Death

An interesting topic for you today, death. I am on my final week of my first class back to school and it has been all about human development. This final chapter is about death, dying, and bereavement. I am still young but I cannot help contemplating this inevitable event. I want to put down my thoughts about this so that I can think more clearly in regards to the part, "What about my family?". I have always hated the idea of dying young and leaving my family to live long lives without me. I admit, I am greedy and selfish and do not want to share them, not with anyone. They are mine, all mine.

But with this chapter one of the reflection questions asked what we thought of death. My heart was wrenched and torn into a million pieces and I reminded myself again that I am not allowed to leave before my family has grown to a ripe old age and my husband and I die together in each others arms. Well, I sucked up that mentality and tried to think more clearly and decided a very difficult thing. That difficult thing is this...

I could not ever imagine my life without my children and husband. I would be heart broken to leave them. I had never taken the time to think about them and how would they get on without a mother and a wife. I had always felt that if they couldn't have me then they got no one. Young children need a mother, young men need a wife. As painful as it is for me to admit this, I would never want them to suffer and long for a woman in the house just to please their dead wife and mother. I would want them to be happy. I would want them to be taken care of. Ouch, this hurts.

I am done venting this. I am just deciding here and now that I am going no where and if I have to then the woman who takes my place better be DARN AMAZING!!! Oh wait, maybe I wouldn't want her to be better than me, because then my sweet children and husband would forget all about me. So, I'd be alright with her being just OK.

The Beaver

So, my absence has been due to the fact that I am now a full time student as well as full time homemaker, amongst other things, and I just don't have the time anymore to write. Any thoughts I have are mere passes in the wind. Nothing ever solidifies and gets put down on paper, or in this case, my blog. I have been more diligent in keeping my personal journal, but even those entries tend to consist of, "BLAH" or "Nada to dada". I even wrote one day "Nada Pinata" because it rhymed. How pathetic.

I am enjoying being back at school. I am learning a lot from this first class. But what I am learning from Adult Development isn't what I wanted to write about today. I have been sick the past couple days and not seriously motivated to pour over my text book as I should. So, yesterday I took a break and went to Netflix to watch a quick episode of Leave it to Beaver, season 1, just to ease some mental tension.

All about Leave it to Beaver...Man were those the good ol' days. I love that boy. So sweet and innocent, mischievous and naughty. Typical boy I'd say. I literally wanted to reach through my monitor and pinch his cheekies. The first episode was a complete crack up. I haven't laughed out loud like that in a while. By the end of the 24 minute episode my heart had been lifted. My nose was still running, my head still throbbing, it all seemed a little more tolerable after getting a good laugh in at The Beaver.

Uh, I guess it's true then. Laughter is the best medicine. Well, the Benn and Jerry's Berry Sorbet did help quite a bit too! OK, so the Sudafed helped the most, but I won't give all the credit to the drug industry because the Beaver sure is funny.

Forgotten

I was practicing a song on the piano yesterday for our church choir ( I am the new pianist, ha ha ha, I can hardly play as it is)and feeling a bit overwhelmed with my lack of skill, I decided I deserved a break from the HAVE to practice. I love to play the piano, I could do it for hours every day. My Grandma Stubbs gave me a book of classical pieces when I was maybe 17 or 18. I hadn't opened the book in years. As I bent over to pull the book off my shelf my heart and mind were flooded with memories of that book, my Grandma, and a promise. The promise means nothing, it was never followed through with. It was the memory that means so much to me. But not only that, it is what I gained because of my Grandmother's promise. My Grandmother, who has since passed away, brought me the book on one of her last trips to my home in Missouri. She sat down with me, handed me the book, and said, "I will give my....to whichever of my grandchildren who learns one of the songs that I have checked as favorites and play it for me" I was floored! I worked hard learning two songs. I was the only one to learn and play a song for my grandmother

Years have since passed. I had forgotten all about the book and all about the promise. I ran my hands across the contents page and noticed all of my Grandmother's check marks. I turned to the first one and played with rusty fingers a song I had long forgotten I had ever played for her. Then I played the next song on the list and I played with all my heart. I played for my Grandmother. I played hoping she would hear and be proud of me, that I could still play one of her favorites.

I realize that the gift that I never received wasn't the gift I was meant to receive. The gift I received is greater than the one lost. I received a love of classical music, I worked hard and learned to play a song that I would have never played other wise.

When I finished the two pieces I sat and thought of my Grandmother and my Grandfather who both had a love of the piano. I never knew them very well, they lived in Idaho and I in Missouri, but I pray that through my practice I am in some way reaching out to them and in some way close to them. Particularly my Grandmother who gave me the challenge in the first place.

Happy New Year

Late last night while Kevin and a friend were out back at the park shoot off fireworks I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark looking out the window at the humble fireworks display.

My mind was turned to my earliest memory of New Year's Eve. I must have been about 9, the year being 1985ish. My family was living just outside St Louis Missouri at the time. I had a really close friend, Heidi Schultz, who was hours younger than myself. She and I were very close, her family was my second family. I do recall even dreaming of marrying her brother who was just barely older than us so that I could truly be part of their family.

My parents had actually allowed me to go to the city with them for the big New Year's celebration that took place just beneath the Arch on the Mississippi River bank. The memory is so fresh in my mind, as if it was just last night that I experienced it. This memory is more than just an image, it involves all of my senses.

The stench of alcohol and cigarettes on the thousands of breaths waifting down upon my young lungs, the ground so saturated with spilled beverages that my feet stuck to the pavement. My heart raced with excitement, anticipation, and even fear. Fear of the many people crowding me and bonking me to and fro, fear of being separated from my friend and her family. But then the show began. All fear was gone, my eyes were drawn upward and the sky was filled with the most beautiful bursts of color. So many explosions created a smoke filled sky, causing the fiery lights to be illuminated. Half of the beauty of the display was reflecting not only on the river itself but on the St Louis Arch, the emblem of expansion.

I'd never before seen so many fireworks light the night sky, and to have been underneath all of it. Looking up became painful, my eyes like a butterfly net catching not butterflies but falling ash.

I recall the feeling of climbing into my friend's van, the show ending minutes after midnight, my eyes heavy with sleep, smoke, and ash. The night had ended and with it another year and another childhood memory.

Happy times creating memories, happy times learning, happy times serving, happy times making a difference, Happy New Year, happy 2009.