Category: Uncategorized

Waiting

I walked into the holistic health office and 4 young people smile at me, their faces full of joy. I try to smile back. I wish I could put on the big fat I can take it smile, but it’s just not there. Mourning sucks all the joy out and fills the empty spaces with sadness. I honor my grief because when the mourning quiets down I know I will be better for it. I will find my joy.

Stirring the pot

I love to just push buttons and see what happens. That is why I now have a headless picture up of Grace and Rolly. The irony is that if Grace had taken this picture it would be headless. She was famous for not getting the head of her subject in the frame. We finally figured out it was because when she pushed the button on the camera she would bend her knees and lose the image in the frame.

Kissing

Scan Scan 3While looking through the photo  history of Captain Rolly and Amazing Grace I  noticed that they have a nice collection of kissing pictures. Kissing in celebration.  I love to kiss. I like to tell stories with my tongue. Unfortunately I have not had a partner who felt the same and I have no collection of kissing pictures. I think that is an error in judgement on my part (I love clichés). Maybe I should spend the rest of my life looking for kisses;  and hugs. A friend told me she heard we would be much happier if we got 8 six second hugs a day. Hugs help relieve stress,  I think kissing does too.

Captain Rolly and Grace

I went through a box of pictures I found in the queen mum’s storage today. Pictures of her life with her second husband Captain Rolly. I love pictures and I find it hard to throw them away. I feel like I’m throwing away not only my mum’s life but now her husbands. The Captain was a dapper sea dog and he and Grace look good together. Most of the pictures record their life on Maui where they lived on their trimaran Amazing Grace. There are many pictures of them at weddings, some of the people I recognize but not all. I had suggested that Grace come to Maui when I visited her in Washington DC where she lived after she divorced my father. It was one of my better ideas. Grace blossomed on Maui and before long found her mate Rolly. You can tell from the pictures how happy they both were, those are not phony smiles I’m looking at. They knew how to enjoy life. I think that is a gift. It helps to remember how much love they had for each other instead of the sadness I feel as I throw their lives away.

The night Captain Rolly proposed to Grace at the Pioneer Inn in Lahaina.
The night Captain Rolly proposed to Grace at the Pioneer Inn in Lahaina.

Monday

I cleaned out the queen mum’s purse today. I had bought her a new one for her birthday but she never got to use it. I thought about taking a picture of all the things inside the purse. Is that morbid? I hate purses. I don’t like to carrying anything with me. Mum was a lady so she had her compact, lipstick, hairbrush, reading glasses, wallet, sunglasses, breath mints, all the necessities a lady needs.  I applied for a job writing for an online site and was rejected. I felt it in my chest immediately, just for a second. The fog is floating through the trees on this balmy winter morning and I can hear hummingbirds whizzing by their feeder.

Sunday Dog

Driving into town this morning, a medium size retriever mutt dog comes barreling down a side street right in front of me and proceeds to run down the middle of the road. I had slowed down but the person behind me just beeped their horn. I pull over to the side and opened the back door, calling to the dog. Big old puppy dog with muddy paws jumps in the back seat wagging her tail like she has been waiting for me. Lucky for both of us the animal shelter would be open in a half hour. I get an espresso to go and the dogs (Sweetie was with me) get a biscuit. No tags, no chip on the runaway. It’s a good day for me as the dog is safe and Sweetie is happy that she is still “an only child”. We seem to find a dog or two about once a year since I’ve been in Port Townsend.

Hitchhiking

All types of people hitchhike on the Big Island; public transportation is limited and the price of renting a car is steep. You see them just off the airplane in their mainland clothes overdressed, suitcase in one hand and their thumb in the air. Young mothers holding their baby in one arm and groceries in the other standing in the hot sun. We even have a lady who hitchhikes with her goat and often men hold a six-pack of beer as incentive to pull over.

One time while driving to Pahoa I noticed a woman with three kids and a dog waiting for a ride. “Please dear God, let them be gone before I come back this way”. I do my errands and make my way back home and yes there they are just waiting for me to stop, nothing like the smell of wet dog in a cramped car. I pull over and they climb in.

