I think I'm going to collect the nice things people are saying. I'm going to open a bag in my mind and fill it with nice things and maybe that will start overflowing and shoving out all the restless anger fear and anxiety that has been rooming in there trashing the place.
It would be weird to not have all that fear and anxiety and anger, that is the natural state after 4 plus years raising my mom to her ultimate death with dementia. That is the fallout, a little known movie playing in your mind from the daily care of someone you adore dying in front of you.
I don't think it's bad to feel the whole thing. To use your hands to care for the person who is out of control of themselves. They need you. More than ever. To be cared for by hands that love you, that is why we are on earth. That is the real thing.
I do know now that you need a whole big family to help hold you up. Mine is doing a a good job, it's just tattered, but we are a good unit. But there is not enough help to rebuild your insides as they are being shredded, there's no way to get ahead of that pain. Because it is real, and it's just a by product of doing a good job. You don't have to do the job with no fallout, you can't do it neatly. It's a wolf attack, and you can't be cleaning up while you're fighting the wolf. You have to do the job and realize that you also need to call FEMA in to help you manage the effects of the job on your soul. Because like any good job. It takes tending to the tender.
I'm going to concentrate on relieving the bag of anxiety, yes. If I can. It is overflowing and it is tiring. I do fill it with beauty from outdoors, the horses and creek, and chickens pecking around my feet and dogs always always walking me everywhere, to every chore. They walk with me, and they lie at my feet. They look at me resolutely, and hopefully. Every animal on this property is holding me up. And chickens are pretty fragile. But they are dinosaurs so they have some staying power.
Kurt congratulated me on being a horse trainer and doing things in slow easy steps, and feeling success with the new young horses we have. He said I'm proud of what you're doing. It's really amazing to watch. He said nice things. And Linette called me on Halloween to wish me a happy anniversary of our long ago beginning of our relationship. Maybe it didn't work out exactly the way we expected but it did work out in the mothering and laughs department. It's nice to be remembered, and to remember happy things, and to remember you still are that happy thing.
It's good to build a chicken house and shred your hands because your hands come back together if you use enough lotion and give them a rest. And it's good to hear your friends' voices and know they are out there and thinking of you with respect and happiness. You cheered their days, and they told you. I like that we're all on this floating planet thinking the same things and feeling shredded and too full of pain and scared and also buoyed and too full of busting love and safe. It's such a rocky boat. The simple things are the hardest things, aren't they.
