I’m sorry for the delayed post. It’s been a morning of distractions which is not ideal for a distractible person, such as myself. I’ve shared the following excerpt on the blog before, a poem most often attributed to Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, but it is too poignant not to share again. I first read it when a friend sent it to me in a sympathy card after the loss of my beloved grandmother. I usually send it on in almost every sympathy card that I ever send because it has always brought me such comfort. Our son’s girlfriend just lost her beloved grandmother and so once again, I texted her this passage today:
“I am standing upon that foreshore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says “There! She’s gone!” “Gone where?” “Gone from my sight, that’s all.” She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says “There! She’s gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout “Here she comes!” And that is dying.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
Happy Friday!!! Happy Holiday Weekend!! I love Fridays. Friday is my favorite day of the week. Fridays are for my favorites on the blog and today’s favorite is one of my absolute favorite rabbit holes that I followed down this week. (The internet was definitely created by and for, really insatiably curious, distractible people such as myself) So this week on social media, I saw the hilarious post above, of quite the unusual obituary. It made me giggle. I like original, unusual people who can make fun of themselves, and who can laugh in the face of death (and who are animal lovers).
Of course, I wanted to see if this was a real obituary (and so did many others, it seems). It is a real obituary. Holly McCray Blair was a real person. She is still getting all sorts of messages posted on her memorial wall, to this day, 4 years after her death, by people who didn’t even personally know her, because her obituary has gone viral on social media. Interestingly, a lot of people wrote “GNU Holly Blair” on the page. Hmmmm. What does GNU stand for? Is it relating to the animal? Is it an acronym? “Good night, Universe” “Good kNowing U” Those were my guesses and they were wrong. My rabbit hole continued on to this carrot of information:
“Sir Terry Pratchett, an English author and humorist, invented in his Discworld comic fantasy book series (a fictional computer code):
G: send the message on
N: do not log the message
U: turn the message around at the end of the line and send it back again
so that the book character’s son’s name John Dearheart is memorialized forever as long as the “clacks towers” (a telegraphic device) is still in use. Chapter 4 prologue of Going Postal (a book in the series) says:
“A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.”
Terry Pratchett (the guy who Holly Blair wanted to drink beer with, after she died) died, himself, in 2015.
What better way to remember the beloved inventor of this fictional system, then, than “GNU Terry Pratchett”?”
(the above information about Terry Pratchett was taken mostly verbatim from a Reddit article)
Do you have anyone who needs to be GNU-ed? Speak their names this weekend. Keep them alive.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
2841. Is there anything you are really stingy with?
I just took the dogs out and the little blue heron was sitting out there waiting for us. He comes to our backyard often, picking various perches to look for food. The little blue heron is never excited to see the dogs. He stubbornly holds his position until the last minute that one of them almost reaches him, and then he flies off, loudly squawking his disapproval and disgust. I smile to myself every time I see him. My husband always says that the little blue heron is his dad paying us a visit.
My husband’s father passed away when my husband had just turned 30. We received one of those awful “middle of the night calls” (the kinds of sickening calls that you wish were only true in movies) with the news that my father-in-law had passed from a sudden heart attack. He was 59.
My father-in-law was a complicated man. My husband had a complicated relationship with him. But my husband was his only son of five children, and I never doubted my father-in-law’s love and pride for his son. When my husband was earning his MBA from a prestigious, challenging university during night school, while supporting our family of me and our two young sons with his day job, my father-in-law sent a regular stream of handwritten letters and newspaper clippings, as a form of pride and cheerleading and support.
My husband and our two middle sons took off from work/school today, to go fishing together. I just waved them off, feeling their excitement and anticipation reverberating in my own heart. My husband often fished with his own father when he was a boy. Maybe when the little blue heron flew off just now, he was heading out to sea. Maybe the little blue heron has “a boy with his own boys” to look after today. Perhaps they need the little blue heron’s pride and cheerleading and support.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
I’m going to a Celebration of Life on Friday, celebrating the life of the mother of a good friend of my daughter. My daughter’s friend and his sister played on the high school tennis team together, and he and my daughter have always traveled in the same social circles since high school and beyond. My heart is bleeding for this family.
I did not know this woman very well. We only saw each other at tennis matches, but she was always kind and easy to talk to, and she clearly enjoyed watching her children play tennis. She was one of “us” – moms doing our best to support our children in their activities and interests. Her life clearly centered around her family.
