Binding back again

My nephew and his young daughter arrive this evening for a four day stay.  I am very emotional at present.  It will be the first time we have met his daughter due to his family being a long way away.  On the other occasions when he has visited he came alone due to expense issues and now his dauther is growing she wonders why on one side both grandparents are not alive and not in the picture.  Those who follow my blog will know this estrangement theme is an ancestral pattern that goes back over 3 generations and I really feel this weekend we have a chance to bind back again what has been disconnected.  My older sister died in 2014 after a long time in a care home for acquired brain injury.  She only met her little grandaugher once.  On the last few visits where I sat with her (she was nearly always confined to bed in the final year) I would cry as she had a photo of her son, his wife and Lyra pinned to the wall very close to her head.  They spoke on the phone and pictures were sent.

I shared last week how resistant my Mum was to them coming.  I know now its due to complicated grief.   I visited Mum a short while ago and she had had a panic attack at 12 pm until 5 pm this morning.    I know we can panic when emotions that are under the surface are about to emerge.  Its as if the sea comes in, a huge ocean wave and we feel we may go under so we wrestle around when really we need to surrender.   I know this because in the past few weeks as I have been learning to relax and surrender my own resistances my own panic attacks or ancestral spirals have changed in character.  I cried alot today seeing my Mum only in her undwear to see how twisted about her body has become in old age.  She finally went to see the doctor this week about coming off her pain meds. They will reduce them slowly so she is not overwhelmed.  She seems more at peace this week with the knowledge that her grandson and great granddauther are visiting.  I am so glad I pushed for it.

I thought today of how much love there is in grief.  How fundamentally important our attachments are.  I was only 3 when my older sister married and left home.  I used to miss her a lot although I dont consciously remember it.  But I know I was impacted when I felt marriage had ‘stolen’ her away.  I feared my brother in law at that age.  He seemed like a dark force and in the end he did abandon my sister in her darkest hour.  The reasons why are complex.  My sister loved him deeply so she forgave.  She knew that perhaps what broke needed to break, its just that as the youngest I carried so much of the impact as when they returned to Australia I had a lot to do with them and her sons were close to me in age so more like my brothers than my older brother who was 16 when I was born.

Anyway for four days we will have them close to us.  I have some trinkets my late sister had in the care home I want to pass onto her granddaughter, as well as some beaded starfish she made at Daryl’s den, the creative enterprise that disabled members of her care home where taken to over the years she was resident there.  I also want to give her a photo and go shopping for a frame for it.   There is a binding back that wants to happen here.   I am just so glad that I am in a healthy enough mental space to be a part of it.   I am so grateful for my recovery, for without it there is no way I could be emotionally present for any of it.  I am sure ancestral spirits are watching.