Full Moon on the Rise

Robin states in a comment on a previous entry that there is nothing like looking at the blue New Mexico sky to lift one's spirits.  To which I'd like to add that watching the Full Cold Moon rise over the Sandias is pretty darned close.  The actual December full moon was on the fourth, but last night it was still immense, rising over the mountains, throwing its frosty light across the valley.  It's hard to concentrate on where the dog and I are going, because Ican't look at anything except that miraculous moonscape.  But last night, in the opposite direction, I discovered that the big Catholic church on the corner of Lomas and Tennessee was entirely adorned with luminarias...it's a truly huge church, built in the Mission style, lots of rooflines, porticos, strange little niches, all of which are now gleaming into the darkness with what must surely be electric luminarias.  So,there's much towards which to turn my vision, even after dark.  And today, for the first time since late October, I went for a good long walk all by myself.  I've been nervous and somewhat scared to do this, and our dog is too old, crippled and just plain goofy, to be of much practical value on a walk.  He can't see any better than I can, and he wouldn't scare a rabbit.  We are out of the deep freeze we were in for the past week and a half, so it was still warm in the sunshine, and I started at a small park in a beautiful residential area just below the mountains and walked for half an hour.  May not sound like much, but it's a big first step for me.  My eyes seem better to me, or else I'm just getting used to this level of vision.  I won't really know until next week, but I'm very hopeful.  I'm able to drive short distances, during the daylight also.  We are thinking of a day trip down to Bosque del Apache Wildlife Reserve near Socorro on Saturday, as the sandhill cranes have arrived for their winter sojourn.  Gail and I saw one on Sunday when we were walking at the Rio Grande Nature Center - it flew over the fields and headed towards the river.  Our friends who live not far from the Center in the North Valley say they saw them flying over their house all morning, in astounding numbers, crying as they went.

IMPROVEMENT TO REPORT

Once again I offer my gratitude for the kind comments left by friends on the previous entries.  They help more than you can know. 

I've been back home for about a month now, resting and healing.  This Tuesday was the first day I realized some real improvement in my vision.  And it occurs to me that I didn't previously mention that aspect of my disintegration...so, long story short:  Beginning in August when I returned from the first trip to RI, I experienced some loss of visual acuity.  I have terrible eyesight anyway, have been seriously nearsighted since I was seven years old, and have added difficulty with close vision as well as far, as I have grown older.  But this was something new.  A visit to the opthamologist brought the weird diagnosis of cornea damage due to copious crying of "toxic tears' in the weeks following my sister's death.  Apparently my tears of strong emotion are like bathing my eyes in acid, and I am an Olympic-level cryer at the best of times.  A second trip to the doctor earlier this month showed no improvement, not surprising, as I hadn't stopped crying at all.  After that visit, I realized I would have to find some other way of dealing with grief, crying myself blind was not an option I wanted to continue.  Thus, a month of meditation, Reiki healing, walks with my dog, cuddling on the couch with my cat, sleeping a lot, with a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday thrown in as a bonus.  Jamie and his family (Jamie is my partner's younger son) came from Denver, and grandchildren are the best therapy, I must say.  We also had friends andneighbors around the table, and the table was loaded with an amazing meal that I had spent the week before planning , shopping for, and cooking.  Cooking is also pretty good therapy.  Thanksgiving was the right holiday, as my Reiki practitioner advised me to do gratitude work, as part of my healing .

Right now we are in the throes of a winter storm that blew down from the Torthwest, yesterday bringing snow, wind and rapidly plunging temps.  The negative ions that acccompany a storm like this have raised my spirits enormously...it's the same feeling one gets walking by crashing waves at the shore - something I miss hugely, by the way.  But watching it snow on the mountains, the birds at my feeders, while I spent the day making turkey-tortilla soup with the carcass of the Thanksgiving bird, felt like such a great gift.  It was ELEVEN for a temperature just now when I walked the dog, but the precip is over, and the air smells clean and fresh, the New Mexico sun is back, shining on the snow, and both Honey (goofy old ocker spaniel) and I had a spring in our step.

