well, she did," I said. "She died on Tuesday." Facts. I can state facts. And I am a person who loves intense experiences, who would forever swim in the depths of her emotions if she could. But today I am grateful that the human mind, body, and soul can state facts and do so without fully engaging the depths of human emotion. I can bear a lot, but even I am far too fragile to bear the fullness of the implications of these facts all the time.
"I'll be playing a lot while I'm here," I continued to tell the piano tuner. And I did this morning. I filled the quiet of my house with the sounds of a lament, just some simple chords without words to express a portion of the ache that threatens my heart. May that ache and that pain be consumed and expelled as something achingly beautiful.
2 comments:
Ann-
Yeah...real...surreal...somewhere in between. My heart is heavy for you as you wade through an ocean of facts and emotions mixed together.
Your spirit is bright even in this darkness. Continue one my friend one day at a time.
Dear Ann,
I've finally caught up on your blog. Your birthday card has been sitting on the counter since Monday or Tuesday; alas, it won't get to you on time. I regret our terrible correspondence and am grateful you surely understand. We've been thinking about you.
You write beautifully.
May God be giving you the treasures of darkness and riches stored in secret places. (Isa 45:3).
Kristin
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