making lemonade...

My birthday is coming up soon and I miss Mom. And things are happening around me that just make me sad and blue. I was slashed into by someone I care about... I feel like I have to protect myself from now on. I can't spend part of my morning crying in my office ever again.

I read a fellow blogger's truth grenades tonight (thanks Jen) and these words felt like she had been in my head (or at the very least my heart):

"I don’t hold grudges. I forgive and forget. But if you hurt me bad enough, you'll never get a piece of me back. I save that piece for myself."

I've decided to take some of the pain and turn it into something positive. A walk down memory lane... I posted this account almost exactly 2 years ago on the old blog, the one that belongs in my past... I was reminded of it in a very painful way this morning. I guess some people lose touch and sometimes the old short-hand one has with a friend gets lost because we take it for granted and stop working on the friendship. Or because maybe it wasn't what I thought it was.


So here goes:

This weekend I took my father (who gets motion sickness when someone rocks in a rocking chair in the same room as he is – yes, it’s THAT bad) to see Mom at the hospital. Got him in the car, and drove the approximately 30 minutes it takes to drive into the city and navigate the side streets of downtown Montreal. He didn’t complain - and usually he uses the ‘passenger side invisible break’ at least 3 times in a drive of that length.
Once we got to the hospital he walked what seemed like 100 feet to get in the building (the door which leads to an elevator just a mere 10 feet from where we parked the car is closed on Sundays... of course!) Okay, so it wasn’t 100 feet, but it sure felt like was, Dad walks slowly, he’s 86… remember watching George Burns walk in the final years?

Once in the building I sat him in a wheelchair (why didn’t I think of it before the long walk… sheesh!) and took him to the ER (yes… she’s still in the ER as they don’t have a single free bed in the Oncology ward or the free world for that matter!) to see Mom.

What came next was, well, it was magic.

My mother knew that my father was coming and had asked my aunt (her sister who had come in from out of town to visit) to brush her hair. The most wonderful smile came over her when she saw Dad. In her eyes, I saw a young girl, giddy from her first crush.



I pushed the wheelchair up to the bed and stood back as my mother took my father’s hands in hers - as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my father is legally blind – he can no longer see the details of a person’s face, much less if her hair is properly coiffed. But my mother’s face is etched in his heart.
She brought her head close to his and they kissed, and I watched them with some guilt. I felt like I was intruding in the most intimate of moments, as they talked to each other with their heads close, their foreheads touching. And I let them be alone together because I don’t know when or if my parents will see each other again in this lifetime.

‘In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.’
- Paul McCartney

In the meantime, I hugged my aunt, and told her I love her. I thought she was going to cry in my arms, but the women in my family have been through a great deal and we know, there is always someone who needs us and we draw strength from each other.
I know that as my aunt looked at my mother she was reminded of my grandmother’s cancer, the gauntness of her face, the frailness of her body. But my mother and her sisters are the strongest women I’ve ever met, and it’s a trait that I intend to carry on and so will my daughter. My aunt and I chatted about her husband, who has lost a leg to diabetes and is relying on her more and more, becoming less and less sure of himself… and about everyone else in the family who is going through a rough patch. And I know that when the end does come, I’ll be holding many of them together, as my mother did before me. I am not the eldest, as is my mother, but I have inherited her resolve and her role in the family.

I could see that although he was happier than... no... that’s not the word… serene, I think it describes it better.. more serene than he’d been in a long time, Dad was tired. So I told him we’d go home and he could have a nice cup of tea and rest. He kissed my mother, and told her he loves her with such tenderness that even a non-softie like me can’t help but be touched by it. She beamed, and I forgot, for a moment, that she was ill. My father was the best painkiller she could be given.
They had talked everyday since she was in the extended care facility and those little chats had made them feel closer, giving them strength. Much like chatting with my wonderful extended family that I love so much, my Soul Patrol brothers and sisters, has lifted me when I need support. But since she's been admitted to the hospital last Thursday, it was the first chance they had to speak.. to reconnect..

‘Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists.... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.'
– Goncourt

Seeing my parents together again gave me renewed faith and hope for the world…In that brief time… I saw Magic…

‘I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.’
- Shelby Eatenton Latcherie (Steel Magnolias)

When I read this again, I was reminded of just how lucky I am that my parents loved each other so much... and that they showed me that that kind of love does exist. Now I'm fortunate enough to have finally found the man who makes me feel like a giddy schoolgirl every time I see him and who's voice still gives me butterflies when I hear it over the phone.

To the person who hurt me, I hope your heart sings and that no sorrows darken your life. But since you don't believe in me and think I'm selfish and can't feel for someone else's pain... I'll be keeping my distance. I suspect this will cost me other relationships. And that pains me. But I have to respect myself enough to know my truths. If someone doesn't believe in me, I can't believe in them.

May your lives be blessed with love and compassion and true kinship with those around you.