Journal/Blog

12-1-2024 Optimism

Normally, this time of year I am so cheerful that I even irritate myself a little.

I love this holiday season and that hasn't changed, but the circumstances in life have in the past year and half.

This time last year, I was struggling with coming to terms with my dad's death. He had drifted away due to Alzheimer's, so for years it had already felt like he was leaving us. So, his passing left one crack in my heart, but healed another. He isn't suffering from that disease any longer and for that I am eternally grateful.
It's still hard to actually acknowledge inside that he's gone. It's far easier to say the words. To put on the mask and give and get hugs of sympathy. But deep inside, where the little kid part of me still lives, she's still wandering around, looking around corners and listening intently to see if he's still here somewhere.
Those extra senses that I believe we all have, knows that he is here and there sometimes. He's watching over us and enjoying his respite and also moving on in his own way now. All of that at once. I also see him in our kids. The stubborn tilt of a chin. The corny joke that is told. I see a shadow of him leaning over the car my husband is working on, helping him focus and figure out the problem when he gets so frustrated.
I hear him whispering to me to slow down, don't get so upset over the small stuff, and live each day as if it might be my last.

This time last year, my mom was still here. She was trying to put on the best face she could to still be here with us all, but nothing was the same without her best friend and husband of 56 years. She spoke of missing things she had stopped doing since dad had gotten bad: driving, cooking, visiting people, just shopping at the store. It was the little kid in me that refused to see that she wasn't going to be here long. The signs were there. She had decided for herself a year before dad passed. She stopped taking her medicines and just let life take its course, without telling any of us. Stayed around long enough to put things in order.
Their anniversary was two days before Christmas. She spent one anniversary and one Christmas without him and that was more than enough.
The call that I thought would come months later came the day after Christmas. It was devastating and relieving all at the same time. Mom had been a shell of the woman she once was. Not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally.

If all of us had a wound in our hearts from dad's passing, mom was missing half of hers.

Ugh! I write all of this and it helps, but I also have the cynical part of me that is saying stop sounding like a broken record.
I've had to mentally smack that part of myself a lot in the past year and a half.

The title of this post is Optimism. That is where I want to end my entry.

Life does indeed go on. No matter how painful or dreadful it may seem at the time. It marches right along and takes you with it.

And the pain doesn't go away, but it does morph into something that you can live with, most of the time. The times that you can't, you take it off the shelf and lay it all out and let it wash over you again. Like the receding tide, it lessens but still ebbs over your heart. Salt water over a wound that will never completely heal.

Where does the optimism come from then?

From still being here. To hurt and heal and experience joy and pain over and over again. To live life.

The day after Christmas is coming. Like it does every year. But very different from all of the others this year.

I'll get to it - time will see to that. I'll get through it - family will see to that.

And that spark of the old me, the one who had both parents still living on this Earth, she's still there. She's quieter and more humble, more serious, but still loving this season and the (hopefully) many more I have to come.

'Tis the season. Indeed, it is.