At Christmastime, my daughter told us that this family was so excited that this mom was going to make it to Christmas. She had incurable cancer and by all accounts, it was a miracle that she was going to make it to the end of the year. Her family was thrilled to get to celebrate the holidays with her.
Frequently throughout this year, I would ask my daughter if she had any news on this woman’s health, and the report always seemed to be that she was holding steady. She made it to her daughter’s high school graduation, and then sadly, a few weeks ago, she started rapidly declining. This mom died a little more than a week ago.
It did not surprise me that this mom found the strength to hold on until her youngest child’s graduation from high school. It’s what all of us moms want at the very least, right? We want to make sure that we have successfully “launched” all of our children into being capable adults. We want to see it to the end. It’s our purpose. It’s our duty. It’s our innate instinct. It’s honestly primal. I remember feeling the biggest sense of relief, when our youngest child, our daughter turned 18, and then graduated from high school. Of course, I also felt so much pride and love and all of the mixed-bag feelings that come with big events like these in life, but the “relief” was personal. It wasn’t relief in the sense that I didn’t really have to actively parent on a daily basis any longer (although that is its own special kind of exhalation), but it was more a sense of relief that I had achieved my duties. I had honored my commitments. That me, my husband and the divine forces that be, had gotten a new generation of our family to the starting gate of adulthood. I had completed the mission. I had finished the race.
When I have talked to friends about death, no woman I know seems to fear death. We do fear the death of our children. We do fear missing out on all of the vicarious joys our children will experience in their own lifetimes. My heart aches that this dear woman doesn’t get to go to the victory parties of her children’s weddings, witnessing the births of her grandchildren, growing old with her husband. She got the shaft. Her life got cut short from getting to enjoy the more relaxing “golden” years. Her family misses her and they will miss her for the rest of their lives. That hurts. But she still shines. She found the vital, unearthly strength inside of herself (which I think all of us mothers have been shocked to discover inside of our own selves, from time to time), to hold on for the final lap. She saw her daughter to the finish line. Now, she can rest in peace.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
1535. How are you different from most people? (Let me the count the ways! wink wink)
“People may call what happens at midlife “a crisis”, but it’s not. It’s an unravelling- a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re “supposed” to live. The unravelling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.” – Brené Brown
I believe that I truly started “unravelling” when I turned 40 and the Great Recession started the ball rolling for me, in a big way. Unravelling can be painful, but it can also be so liberating. And it’s funny, we sometimes smugly think that we get to a point of being completely “unravelled”, but then we realize that we still get all tangled and tied up in knots, reminding us that we still have a long ways to go.
Our middle son is in medical school, and we were Facetiming with him last night. He is currently working and learning in the Crisis Trauma Unit in a major hospital in a major city in our country. He has seen and witnessed more in a few weeks than I hope to ever experience in my lifetime. (Those of you who are in the medical arts, thank you for heeding your calling. Thank you for putting your incredible talents towards the healing of others. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.) I asked our son last night if anything really unnerved him the most about his experience. Was there anything that really gave him pause, more than anything else that he had experienced? He told me that it was surreal to see a patient die who had been all “done up” for the day. Their makeup was in place, and their nails were freshly done. It struck him deeply that they had no idea that this would be their last day alive on Earth.
Maybe we are all just balls of yarn, unravelling. We will unravel until we come to the end of our own line of string. Our string gets intertwined and tangled up with others, throughout the days of our own unravelling, making patterns and connections, and then sometimes it rolls on, in a line, all by itself. We have no idea when or where our own ball of string ends, so we may as well enjoy our own unravelling. We may as well get all made up, get a manicure, and roll on with our days with purpose and curiosity and gusto, until one day, much to our own surprise, we reach the end of our string. We are completely unravelled. We are no longer twisted in knots. Our own unique line has been added to the blanket of Life. And we are free.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
2319. Do you prefer vertical or horizontal stripes?
I’m sorry to be delayed with today’s post. I’m grappling with a pinched-nerve in my neck which is like having the worst toothache that I ever had, in my neck and in my shoulder. I am sorry for those of you who deal with daily pain for years on end. Pain is so miserable and distracting and annoying.
The above video is part of the best scene from Babylon, a movie which we watched last night. Babylon is about the change from silent films to “talkies”, and it takes place in 1920s/30s Hollywood. The movie is not for the faint of heart. It shows the debauchery and the underbelly of early Hollywood like you would never expect. The film is long (3 hours), but I found it be interesting and entertaining and thought provoking.