Mom is a classic Big Island wild woman called White Feather who needs to go to Kehena Beach to find some lady who makes natural futon bedding, they are on a mission. It isn’t where I am going but it is still raining so I drive them to the beach. My reward is an invite to a great Halloween party. Most of the time when I pick up someone hitchhiking it isn’t so rewarding. They will get in the car and the first thing I notice is how bad they smell. I know that we all sweat when it is hot but this is more than that, this is a lack of hygiene in a serious way. When I finally get them to their destination they depart but their odor stays in the car haunting me.

I guess I expect too much of hitchhikers. I think that once I’ve taken the time to stop and invite them into my car that as we drive to our destination it’s a good time to make conversation, maybe make a new friend. I’m lucky if I can get them to tell me where they want me to drop them off, before they stare out the window without saying another word. Hitchhikers don’t seem to do small talk. Sometimes I want to say to my traveling companions “ Maybe the reason you have such a hard time getting a ride is because you stink.”

I hadn’t picked up hitchhikers for a long time after a bad experience on Kauai. I had gone over there to scout for a location for my wedding. My boyfriend was working on a cruise ship and I decided to walk down to the harbor to meet him. I was in love; here to have an adventure on this beautiful island, the sun was shining.  A local man stopped and asked if I wanted a ride and I said sure and jumped in. The next thing I notice is he is no longer going down hill but back up towards a sugar cane field. Then it hit me like a brick wall, really I saw a brick wall in front of my face and I realized he wanted to do me harm. This is what went through my head;  “I’ve given it away a hundred times but you are going to have to kill me before I’ll have sex with you.” He stopped in the field and we started to struggle, he had a knife and I just kept screaming and fighting him like a little girl no instinct to poke his eyes or kick him in the balls. Finally he stopped humping me and I got the door open and started to run, here is the weird part he called after me that I had forgotten my flip flops that had fallen off as we struggled. I just kept running. It took me years before I felt comfortable trusting strangers because all I kept thinking is I can’t tell the good guys from the bad.

I hear the goddess Pele has been known to hitchhike. She takes the form of an old woman dressed in white with a small dog waiting on the side of the road. Pele has a temper so it’s a good idea to take her where she wants to go and if she doesn’t want to talk that’s okay with me.

Meltdown #1

For 57 days my life was an emotional rollercoaster. I was running a marathon in my head and couldn’t stop. The only way I slept was if I self-medicated which lasted for six hours. I need eight hours to function. My emotional stress was constant. It was exhausting. I knew I needed to slow down and take care of myself and I also knew I needed to play this pain out. I had to be as close as I could get to my authentic self or this grief would come back to haunt me. I don’t want to live with pain like that anymore; there is too little time. Nothing like death to remind you to live.

I slowly started doing things to relax. I went and soaked in a hot tub for an hour and let my pain seep into the warm salt water. It really helped as I use water to find my self when it has run away. I love water, it heals me.

During this hurricane of hurt I had a few emotional breakdowns. Once after waiting 20 minutes on the phone to cancel a subscription of my mums’ I let loose on the operator about the fact that mum had two subscription for the same thing as the constant barrage of renewal notices had caused her to pay twice. “Surely you could see that it was the same person at the same address getting the same information.” One of mums’ fears was dementia, so she would get too embarrassed when she would make any kind of accounting mistake. In the six years I was around I watched her keep charge of her banking and medical issues plus a plethora of medicines. I couldn’t have done it. There I was screaming at this man on the phone, crying hysterically about how mean it was to take advantage of the elderly and then in the middle of it I hung up without “officially” cancelling her subscription. I wonder how often this has happened to operators?

Grief

I sometimes feel I am wearing my grief. It hangs over my head and slips down my face and pushes on my shoulders. Can you see it? Can you tell? I think I can see it on other faces. The ones who forgot to brush their hair or put on a smile. I wish that we still worn black arm bands to let the world know, don’t look too close, don’t expect too much, don’t mind my tears.