The name we don’t speak of…
You know how in the awesome Harry Potter books they talk about Voldemort as the name we don’t speak of… well when you have big health issues, like a stupid autoimmune disease, you don’t talk about remission… It is a dirty little word because it puts every one of your life dreams into that one word… Now listen, I’m not saying I’m poor little old me in a corner crying about what my life could of, shoulda, would have been… I’m never going to run the Marine Corps Marathon, I’m not going to sail around the world…
But, I am the best wife and mom I can be… and that is good enough.
Life isn't perfect and life isn't easy, and frankly for too many of us, we have held onto the notion that everyone gets a trophy… everyone should be on the A team in soccer… Well news flash, not so much.
Maybe the best we can hope for is to learn to appreciate the exquisite moments of everyday activities… to love them, believe in them, revel in them and pull them up when you are in the darkest of the darkest moments…
For me my exquisite moments are very simple… a morning spent in meditation guided by the voice of a friend and sister that I would follow anywhere, a keg party for my girl Beth on her 40th birthday, the best party I have ever thrown, doing errands and getting slurpees with mini A and talking about where babies come from, first born sleeping on my chest for hours in the warm afternoon sun… You never get those moments back…and lunch with Clive anywhere…we have never had a bad lunch together… tea with Maureen, chats with Jess about the weather… I can talk to Jess for days and never get tired… Mass when I feel great, don’t cough and the homily speaks to my soul… and Thanksgiving when we all sit down, the broken parts of my family quiets for a meal…These are my exquisite moments…
I can pull the memories out often to warm my soul, and there are many others, I can’t talk about, too close to share today….but this is what I do to get through… I don’t know how to run anymore…
Today when my Harvard said the words I have been dreading… ”we have run out of new treatments”, words I already knew, have been keeping me up for days, but didn't dare say out loud. I’m left with the truth of the word we dare not speak...
There will be no remission for me today… or this month… or probably this year…
What amazes me is that I’m not sad, hurt or angry… I’m just diving into my box of exquisite moments… eating candy with my kids and laughing, being grateful that I’m not a new Saint this year (it is all Saints day after all), reveling in my kids joy in a holy day that we stayed in our jammies... That I won’t feel guilty for missing Mass… that I live in the Mass of Christ’s light... in the belief that this is not the world we are striving to succeed in, that these bodies are just a stepping stone to HIS plan… that I’m just working for the next life that will be free of the brokenness of this body… That we are the people of the resurrection…
So no, I’m not sad, or disappointed by this news… it is just an annoying little sometimes very big part of my life… We move on, we stay focused on the light that matters… Our exquisite moments and our faith...
Namaste my friends… the divine in me, bows to the divine in you…