The scene above is a monologue from Jean Smart, who plays a notorious gossip columnist who has just written an unflattering feature about Jack Conrad (played by Brad Pitt), a washed up, silent films era star. In the scene, Jean Smart’s character is telling Jack that while he is no longer “spotlight” material, the beautiful thing is that he will live on, indefinitely, in the films that he starred in, for generations to come. At the end of the scene, where Jean Smart’s character tells Jack that his time is up in Hollywood, and there is nothing that he did to create this fact, and there is nothing that he can do about it now, we see Jack Conrad leave the room, disquieted but grateful that the gossip columnist gently but firmly told him the truth. “Thank you for that,” he says, almost under his breath.
I appreciated this scene so much because it so clearly depicts when any of us hear “a truth” that we deeply know, but we have not yet let this truth surface to our consciousness. We don’t want this truth to be the truth, but yet when we finally face the truth, we are also grateful and relieved to no longer have to pretend anymore, that it is anything other that what it is. It is what it is, is the ultimate truth about anything when we finally face it head on. And the truth can be so painful, and yet so liberating all at the same time.
This scene in Babylon is the ultimate scene of letting go of ego, and of realizing that the idea of life is bigger than any individual life in it, even the lives that are lived out in the spotlight. Life has gone on longer than any of us can fathom, and it will continue to go on, long after each of us departs. Towards the end of the scene Elinor St. John (played by Jean Smart) says this:
” . . . It’s the idea that sticks. There will be a hundred more Jack Conrads, a hundred more me’s, a hundred more conversations like this one, until God knows when. Because it’s bigger than you.”
Elinor does leave Jack with a hopeful thought about people seeing his movies long after he is dead, and in that regard, his memory lives on. On a broader scope, that’s how anyone of us continues to live on after our deaths, for generations and generations in families, and in close groups of friends, and even in societies. Our stories become lores and legends. Our mannerisms become traits in family genes. Our habits and rituals become customs and traditions. Our creations and treasures become heirlooms and antiques and springboards for more creation. The ideas of any essence is what sticks. “That which is bigger than us”, never ends. We are each just small waves of an endless/timeless ocean, and this truth is both frightening and liberating in equal measure. It is what it is.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
We have had a fair amount of death and dying and serious illnesses in our extended family in the last year or so. There is nothing that makes you reflect on your own life and how you live it, like someone else’s death. Yesterday, I wrote about going through my old daily journals from this past decade. I also went through my prayer box. (When I tell you that I love to write, I’m not lying. I am always looking for excuses to write more stuff down.) Yesterday, I opened up all of the little papers in my prayer box, and I can honestly tell you that already 90 percent of my prayers in my prayer box have been answered, and these answered desires exist in my life today. (Time for me to get crackin’ on some more desires, wishes and prayers.) Gratitude is living the life that you prayed for, and being in awe of the miraculous process of how it all comes into being. Gratitude is taking the pause to say thanks and to feel that thankfulness from your deepest depths.
Another thing that I have been deeply pondering lately is the worth of my time. Recently I got back in touch with a good friend from my past, whom I have always felt an instant kinship to, any time that we meet. The last time that we reconnected with each other was in this past December and I hadn’t seen nor spoken to her in over ten years before then, and yet it was like I had just seen her yesterday. Don’t you just love relationships like these? We both raised our kids in the old-fashioned traditional way, where our husbands were the main breadwinners and we were the family managers, mostly staying at home, with just odd part-time jobs here or there. (She has three kids. I have four.) Earlier this week, I texted her to see if we could connect today on a call, and I asked if she would be available around 11 a.m. She wryly replied that she would pencil me in. I got a kick out of her reaction. (We’ve always laughed together a lot.) Still, it made me realize how much more protective of my own time I’ve become, especially lately as my kids have grown, and they have left the nest.
My morning process of reading and writing and meditating and being alone with my thoughts is extremely valuable to me. I don’t get paid to do it, but it is my vocation. It feels like it is a big part of my purpose in life, and it is a deeply meaningful part of my everyday life. How my morning goes, often has a lot to do with how the rest of my day goes afterwards. So honestly, unless it is urgent or dire, I don’t allow anything to creep into my mornings. I do my best to not have any morning appointments with anybody. I treat MY TIME every bit as importantly as if I were a CEO with a tight schedule. Why should someone’s time only be considered important and uninterruptible if they are getting paid to do whatever fits into that time slot? I am the CEO of my own life, after all.
