What this week held for me in spades.
I am thinking of the example of the older people at the Y. The women and men in the therapy pool and locker room who, while they’re out exercising, are in very poor health. Those were choices they made all life-long. The older man who was their age or older, very fit, having a very different life experience in the same facility.
I am haunted by my mother. It’s just the way it is and has been. Why is that?
Yesterday we stopped by their house on the way to Canada. I bought them what’s called a Day Clock. In very large letters, it displays the day, the date and time. It’s very helpful and common for people with dementia or aging of any kind. They were over-the-moon excited about it.
Somehow, I have no idea how, my mom started talking about Mt. Hood. She made the comment: “You can only get about eight people on the top of the summit.” I was stunned. Maybe every few years, somehow this other part of her life gets brought up. Like, she used to climb mountains. And then she just stopped. We had almost no exposure to that type of living growing up and now, here she is, agin herself and with a not healthy aging second husband.
So this haunts me. I talked at length about this with Kay.
In summary this week?
My mom chose a life of living more in the therapy pool. She is not the healthy one, in many ways, striding into the gym, feeling good and getting out. In fact, the man that was healthy, his wife isn’t as healthy and he is staying in shape. He isn’t declining or stopping doing what he loves because his wife isn’t as healthy. He still is living his life.
So as I process this, I need to someone isolate the things that I appreciate about my mom, things that I admire about her and can emulate or appreciate. And then I need to move on and live my life. I need to live the life I think she would have lived had she not gotten trapped in a dark system of religious patriarchy.
She and her sisters were all damaged growing up in a dysfunctional home. They all looked for a way out. They all chose men as a way out and all of them essentially ended in divorce. My mom stayed with my dad but he could have been the worst of them all. So it didn’t work as a way to escape.
You need to develop yourself, your own life, your own strength. You need to be resilient. You need to have an identity.
So as I’m skiing today, I need to live into myself and continue to grow and expand. I can’t continue to be haunted and give this much headspace to the nightmare of my parent’s lives and families. I have to move on.
*****
I found myself unable to be present even while I was skiing.
On one of the chairlift rides, I closed my eyes and started listening to my surroundings. I reconnected with my senses other than my thinking mind (which was whirling). I listened to the dim voices of people skiing below me. I heard the light wind. Mainly, I heard the stillness over those sounds and the slight creaking of the chair lift.
Then I started tapping my legs gently, back and forth. Left, right, left, right.
After quite a while of this, maybe five minutes, I started to calm and felt myself enter my body again. I felt the craziness in my mind dim and then disappear. I felt myself once again in the present.
I spent the day skiing and exploring the mountain and various runs. I told myself to be strong and to explore. I reminded myself I had nothing to be afraid of.
The strongest sense on the chair lift was that the mountain is my home. I am safe. The mountain is bigger than the people in my life. I am safe and I am strong and I am capable of strong decisions and actions.
*****
We spent the rest of the weekend at the lodge and outside. We had fun in the hot tub. I found the sauna. We ate in the town. We went on walks down to the town and back. We hung out with the puppers. We hung out in the great room at the lodge. We kept the fire going. We easily found intimacy even as there has been nothing easy about this part of our life, my life.
It seems I’m losing so many old ways of being. The last session w/ Kay made so much sense about expanding your window of tolerance and gaining integrity in how your mind daily works.
I feel like the confusion I’ve experienced for decades with how I think and process life is fading away. I feel calm. I feel less need for extreme swings. I’m focusing on goals and getting things done. I’m not taking naps. I’m feeling stronger.
I still am recovering from this accident and dealing with my hip and low back. This month we’ve already spent $700 on doctor’s bills. It isn’t going to last forever, and I hope we can then save some money and feel less pinched.
I’m grateful we can pay for it though. I’m grateful I’m getting to the bottom of things with my health. I just am amazed things are actually getting better in deep ways, going into my core of how I process life and live, not just my body.
*****
My one sadness right now is the person who offended me last week and how this will fall out for that person. It’s hard to believe it happened. It’s hard to believe that this wonderfully loyal and caring person had this weakness. I’m naive. I have a lot to learn.
Rossland, BC