Holding while letting go.

I'm struggling with how to word it all and how to feel it all and still yet continue on with living life as we now know it. Preparing for life as we see it's going to be, without foresight, because, well, I'm not the omniscient narrator. I'm just someone's daughter and someone's sister, someone's wife, and someone's mother, and this is the how it goes.

I'm not special. Many many have been before me on this journey, my own parents included.

The plain truth: we are losing Mother. Piece by piece, bit by bit.

There is nothing more that needs to be said. She knows how much we love and respect her. We know she would do and has done anything for us.  No one really wants to talk about it. And yet, we have to sometimes. The days are long, the years are short. In child-rearing, and in watching a parent decline, hoping like Hell you're doing enough to offer comfort, keep regret at bay, be part of the team.

No one wants to feel left out. No one wants to have another pull her burden, or lift her share. We lean into now, while simultaneously preparing for a future we didn't ask for but is coming all the same, in a faster fade than we'd like.


As I said, there is nothing (or almost nothing?) that is left unsaid. We're all sad. We've all been angry. She's tired of fighting, and shakes because, as she told me today, "It's all so stressful."

It seems cruel that one good woman should be made to endure so much. So much pain, so much loss of independence, so much indignity, such need for help to do pretty much anything. For my independent, intelligent and highly spiritual mother, this last leg has been a mean moan, a long quiet mean moan echoing into a vast unknowing.


My sister told me to come. I changed my plans, on the fly I drove here. To Mother and Daddy's. Even now, in the midst of my own grief, I am thinking of my best friends, and how lung cancer has one father in its grip, a brother has pancreatic cancer holding strong, a mother beat breast cancer but lost her husband to the effects of a long decline into physical weakness and dementia. I am not alone. I think of my dearest and oldest friend boarding a plane going to tell her brother goodbye.



It sucks. Inelegant to say, raw and primal to live.



And we're the lucky ones. We have had Mother for so many years -- had her in high quality sparkling wonderfulness as the woman who adored our every word and song, but told us we'd have to work for things. Told us that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, even when we (I) didn't want to hear it.

I'm glad she knows I finally learned some of the bird in the hand wisdom. That I ended and healed from a broken marriage. Made a new life with a partner I'll love beyond the grave ("Not everyone has a tall handsome husband, Daughter," she tells me -- she is right. But I do, as does she.) I am glad she's seen all her children become parents, finish some things we started (me, especially, since frankly, I worried her perhaps longest.)


Here, I bag up things for Goodwill and the Ecumenical Storehouse. Clean out drawers, make plans to tackle closets. I cook, because that is what I do.

I listen to my father. I watch him, as he gently scratches under her chin with his hand at the breakfast table and I know how her vacant face lights up to him alone, her husband of nearly fifty years. She bestows upon him a smile and says, "Me and you."  He repeats it. I listen as he tells my brother of this moment. We get choked up a lot around here.


And in the inbetween times, we all go on about the business at hand. Raising our children, teaching our students, preparing and eating meals. Putting gasoline in our cars, walking by the river and reading books, driving between here and there. Paying bills, fitfully sleeping, generating more questions than answers.


She tells us she wants to go home. That it's all too stressful. She says thank you and that she's sorry (the thing that tears at my heart the most.) That she wants to get in a car, go far. Get on a plane. She asks if we have made the travel arrangements, and when we will leave.



We know what is coming, though we can not forsee its impact, the loss of her colorful self in the world as we know it. But I think I can say that each of us is willing to give up the reds and violets for the pink sky at twilight, and her peace, whenever that time might come.


We are both holding her close, and letting go, as she did with each of us.

Winter at Home: Signs of Life.

That kind of love.

I'm home sick this week. First with my boy, who had inflamed lungs and a stellar case of thick snot. And now I've got the parainfluenza. Cruelly, it mocks the flu, but isn't the real deal. Hardly seems a difference.

And so I'm home with my hair in a bad ponytail, wearing a Y tee shirt and a cardigan with yoga pants, drinking mug after mug of hot tea, emptying box after box of Kleenex tissue.

I've watched episode upon episode of The United States of Tara, streaming onto our new Christmas family present television through the new Christmas family present Wii on Netflix.

My boy is back at school in his standard school attire uniform, missing both top front teeth and looking more adorable than I can stand and I have the nicest damned husband in the world who brought me a steaming container of Tom Yum Goong last night.

And today, I'm crying trying to remember the last "normal" pre dementia conversation I had with my mother and there's so much of life, THIS Life, this sweet messy little one, that is good and right and I'm grateful. And yet, I miss my mother. Terribly. It's not fair.

I may be forty-five years old and a mother and a wife myself, a school teacher, a tax payer, a late night laundry doer. And still, I miss my very own mother. So badly.

I miss her able-bodied, well minded Mother self who taught me pretty much everything, including how to love her because I can't not even when there's something different to hold onto.

I know my brother and my sister, they know that kind of love, too. Our mom is the best mom. Our mom is magic.

Thank you, Mom. for giving us everything.

