sunflowers

I'm looking at a bouquet of sunflowers that I bought yesterday at the local farmer's market. Years ago I read "The Findhorn Garden" by The Findhorn Community and identified with the idea that all plants and animals and environments have a spirit all their own. When I first met these sunflowers, I got a real sense that a very happy spirit was peeking out from them and giggling! It took me by surprise and I was quite taken by them.

After more than a couple years of trials and tribulations it is wonderful to feel such an uplifting spirit so near. Looking at these flowers brings an instant smile to my face. Long needed.

My life started to go downhill after my ex visited in 2011 and returned to Australia. We'd had an ongoing online relationship for 6 years at that point. And we were both being worn out by the stress of a long distance relationship. Unfortunately, he was unable to tell me his true feelings. Only that he felt numb.

I was living with my Mom at the time of his visit and she didn't really welcome him in her home because of the stress of her alzheimer's. He left and returned to Australia a week later without talking to me about any of his emotional problems. (Not a very good talker to begin with and like too many men, not in touch with his feelings.)

At this time, it also became increasingly clear that my Mom was experiencing more difficulty relating to the world around her. I tried to get family to help and had been trying to get my siblings to spend more time with our Mom because I wanted her to have lots more good experiences before she died, and I just couldn't do all of this alone, and because I didn't want my siblings to have regrets that they hadn't spent more time with Mom before she died.

I went for counselling because of all the issues I was having to deal with, with my ex and with my family. I'm still receiving counselling and feel no shame because it has helped me far more than I ever thought it would.

About October of 2011 Mom started to display symptoms that, unknown to me, indicated cancer. I took her to the doctors and it wasn't until December that we were able to get Mom into see a cancer specialist. The diagnosis was possibly ovarian cancer at a quite late stage. (The reason Mom didn't go see doctors without a lot of prompting and prodding on my part was her experience with doctors and insurance companies after she was hit by a pickup truck as it turned the corner while she was crossing at an intersection and was thrown 25 feet before landing on her head. The insurance companies did nothing to help her with her brain trauma and caused her to feel paranoid - like someone was always watching her. This is about the time that her fear that the government could take her out of her home and put her into a facility many miles from home began.)

Mom was put into the hospital a couple days before Christmas of 2011 to have ascites drained from her abdomen. This was only to take overnight and then we were told she would be home. The doctor in the hospital changed that and tried to keep Mom in over the holiday and away from her family. Due to her alzheimer's, she didn't know where she was the first night in the hospital and was up and wandering the halls. My sister went into the hospital in the morning to find Mom in a wheel chair with a tray holding her in. She had been parked at the nurses station and kept there for most of the night. My sister thought this was cute. I was just appalled and wanted Mom out of there, right then and there.

The doctor managed to convince us to let Mom stay in the hospital one more night and she managed to sleep this time and wasn't treated like a child by an over-worked staff. The next day was when the doctor told us she wanted to keep Mom in until Wednesday (this was Saturday!) and I talked with my other sister and said there was no way that Mom was staying in the hospital. My sister, who was also power of attorney, agreed and we took Mom home that day. My brother brought Mom home from the hospital and we took some pictures and I put up Mom's ceramic tree as it as something she really liked to see at this time of year.

The next day being Christmas, all of Mom's children were there, except for our brother who was with his girlfriend, who had just lost her Mother to cancer in the middle of the night. I was torn by my brother's actions because I felt he should be with his own Mom since he didn't know how long she would live. But I understood his choice being a difficult one to make and he had to do what he felt was right for him.

There was also the struggle to get the help provided by the health care system to work out well. Unfortunately, the doctors didn't really explain the cancer process to me and I couldn't help saying she was doing well and the home-care providers took that as an excuse not to send in extra help that would allow me time to decompress. I spent a good part of the winter of 2011-2012 feeling like I was running in place, unable to catch up to where Mom was with her illness. It was really more than I could handle at times. Thankfully my siblings finally started coming around more often and helping to relieve some of the pressure that I was experiencing.

At this time, my counsellor was telling me that I didn't need to go through the whole looking after my Mom until she died if I felt that I couldn't handle it. I knew I could handle it as long as I had the help I needed and I told my counsellor that if Mom could go through dying then I could go through being there for her. It was the least I could do for all the years that my Mom helped me. She wanted to die in her own home and I was going to make damned sure that is exactly what she would get.

In late January, the home care providers started coming in one night a week to look after Mom so that I could get some rest. That didn't work out so well for me because I was already stressed by everything going on and I knew Mom would be frightened by strangers being in her home. I was also still talking to my boyfriend and had horror story after horror story and stress and after stress to tell him about and I felt like I was burdening him with so much that he couldn't do anything about. Little did I know that he already had his eye on my replacement.

Mom died February 11, 2011 at approximately 5:30 in the morning. While I was sitting, listening to my ex talk about a computer game, I heard my name being whispered in my Mom's voice and I knew that was when Mom had died. She'd been in a coma since about 5:30 pm the previous evening. I regret listening to my ex tell me about yet another computer game instead of being with my Mom when she passed. I had just gone in an hour earlier to give her a shot that would ease her passing. I didn't want to do this but the previous evening when Mom had gone into a coma, I had stopped giving her the shots thinking that she wouldn't need them anymore because I assumed she wouldn't feel anything. I'd never been around anyone in a coma before. About 10:30 that night she had started to cough and choke on the phlegm that was building up in her nose and throat. I panicked and called the nurse and she said to keep giving Mom the shots so that she would pass peacefully.

We had a remembrance of Mom the following Saturday in her home with her ashes present. We placed her ashes in a cardboard box with bright balloons on the outside. Her ashes were actually inside of a plastic bag inside of a black plastic container.

Being as it was the winter and the ground was frozen we didn't bury Mom's ashes until the Friday before Mother's day. We divided her ashes up so that some were buried in her Mother's plot and some were poured into the water down at the fishing village that she grew up in and loved. I also kept some for when I have a home and can plant a bleeding hearts plant over top of her ashes because it's her favourite flower. I made a cloth bag for Mom's ashes. I hated the idea of her being in plastic. And my brother had made a wooden box years ago that ended up being the perfect size for Mom's ashes. One of my sister's thumb-tacked a picture of Mom and her four children at Point Pelee inside the lid of the box.

2012 was my annus horibilis. Mom died in February. My daughter moved from Canada down to Pennsylvania to marry a man she'd met online at the end of March. My cousin Cathy, 49 died on her birthday in June. Even though she was kept on life support for four days, she never came to again. She'd had a stroke. A couple weeks later my friend's husband died of Cystic Fibrosis at the age of 50. My granddaughters moved away to Oshawa with their father at the end of August and my ex broke off with me the week before I was going to buy my ticket to move to Australia to be with him.

I'm still recovering from this year of sadness and pain, but with the sunflowers in the vase in the corner on my desk, I feel like there's hope and I feel more and more joy at being alive. And I realise that I can have what I want (another story for another day) for the first time in my life and that I don't have to "pay" for it emotionally, or "earn" happiness. I can find it where it peeks out at me from the sunflowers and my granddaughters' and my daughter's beautiful faces.

And though I can't share the love I still feel for my ex with him, I am ready to move on with the help of sunflowers that giggle and remind me that life holds so many wonderful things yet to be cherished.