For years in raising my family, everybody else’s schedule was the priority. If something needed to be dropped, it was usually some activity of mine. And that’s okay. I signed up for the job of family manager and I did what I needed to do to make things run smoothly and effectively, as well as I could. But my family is grown now, and I am prioritizing myself more. Interestingly, I’ve noticed surprised reactions from my friends and my family when I keep my boundaries around scheduling phone calls and visits. I believe that planning ahead for calls shows respect for my time, and also for theirs. Time is everyone’s greatest treasure. If anything death has shown me in this last year, is that our time on Earth is not replenishable. I value my time, and I value your time. Every minute that we give to actions, and to others, is a little chunk of treasure from our own unreplenishable treasure chests, filled with little chunks of our time to live. Shouldn’t we be clear and conscious of who and what we are giving our treasure to, every single day of our lives? When I volunteered for different things throughout the years, I noticed that people were thankful and respectful of my time that I was volunteering to give. I didn’t get paid for that time either, but people didn’t take that time of mine for granted. Maybe that is why so many of us get fulfillment from volunteering. There are little expectations and great appreciation when you are willing to give your time away to a cause.
If we look at every minute of our days as little chunks of gold from the one treasure chest that we get in this lifetime (and mysteriously, none of us know until the very end, how many of these little chunks are actually in our individual treasure chests of time), we get a whole lot more careful about where we give it away. Our time is more valuable than our money, than our possessions, than even our relationships, because without our time, we don’t exist. Spend your time consciously, wisely and gratefully. Treasure your time. It is your most valuable possession.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Friends, I don’t have it in me right now to do one of my traditionally frivolous Friday posts. I know that “the show must go on,” but I’m not a good faker. I never have been. We are on the brink of unexpectedly losing another extended family member and it’s a lot to bear right now.
The truth is, I love to play around with pretty things and fun products and to read excellent books and to get engaged in interesting movies, because I love life. Even in the tough times, I love the experience of being alive. I love the sensations of seeing beautiful things, hearing lovely music, smelling amazing scents, feeling all different sensations on my skin and tasting wonderful food. I make no apologies for being happy, and actively and fully loving my life and looking forward to each of my days and experiences. It’s what we’re supposed to do. I love Aliveness and it hurts to see people lose their gift of Aliveness, no matter what the state of their physical health. As we all know, it’s not really the things in life that matter. It’s the people whom we love, and the very act of being in love with life itself.
Today, this Friday, please do at least one of your favorite activities with at least one of your favorite people. Feel what it is like to be fully immersed in the feeling of love, and of joy and of awe, and of passion, for the experiences that you are having, living a life here on this overwhelmingly beautiful and abundant world. Have compassion. Be kind. Stay in the moment. Find serenity in your faith. Have the courage to feel your feelings fully. Make your own precious life your most absolute favorite possession, and decorate it and celebrate it and submerge yourself in it because one day, it will be gone. And all that matters in the end, is that you savored and favored your life when you had it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
We are currently going through an end-of-life situation with a relative and having to slog through the process of agonizing hopes and decisions. I don’t wish this predicament on anyone. It is one of those times in life when you realize that you really never knew what someone was going through, until you are going through it yourself.
I highly recommend watching these two short documentaries with loved ones. Although extremely emotional and difficult watches, they will really help with starting conversations about where everyone stands, on how they would like their end of life to look like. It’s important to know what your loved ones would really want for their own end of life passage into death.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“My son has started calling me “mom” instead of “momma” or “mommy” and no one has prepared me for how devastating this is.” – @kelly_le (Twitter)
I saw this quote the other day and I found it to be so relatable. It is one of those first steps of independence your children take to move away from you, and you know that it has to happen but it still hurts. It’s proof that you are doing your job right, but it definitely causes a mother’s heart to pang a little bit. I remember being well into my early adulthood and my father would still tell us to, “Go ask Mommy,” even though we hadn’t called her “Mommy” for many, many years.
And staying with my sappy, sentimental side (What can I say? It’s Mother’s Day weekend), I read this idea the other day, that honestly, I never had heard before. The thought is that people die twice in their lives. The first time is their bodily death, and the second time is when the person’s name is no longer spoken. I honestly that think this is a beautiful idea. My grandfather used to hold our hands and squeeze them and say “Onka Dunka”. He told us it meant, “I love you.” I squeezed my children’s hands and said “Onka Dunka” to them all of the time. I hope that they will pass the tradition on. It keeps my grandfather alive.
“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last timesomeone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.” – Ernest Hemingway
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