Our mom IS that kind of love.

Preparation.

When something, or someone, is coming, it's time to get ready.

Be it the arrival of the innocence of the Christchild, or of longer days full of light, Santa Claus, or the open ended and hopeful possibilities of the impending New Year.

Here in East Tennessee, we are readying. Mother has her first week of chemo treatment down. She and Daddy are both a year older-- we have feted and celebrated them, though Daddy has requested not to have his now traditional ice box fruitcake in honor of him. (The rest of the family is sad about this, so I may have to pull one out before we depart for the next leg of celebration northerly, where I will make it yet again.)

This will be the first time in my memory without a true Advent wreath to light at Mother and Daddy's here on Christmas Eve. We will certainly have to light a candle tonight, and it would give my heart great joy to hear our son read the birth story from his Uncle Jeffrey's childhood Bible, which lives in the room upstairs in which we sleep here.

As I write, Mother is drinking tea and eating a cookie brought us by a neighbor at home in Nashville, and a pumpkin muffin brought here by my sister in law. My Mister has helped The Boy hang his series of (eight) Santa letters -- some directive, some requesting. They are even now creating a snack for the reindeer.

Our butter is room temp for pie crusts and for our favorite holiday cookies which will be baked up this evening for Santa and the rest of us, too.

I have addressed a second raft of Christmas cards, and last night before bedtime, our Boy wrote all the letters to Santa, and today once his father arrived, we've begun to make our time honored Santa Box (in which the big man delivers presents to the La Grone children and theirs.)

The questions at bedtime included, "Do you believe in Santa? What would you ask him if you could? I'd ask him if he's real. And if he has magic dust."

I think about how sometimes we wonder are YOU real, God? Do YOU have magic dust? Is Jesus real?

I made my own peace with that some time ago, agreeing with myself to let the mystery be. I have tried to impart this open hearted belief in believing to my child. The willingness to allow ourselves to be steeped in a love even bigger than Van Morrison's love that loves to love that loves to love.... The ability to say, "What?!" and then create a stronger purpose for holding on another year when a friend says "Santa's not real, my parents TOLD me."

Does it matter if you call your belief Santa or God or Christchild or New Season?

I am not sure it does, to be honest.

I choose to believe. I choose to hold onto faith, to expect Light. To await the miracle of the Christchild with wonder and with reverence. I choose to believe that chemotherapy may help my sweet mother by shrinking her brain tumor. I choose to delight in cookies and ice box fruit cake, letters to Santa and wrapping bits and bobs like books and lipsticks and handmade treats in colorful paper, with, I have to believe, all the love and wonder of the three kings with their gifts of frankincense, gold and myrh.

I KNOW they came to see Jesus as a toddler. That they didn't actually appear at a manger bed while cattle were lowing and angels hollered, "Hark!"

The timing on this is immaterial to me, because I have chosen preparation. I have chosen the kind of love that can not be explained, but can be felt right here among the ones I cherish, the ones close to birth, and the ones closer still to death.

We are waiting. We await. We stretch our hearts larger yet again, and walk into darkness unafraid, expecting Light.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer....

for help in times of fear and upset.

for single parents raising children with mental illness.

for the great suffering inflicted upon the victims and the families of the victims of this senseless act of violence.

for the voices silenced, the children who lost their mothers at the hands of a very troubled young man.

for the children left behind without a best friend or a beloved teacher, without the prior sense of safety and of innocence.

for the mothers and the fathers in Sandy Hook and their paperboys, their newscasters, their truck drivers and nannies; their bakers and store clerks and city councilmen and women. for that community, please God, grant them peace. grant them comfort in each other in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

for all the teachers and the mamas and grannies and fathers and uncles everywhere like in Nashville and in Dallas and San Francisco, in St. Paul, Denver and Philadelphia.... the ones who are weeping and watching their children sleep, worrying about other families in other towns, or wishing their own dead children could come back from cancer or overdose or maybe a car accident.

there is such great suffering. it is hard to understand. to wrap even the most agile of hearts around....

please and thank you and help: these are the prayers today, yesterday, into the new week as laundry spins, fractions are added and subtracted, maps are studied, ornaments are hung, choirs sing and families gather to hold one another another day, another year, another little while.


we want things to be predictable here on earth with the excitement coming from things like roller coasters and new babies and chili cook-off winners and beautiful new postage stamps on love letters. we want all the rent hearts to be mended, the cleaving couples to come back together, the church to stop pointing fingers and fussing about who marries who because love is love is love. we want every man, woman and child to have plenty to eat and a warm place to go where he or she can get plenty to eat and the ones that love them open their arms.

we want to stop weeping at the brokeness and the senselessless, the confusion. we want to say, Enough!! Everyone brush your teeth and go to bed. Tomorrow will be softer, we will find an answer.

Mother-Father God, I'm not sure that can be. but it's what we want here.

