Mother Love

In recent years my mother has developed a series of complicated heart problems, the least of which has been heart disease. She's had many many procedures and tests as well as a cardiac defibrilator implanted. It goes without saying that all of these things have had a dramatic impact on her daily functions and quality of life. For years my mother has run circles around my sisters and I. She could always accomplish things, she always got things done! And for the last four years it seems as though her life has become one long list of things she'd like to get done.

Tomorrow morning at 8:00 am she'll have open heart, valve replacement surgery. It's made us more than a little bit nervous but we're very hopeful that it will be what she needs in order to resume a somewhat normal existence again.

With that being said, this post is in loving tribute to my always loving, less than normal, extremely wonderful and mostly adorable mother, Jennie.

My earliest memories of my mother begin when I was about 18 months old. (These are not recovered, associative memories, they're real. I have an almost photographic, uncanny long term memory that quite literally begins when I was a year and a half old). My memories are distinct and clear. My mother was always there. She held my hand, styled my hair, polished my nails, read stories to me, played games with me, held me in her lap, carried me in her arms, and administered more love and compassion than any child could have asked for. She has taught school for 30 years and is in my opinion, the only reason that my overly ADD ass made it through school. She taught me how to find main ideas, important points in texts, she taught me how to count dots on numbers and multiply without memorizing. She is the reason I love Valentine's Day and Easter. And she's been my greatest supporter for all of my life. She never bragged on me or critiqued me. She watched me with loving kindness and never stood in judgement. She didn't put me up to competition, enter me in beauty pageants or demand that I ever win at anything. She always told me that she didn't have to win anyone's approval of me. She loved me entirely for who I was - and I'll be damned if that didn't turn out to be enough! She's the reason I'm not sitting here today at 32 years old, wondering what I have to do to gain my mother's respect or love. I knew all of my life that I was loved... I've never had to look further than my mother to find all of the guidance, reassurance and protection that I've ever needed.

I am lucky to not only be her daughter but to be one of the three Gariepy girls who will know complete misery and misfortune when she leaves this Earth. I can't conceive that there is another woman who may be as mourned or as missed as she will be (years and years from now) when she leaves. How lucky am I that I get to love her so?

Shine a Light

This post is going to be a confession of sorts... A brutal, but truthful confession of what I've discovered to be very real about Heather.

The last couple of years have been an inward journey for me. I've confronted many of my weaknesses and stared down what I've come to dislike about myself. I've been determined to work on all the things I had decided were wrong with me. I've confronted deamons, excommunicated toxic people, worked on building patience, tried harder to keep time committments, tried to be less of a control freak and know-it-all, and I've even stopped verbally assaulting unsuspecting morons (in most cases). I've been consumed for years and years with what was wrong with me and have neglected to identify what was right with me and impove upon THAT. And today it hit me - instead of working like a plumber to fix all that was broken in me - perhaps I should have spent a little time expanding upon what was good, improving on what's right, shining brighter what was light inside of me. And then I had the horrible realization that I couldn't proudly exclaim very many things about myself that I actually liked. It was a painful, very private and dismal moment that solidified a lump in my throat and it made me as sad as I have ever been. Even as I type this I find that lump very difficult to swallow.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke to a lady on the telephone who blurted out to me that she had been raped four years earlier. I didn't know her, we had never met and I was trying to discuss life insurance options with her when she awkwardly fumbled through the utterance as though she were confessing. I was unsure of what to say or how to advise her. And so I simply stated "It gets better. I swear on my life, it gets better. It won't always be this hard." She burst open like a damn, spilling out her grief and life's burdens. She was estranged from her only son and hadn't been able to get her life back together since the rape occurred. I sat there on the phone listening, remembering what it was like to wear those scars so boldly, so crazy. Even though our lives were not at all similar, I felt as though I was listening to a part of myself. I was absorbing the sounds of this broken woman, wondering all the while what in the world I would say to her when or if she ever finished spilling her words. She finally stopped talking and when she did I could tell immediately that she regretted it and wanted desperately to get off the phone. I let her go politely and then hid myself in the restroom at work and sobbed. I prayed for her and I prayed for myself - that all of us broken girls would get it together one day. I prayed I had been what she needed that day. I prayed that I never sounded quite so broken as she did. And I prayed that there really was a hell and that her attacker would quickly go to it.

I confess that after 17 years I still have no idea how to cope with the loss of my... whatever it is I lost that day. I can't identify what's missing and I can't tell you how I know it's not there anymore. It just isn't. But when I swallowed my self loathing today I can tell you I got a little of it back. I'm putting down the book of "What's Broken in Heather". I don't want to wear wounds or self pity any longer. No more internal conversations regarding what needs to be fixed. None of us are perfect. Most of us are extremely flawed... But I think that's what makes the best that's in us shine that much brighter. I can't keep trying to cover up and make up for what's not right with me. I have to find what's good and make it even better. And unless I start looking, how am I to find it???

Balls the size of Texas

     The older I get, the more convinced I become that I'm really not half as smart as I thought I was. I use to think I knew stuff but come to find out - I don't. I know a little bit about a lot of things but I dont' know a whole lot about very much. But I do know that people who join the United States Military have balls the size of Texas. I realize that they're not all the most amazing people on Earth and that they're human, just like the rest of us. But they commit to a job that I can't honestly tell you I myself would do if the pay were actually worth it. So with that being said I'd like to elaborate on something that I'm not sure I know that much about: the assassination of Osama Bin Laden...

     I don't have all of the details because I've been too tired and busy to absorb them, but I know that that terror of a terrorist is dead and that no elected official is responsible. I know that I despised George W. Bush as a president just as much as I despise Barack Obama. In my humble opinion neither of them is worth a shit as a human or as a president. Therefore I don't feel bad about saying that neither administration deserves much credit for doing anything about ridding the world of terrorists. GW got us into a costly war based on WoMD spook stories and Obama hasn't been in office long enough to do anything except scare me with tales of tax spooks. But everyone seems to have an opinion hell bent on a political victory of some sort. And all the posts and pictures and flyers and banners and propoganda in the world won't convince me that Obama killed Osama or vice versa. I'm not really a conspiracy theorist but I theorize there might be a conspiracy brewing. A conspiracy against good common sense and decency. And when Facebook battles brew over petty politics it only serves to disregard the truth. Claiming that Bush or Obama either one is responsible for the jobs our service men and women carry out is a slap in the face to every one of them who have died a world away from home in defense of our very right to disregard them. And the last time I checked, neither of the Presidents had jumped from a helicopter to storm a fortress and take down a mass murderer. They much prefer the comforts of mansions and proceeds from poorly written biographies. 

     These days I'm not really sure of what I know or what I don't know. But one thing I hope to always know, is gratitude. Gratitude for the 8 veterans in my family and for the millions of others who have served and continue to serve in our Armed Forces. And I'm smart enought to know that my balls aren't big enough to be counted among them. I just wish our politicians knew that about themselves...

***This post is attributed to my husband, who inspires me with his perspective***