So,  I have better days and worse days with my vision, but I am trying to look ahead, in every way, and to spend as much time looking at beauty as I can.  I think this may be what "I lift up my eyes to the mountains" may actually mean, and I am trying to do it whenever possible.  Next opthamology appointment is Dec. 13, two weeks to continue the healing.

Later, the same life

First of all I want to thank the friends who left comments on my last post;  It is so heartening to hear from you, to know you are still there, and to feel your sympathy and caring so strongly.  I am home now fromMy second stay in Rhode Island, which, though well-intentioned,  was a complete disaster, and ended up being much shorter than I had intended.  My mental health is fragile at the best of times, and two days of going through my sister's house with my niece was all it took for my sanity to unhook and sail away like an icefloe.If my darling sister Katy from Dallas hadn't come up and worked with us for the rest of that week and then practically carried me onto a plane, Lord knows what might have happened.   .  The grief, anguish, and guilt we all feel is so  magnified by our realization of the circumstances of Peggy's last years, the fact that she was living in such squalor and wretchedness without ever reaching out to us, even repudiating any of our efforts to reach in to her with love and aid is so unfathomable in every way.  My inability to stay on for the rest of the month and continue to help her kidswith the settling of things only adds to my guilt and disgust with myself.   Katy and I also both became physically very ill while we were there, in all probability from over a week spent in that mold-filled colddamp dreadful house, and it's going to take a good while to recover from the whole thing as best we can.   We actually managed to accomplish quite a lot in the short time we were there, and hopefully the kids will be able to carry on with only our long-distance help.  I hope it will be possible to get my niece and nephews out to either Texas or New Mexico to visit their aunts at some point during the winter holidays.  These are going to be very difficult months for all of us, and for me it is only being with my sisters and their kids, and our boys and their kids, that gives me any solace and comfort or peace. 

BRINGING YOU UP TO DATE

As usual, it's been a long long time between postings here.  And a very hard long long time it has been.  Early in August my niece in Rhode Island called me one night, and just from her "hello" I could tell she was calling with bad news.  She is the daughter of my sister Peggy, the third sister in my birth family of six siblings.  This sister was widowed quite young, with three very small children, whom she brought up alone, often in dire poverty, and increasingly in ill physical and mental health.  While I lived in New England I was able to stay close to her and the kids, helping them all out in any way I could.  When I left the area over eight years ago, she began to shut me out of her life, as she had her other siblings for some time. 

The kids, grown by this time, remained close to me, or at least two of them did.  One of my nephews is developmentally delayed, and it's hard to have much emotional closeness with him, especially from a distance.  The other two often visited us in Delaware, and my niece and I drove across the country to Texas together one summer several years ago. From time to time I would get word from them about disturbing developments in their mother's life, although I had to pry most information out of them.  She had tyrannized them into paranoid secrecy about everything concerning her life, and it was only when they felt at the end of their ropes dealing with it alone that they would tell me anything.  She was diagnosed with diabetes about twelve years ago, and last winter had a heart attack and a procedure to place shunts in her heart.  She had had half of one foot removed after serious infection, and had broken the knee on the other leg, and it never healed right, causing her to be in a wheel chair or on crutches, unable to continue the walking that had kept her semi-sane for many years.  During all this time, listening now to my niece and nephew talk about their childhoods and adolescences with her, I am convinced that she also suffered from bi-polar disease, increasingly more so as she got older. 

Back to the night in early August and my niece Jessica's phone call - she was calling to tell me that she and her brother Tom had found their mother in a glycemic coma (an event that had happened numerous times over the years, though usually they were able to revive her or call the EMTs who either revived her or took her to the ER where she was revived) from which they could not wake her.  She was taken to RI Hospital, and continued in a coma - by this time it had been four or five days - from which she could not be woken.  The doctors could not figure out why she remained in the coma, and insisted that it was just a waiting game, and soon she would surely wake up.  I flew to Baltimore, then drove up to RI with my youngest sister who lives in DC and her 8 year old daughter.  We were joined in RI after a few days by another sister, from Dallas.