I want my students to be safe and well fed, to learn how to read and multiply, to believe in themselves and to become productive citizens of the community. I want not to get out of work at four o'clock in the afternoon while I've been teaching children in a poor neighborhood -- one that knows violence and unmet desire well -- to learn that north of me by several states, a man walked into a school and shot up a bunch of people for reasons we may never understand. I want to get to my child across town fast, so fast, and drive him home even if it takes two hours through the traffic and he falls asleep.

thank you for that. for that small inconvenience of time, with the sweetness of my lightly snoring son in his booster seat while I am driving in quiet. thank you for no radio or television over the weekend, but instead Christmas carols and a husband who loves us and a place to call home. thank you for a safe place to be a family, and to cry for those that woke yesterday in a world where that was no longer true for them.


it isn't fair, God. any of it. and I've been pretty mad at you this year, anyway. but I'm still looking for you. still praying. still hoping.

Season of Light.

The days are long. The years are short.
Sunrise, sunset....


I spend most of my waking hours away from home, away from my child. Away from my mate, my dog, my family of origin.

Like so many others, I spend an awful lot of time in the car, criss crossing town between my child's school and my own, to and from home, and so on.

Evenings spent coming home like this:

Make these moments all the more precious:

After supper (take out pizza) we went into the yard to look for meteor showers. The city lights make it difficult to see them. We saw blinking planes, believing at first they were meteors, adjusted, watched, waited, foggy wisps of breath issuing from our mouths. Craning our necks back, upward starting into the vast sky.

"Space HAS no end," said our son when his father attempted to explain how to look into where you couldn't see the space anymore.

"Will the meteor rocks hit our house?" he asked.

"How can we see the meteors if the rocks break into something small as a grain or rice or sand, Dad?"



And then the tromp back into the house, the unplugging of the Christmas tree lights, the readying and cozying into flannel sheets, the Mister's voice reading aloud from the seventh book of the Harry Potter series.

I drifted off. Surrounded by the people I love, in the kind of moment we live for.


Light. Yes, it can be both wave and particle, but too, it can be:  Home. Hope. Hello.


Or even the road toward it.

Many things have happened since....

our lives went ass over tea kettle.


 In short list form:


 * My brother Jeff and I stayed with our mother during her most recent MRI, earplugs in tight. We got lost in the drone. I laid hands on Mother. I prayed over and over in my head, "Help. Give her peace." Not very eloquent, instead practical, urgent, even desperate. Jeff checked her eyes to see if she was sleeping or awake.

 * My son has now had several sleep overs with his girl cousins and loves his Aunt Dana ferociously. At last, he has made up to her all the early years of snubbing her (and most everyone else) for yours truly. 

* I have attended, with a caravan of co-workers, the pre-funeral visitation for one of the mothers of children at our school. She was struck by a car very near school, and died. We are all deeply saddened keeping watch over the children by day in our hallways and classrooms.

 * As my fast talking three on the Enneagram friend Jo Ellen says -- I expected my job as a schoolteacher in an urban inner city school to be difficult -- Kingdom work. Goodness, love, mercy. Daily, I struggle and fall short of the peace inside I strive toward. I question myself and my abilities in a way that hurts. Still, I show up every single day and give the best I've got.

 * I missed the Holiday Luncheon at my boy's school. Again. Forgot that it was happening. Forgot to send funds. The boy reduced to puddles of tears on the second night in a row I came home late.... sometimes I get home after he is in bed, leave before he's out of it.

 * I am thankful for Katherine and Karen, mothers who mother my boy in my absence. Mothers who show up for the Parents Visit Music Class Day and make our boy feel just as special as their boy and girl, respectively, by loving him up and sending pictures and videos to my phone to include me on his experience. Blessings, they are, these other mothers so full of joy and love and heart-full friendship.

 * My husband, my friend, my man, my love, my partner. My Beloved Mister. With the time in, we're a better team then ever. I tell him that my siblings are concerned about my scatteredness, my repetition in telling the same things. He wisely reminds me that my talking about something is like most people thinking about something. It's how I process. And now that I've given up the Facebook time suck, which in many ways was a way for me to empty my brain, my verbal tics, such as they are, are all the more apparent. We have all had a good laugh over that.

 * Too, I have laughed (again, at my expense, but why not?) about my traveling road show. My cobalt blue station wagon crammed full of hiking boots, apples and clementines and thermoses of water, a box of clothing outgrown as a pass along for a friend's son, glass baby food jars for science projects at school, books and Legos and far too many fast food straw wrappers, extra coats and sweaters and random things piled or chucked in at the last minute on my daily commute, or the longer weekend version across the plateau and down into the valley and back..... My father says, "Hell, you could throw a pumpkin in the back of her car and she'd not realize it until the vine starts growing out the windows!"



Oh, oh. The mistletoe. The cancer. The lack of kid toothpaste in the house. The overdue library books and friends I don't deserve. Merry Happy Wonder.

Help. Give us Peace.

Our Quaker Oats Star, fashioned by me in the first year of our marriage, covered with aluminum foil and  painted with spirals, makes an appearance this year in its naked state..... at the boy's request.