Ramblings on Grief...

 Hi.  I promised I would post the poetry that I submitted to a writing contest this past summer so without any further ado: 

Deal with Dementia 

Who will answer the phone today?

Will it be the woman who remembers,

the one who interacts?

Or will it be the woman who doesn’t remember,

the one who talks in circles, repeating the same questions?

So sometimes I avoid calling,

then guilt sets in.

Face to face isn't much easier,

sitting in uncomfortable silence,

worrying about what she is thinking,

or feeling.

Knowing the conversation may frustrate her,

may be hard to follow.

Then the anxiety of the "what ifs" enter my mind.

"What if” this is my future?

"What if " that little struggle to find the right word

is an indicator of future struggles?

“What if" I should be seeking early

interventions now.

What if, what it, what if...

Losing a parent is hard

and I often feel like I'm losing Mom,

over and over.

Pieces of her die

in circular conversations.

A reminder of a long hard process  

without a predictable end point.

Losing a parent is hard.

Losing a parent over and over is taxing.

Still there is no choice but to

deal with dementia.

*The formatting was weird on that. What I would do now to still be dealing with dementia. I miss her like mad. I am very good at trying to ignore grief but something a family member said the other day really has brought it back to the surface the past few days: "The holidays are especially hard." I think that is 100% true compounded with the fact that I don't have routine to distract me for the next two weeks. I am very excited for the rest but will miss distraction.

Here is the next poem I submitted:

Dementia is a Thief

Stealing moments that should be monumental,

birthdays once recollected with precision,

now only recalled with reminders.

Names once salient,

now faded,

replaced by relationship tags:

Your husband,

Your daughter,

Your sister.

Physical death still distant

yet mental death is imminent.

Close connection

ripped away like a shoplifter

and their five finger discounts.

Dementia is a thief. 

*To any of you associated with dementia my heart goes to you. It is not easy. Just try to be okay with just sitting in silence at times and. holding hands. You will be glad you had those sweet moments.

Here is my favorite of the three poems I submitted. There are more poems to be written about grief, but my brain still needs to just be in silent and process the whole entity that grief truly is.

Grief is a Bastard

Alone and abandoned,

you leave it unattended,

packed far down in the darkest

forgotten corners of your brain. 

But like a 3-year-old begging for attention, 

in a crowded department store,

grief tantrums. 

Raging,

punching,

tearing up from

long dried ducts.

Crying alone feels right.

In the dark isolation of a cold room,

under warm covers.

Crying feels like a necessary solo act.

Unlike a musician,

who solos surrounded by a crowd,

and more like a pilot

trying to transatlantic in solitude.

Yet like Amelia,

solo proves fatal,

extending the life of grief,

keeping you alone and abandoned.

Grief truly is a bastard. 

*I have let myself be familiar with grief. I do not try to push it away. Today the tears nearly froze as I was walking the dog and a song that gets me thinking about mom came on. Instead of avoiding it and skipping the tune, I embraced it, tears in all! Luckily, I have a very good support group! My dad was right, "With time it will get better," even though it is taking a long time but there is hope is the baby steps that healing brings.

I think that is all I have for now. I truly do think about what to post or right and am often just paralyzed. I think in many ways that is how grief has felt of late. I have great intentions of writing or reading more that quickly turn to sitting and staring, a pure nothingness replaces those intentions. But again, with time it will get better. So, in the meantime, I just keep dealing with grief too!

Plan the Trip, Little Monster!

SIDENOTE: I never finished this post that I started writing just after going to Los Angeles to see Lady Gaga.  So, it's a perfect bonus read for you! Happy reading.

 I don't know why, or maybe I do but I have been trying to write this post since September 11th.  Part of the delay is that I wanted to write something profound, something more like a serious non-fiction, article like piece.  But the past few months I have not been able to focus.  As I have mentioned before, grief is a very weird thing.  

I read or heard somewhere that planning a trip is actually really good for our brains and that this action actually helps our depression levels and anxiety levels go down.  I have been a bit depressed about my mom and her rapid decline with her memory.  It has felt like I have slowly lost her over and over again.  So, I thought I may just start planning the trip.  

I have become a bigger  Lady Gaga fan as I discovered and grew to love her album "Chromatica."  It actually has gotten me through a lot of the hard stuff with my mom.  You can read all about her album HERE.

When talking about Chromatica Ball, which is the tour for the album, Lady Gaga said "It documents like the many different stages of grief and the manic energy of grief that I feel like I have experienced in my life."

