Connections II

I went to Rose's dad's funeral today. He'd gotten sick about a month ago, and last week, after 94 years of life, he died in his sleep. I cried though his funeral - even when they are at the end of a long and good life, goodbyes are still hard. I cried for Rose. I cried again for Maria; my wordless grief over her too-soon departure is still near the surface.

My mind keeps circling back to connections.

I'm developing a vivid mental picture of a multi-dimensional web, surrounding, sustaining us, lifting us up, holding us when we'd otherwise fall. I sensed it surrounding us all last month, I saw it cocooning Rose today.

The strands are formed by love; frayed by distance and dysfunction. They connect us one to the other - to the people part of our lives today, to those who we have lost track of but still hold a place for within our hearts, to those who have traveled the path of death before us. When we die, the sections of the web connecting us to those who have died before us tingle, and the people at those connection points stop and turn back to pull on the strings to help us along the way.

I think this is why I've always found the saddest lives to be those where the web is sparse; the connections few. Their road to the afterlife is the hardest because they travel alone with no one ahead to encourage them and pull them across the tough and scary parts of the path.

Can you picture it?

Your eyes close for the last time, your soul prepares to depart from your body. With the eyes of love, you look ahead through the darkness to see a web, its strands made of light. At the end of each line is someone you love. As you begin to walk, the web closes in around you, showing you the way onward. Behind you, the lines flow to those who are sending you on your way with love; those for whom you will be one of the guiding lights when their turn comes, as it will.

Connections.
I'm going to have to keep thinking on this.

Spring???

It seems spring has changed its mind about arriving.

Last Friday, for Maria's funeral, the weather in Minnesota was brilliantly sunny, but cold.  Single digit temperatures.

We were only up there for a couple of days, and late winter decided to follow up back down to Kansas City. It's snowing outside again now, the second time this week. It didn't snow all winter, but now, in March, it's here.

The previous weeks of unseasonably warm weather had all the trees blooming - too soon, it turns out. The fragrance of their flowers has been abruptly cut off; the petals are brown, sad.

I can empathize.

The last few days have been tough. I've continued to look for work - fortunately for me, the computers on the other end can't tell how half-heartedly I push the apply button for the jobs. (If / when one of these pretend jobs turns into reality that, in itself, will boost my enthusiasm for the process.)

Yesterday, I was back to my January pattern. It's gray, it's cold. Time for a nap. Time to look out the window and contemplate the beauty of the bare branches waving gently against the gray sky. Time to retreat into a contemplative state. Not thinking, not trying to process the events of the year, but rather, just being with wherever the heck it is I am for a few minutes.

Processing hard things takes its toll. I'm sending a lot of healing energy in Tony (my eldest brother) and Libby's directions.  (Libby starts round II of chemo next week, Tony's prostate cancer surgery is scheduled for the end of the month.)

At the funeral, people kindly asked how I was doing. I had no answer, so deflected the question to a heartfelt, "it is good to see you - I am glad you are here today". If I were to be asked the question today, I would still have no answer. No idea how I am.

Winter 2.0 is scheduled to last only a few more days. Spring will return.

This, too, shall pass.

Not Fair!

Once again, I run up against the enduring unanswerable question stemming from my bout with cancer. Why not me???

Libby, my younger sister, is also battling the demon. But her demon is triple-negative and when they did a first round of chemo to shrink the tumor before surgery, it only partially worked. The tumor did shrink - but also started to grow back before she had her surgery six weeks later.

Fortunately, she has a good surgeon; the experienced kind who relies on what her fingertips tell her as much as the data from the scans. She found and removed the original tumor - then found two other spots where it was growing, and took those out, too. She removed the sentinel lymph nodes, and then, when her sensitive fingers sensed 'something off' about some of the others nearby, removed those, too.

The good news part is that they were able to remove all the cancer they found. The hard news part is that Libby will start a second round of chemo in a couple of weeks - a stronger one. Stronger is good for killing cancer cells. Stronger is harsh on the rest of the body as the doctors do the best they can to seek the delicate balance between killing all the cancer cells and leaving the rest of the body in a place where it will be able to recover when the treatment ends.

Chemo II will be followed by radiation - the cancer is gone, but statistics say the long term survival rate is better when radiation is done anyways.

When she heals from the radiation, she'll finally be able to get her implants filled and replaced with the permanent ones. I remember those temporary implants. They feel a lot like someone stuck a shower curtain under your skin. It's a creepy kind of feeling - and I know she's not looking forward to the 5-6 month delay in getting them out of there.

Libby is coping with all of this by searching for the good things anyways. (It's the same coping method I used to get me through my cancer, and then Kate's.)

The delay between the chemo and the surgery which allowed the cancer to grow back is not all bad - if they'd done the surgery right away and the visible tumor cells were still gone, they could very well have missed the signs telling them how aggressive the beast is.

She was worried from the get-go about the other shoe dropping. Now it has, and she as she put it, now she has a matching pair of shoes.

Knowledge is power.

You can do this, Libby Elizabeth Leonard the last (in line, licking lollipops, late at night)!
One step at a time, you can do this.

New Beginnings III

Well, that job was fun while it lasted.

It was short term anyways, but disappeared a week before it was scheduled to - I'd finished the work they initially hired me to do.  There was talk about having me do further work, but the end customer lost their funding, and *poof*, it was gone.

I am grateful it lasted while it did - it got me through the last of winter,

Job hunting in the winter was hard(er).

I'd get up and do the job hunt part OK, but then, once I'd finished for the day (I've discovered I can only look for work half time...), I'd grab some lunch then look outside. It would be gray. Which means it must be time for a nap. I'd sleep for 30-45 minutes then wake up and gaze lazily out the window at the gray sky for a while. I'd finally get up, futz around for a bit, then look at the clock. Dang! It's three in the afternoon already. I can't start anything now, it's going to be dark in an hour!

So much for getting things done around the house.

I started looking for work again this past Friday, and the after-looking part of the day has gone much better. It's been unseasonably warm - climate change, anyone? But even though I KNOW sixty in February is not a good thing, and I'm worried about the long term implications, when I'm in the moment, it's hard to deny the joy that springs from my soul when I step outside and raise my face to the warmth of the sun.

I took advantage of the warm afternoons last week to clean winter's debris from my yard. I've made progress on my cabinets. I've been working on cleaning up the odds and ends in the corners of the house; the things that got put there, just for now, until I have a minute to get to them - and have been sitting there for six months. (It REALLY feels good to get those things knocked off the list.)

I haven't gotten any bites yet, but I've been diligent about looking for work. This soon after looking just last month, I'm finding it hard to press the submit button on the applications. My heart is convinced that they're just going to say no anyways, so why even try? I am discouraged. But I hit enter anyways - because if I don't, the right job won't have a chance to tell me yes.

The days are getting longer, winter is alllmmmoooossttt past. The cycle turns, and I am ever so grateful for the coming of spring.

Life Is!