Friends are a good thing.

This past weekend, we flew to Denver and spent the weekend with friends from college (members of a club my husband and I were both in), and some people from the same group that we did not know. It felt like coming back to family and dear friends, even the strangers. It was excellent recharging time, and - forgive me, Mom and Dad - not associated with memories of my parents. I treasure those memories, but in this space I wasn't thinking about what I have lost, but about what I still have.

I have been blessed so many ways. And I still am, in many of those same ways.

That includes some of you, who read and who think of me, and who leave a comment here.

Some days, I could just cry.

And these are them. There is too much going on. I have made three trips this summer, and make three more in the next two months (though only two, both over, were longer than 4 days, and only one of those was over a week). Work has been busy - in a good way, but busy.

A year ago this week, my mother went into the hospital with what they thought at first was just malnutrition and weakness. It would take them months to diagnose terminal lung cancer, it would be almost four months before she was dead. Not long enough. Not nearly long enough. And I wish she had lasted a week longer, because then the road would not have been icy when Dad drove to the lawyer. (Oh, let's be honest: I wish she would have never gotten ill, and lived to be in her nineties. But that doesn't somehow seem as realistic as wishing for an extra week. Silly realism. Not like any of it is realistic now knowing what I know today, namely, what did happen.)

A year ago this week. My emotions have been on a rollercoaster. To add to that, I got the letter today; the estate is closed out. I write two more checks and the whole proceedings are completed - legally. I still have a lot of stuff to sort through, dispose of (sell, donate, etc.), and so on. What's neat on paper is not necessarily neat and tidy in any other way.

I do not expect the months between now and January to be easy. And this coming weekend is another of my trips, to get together with college buddies from ten years ago and hang out and play games (myself and my husband both). And it seems strange to ping pong like this between the trivial but sweet and the other.

We had to have Basta put down. (Heart disease caught up with her, despite attempts to treat her. She would have died that day, it was just a question of whether it would be quick and peaceful or not.) But we still have Babe, and she regularly puts holes in my leg climbing into my lap. I still remember her jumping to Dad's lap, when he sat on the little computer chair by the foot of Mom's hospital bed. Even with his heavy jeans on, he would quickly grab for her and look pained - a heavy, clumsy cat with a lot of pointy pieces. She still is. And I understand why they loved her so. She is a charming sweetheart with those she knows and trusts. A cuddly little sweetheart with a joy for life that is so touching.

And sometimes, rather soggy fur. She's fairly patient with me all things considered.

I wish she were home - home with my parents, home where she was born, with them still taking care of her. I'd never know this side of her, for I was Stranger then and she was cautious with me. But I'd have my parents. On the other hand, since I don't have my parents, I'm rather glad to have her to cuddle.

I want to go back five years, ten years, and do all this again, treasure my parents and our time together more dearly, ask the questions I wonder about now when they can still be answered. (For example, where did my sister's baby book end up? I want it, but I cannot find it. I don't know why I care - she was born and died eight years before I came along - and I have baby photos of her. Just not the book. But I do care.)

If I could go back, of course, the first thing I would do is try to change things, not get those answers I get maudlin about now.

Perhaps we're lucky humanity hasn't got a time machine. What a horrible temptation it would be - or, if nothing could be changed, what a torture.

I'm going to have enough on my plate, just living through these next four months, I think.

Home again, home again. Or, long time no post.

And this is not much of a post. I am back (okay, have been back a couple days) from a two-week vacation spent visiting my relatives. Mom's side of the family, and also my husband's family. They are all out in the Midwest. I wonder what I would have been like if my parents had lived near enough that I was raised with the constant interconnectedness to family that they were? As it is, it's a sweet but foreign land to me. But the visit was lovely.

I don't really have much to say. I had a blast - and now I am home - and I am missing my parents starkly and wishing I could share some of the things I saw and heard and did with them. And I am running in circles catching up on all the things that lagged while I was gone. Ack!

I have photos, but they are not up yet.

Miscellany

I am working on gathering paperwork for the estate receipts/disbursements stuff to take to the lawyer, per his request. It is amazing how panicked this makes me feel. I have been wailing again that I want my parents back, when I had been going along with more okay moments than upset moments for so long. Of course, one item is not yet anywhere I've searched, which is also upsetting me but in a different way. (Not too bad - I can call the bank and get the info from them, I am just annoyed that I can't find it, but it may be in the one area I still need to go through.)

My to-do list has just kept getting larger and more frantic since December, and I'm ready to cry and scream. Unfortunately at the moment I don't have a whole lot of leeway time to do so.

On a brighter note, I am enjoying swapping with people on swap-bot for the most part. It is interesting to see what you get although sometimes I am a bit bemused. (So far, the winner is the person who sent me a postcard with a quote on it. I'm in, like, three or four swaps for postcards. This is a handmade postcard - it is gorgeous. And nowhere on it did the person identify either themselves, or which swap it is for.)

Also on the positive side, an old friend from high school told me that my mother had given her mother some of the pinks I loved as a child. And they still survive at their house! So I can find out what my pinks are after all and, even better, they are going to divide them and give me some. Since they spread by root and division, this really feels like getting some of the pinks from my parents' house back after all.

Sputter, Sputter.

Or, false starts. I'm back off the morning pages. What I found was that they unearthed where I was stuck...and then got in the way of getting unstuck by using up time while just repeating the same thing. I quickly grew frustrated with the time it takes to write them, which is actually a very common reaction to the MPs for me. I did them diligently throughout the AW back when, and sometimes they helped and often they didn't. So now I am more of the mind to do them when I am feeling stuck or caught, then let them go for a while. Maybe I am rationalizing (okay, I am rationalizing; maybe I am also right, maybe I am not), but I think this is what I need to do. ADs are another matter. I'm trying to figure out what mine should be this week - a little late there, aren't I? Maybe I will go up to the Gardens today except I am not really in the mood. Oops.

I am doing okay. And dealing with my grief, I think. I'm not sure quite what brought that poem to the surface in April (or the dream that led to it). I know this - I know I welcome dreams of my parents, though I'd rather connect with them, not see them sitting there tired and fading.

I have been doing some swaps at http://www.swap-bot.com/ - just sent a few items in the first ones, waiting to get my items. So we'll see how that goes. But it's interesting, and it's another way of connecting to people.

Slowly starting back. And a poem.

I am beginning my morning pages again, and today I go on an artist's date. Not doing The Artist's Way, but doing Vein Of Gold. Or rather, I will be, maybe, probably. Right now I am just trying to get back into the basic tools, nothing more. I haven't started the walks yet.

And on a totally unrelated note, this is a poem that I wrote back in April. I've let it sit, and edited a bit. I'm not wholly satisfied but I'm not sure whether that is justified or just fussing for fussing's sake.

Waking

I had a dream this morning. Not like how it really happened.
In the dream, my mother outlived my father. She was sitting
in the cream brocade chair she reupholstered twice.
She wasn't healthy; her face was grey and her breath was short
and she didn't speak at all. Not that I remember, and I hope
I'd remember every word if she did. Even the ones she never said.

There were children, looking at something, on a trip -
she had invited them, I think, but I no longer recall
why they came. They were unconcerned with the woman
dying in their midst. As full of life as she was empty of it.

This is not so far from the truth, even if almost all of it
never happened anywhere but after dawn, in the hours
when sleep comes and goes, and dreams hover close enough
to waking to be remembered, to pretend they might
have happened somehow, somewhere that is not here.