She also talked about the album itself and the ball on a recent Instagram post: "People ask me all the time what Chromatica was about and in Babylon I say "Battle for your life" and when I made Chromatica, I was really battling for my life and for anybody that is in a tough spot, I just want you to know that this show was created in the spirit of that battle to win yourself back. There's no greater prize than you! There's no thing more important that your own heart and your own ability to heal.  We don't heal on our own, I don't think, but I think it's possible to at some point have your own back and having your own back takes a lot of strength and time."

This journey through this album made me really want to see her concert live.  I had watched clips on YouTube when she was on the European leg of tour and I got more and more excited about it.  I started looking at dates and how much tickets were.  I also started to look into how much it would cost to fly to the cities.  Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and Miami all were on my radar.  The only two of those cities that had weekend dates, were Los Angeles and Miami. School had started and it had to be on the weekend.  Miami would have been fun, and sunny and all the fun Florida things, but it was also more expensive to get there.  So, I started concentrating on LA.  I started to invite friends(mainly because Reub wasn't comfortable with me going solo, although he was okay if I stayed with my nephew and just drove to the concert!) but after a few friends saying they couldn't make it, I got a little worried and did make plans to couch surf at my nephew's in Irvine, CA. I also started looking more and more at single tickets, but didn't purchase any because it was 1. still a bit away and 2. up in the air if anybody would join me.  Luckily, I asked a co-worker, who was very interested in coming and eventually was my travel buddy.  The unfortunate thing was that I did have a bipolar midnight moment the evening before she told me she would come and I bought a single ticket because it was in a place I knew I would have a good view of the show.  But, I found her a ticket in the same section and she was totally cool with it. 

As I boarded the plane to L.A., I was giddy and thinking how truly blessed I was to be going.  I also was just so excited to be going to this concert because I had been dreaming about it.  Dreams really do come true.  

My sister had asked me if I was going and I said, "Of course, 'cause YOLO!"

The concert was amazing.  It was loud, you could feel the sound.  That feeling was accented by random burst of flames coming from the stage, and even up in the upper deck of Dodger Stadium, I could feel the heat.  The art of both Gaga's voice, her stage design, and the little interludes were captivating.

The brutalist architecture a background to shadow not only Gaga's struggles but also my own. The concert was divided into acts similar to a play.  The opening act, or prelude, brought us back to her chase for fame and featured a few of her first big hits, "Bad Romance," "Just Dance," and "Poker Face"

End of Summer Rambling

 Remember that one time I wrote about how I was always shocked by how much time had gone between my blog posts? Well, there is something to say about consistency, right?  I have been "summering" around these parts.

"Summering" typically means, I wake up around 7, get workout clothes on and take the dog for an hour walk, then kids and I go and do some sort of adventure after I shower and eat breakfast, then we come home around lunch and then they immediately jet to their friend's house and then return around 4pm, then we eat dinner and then sleep, rinse and repeat.

Other times we were out of the state visiting with family and eating up the traveling moments.  

And even other times, we are out of routine and just enjoying the summer.

I'm still in denial about going back to work next week.  If I don't think about it, it won't happen, right?

Of course there are moments when I definitely feel ready to be back in routine and to not have to be the referee to my kiddos endless fighting.

I started this post yesterday and really have no clue where I was going with this post. I think it is definitely just a space to be random so here I am, Mrs. Random.

Today we went to a museum.  It is the fifth museum we have visited this summer. It was the BYU Art Museum and it was a nice time. My favorite museum of the summer was The Peteeneet Museum in Payson, Utah.  It had a room filled with dresses. Now, most of you know me and know that I really don't care too much for dresses but it was cool to see dresses lined up from oldest to newest and to see dresses worn by Shirley Temple and Doris Day.  We have also visited the BYU Dinosaur Museum, the BYU Bean Museum and the BYU Museum of Peoples and Cultures.  E is a huge museum fan and he learns all of it and then tells us more about it for months on end.

We had a daily theme including art and crafts, movies, museums, hikes, and splashpads/pools. The schedule was 99% for me and 1% for them.  See, having something to do makes it so we do not just sit around and become bored and there is much less fighting.  The added bonus of getting away from screens was also a big plus.

Wisconsin was glorious.  We had an Air BNB a block away from my parents' house and it was magical to just walk over to visit.  The favorite memory was going over there to fill gallon jugs with filtered water and my mom inviting me over to talk with her while she ate her lunch. That thirty minutes of just me and parent time was magical.  

