Memorial Day After

I always think that when there’s a holiday (like Memorial Day), I’m going to feel really rested afterwards, and that I’m going to somehow get caught up on everything, yes everything! And then I wake up on the Tuesday afterwards and I’m still not caught up on everything, and I wonder why I still think that this is a possibility. There is no catching up in life and I’ve realized that when I’m working I’m not riding bike and when I’m reading in my free time I’m not taking sailing lessons and when I’m shopping I’m not traveling. 

Someone sent me an article today that said when we talk to ourselves if we use our first names (instead of pronouns) we are more likely to be successful. So, here I go, Theresa, you need to walk more dear, you need to work less (and less, and less) and you must make time to travel, and of course do yoga everyday. There, now I’ll wait for this life to emerge. 

Yesterday I decided to go on the last leg of my ex’s yearly Memorial Day cemetery and gravesite visit along with my youngest daughter. My ex honors his ancestors in a way I can’t help but admire. Most of the time I still cannot understand his choices or the way he shows up in relationship, but he is my daughters’ father and I once loved him dearly. And so even though I’ve been angry at him for not being the father I’d want him to be, I went with Megan and her dad, and his long-time friend to Lakewood Cemetery to visit a few of his relative’s graves, and then we literally swung around to the other side of the cemetery and stopped to find my dad’s grave. I was unprepared with no flowers and no flag. 

Being at this place always fills me with tears and memories and loss. My dad was there for me in ways that set the bar of being a dad, that set the bar for me being a mom. He supported 10 people (including himself) and made a good life for us, and when I was a single mom, when I was so overwhelmed that I’m even now just processing many of the emotions I didn’t know how to feel then, he showed up and mowed my lawn and gave me advice. And so, when my spirit flagged, I told myself over and over, that if he could support 10 people, I could support 5--my 3 girls, my grandson, and myself--and I did. 

This didn’t mean that there weren’t casualties of mostly an emotional kind, when my girls were young. I really didn’t have the skills or the energy to be emotionally present most of the time. I didn’t know how not to feel abandoned and angry, or how to actually feel those things and not believe what I thought they told me about life. I didn’t know what I know now, and that makes me sad that I couldn’t give more tools to my daughters, because as a parent, I want to give them so many things. 

I have to stop though, and start with now, with today, and trust that the past gave us all enough. The strange thing about emotions though, is that they stay present with us from the past until we sit with them, invite them in and politely thank them for their message, and this takes time. Sometimes the hard truth is that the people we love leave us in places we never thought we’d be, alone and bewildered, and from there, we find a way.