They Call Them Flights, Don't They?

Having procrastinated as long as possible, I finally sat down and researched my mom's health condition on the Internet this evening.

With the available levels of information (medical difficulty of understanding), and links to sites with more info, and more info, and FAQs on the world wide web, one can become quite educated about any medical matter.

One can read the medical journals doctors read, read about the experiences patients have had, and accumulate quite a store of information in a short period of time (if you read fast, and often). The Internet really does have amazing uses--even for little ole me. I'm still learning basic computer skills.

I'm glad I'm finally doing something proactively constructive. Perhaps, educational, would be more correct than constructive.

At least I'm not being self-destructive. That's how I have too often handled emotional stress in the past. I have always had bad results doing that. I've feel like maybe, I've finally grown out of it--or my AA subconscious is kicking in.

Now, I believe God won't give me more than I can handle. My Higher Power doesn't want me to hide my head in the sand, and be quiet, invisible, uninvolved, and ignorant.

God helps those who help themselves.

And God helps those who deal with accepting changes in lives, finding the courage to do the proper things, and using serenity to maintain peace in intense situations in their daily existence, even giving us the words of the Serenity Prayer to meditate on for comfort.

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage

to change the things I can,

and the wisdom

to know the difference.

The past few weeks, I've been living in a dream world--kinda zoned out, daydreaming, taking stare-out-the-window-brain-breaks, a lot. I've been thinking how my life will be when my mom has passed on. I've been imagining how my days will be without her.

I will feel void and unbelievably empty, at whatever point in time my emotions begin to gain control. At this point in time, I'm able to keep my intense emotions out of daily normalcy.

I know I have the tendency to keep all my emotions bottled up, till I can't stand it anymore. Then I "blow" in some fashion. That's part of how I would describe an aspect of my bipolar disorder.

When I'm concentrating on public events and rituals, and other changes that will be beyond my control, I'm focusing in a cointrolled manner. Emotions are difficult to control, aren't they? You don't have to have a mental diagnosis for emtions to cause problerms in your life.

Are actors and bipolars at an advantage being able to disassociate from emotion at times?

It's not a normal situation. Life is not a well directed one act play. Life is one day at a time, one minute at a time.

At this particular point in time, I'm focusing on appreciating the true friend relationships of people who I know care about me: Mom--especially; my newly relocated best friend from high school-Bev; and one of my doctors, my psychiatrist, Dr. Sam.

I have friends who are now separated from me by distance. I have friends, and many relatives who have been separated by the passage of time. "The passage of time" is another way of just saying that our lives have gone in divergent directions, so we have only fond fading memories in common.

Recently, I've exchanged e-mail messages with my first and only husband. We had no kids, and divorced in 1979. He's remarried to the bitch that used to live next door to us. Whatever, he does still care about me. The reason we split wasn't anybody's fault. I find comfort in knowing I felt that close to someone, although so long ago.

When I think "family," I think of being 10 and playing with my cousins at holidays, usually Easter. Everybody's all grown up with their own lives and routines now. One can't turn back time. I tried.

My infrequent, yet enthusiastic, attempts at being part of the old family traditional celebrations, haven't been successful. I really thought it would be different when we all lived in the same town again. Dallas is a big town. My error of assumption. They say, " to assume makes an ass out of u and me." That's definition, in addition to spelling hints, complements of a retired English teacher.

With the relatives, the problem isn't distance. It's the trouble with apathy-- nobody cares.

Friends are often only capable of being activity associates, not people with whom we share confused self-condemnations, and questions about the meaning of life. Good times buddies, I might call them.

True, deep-felt intercommunications can certainly make, or break, what one considers a relationship to be worth. It's a risk to open up and speak of the feelings raging inside. Will I still be accepted as a friend, or will this put another name on my list of "good times" friends.

I talk to my dog, and his eyes convey the deepest compassion--but no understanding.

Which is more important: compassion or understanding?

And am I just being overly dyslexically aware that "DOG" is "GOD" spelled backwards.

So much meaning is conveyed through the eyes. Statistically, liars blink much more often than those who are telling the truth.

Are understanding and compassion the same thing? At this point, I would say no.

I've been imagining events, and how events will transpire. I feel like if I know what to expect, I can handle it.

Some audio cassette tape I've been listening to says, "If you can see it, you can believe it." I want to see beauty in all life.

It's not that I want my mother to die. She's 80, in declining health, with perhaps cardiac surgery within weeks. Considering I'm the daughter, and she's the mother, one would expect the elder to pass first. It's an eventuality. It's always been an eventuality. But now the eventuality seems to loom in the misty gray fog of a new morning's horizon.

I can visualize an orange sun glaring brightly through shades of soft pink and orange swirls and puffs of clouds. I can remember one morning when I was up uncharacteristically early, in order to go offshore fishing on a "tourist" boat at sunrise.

I can remember hearing the wind whipping through the sails, carrying the splash and salt of the sea water onto my face, blowing my dampened hair wildly back from my line of sight, and coolly impregnating the too insufficient layering of clothing I had donned for the day's summer expedition.

I held on to the rail, gripping for stability against the strong wind and crashing waves as the boat continued across the bay, then out into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, headed due east, into the brightest imaginable orange ball of light. It was my own private version of "Titanic."

Staring, blinded by the brilliant radiance of the sun, increasing in intensity as well as size, second-by-second, the day soon burned the fog into our past wake.

We continued out to the oil rigs, and I found a spot on the boat that wasn't blinding, watching the smooth, fluctuating rhythm of the waves.

I experienced a beautiful transition of sensual understanding that morning. It was the most exciting sunrise I've ever experienced in my life.

Every day can be like a sunrise. Every day is a new 24 hours to be experienced, and filled with good life.

I find emotionally intense situations very difficult to deal with. However, I won't get past this icky-sticky, emotional, brain-broth that's confusing me, until I get a better hold on my own faith.

Is faith what keeps one hanging on to the railing of a swifty traveling boat? Is God the "holding on" to the handrail in my analogy? He's not the handrail. Faith isn't a thing to be touched with the hands. It's a head trip.

But it's a physical action too. It's the basis for all phycical action--life.

I will listen to Him in the silence, and in my dreams, and I will keep Him in my heart. That's my premediated disposition now.

I pray that God will help me when the difficulty of dealing with the mortality of a loved one seems more than I can bear.

I want to be there to make the transition, the stages, the many different steps of the flights in the stairway to Heaven, an ascention of spirit for the both of us.

So be it.