Just Shy

 Eulogy (Just Shy)

just shy of a funeral for my boy

really, almost

      so close

so much blood

and pain

but we are planning a LIFE here

not a funeral

then why?

why do I breathe in grief

and every exhalation is

       heavy 

with bitter tears

my mouth stretched 

wide to ripping

behind frail hands

        covering 

airless screams

but we are planning a LIFE here

not a funeral

then why?

why do I hear a dirge 

and a keening ululation 

echoing in my newly

      emptied

eviscerated heart

as I lay to rest the boy 

that was before

      before

before he did THIS

selfishly I weep

as I bury that boy

the one who was

who came just shy

really, almost

      so close

so much blood

and pain

and then I turn to embrace

this stranger 

   with his face

with the path

this LIFE before him

that I never dreamed 

or imagined 

or wished

O, God

O, angels attend

as I bury my sweet boy

who is gone

there is room for his lifeless body 

here, in my heart

so much room now

and I then will turn to my son

who is left

who is living

scarred and scared

but alive

We are planning a LIFE here

not a funeral

Stuff

 It's pretty great cruising through the old posts of this blog. So much of the childhoods of my kids. Some of whom are not kids anymore.

My darling Birdie is "Sister Chaos" now, serving a Mission and sharing the Gospel of Christ in Texas. She turns twenty in a few days.... and I will not be making her a cake or a trifle or a Pavlova or anything. For some reason this punctuates how "gone" she is, in a way that didn't even hit when we did this past Thanksgiving and  Christmas without her.  Not gonna lie, I'm a little desolate over it.

My LaLa girl will be an adult (18) two weeks later, and she is graduated from homeschool and working at Target. She drives herself to work and back and takes her little brother to the dollar store as Birdie used to do for her. She's looking at a digital media program at a college down south, and we'll see if either of us survives it come August. A nearly four hour drive away. We shall see.

Sweet Pearl has a drivers license and a FaceTime interview this evening at a local ice cream shop. It will likely be her second job, her first one having been a seasonal gig packing books for shipping over the holidays. She is super private and I'm not allowed to hear her play or sing or be privy to anything she has written, but she WILL watch coming-of-age shows on Netflix with me. Thank you, I'll take it.

Henry is as thirteen as thirteen years old can be. Dude. I'm 5'8" tall and he's several inches taller than I. His voice is already quite deep and yet is STILL cracking and changing daily. He codes and designs games and laughs at the kinds of things that adolescent boys find funny. I wouldn't say he's Beavis and Butthead level, but it IS a bit of a thing.... I'd say the 13 year old dude watchword is "Random" or maybe even "Silly," but I would not rule out "Gross."

I'm working on resurrecting myself here... I find that after 20 years of squashing myself to fit the needs of a growing family and get my day to days, and priorities taken care of, that I cannot recall some portions of "me." I'm betting that some are gone for good and "don't let the door hitcha on the butt on the way out," but some of who I am I think I really need back. I have a few years to track that woman down before a serious crash, but track her down I must.

Brain Death

 When I was a teenager and into my early twenties, I thought, for reals, that adults were numb. Numb to joy AND to pain, just sort of floating through their infinitely dull lives of banal nothing-burgers. I watched them for signs of life and judged them to be barely breathing.

Welp.

Here I am an adult, mom to three teenage girls and one dude who turns thirteen this December... I turn fifty-two in one week... and I think I might DIE of feeling, freaking EVERYTHING. I literally cannot drive alone down the street without having to either mop up the tears from my face to put everything back in order, or stuff down the expression of horror on my face. How on earth did I think the grown ups around me were on auto-pilot to brain death?! Possibly the boundless selfishness of youth?

I am heartbroken.

None of this is what I thought it would be. 

I can barely move, I hurt so much.

Hosanna!!!

Yesterday and today was the bi-annual General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If it's your thing then you KNOW how amazing and satisfying the past few days have been... if not, then Imma keep that to myself... except. Just. Wow!

Hosanna!!

Also... a bunch of the young missionaries, as well as a married couple of the "senior" missionaries have all been sent home early from the mission fields. There are yet a few missionaries from our Ward stuck in the Ukraine and Peru, and some who are sheltering in place, but these Elders and Sisters who've been forced home have all come back in the past few weeks...

Usually we get to hear from each missionary upon their return, but Coronavirus. Today someone sent out a message on Facebook that we could all drive around the neighborhood honking and waving and calling out to the eight returned missionaries as they sat on their porch or stood in their yard. A time was chosen and signs of welcome and celebration were made with whatever paper or posterboard was on hand and the neighborhood lit UP!

Ya'll. It's almost ridiculous how much I needed that... to see and celebrate from a distance, the honking car horns and ringing bells and clamor of joy. My friends and neighbors and... everything we've been missing... y'know, from a distance!

Block!

Today.

Welp. 

It's Taco Tuesday and I decided that some Del Taco discount tacos are the way to go for dinner. Nevermind that one kid will only eat the burritos, the other kid will only eat a burger and the husband will only eat the fries.... it's Taco Tuesday dang it, and that's what we're calling what I got.

