Grieving for my parents

So much pain and forgiveness towards my parents flowed out in tears at the end of therapy today reading the final paragraph of my recent post on the sun and the moon and the long journey of recovery to face buried carried multi-generational feeling made me feel how many defenses my parents had to erect and also revealed the sadness of how hard two young kids who survived World Wars and the depression struggled to live and make a life for their children.. I am mindful too that the anniversary of my father’s cancer diagnosis is close and so is my Mum’s birthday so in that context too, my tears make sense today.

Looking at a photo of my living sister I downloaded from my phone yesterday on the computer last night taken on her birthday this year I felt so sad too and started to cry.. I saw that the front my sister so often put on belied the tenderness and gentleness of the little girl inside of her.. I felt sad for her last night in so many ways and wonder what state she is going to be in after this last hospitalisation.. the thought of that terrifies me as the holocausting of ongoing drugs and ECT really had hurt her so so badly, that was so so apparent in the earlier part of the year when she once again struggled to live and come alive.

I can feel that love now.. I can let it flow out, I know how fucking tough my life was, it was crippling, two times I nearly died, I got cut, burnt, an arm pulled out of my socket, left alone, never loved with actions and hugs but only with money and then there was the years of trauma when it all began to fall apart starting with my accident and Judy’s bleed.. so so much pain and problems as Pluto in Scorpio began to hit all of my Aquarian planets from 1 degrees to 18 degrees..

The one thing I have to tell of it is this blog..It will be my surviving testament, even when others tried to silence me I did not let them, even as they tried to make me feel guilty for sharing my experience I still shared it. Not that I have monopoly on truth only my truth.. And I am with Alain De Botton when he, in the talk on Pessimism gets that audience to sing along with Elton John’s song, Sad Songs.. “sad songs say so much”

Sadly often the younger generation and our society may prefer the elderly die alone and with out being able to give voice to the truth of their stories.. I am glad I got to hear those stories my Mum told me, so much in the later years. I am glad I at least go to know some of the pain, insecurity and aloneness she felt and to know she was made of such strong stuff.

For my Dad I feel sadder he was softer and so he could not speak of a lot, my living sister is a lot like that, a soft kind person deep within, even if her own defenses at times made her critical, the sister I know and love is deep I pray for her every single day..I love her but these days its a loving from afar.

One day I may have the courage to go into that killing system she is trapped inside but for now, I cannot..it terrifies me, it horrifies me, it really really scares me on so many levels and maybe that too is why so often I cry all of those tears of powerlessness. For I am not a God, only one simple fallible human… one who chooses to feel rather than turn away from feeling.. one that owes her life also to the two parents who tried so hard to make the lives of their children ‘better’ as the also passed on so many of their own adult child wounds. But one who also knows that I have no power at all over another human beings choices, only over my own.. Its not an easy truth to take on board and it makes me sad.. It really truly does.