After a week of watching at her bedside, talking to doctors (who appeared to be completely mystified by her case), my nephew suddenly remembered that maybe she had made a living will back in the winter when she'd had the heart procedure.  We trooped in for a meeting with her lawyer, to find that indeed she had done a medical POA as well as a durable POA.  She had a very specific DNR order written, which had already been extremely countermanded by the presence of breathing and feeding tubes, though by the time we found it she was breathing on her own.  Evidence of neurological damage was growing, and though the doctors still seemed utterly baffled, they acknowledged that they were not acting according to her wishes.  She had told her kids many times not to revive her, not to call for an ambulance, just to let her die, every time she had previously had such an episode.  After another week of waiting, watching her grow more and more agitated, though still not fully conscious or able to speak or see, the doctors agreed that her orders should be obeyed.  Once the IV insulin and the feeding tube were discontinued, and she was on only a morphine and atavan drip, she relaxed into a deep sleep, and died in ten hours (instead of the three days the medical staff had warned us it might take) holding Jessica's hand.  Her son Tom had been there with her all night, and my sister Rosie and I had been there the afternoon before he came in.  They had brought my other nephew, Charles, in to say goodbye that afternoon as well, once the tubes were removed and she was peaceful. 

I have always dreaded the loss of a sibling, and now it has come to pass.  This sister had estranged herself from the rest of us for many years, she was lost to us long before she actually died.  I did see her four years ago, but have had little contact after that.  Her life was a tragedy, and her death was the tragic outcome of it. 

All of us are now filled with not just the grief of losing a sister, or a mother, but the guilt of wondering how we could have helped her want to live, to take care of herself, how we could have reached her through the layers of depression and illness.  I stayed on to help the kids (I say kids, although they are really adults in their late twenties, early thirties) with her final arrangements and some other practical things.  There is so much that will have to be done to clean up the mess she left behind, in so many ways.  I'll be going back to RI probably the end of this month to help with it all. 

This will be very hard for me, as the past month has been.  Leaving our new home and life here, so soon after such a big move, with all its attendant stress and exhaustion.  My DC sister will help out financially, if I can help with time, and amongst us all we'll get it figured out.  Hopefully as quickly as possible, for the sakes of my niece and nephews.  I haven't been posting at The Blue Voice, either, and don't know if I even will return there.  I just can't find it in me to write about political and environmental subjects, while my family is in such grief and turmoil.  Of course I know it all still matters, but it will all go on without me.

Right now, since getting back from RI last week, I've been working as a paid staffer on Bill Richardson's re-election campaign, and Gail has been working for ACORN on voter registration.  It  will bring in a few dollars, to help with all the dollars that have flowed out in the past month while I've been away from home, travel expenses, motels, eating out, paying for groceries for my niece's household, and so on.  Those kids live on the thin edge financially, and my sister's estate is more bills than anything else - so these part-time jobs of a defined duration are a godsend. 

I just wanted to bring my online friends up to date on the events of my life, and let you know where I've been while I've not been online.  I don't read your journals or blogs, haven't for a long time,  for which I ask your forgiveness and patience.  Perhaps some day I will be back to a normal life - it seems like a very long time since it's been normal - and able to catch up with all of you.  I hope you are well, that your lives are "normal," and that for you "normal" means wonderful, or simply...good.  Thank you for all the love and friendship you have brought into my life.  At a time like this friends take on a whole new meaning.  I couldn't function without them, without you.  May the force be with you all.      Mary Ellen

LAVENDER HEALS BODY AND SOUL, THEY SAY

Very validating to have old friends respond to my previous post, and to know that the windmills are still turning, even if not very often. 

