Suddenly It’s Sunday
I have not been here for a week. Have not written a blog post, have not thought of writing one.
But wait! Wasn’t that something I said I’d do when I redesigned the blog? Said I’d post something every day. Because, after all, I am a super-human, super-creative, super-duper-super-woman extraordinaire. Without the cape.
Capes get in the way.
Oh, whack me upside the head for being such a silly girl. For not realizing that sometimes life gets in the way of good intentions. That sometimes we need to be and do other stuff. And so I was doing. Doing doing doing DOING until my head spun a complete 360 like that kid in The Exorcist.
I was cleaning and clearing Mama’s cottage for the renter. Shlepping stuff up the hill to my place. To the dining room table for further sorting. To the kid’s rooms, the kids who no longer live here so I can use their rooms as storage for saddles and other stuff until I figure out where they need to be…those rooms.
To the thrift stores. And the dump. Buh-bye.
And all the while my head was SPINNING.
Because this week marks the second anniversary of Mama’s one-way ticket to Jesusland. The week she turned to me with such a perplexed expression on her face and asked, “Why is my body doing this to me?” And all I could say to her was “Because you’re so damn old.”
There was nothing more I could do for her except love her and tend to her with my sisters. That last morning, when she could no longer speak, I slipped some shaved chocolate between her lips. Her favorite, Green & Black 85% Dark. Her smile was pure bliss.
A few hours later she died, just a two weeks shy of her 96th birthday. She died at home. In the cottage, the cottage I’m now okay with renting.
Still, it’s been a rough week. Hard work and bittersweet memories. The cottage is clean now, the renter moved in. I still have sorting, distributing and disposing of stuff but the pressure of a deadline is past. I can breathe now. Relax a little.
This evening I went down to stand with the ponies while they had their buckets, their nightly treat of senior chow and supplements. And as they ate I stood there opening my senses to the moment. Taking it all in. The sight of the mud, of hoof print size puddles, of hay trod into the muck. The pile of hair beneath Lana, hair I pulled out by the handfuls last night in lieu of a proper brushing.
But it was the sounds of the evening that rounded things out. The sound of horses slurping. Birds high up in the trees. So many of them, different birdsong, sweet and clear. From down the lane the sound of voices. A small child. Adults speaking. Laughing. And then the music, notes from some sort of flute.
The sounds dipped and wove around each other like music. Subtly so. We’re not talking boom box here. But standing there with my all my senses…with my heart open to the moment…it was lovely.
Here’s a tiny slice of it I’d like to share. A moment in time captured with the iphone. And just so you know, that muck is mud, not pony poop. Well, mostly.
