I drove over to visit my sister this afternoon.. When I got there her room was empty and she was no where to be found I approached a nurse who told me she was out on leave.. That made my heart relieved.. It meant she is going out doing something…. and its a sign of life.. I took myself off to the center nearby where so often I took my older sister when she was alive.. Jude lived in a home for people with acquired brain injury from 2003 to her death in 2014… I used to visit her there often and sometimes as soon as I arrive to visit her she would look at me and say “let’s get out of here.” My sis was in a wheelchair and grew progressively heavier as time went on. There were a couple of times chair fell forward… Often as I wheeled her into the Jamison Center she would grab a free local paper and then it was off to the coffee shop or the chemist or newsagents if she needed something.
Today after getting my groceries the cafe we used go to was full, so I took myself off to another cafe.. While I sat there I thought of the re-arrangement that goes on in families when pivotal people we love die.. After Judith’s death Mum and my sister Sue and I were asked to attend a hospital memorial service for persons who died 3 months before. My living sister was hospitalised with chronic depression on the day of Jude’s funeral so she never made it there to grieve, in fact she was and out hospital a lot over the final years of Jude’s life even though at one point she visited a lot and tried to help her with her clothing. I was so glad for that memorial service, even if my sister and Mum shed no tears on the day, we were there together to honor my sister. This never happened after Dad’s death.
Driving home I shed a few tears listening to the version of “Glasgow (No Place Like Home)” by Jessie Buckley that I posted after watching the movie Wild Rose a few weeks ago. The words “lost in the storm”, and “I had to find my own way, make my own mistakes” resonated as I thought of how, so often, home is not a place but a person for us and of how many homes got torn away from me over the years.
Lately when I feel myself to be pulled all over the place I have to remember that I did not have much stability at all growing up, we moved when I was three and then when I was seven, and the house we moved to was not a home for a long time being under construction… and so much trauma hit there..after Dad died I was torn overseas and then, on my return, Mum remarried and there being no home for me with her I went to live in a nearby city.
I got quiet emotional to know my sister was out today, while part of me was glad, since Mum’s death she is no longer the fulcrum uniting us and we have struggled in our relationship to support each other and be close.. I know we are both very different but I wonder how it would be not to have the permanent worry of how she is hanging over my head at the same time as I miss how nice it can sometimes be to share time together when she is feeling better, even though I often feel a lot of anxiety or grief being with her.
Lately it seems God may have pulled so many of my existing relationships away from me, but the truth is I know those friends and family are there still loving me, but they are getting on with their own lives, just as they need to do.. At the moment I must confess to feeling a bit ‘lost’ at times. I orient my day around meals, walking Jasper, time in nature, the garden, self care and then trying to touch base through blogging… the thing is it would be better if I could just let go and relax.. I was reading last night about how our ego always strives for certainty, it can also build ‘drama’ around events.. In the book James Mcrae speaks of a girlfriend he had who took everything very lightly.. Unlike him, she would not get into an intense lather, or endlessly analyse everything to the nth degree. He said he gained a lot through the relationship, even though in time it ended..
I remember once my living sister saying to me well over 20 years ago.. “lighten up.” At that point it felt dismissive as there was so much I had not worked through but these days when heaviness descends I am more likely to look for the softening.. Just being able to cry those tears on the way home opened me to the reality that is okay to let go and just breathe and its fine to have my feelings and let them out. I sat with my inner child a while ago and asked her what is going on, she showed me how in a much older family I naturally just geared myself around everyone else, its at the point now that I see how much of my life has actually been reactionary rather than self generating and that is the old pattern I am being shown that needs to change.. I need to become more of an author and active generator of my own life..
That said I self generate my recovery and work on that everyday. Maybe at the moment I am opening to an awareness of what life might be if I were freed from the ‘family system’. I don’t know the answer and I don’t think its packing up and starting somewhere new, I have tried that before and often I just took my problems along but maybe over the next few months or next year I will be able to make some forays away for a time..
Maybe my sister will come good, she has the support of family and friends should she chose to ask for it, more than I do really.. Maybe its time for me to let go and stop worrying so much, but love for my sister, no matter what dramas of difficulties or challenges we had in the past is there.. at times like today it rises up and I move out to connect with her, but who knows maybe we are more connected in spirit. I don’t have any answers, taking my advice from James Mcrae maybe I am just better to rest in the fact of uncertainty and keep my heart open to what life wants to bring to me in the form life chooses to present it on any day… Today was a good day despite everything and I am grateful for this afternoon’s peace.
Emerging From The Dark Night 