my mother used to say.. "do what is right and you will feel right"... i.e. usually a response to overly-emotional me at a point where i was feeling down, tired, sad, adrift somewhere upon my very own melancholy sea - and her patience was, no doubt, arriving at its rather finite limits.
another favorite turn of phrase... "no one can make you feel bad, amy - unless you give them permission..." and here i find myself feeling, once again, bad, like i do in no other spot in the world but in my childhood home - all warm, cozy, comfortable and beautifully decorated. and i find, again and again, at the end of each return home, i am never more miserable than in this place. what does it to me, i wonder? old demons, once thought forgotten, now re-discovered, just dozing, waiting like savage kittens curled up on newly upholstered rugs, waiting to pounce - attack. i never feel so weighted down.. so completely futile & pent up...
it's true. this week is no ordinary visit. i have come down this weekend not for some forced familial merriment but rather to commemmorate the passing of my grandfather. he died a little over a week ago, a fact which i received by text. yesterday we gathered at his small church, sang hymns, shared stories and condolences and ate storebought cookies and speared bits of fruit on tiny paper plates. people, mostly those whom i have never met, shared wonderful stories and thought about my grampa - papa - and the life he led - the warmth, the gifts, the strength he shared - and it wasn't all so difficult really. my grandfather lived to be nearly 84 years old and had a full life. and i believe his spirit is free and at peace now - death, this, it seems, and the amorphous glow of eternity, these things, it seems, i can handle. it's the living - the day-to-day mundanities and sheer silliness - of myself and others - these are the things that get me.
it's so short - at 28, i am aware of the time i have already spent - & at times squandered. what's a life for??? how do you shape your time, your energies, your soul.... into something that, when it has all passed, you can look back upon and be proud of? thankful. for the time you've been granted. for the ways you've given back some small piece of the grace and beauty you've received.
i'm so annoyed!!! by everything, today. by television and new clothes and shopping and weight loss and hearing aids and politics and politeness at the expense of truthfulness and small talk and lipstick and bedspreads and the passing of time... the goddamn american dream.....
such a short time. and what does any of us have to show???? "do what is right and you will feel right..." these words again as i contemplate... for the umpteenth time again... always a whisper... a billowing prayer.... just how then... show me...how to LIVE....
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