Where Is My Yellow Brick Road?

WHERE IS MY YELLOW BRICK ROAD?


My first step, I guess, is to physically write about the good thoughts and memories, along with the other unholy truths. The more difficult moments of our shared lives. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But, this does seem like a way to try & make myself force myself to confront things. To finally face myself, what’s happened to my life and to question many previously-feared issues.

This, indeed, is more difficult than making that first telephone call to a "professional". That first appointment to begin my journey into my own unknown…

Generally, all the hugs & holiday mornings & car trips & hot cocoa & dressing-up, and going to work with my mother were all good things. Warmth that even the Hawai’ian sun couldn’t compete with.

The bad? The painful? Too many ambulance rides. Too many unanswered questions. Too much learning about diseases too early in life. Too young to learn how to give a needle. Too much childhood spent visiting my mother in the hospital. Too many comas, including one on the Mass Pike at a Howard Johnson’s. Seeing disease rot a person - your own mother. The cellar and side room in Nana’s house. The bathroom door there with a big hole cut out of it so junior monsters could look in on your private moments. Watching my mother work too hard too long - watching my mother be too sick too often. Watching my mother die. The wakes. The funeral. The years following…

I’m scared now, trying to face my demons. Or perhaps remembering some. I may or may not want to remember everything that happened to me as a child. Once again - or still - the fears of my childhood are here. Making my heart beat too fast again. How can I possibly not still have guilt or anger or questions or sadness???

How can I ever live with Christmas lights year after year after year?