I am working on getting rid of stuff that belonged to the queen mum today. It always makes me emotional and today angry. I believe what happened at the nursing home has traumatized me, and I still wear my grief like a second skin. Today I am looking through the stuff that was in her desk. Everything we could never find so we bought another was in that drawer. Now I have 4 staplers, 3 measuring tapes, 6 pairs of scissors and more pens that I want to count, and push pins and rubber bands and on and on it goes. I have had a couple of people give me suggestions on getting a job. Like I don’t know to look in the newspaper, I hate it when someones suggests the obvious to me. In my heart I know these suggestions come from a place of love and yet it makes me mad because neither one of them has worked a low paying job in forty years. They have no idea what it is like being an itinerant worker these days. I was so surprised how cruel women can be in the workplace. I still have no idea why they didn’t like me and decided to make my working life miserable, no sisterhood working there. And don’t get me started about ageism in the workplace. I see another box to go through, it looks like kitchen stuff, oh good just want I need another potato peeler.
Help Me
There was a big black fly banging on the window today, acting like he wanted to get out. So I opened the window, all he had to do was go over to it. But he didn’t, he just kept whacking his head on the opposite side. I would think he could smell or feel the fresh air and gravitate towards it. No, he just kept flying around in the opposite corner. I use my hand to try to lead him towards freedom, instead he panics and flies even father away from the open window. I feel like I’m doing the same thing. I want to be happy and support myself doing something I care about and not worry about being in the corner but I’m so focused on where I am that I can’t see that the window is open and all I have to do is fly.
Where did it go?
I’m having a hard time liking the world right now. When I say world I mean people, not anyone specific just people in general. I have this bad habit of reading the dailymail on the internet. The queen mum would have called it “a penny dreadful.” It gives me the worst news possible along side of pictures of Bruce Jenner’s new fingernail polish. It shows me ISIS brutality in detail and then I get to see Kim Kadashian’s butt. We are all mourning Spock on Facebook while a blogger Dr. Avijit Roy was hacked to death in Bangladesh is not even mentioned. The full color picture of his bloodied wife standing over his body while onlookers stand by is shocking but they are not reality stars. What the hell has happened? When did sensationalism and cruelty knock out compassion and peace? I feel like the world has gone crazy. I hardly know anyone who seems happy, do you?
Today is my birthday
Yes, I was born on 2/22/1950 in Washington D.C. on George Washington’s birthday. My mother Grace played cards (was it canasta) with my dad Tom and his parents until they insisted she go to the hospital. At the hospital they knocked her out and got out the thongs (I can still feel the dent on the side of my head) and pulled me out. I have a feeling I wanted to stay inside. Grace woke up and said that was fun let’s have another. Grace loved babies. Kids; not so much. I used to be a holiday. George Washington’s’ birthday was a national holiday, no school. I loved that, it made me feel special. I can remember as a kid trying to imagine what it would be like in the year 2000, I couldn’t. And now here I am in the year 2015 at the age of 65, with still so much to see, so much to do.
Thursday
It is one of those rainy grey days. I stay home in comfy clothes and begin again to throw the queen mum’s life away. Yesterday marked two months since she died. The last couple of weeks have been hard, lots of crying and sadness. I stopped looking through boxes, I needed a break from the daily reminder that she is gone. I feel so alone. I don’t know where I belong. I don’t know what to do. Who am I now? What do I need? Feeling closer to the end then the beginning, working on making peace with that. Reinventing, revitalizing, remembering. Today I tossed away fifteen years of calendars that Grace used as a diary, noting birthdays, telephone calls, parties, fights and bills paid. For a moment I want to stop and read what she wrote for every day of every month of every year. I resist and drop them in the garbage bag. I sift through a box of video tapes that cause my nose to itch from the faint moldy smell held in the box and wonder if anybody still uses VHS. I think that is enough for today.
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.
Riding the wave
My grief reminds me of waves, sometimes it just laps quietly at the shore and then without warning big swells of loneliness twist my heart. I ride the wave. I fall and crash and gasp for air not wanting to drown. Life and death swirl around me, I can almost touch it.
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
While 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 Buzzy Donahue Show 