Saturday, June 17, 2006

BLUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRR
Hi friends. Sorry I have been away. We had a death in the family and things just went to hell in a handbasket for a week and a half. I finally feel like I can put together more than one sentence at a time that might make sense to someone else AND to me. AND, more importantly, I finally feel like I can process a thought without tripping a breaker in my brain.

While I have been trying to help my family through the practical processes associated with death, life has gone on everywhere else. Goddess church happened without me, Harley had baseball, Har and Andrea had swim lessons, emails came and I ignored them until I can wrap my brain around the idea of answering them. Chelsea and Mike broke up, Ellen got laid off, Martin and Heather had both of their cars die, and I have to go to World's of Fun Monday with 8 high schoolers, then trek to the national UU conference for 6 days. I have every weekend but one scheduled with a meeting of some sort - many of them far, far away - until mid-October.

I am whirling in a sea of craziness, but none of it matters when you think about someone dropping over at age 50. I saw grown men - tough mechanic guys and race car drivers - crying and in shock about the loss of their friend. I stood at a visitation for 3 hours with a half-hearted smile on my face, talking to total strangers, while my family sobbed in the foyer with the minister who would perform the memorial service. I bit my lip and wept when we sang Amazing Grace, and tried not to think about my own sadness over the loss of my father, which is still incredibly fresh in my heart and mind although it has been five years that he has been gone. I told people to remember their mortality and to have a great life, hoping that they understood what I meant. It is so hard to really live your life like you could die tomorrow when we are so caught up in mundane bullshit that doesn't matter at all. We are overscheduled; over-connected by technology; inundated with messages that insist we should be doing more to be thin, well-invested, well-medicated, and living our lives in a responsible, environmentally-concerned, culturally-sensitive manner with time to talk to our kids about drugs and sexuality; have healthy intimate relationships; AND not go crazy while cramming work and self-care in on top of it.

I'll try to see you at FSB Monday night after I squeal my brains out at WOF with the high schoolers. Please don't call to see if I am OK. I am. We are. We just need the phones to stop ringing for one day so that we can have a second to collect our thoughts and restore our souls to some semblance of normalcy. Perhaps "normalcy" will be the return to the calendar slavedom that is my life without the constant reminder that we are mortal, and I really could drop over dead tomorrow. I guess that thing I said earlier about thoughts that make sense to others AND to me was premature. I gotta go flip the breaker back on.
posted by Rosie @ 6/17/2006 10:35:00 PM

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