So there is a monster line... cuz "Coronavirus," and drive-thru is all that's available, and everyone likes to eat them some cheap tacos. The line is so long it actually cuts in front of one of the two entrances to the parking lot that serves the restaurant and the little strip mall next to it. I'm appalled at the dude in the black pick up just ahead of me who just pulls forward and blocks the entrance to the parking lot. 

Rude!

So I make sure to leave just enough room for a car to get in or out of the entrance and still be apparent that I'm next in line. Honestly? There are two more cars behind me, so it seems pretty much a no-brainer. I'm being polite.

Anyways, some jerk-head in a white truck pulls in off the street, he's moving slow and it sort of looks like he's gonna just get into the drive-thru line ahead of me, so I honk. Doesn't even look around, and sure enough blocks my way and just cuts the line. 

I just.

I cannot social-distance ENOUGH today. 

I also noticed that no one else behind me left a space after that. Blocked, baby, blocked!

Bug

Sooooo... Rented and streamed the newest movie version of Emma with the kids yesterday afternoon after all the school work was complete. It was delightful, although I'll admit the Mr. Knightly was not my all-time favorite Knightly. 

I literally wept for Emma and Miss Bates, both, at the Box-Hill debacle, and I don't think I've ever cried over any part of that particular Jane Austen tale in either book or movie format. It was just so bitter, her utter selfish fail. It broke my heart, I mean, I KNOW what that is like to feel slightly off and petulant and then to find that all your relationships have been tainted by one or two stupid things you did in a moment of pique.

Sometimes it seems that everything has gone dark. 

Yes, it WAS "badly done," but wow. Ouch. More than the reproof from her good friend or the social censure from the party in general, just knowing that you aren't the person you'd thought yourself all along? Bummer.

Perhaps I'm just weepy. Today I got the notification that my "Women on Weights" weight lifting class just got cancelled. I'd signed up for it a month early just so I'd FOR SURE have a place in the class. I can either get my money back or transfer to a class this September. I cried over that as well, but I guess I'll take the September class.

I think this is somehow the thing that has stung the most, and I'm not really sure why. I suspect it's just the cumulative of all the little losses together, it's obviously not that big a deal. 

Except... the freaking quarantine eating that I've been doing the past few weeks. Ugh. Looks like I'll just have to straighten up and eat right and figure out how to build some muscle on my own. In the middle of a quarantine, stressed to the gills, stuck right next to my kitchen 24/7.

Bug.

Transparency

I used to blog pretty regularly. I look back at it and it kinda blows me away that I was ever that transparent with the things that I thought and felt.

I assure you.... sometimes I'll lose my beans in a conversation and actually unpack some things that I think and feel, but that's the exceptional situation nowadays. There are reasons. Some of it's my fault, some of it's situational and some of it is frankly, cuz people are assholes.

Or perhaps it's cuz I'm the asshole.

Not actually proud of the fact that I've become so tightly zipped. In some ways it's a sign of cowardice.

Maybe I am a coward. 

But. 

I mean, I feel like I've taken a few hits lately. It's understandable that I'd be a little head-shy. 

Plus as a woman in her 50's, while I have a healthy respect for my own ability to think and put information and ideas together, I no longer consider myself as .... more "correct than most"? ... "right"... or even necessarily as "logic based"? as I once did. I have been wrong enough times, I have seen my own tribalism and bias enough times that I'm not in such a fat hurry to make statements and back them up to the death.

Plus given todays culture of ultra-tribalism and name calling... I'm too worn down to even bother most of the time. It exhausts me, the shredding of people I see so many indulging in online.

It's not all bad. A good portion of my blogging in the past was me thinking thoughts and having internal conversations while doing the more banal and mind-numbing parts of being a SAHM of young kids. Cuz really... kids can be entertaining, but they aren't what I'd call stimulating conversationalists. I have less of that kind of mind numbing scut work, and more of homeschooling conversations with teenagers and my one tween dude. Also thinking about homeschooling and DOING homeschooling. Not actually engaged in so much "boring stuff"nowadays.

But I do think about stuff.

Right now I'm thinking about mostly crummy stuff. Like how lonely I am. Like how I miss my walking buddies, my lunch buddies and my temple going buddies. I miss my sisters and my mom. Like how I'm stuck at my place of work for the rest of forever.... with Laundry and effing MATHS whispering little "your failing" sweet nothings in my ear. Constantly.

...and now with YARD WORK jumping in the mix. Last year I failed big time at the yard work thing. I may have killed my peach tree, most definitely I maimed it. I let it get over burdened with peaches and it nearly split in half. Several key branches simply buckled and sheared off. I can hardly look at it for the shame and sorrow of it all. I just cannot even with the garden boxes of endless burrs and sticker weeds. I'm tempted to Round Up nearly everything in that back corner and just start afresh next year.

But I'm also thinking about how much worse off we could be right now. I'm thinking about how much worse off so many people are, what with financial insecurity and health concerns and on and on. 

I am such a dreary schmuck.... I kinda hate myself right now.

I'mma post this anyway, and try again tomorrow.