"Change, Big Or Small, Is a Real Challenge"

“... I will be in the hospital Easter, but remember I love you. God bless you, dear one.” 

My Grandma, always putting others first, in the Spring of 2006. She wrote the words in a Easter card, the last legible writing I ever received from her.

“I love you more.” 

My Grandma would say that to me each time she ended a phone call with me. I can hear her saying it to me, it’s the whisper of the faintest distance in the dead of night. In my heart I say, “I love you.”

I can feel her say, “I love you more.”

Since my last post about not wanting worry wrinkles, a part of my life changed. A significant part is no longer and now that is part of my journey.

I believe you don’t necessarily have to be a religious person to experience God’s grace. In a year, for me, that’s been full of changes, both good, and bad, and somewhere in between, grace defines me. 

She, my Grandma, taught me to affect my circumstances, and not to be affected by them. 

Tears, they may stream like a slow, but steady drizzle from a faucet, onto my face, down the curve of my lips, and into my mouth, but they are happy tears. The salty sensation, the cool wet kiss of my own emotions on my cheek, remind me again of the resilience, the promise, and gradual, if not certain, passage to happiness. 

My Grandma suffered a stroke in June 2006. I never experienced her the same after that. In my memory, she is this strong-willed person who said, “Don’t give up on me just yet.” 

She died a few months later. It was grief, and to this day, is grief of the deepest magnitude I have experienced.There is a hero for every person and in every family for different reasons and at different times. My hero is, and has been, my Grandma.

In the days, if not minutes, before she passed away, I wrote some words down that resonate quite deeply with me now: 

I’m going through the motions of going to work and doing my job and feeling like I’m a spectator of my own life. Certain things happen in slow motion because my mind is so preoccupied on what’s happening outside of the present moment that I forget to notice it. People talk to me and I miss what they say and sometimes don’t remember hearing them at all.  I’m told this is normal and that it will come and it will go. Then, for an instant, something triggers and I’m fighting tears, but just for a moment, until I return to my vacant mind of going through the motions.

Grandma wouldn’t want me to just go through the motions. 

It does not matter what loss one is experiencing, because loss is the one unifying factor of life. Maybe not loss, but the fear of failure realized, or the fear of loss realized, the fear, the very worry, and the edge of doubt you sat on top of, when it slips out, and it’s realized; we’ve all been there. Also, let me be the umpteenth person to say that sometimes loss is a blessing in disguise, we just don't know it yet.

It is the one thing everyone goes through and yet that does not make it any easier because of the circumstances and the people involved. It is really only being experienced in one unique way for each person grieving.

It hurts, because very few people understand, even though everyone can relate. 

I pray, one day, my children, whenever I do have them, I can share her eternal faith with them, so that they, too, might find a foundation and a hope for a future. 

Resilience, remember, is about accepting our circumstances even if they are different, or disappointing, or not what we thought they would be. We can do nothing, as Elizabeth Edwards said, but scream about what we have lost, or accept it, and try to put together something that’s good. 

Scratch that.

Great. 

Appreciate. Prompts at http://www.reverb10.com/

This year, I appreciate my friends, the many of them who showed up on the doorstep of my heart when I least expected it.

I love you more.

I appreciate the memory of my Grandma, and the lasting wisdom she instilled in me. Certainly, I appreciate the faith, and the gentle tugging of my heart, when she would rub the small of my back when I wasn’t feeling well, and gently squeeze me in a life-affirming embrace.

A Beautifully Different Community, in One Word

A Beautifully Different Community, in One Word

I stumbled across the Reverb 10 project over the weekend after discovering the wonderfully talented in-pursuit-of-happiness writer Gretchen Rubin was offering at least one of the prompts.

The beautiful part about Reverb 10 is that it allows you to choose when you take part, and how you take part, with just some subtle recommendations. The goal is to remember and reflect on what this year, 2010, has meant for each one of us, and manifest our destiny for the upcoming 2011. It is a fitting project for anyone working to get the frump out of their rump.  

One Word 

My mother came to visit me earlier this year. We watched some sappy movies, like “Marley and Me,” and went out to lunch and talked about family members and wedding ideas, should I get married. We also stayed up late and watched Elizabeth Edwards on “Larry King Live.” 

“She is an amazing woman,” my mother said.

“So inspiring,” I said. “I love that the title of her book is resilience.” 

Resilience for me meant different things at the time. Studying business continuity in graduate school, another name for that was in fact, business resilience. You see, resilience, in the business sense, is about the staying up and not falling down during a crisis. Come to find out, resilience means exactly the same thing when someone is battling internal demons or deep challenges of faith. It’s the getting back up and holding on, praying expectantly. It is hope. 

2010 has been a different kind of year for me, faced with change and challenges, some brought on myself, some divinely presented by choices, and others just dumped on me like a bucket of slippery slime. 

Elizabeth Edwards, a woman I did not know, exemplified some of the character traits I admired in my Grandma. The point is, she certainly allowed herself to feel what she was feeling and was unapologetic about it. Yet, she saw no purpose in staying angry or resentful, and she allowed herself the right to imagine a certain, if gradual, passage to happiness. 

Resilience is the word for 2010, and a year from now, it will hope. If we are resilient, we can hold on and pray expectantly. 

Community

The people who read this blog and who unite under the same goal of getting rid of the seemingly “yucky” part about being uncertain in life are part of my community. Those of us who want to visualize and dream-into-life a better tomorrow are the community members I find myself recently aligned with. Whether you are actively blogging or sharing your story, we are all on some sort of journey to find purpose so that we may live the best of our life. We’re a community of education-seekers, budget-minded shoppers, desire-to-give-back volunteers, and some of us are wine drinkers. 

Sometimes, I like to imagine myself standing in a room full of wine tasters and vintage bottles saying, “I’m a Pinot.”

Then, someone says back to me, “I’m a Zin, but I’m better after aging a few years

There is something perfectly beautiful about being part of a winemaking group, which my boyfriend* and I are. 

We are members of all ages, different walks of life, different hobbies, but we all have a taste for wine. 

Something else that’s funny, is when I think of Chelsea Handler’s book “My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands” I actually think of wine bottles, because they’re better stored horizontally. 

Excuse me while I laugh thinking of an alternate book cover. 

Beautifully Different

“You are unique,” my best friend would say to me during high school. “You have your own unique qualities that make you, you.” 

She certainly had a nice way of saying the fact that I was different, odd, or even eccentric. 

“Ughpf,” I’d say back. 

“Yay, Annie noises,” she would say to me. 

The cycle continues, and now almost every time we get together the first few minutes are filled with mutterings and sounds that I seem to always make, and some celebrated joy that I’ve made them. 

As I taper off my writing for this collection of Reverb 10 posts, I think of the things that each one of these topics has in common.

I’m part of a wine making group, which involves patience, and a resilience in case something goes wrong. Each varietal, each bottle, is unique and has its own qualities. Each person who tastes the wine explores it differently, identifying parts that not all of us may experience. And, these experiences we have, whether in tasting a wine, or living our lives, may instill in us the same resilience and hope we admire in people like Elizabeth Edwards.








*UPDATED December 28, 2010: Boyfriend is now an ex-boyfriend.