Storms

I have been keeping a bit of a journal….I call it my “Mom Book” since last summer. It has been a little bit therapeutic and a little bit freeing. Most of all, I really want to speak out for those of us who lost a loved one to addiction and live to tell about it. I have posted a couple excerpts before…here…and here. So, in lieu of the upcoming snow storm headed our way here in Oklahoma. Here is another bit of my Life in Letters.

Storms

You are never prepared to loose a parent or for the other parent to get remarried. When both of these things happen in a span of two months, it is a perfect storm for insanity….and that is where I am.

I have been up in the mountains for two weeks now. It is hard to be too down on life when you get to wake up every morning to Hermit’s Peak. Today I actually thanked the mountain for making me smile. It is sad really. I never thought I would feel so defeated. A friend is coming to visit today. She and her kids are staying a week and then we are going home to my dad’s wedding. I am really glad she is coming. I am not sure how Dillon would explain that he had to leave work to “talk his wife down from a mountain.” I know that with a friend and what is left of my pride I will go when it is time. I won’t like it, but I will go.

*****

A storm is coming in as I sit here on the portel in my mom’s chair. She loved to sit here and watch the hummingbirds and listen to the thunder. She almost always sat here with needlepoint in hand. Over time she made five stockings, probably stitched most of them right here. Not even the stockings are together anymore. Mary insisted that she keep hers. The others are with dad, I guess. I remember the first Christmas she proudly displayed all of the stockings together, Mom, Dad, Amy, Tracy, Mary. Life was simple then. A family, the way it should be. Now, they are stuffed away in boxes a sore reminder of how things are now.

I was thinking as I hurried to reclaim my laundry off the line before the rain began that this cabin is the last place I can go to really sit where my mother sat and do what my mother did. Their house has been sold, my grandparents have died, her apartment is no more.

Sitting here, I also remember when we got the call that sent my mother into one of her worse tail spins. Papa’s cancer was back. She must of sat here for three days crying and staring at hummingbirds by day and fire by night. We all just tiptoed around her afraid that we might upset her more. I don’t know if she was crying because she knew her dad would not live much longer or because she couldn’t muster up the strength to be on her own. Hell, I don’t know if she was ever sober enough to get up if she had tried.

It is really raining now, even hailing a little. I have noticed that a little hail naturally deadheads the flowers leaving them free to bloom more and looking even more beautiful. Maybe this will happen for me. Someday I will see all of this as a way to cut through the crap and just be me. That would be beautiful.

I am able to post this now, after a good night sleep, because life is going on. There are times I would swear the earth has stopped spinning and oxygen was no where to be found, but we are here now…. ten months later…. still hurting, but moving on and I can actually smile and mean it.

Here are some amazing pictures of my time in New Mexico….storms and all.

My Mountain!!!!