We've stopped trying to get everything on this house done here overnight, and have started to spend some time enjoying ourselves.  Last weekend both of Gail's sons and their families came from Denver for a visit.  It was exhausting, but delightful, to have those four little urchins around the house.  I hope to get some pictures into this entry later. 

Then, today - a gorgeous perfect day, washed by last night's furious rain, cool but sunny, blue skies with heaps of white clouds around the edges, the mountains clear and crisp in the distance -  we went out to The Village of Los Ranchos for the Lavender Festival.  We spend most of the day out there, going from venue to venue on the provided shuttle.  Arts and crafts (Gail bought me a beautiful silver bead as an early birthday present), plants galore, great food, lavender lavender lavender.  Lavender soap, cookies, lemonade, sangria, cookbooks, lotion, essential oil, ad infinitum. At Los Poblanos Ranch we were able to cut our own bunch of lavandula grosso and bring it home.  I would have loved to cut lavender all day, it was so heavenly out there among the plants - the smells, the bees and butterflies. Los Poblanos is a place that merits a post all its own, and maybe someday I'll do one.  Suffice it for now to say that I think it may just possibly be heaven. Having so much fun today has worn me slap out, and I think a tall glass of iced tea and a long nap are what comes next here.

(And, Paulette, I just want you to know there was a group of Red Hat ladies at the festival, often in the same place at the same time as we were - and they were having an absolutely illegal amount of fun!  No wonder you are into this!)

A VOICE FROM OUTER SPACE

At least that's how I feel.  Lost in space perhaps.  A friend just emailed me that this journal was gone, no longer available.  And I found that broke my heart... so I came to see if it was true.  Is it?  Is there anyone anywhere who can still access it?  Besides me?

Re the previous entry about putting my books on halfbooks.com, it happened and then it was over.  I only sold five or six books that way, then we had a book sale, as part of the six yard sales we had before moving.  The books that didn't sell that way were donated to the Lewes Library, and they were very happy to have them.   So, that felt good.

We've made the move, the hellacious drive across the country in two vehicles, me driving a twenty-six foot Penske truck, Gail in the Toyota Matrix with all three animals.  I'm just glad we didn't decide to move to California!  New Mexico was quite far enough.  Maybe a little too far.  The last day's driving was done on sheer willpower.  We've been here almost three weeks now, unpacking, looking at replacement furniture for that which we sold pre leaving Delaware, having work done on the house in order to make it our house, just trying to adjust to such a new altitude and climate.

To add Scylla to Charibdis, yesterday I had the first serious car accident of my long life.  A woman ran her stop sign and broadsided me on my side of the car, the driver's side.  I was fortunate to emerge with only shock, cracked ribs and chest contusions, as well as wildly elevated blood pressure and fury.  But it adds another layer of crap to deal with, insurance and car rental, collision people dragging the car away - and in all probability, looking for and buying a new car.  The poor little Matrix looks like it's totalled to me, thought we'll have to wait for the official opinion.

I don't have the time for much researched posting on The Blue Voice right now, so perhaps I'll be back here, just writing from my life, for a while.  If anyone reads, that's good.  If not, it's still an outlet. 

MARIGOLDS GOES COMMERCIAL! SORT OF.

In the extremely unlikely event that anyone out there is still reading this journal, I salute thee.  And want to let any journal friends (former journal friends?) know that we are in the throes of sorting and reaming and packing out this big old Delaware farmhouse, in preparation for moving to a slightly-less-old adobe house in the East Valley, in Albuquerque, NM.  In order not to have the 79 boxes of books we moved here from Massachusetts eight years ago, I am putting some that we can bear to part with on eBay, for sale.  As AOL has already turned Journals into advertising space, I thought I'd just play right along.  If you'd like to see what we have for sale, come visit my "shop" on eBay:  Maisie743. 

Selling books is really hard for me, and selling them to friends would make it all easier.  I will be listing more as we go through them; it's an ongoing process, so check back in from time to time.