You all may or may not know this, but my mom has been diagnosed with dementia.  She often asks revolving questions and can be very confused, but in those thirty minutes, we chatted like it was just me and her regular, remembering self. Magical.  It has been very tough to see her disease progress and she actually was moved(with the help of my angel sister) to a memory care facility just days after we left Wisconsin.  That angel sister mentioned how "it will never be the same" as we embraced in the driveway of my parents' condo just before we came back to Utah, and she is right.  The grief of the loss of that part of our family space has hit me hard this summer. Grief is a silly thing, isn't it?  It hits me at times and then other times I conveniently forget the situation. I wrote a poem about it, and it is called "Grief is a Bastard."  I will post it here after the writing contest I entered it into this summer has picked it's winners. I don't think I am supposed to publish it before then. I will keep you posted on if I win or don't get chosen like every other year.

Wisconsin also included a Brewer Game with two fun uncles, Bay Beach adventures, Algoma beach day, fun fish fries with other family, a ten year celebration of Reuben and I being married, and a visit with some high school/softball friends.  Wisconsin always tempts me to come back and live there, but that whole having a steady job that I love and not having to pack keeps me rooted here in Provo.

Summer always goes too fast. Words just can't describe how much I love my summers off and how much they are needed.  Teachers don't have the easiest job and the past few years have only added teacher stress.  I don't feel like I am ready to go back.  In other words, the batteries don't feel recharged enough to face this next year, but as professionals do, I will go back and act like I am recharged.

I will now close this random piece of writing . I hope all fourteen of you that read this when I publish are doing well and that summer is treating you well.

The need for a challenge.

 Oh, hey again!  Every time I sit down to write on here, I think "Man, I am just not doing this as consistently as I would like."  But alas, life is busy and exhausting as of late.  This coming week is the last of the school year, so hopefully I will be adding more here more often.  I have been writing more lately, but the last two weeks I have slowed a bit.

I have just felt like I have been in a funky time warp.  I just don't have much motivation to do much more than lay on my couch after work.  It could be the tired that comes with the end of a school year(especially with no prep hour during the day), or it could be the Covid funk that everybody has been feeling of late, it very well could be both. Whatever it is, I have been feeling that I need a little bit more drive.  I need a few things that I can control.  So, I have been trying to eat more veggies and less crap.  I also have lately felt the urge to move more.  And I have had lots of opportunity to reconnect with my love of hiking.  Last week, I first went up into the mountains with my little family. Then Monday I was able to go with a group of boys from our school and camp at Goblin Valley.  I did three hikes while there.

Family Hike in the foothills of Orem

Hiking Little Wild Horse Canyon on a school camping trip.

Goblin Valley

More hiking in Wild
Horse canyon

    Exploring the beauty that is Utah makes me feel good.  The air is cleaner out there.  I was also able to hike with a school field trip to Timpanogos Cave in American Fork last Wednesday.  

 

The cave is spectacular.

It's fun to go on adventures with these teens, especially when it is their first time doing something like this.

The views from higher help my overall perspective of life.

    As we explored the cave, we were informed that this is the 100th year of the National Park Service giving tours there.  As part of their celebration, they are holding a 100 hike challenge.  Those who complete 100 hikes up to the cave and down, will get a medal.  This sparked something within me.  So, I am taking the challenge.  The hope is that I will be able to get 100 hikes in before Mid-October.  But, even if I don't make that lofty challenge, I still want to get up that trail as many times as I can.  My body yearns for a challenge.  I want to make my time less and I want something to get up early for all summer long.  I do better when I am up earlier.  I focus more. I get more done. I remember to write. So, alas, I am a crazy looney, but I am a crazy looney with purpose.

Two down; 98 more to go.

    

    Wish me luck. Onward and upward!

Memory Binding Smell

 

March: The month of my birth.  A time where I often contemplate my origin.  Who am I and where do I come from?  What has made me into who I am? Times, places, and many people have made me who I am.  This month is a time to look back, reminisce and explore those times, places and people.  

 Funny how a smell can take you back through time and to a different place. 

    I smell the grease as I pack the bearings of the front wheel of my 1961 Schwinn, but I am no longer in the bike shop now, but back in rural Wisconsin and in the spacious metal shed where my grandpa keeps all his tractors.  I am no longer forty-five, but am now five years old again.  Tools are scattered on the wooden workbench, and hung on the wall behind it.  Some earthly smell mixed with grease mists the large space radiating from inside the long silver grease gun, engines and engine parts dispersed around the packed dirt floor.  Without that grease, those tractors would no longer move and the operations of the farm would be cease.

    Life when I was younger and in that special place was more simple and the memories of grandpa fixing things and taking me on early morning rides as he chopped the green dew moistened grass for the cows are just as rich and thick as that grease.

    I miss my favorite farmer and I miss those simpler times.  I love the time traveling scent as I now work with my own hands.  Hands that now are dirty and slick, just like his thick hard-working calloused hands would be as he worked. We are forever family and memories keep those close to us alive.