I was hard to feel the love

I collected my sis from the hospital today following her breast cancer surgery on Tuesday last week. I cancelled my Monday therapy appointment which was a shame as I could have made it, they changed her discharge time from 10 am to 12 pm. I did gardening instead and had a great chat to my lovely neighbour who was outside playing with her daughter. My sister’s bag was heavy and she needed help to carry it up 4 flights of stairs to her apartment. We went then and had lunch and a great long chat.

I was sharing how yesterday I realised that I was seeing my brother through eyes of hurt rather than love. I was seeing recent challenges with him through my own self centred view. I realised after speaking to him on Sunday he has actually been scared that I may be being scammed by Scott. It was like all the air finally went out of my bubble of upset and I realised that my brother is just vulnerable and human and that he also hides himself away in work and being alone some of the time. I think the latest struggles bought up the fact that Dad came down hard on me after my accident and my oldest sisters breakdown and I told my sister I found it hard to think that my father had really loved me. It seemed to be hard for him to enter my reality.

Back in about June last year I had a breakthrough though, while sorting out Mum’s apartment following her death I came across a carved wooden box from Indonesia where Dad was stationed back in the late 1940s and early 1950s and inside it was a licence in a plastic folder. Tucked inside the folder was a picture of me aged 5 and Dutch Delft medallion with a windmill on it. I cannot explain the impact this had on me when I found it last year. I burst into tears then and now whenever I hold it close and see side by side to my photo the photo of my Dad with his smiling moon face I just dissolve in tears again as I feel the love flowing into my heart that my father found so hard to express to me or for me to feel.

I think for so many years I had walls of pain around my heart. If anything would go wrong in a relationship it just felt like death or like I was dying. I cannot really explain the feeling, just like falling through a deep void of outer space. I have had it with Scott so many times over the past 10 months of trying to get him off deployment. I was telling Sue that Scott asked me to apologise to my brother for getting angry about him not allowing the release of my inheritance in order to help him with the funds for his army exit registration.

I cannot really clearly articulate in this post what is going on at present but being able to be there for my sister is filling my heart with both love and pain. On the way back from lunch we went to the local supermarket where my Mum used to shop when she was still alive and Sue was served by the Spanish Lady who knew and loved my Mum, I heard my sister telling her she had just had her second cancer operation. The lady (whose name I do not know) eye’s just filled with tears. “I am coming to give you a hug,” she said. I could tell she was really affected that my sister who is grieving is undergoing this too after several hospitalisations last year for depression.

We left the supermarket and climbed the stairs to my sisters apartment inside the hotel that my brother built years ago and then sold off into units. I helped her to unpack her shopping. Then I left. In the hospital today I thought of the afternoon my mother died. I remembered how it felt to know her spirit had departed. Maybe she was close today. I just don’t know I think she would have been glad I was able to climb the same stairs she fell down all alone trying to carry a suitcase to take to my sister during an earlier hospitalisation back on 2013 or 2014 when I was unable to help due to my own fear. I still carry a lot of guilt about it. If I had helped my Mum that day she may not have fallen and she may not be dead now. Who knows. But today I was able to front up. Will my own cancer come back? It is a constant worry. For now I am safe and sound at home as the wind whips around. I am alive and grateful to be here, but I do miss the ones who have passed and whose love at times it was so hard to feel or open myself to receive. I do feel them around me now… so I imagine it and if so is imagination a mistake? I just don’t know. Life can be so random. We get to travel down the road and often don’t understand what it is we are experiencing or how or why we are reacting the way we do at the time. When early attachments have been difficult it can be a real struggle. Things happen in childhood and we have a certain perspective on them. But for now I would rather count the love. We spoke today of how as children we were supposed to be seen and not heard, we both identify with it being hard to ask for help. We share so much in common my sis and I but we are different too. In any case it was good to be able to there today. Well worth the cancelled therapy appointment that I will catch up with tomorrow afternoon.