I am feeding the hummingbirds, they can’t stop guzzling down the sweet water in the bright red strawberry feeder. I started out with three birds and now I see maybe 12. I think there are two different kinds and maybe some baby birds. I’m filling the feeder every two days now. I don’t know where they have been but the birds seem to remember this feeding place and buzzed around my face till I filled their strawberry. I love the humming sound of their wings and the iridescent colors of their feathers and how the colors change as they hover. Once in a while a hummingbird will turn and stare at my bedroom window as if checking in on me. They don’t have hummingbirds in Hawaii.
I went to a poetry reading tonight. I have tried and tried and tried and I hate any kind of reading. Ok, that is not true there is this guy Bill Kenower who I enjoy listening too but he gives more of motivational speeches early in the day. I hate to go out, I dislike small take, I smoke da kind and so get paranoid when people whose name I’ve remembered act like they don’t know me. Let me say it again I hate small talk, so instead I over talk, try to be honest and funny ( always a mistake grasshopper) and end up standing there red-faced. The bitch is I am 65 years old, shouldn’t I have this down by now?
I imagine a salon with good lighting and comfortable furniture. Everyone has a glass of something and that smell in the air is more than incense. There is music in the background, slow and low and hits a place in your body that drums to your beat. And at the right moment you hear someone speaking words that catch in your heart, it’s poetry.
Spring
Spring is slowly arriving in the Pacific Northwest. Tulips, daffodils and now some poppies have been spotted. The fruit trees put on their Easter finery and color has replaced grey. I sit and watch the hummingbirds consume mass quantities from the feeder and act like kids on a sugar high, chasing each other, dive bombing, never seeming to stop having fun. Sometimes I think I would like to come back as a bird. I would love to fly high, gliding with the wind. The ocean of my mind is calm right now and I tiptoe around grateful for the peace. I feel lucky that I have spring to remind me of new beginnings, how so much is possible. I know the queen mum is at peace and as I breathe into this moment, so am I.
Mourning
I had a grief attack yesterday. One moment I’m mopping the floor the next I see the queen mum’s pained face in front of me and that month before she died hits me between the eyes. I am surrounded in sadness. I feel so alone. Lonely, lost, lousy, little, loser, lonesome. L words rumble through my head. Tears create puddles on my face. I am all of those L words. I scream and cry, letting it all out. I try to find kinder L words to replace the one’s I feel. Laughter, living, lovely, looking, light, loose, lucky. Life. Soon maybe I will.
dream
I peaked into my mothers’ bedroom and listened as she quietly snored, I found the noise comforting. I couldn’t see her just a bundle under the covers, she would often stay in bed as long as possible. And then I remembered my mother isn’t in bed, she doesn’t have her apartment anymore, she is dead. I started crying, and then I woke up.
Letting Go
My father once said to me that I was like an old dog with a bone, I just wouldn’t let go. I guess he was right. Thirty years ago I fell in love with a man who broke up with me after three years together. Now I see our relationship was based on drugs, we spent many days high on some great LSD that we would chew every morning and see where it took us. The sex was good and I foolishly thought we were communicating with our lovemaking. He had been in Vietnam and wouldn’t discuss it with me. I believed I could understand what he went through but time has taught me that isn’t so. I used to worry that when the LSD ran out so would we and in some ways that was true it just took a couple of years and different drugs to figure that out. Even after we broke up I still loved him and I guess I still held hope. I kept all the love letters he had written and pictures of him and occasionally would take them out and look at them. Feeling the love.
After my mother died we started communicating and he was very sympathetic and supportive. He had married the woman who would call him up late at night while we were together. He always denied there was anything between them and decided it was time to explain why he broke up with me, I am so glad he did. In reading his version of what happened those many years ago and comparing it to what I remember I realize how little we really knew each other, how the trust was never there, how the support a relationship needs to survive did not exist. I threw away those love letters and got rid of his pictures and finally let go of that bone.
Sweetie and Grace
The queen mum loved my dog Sweetie and Sweetie loved the queen. I was surprised, as I thought Grace might be a bit of a dog snob having raised purebreds. Grace immediately saw what a great personality my dog had and it seems I had finally given her the grandchild she always wanted. Sweetie got Grace to walk around the block or take a walk on the beach at Port Hudson. I brought Sweetie to the nursing home to visit so the dog knew Grace was not well. The night my sister called to say mum was getting worse I jumped out of bed got dressed and Sweetie who never got up that late insisted on coming with me to the hospital. After the queen mum died I went every day to her apartment to deal with her things but Sweetie refused to come with me. The dog took to her bed and barely acknowledged me. I started telling her that she had turned into Grace, all she wanted to do was sleep and be left alone. This went on for over a month then slowly she started acting like her happy self again.
Boxes of love
I am still sifting through boxes of pictures, letters, cards, newspaper clippings that belonged to the queen mum. She kept every card her kids ever sent her. She kept a list of Christmas cards that she received and a list of cards she sent. In the past few years the list had gotten smaller and as I looked at her address book I noticed the scratched out names of friends that are gone. She kept everything that had anything to do with my brother Sean who died in 2000, his death broke her heart. So now I struggle with throwing away the pictures of the memorial gathering and remembrance book that his friends signed, the newspaper articles about his life, his obituary notice. It isn’t just his obits she kept but the one for her mother, her father, her two brothers with rosary cards in their honor. Who would I save these for? Who wants to know? Who would see these pieces of paper as treasures, touch stones to their past. History. As I throw these things away I feel I am not only throwing away my mother’s life but a part of my own. I am grateful we have memories, you don’t have to throw them away.
1969
I don’t want to call you “dude” or “peeps” or think of you as being “part of my hood.” I will never put a smiley face at the end of a sentence or a big red heart, and I am definitely not getting a tatoo. When I was young I lived on the north shore of Oahu one winter. Next door was a house full of surfers that lived on granola and LSD. There was an older guy who seemed to be their “guru” preaching peace, love and psychedelics. I had a hard time taking him seriously because of the playboy bunny tatoo on his arm. Right then I decided I didn’t ever want to make that kind of commitment. It was an exciting winter watching the boys surf pipeline then come home and ohm.
Yoga
I finally went to a yoga class this morning. After the queen mum died I bought a yoga class certificate (on sale) and told myself I was going to go as part of my “taking care of yourself” plan. It’s much easier for me to take care of someone else than myself, I think this is a challenge a lot of caregivers deal with. I set the alarm which I don’t often do so I wouldn’t have an excuse for not going (I’m good at excuses.) It was great as I haven’t taken the time to stretch and breathe in a while and I know how powerfully healing it can be. I used to do yin yoga which is basically stretches on the floor with lots of breathing and onetime as I stretched then relaxed and stretched again my body let go of an injury I had forgotten about. Our yoga teacher today reminded me of a willow tree, long and lean and limber but the best part is she seemed to appreciate that not all of us are willow trees.
The Buzzy Donahue Show 