I LOVE ALZHEIMER'S!!!!

I’m not going all religious on you… But I am using a familiar story and sharing its current impact on me.

In the Christian faith many have prayed the mantra over and over known as “The Lord’s Prayer”.  I see this being similar to a monk who chants sacred words and sounds. Both containing layers of metaphysical powers many never unlock or fully recognize. But lately, another Jesus prayer has seemed extremely significant to me, and it’s one that isn’t mentioned that often unless it is during the time that pays homage to his death and afterlife.

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

In my Lomi (traditional Hawaiian healing/massage) practice, part of what I’m discovering is the act of “ho-oponopono” or shortened in my interpretation “cleaning house”. Not just a physical house, a mental, emotional and spiritual home(s).

The Parable of a T-Shirt That Says : I <3 Alzheimer’s

Several years ago, my mother and my brother hurt one another deeply. She thought she was surprising him with a long over-due unannounced visit and he was busy trying to make a living for his family as a professional artist. Because of the distraction of my mother’s arrival, he suffered a monetary loss and reacted with blame and frustration and negative emotions unleashed upon my highly sensitive mother. Her journey brought her to my house afterwards where I spent the week hearing her cry, listening to her sorrow and pain. Later, another incident happened and my brother made the choice to disconnect from most of us in our immediate dysfunctional family unit. Years of processing and trying to understand and replaying words and images in my own head… all taking me on a journey that has ended in Hawaiian house cleaning.

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

I look at us all, in all the situations that have occurred and I see people who have been reactionary, emotional, self-absorbed, unable to wear another’s shoes. The list goes on and on.  People unconscious. Going through motions without enlightenment being their guide. Spewing into the world instead of intentionally moving with love as the format. Wild animals caught in their own traps, prisoners bound by their own chains. All of us, including myself.

No words spoken for almost a decade. Mother broken. Son broken. Sister broken. Brother broken. Family broken. But all developing strength through the consequences of life playing itself out in one another’s lives.

And then suddenly an opportunity arises and son meets with mother again, only now, mother’s brain is being softened and re-shaped by Alzheimer’s. Her daughter miles away was worried about how things were playing themselves out, how mom was going to react; whether or not her body and mind could withstand the stress of facing what was and what had transpired.

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Speaking on the telephone with mom afterwards, I found not only reassurance that everything was good, healed;  I also discovered the ability to laugh at the ugly, to laugh at what once seemed so overwhelming and enormously IMPORTANT. I asked her if she had a good visit. She replied, “You should see how many apples are in our yard… I know something happened a long time ago, but I don’t remember what it was. I don’t remember anything bad anymore, honey. I just live today, kind of moment to moment. It was like laughing and talking and visiting with new people. YOU SHOULD SEE ALL THE APPLES IN OUR YARD!!!!!”

The power of forgiveness and the power of forgetfulness. What really matters in the end?

When we feel  “wronged” by someone, when someone reacts and then we react and then they react and a cycle becomes a whirlwind becomes a tornado becomes a hurricane – when it becomes difficult to forgive and let go and move forward – in the end maybe all that matters is a simple little statement concerning all of us, from both sides meeting in the center: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Clean your own house first. Forgive yourself first, for hurtful reactions, for allowing others to destroy your inner peace, for words said and unsaid, for deeds done to others out of fear, frustration, anger or hate, for not loving yourself enough, for not KNOWING. Forgive others, even when you aren’t able to see what they see or feel what they feel. Forgive circumstances, situations, events, frailties, imperfections.  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I'm not saying to not have a backbone. I'm also not saying that I think we should allow ourselves to be used or mistreated. I'm thinking we simply need to keep trying our best, in every situation, and maybe more especially during the heated moments.

I really really really want to make mom a t-shirt that says: “I <3 Alzheimer’s”….

 

“In the end we're all just chalk lines on the concrete

Drawn only to be washed away

For the time that I've been given

I am what I am.”

“If there was no Tomorrow

If there was just Today

Would you make different choices

Or would you stay the same.”

“I'm begging for forgiveness, everything I've done, If God is listening, He knows I'm not the only one.”

― quotes from Five Finger Death Punch

 

 

First Day of My Life

No secret that my mother instilled in me a love for the arts; creativity in all flavors whether music, art, nature. I adopted a lifestyle that includes seeing beauty everywhere, even in the darkness. It's also no secret that my son underwent brain surgery when he was 16 years old, something that drastically changes anyone going through anything similar. I've written several things about that time frame and won't revisit it now, but wanted to call it to the forefront because of my thoughts and gratitude today.

My grandmothers and aunts and even a grandfather or two gave me their favorite tunes. Songs that when I now hear I am immediately transported back in time.

My mother gave me the gift of her songs. And they've built up my life and kept me sustained during moments when I thought I wouldn't be able to put one foot in front of the other.

My children have given me the gift of their songs. Throughout their lives they have introduced me to the melodies they have found. The lyrics that have meant the same to them, words that provide an ability to appreciate, define, surf and move through this life.

And my granddaughter brings me hers. Usually wrapped inside the package of dancing or twirling or tumbling.

A common thread tying past to present, a thread bringing love when there is absence, and a thread of hope.

A couple of things happened this week. I was at a venue, listening to music with friends and had begun making my way out after the show. I was stopped in my tracks. No one EVER plays this song, but it came over the loud speakers there. "I love little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks, slow moving trains... and rain." An old Tom T. Hall country song that my dad used to sing all the time. Life wasn't easy as a kid in his household, but upon his passing, after years of seeking out and finding forgiveness and understanding with my adult eyes looking back, that song came to me as if announced over loud speakers at a circus, almost audible as I watched his soul leaving his body and I realized in that moment I would never hear his voice sing that song again. And there it was, crystal clear being played at a venue in downtown Des Moines, in the middle of nowhere accompanying me to my car and reminding me that after all the hurt, after all the pain and suffering spattered with more moments of joy and happiness, all that matters in the end is love; who we love, how we love, what we love. It flows before we arrive here, it carries us through and it takes us further once we are finished with our time here on earth.

And last night something happened that I know would embarrass my son by my sharing, but moms are born to embarrass sons, right? I've heard bits and pieces over the years of my son singing along to the radio or quietly humming something to himself. But I've never heard him sing a complete song, loud and proud with an audience. We were sharing time with friends (and luckily I was invited) and after dinner began "jamming" together. There are no words I can begin to describe hearing "First Day of My Life" sung with so much emotion and power --- coming from the voice of my son who spent his 16th year recovering and rehabbing from the removal of tumors from his brain. I will let the song say it all:

This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach

Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been
But I know where I want to go

So I thought I'd let you know
That these things take forever, I especially am slow
But I realized how I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

I remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange, you said everything changed
You felt as if you just woke up

And you said
"This is the first day of my life
Glad I didn't die before I met you
Now I don't care, I could go anywhere with you
And I'd probably be happy"

So if you want to be with me
With these things there's no telling
We'll just have to wait and see
But I'd rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery  (Bright Eyes)


I truly believe LOVE is all that matters.
Let the songs carry you to heal your own past, to comfort your present, to enhance and guide you into where you need and want to be. Sometimes I think the greatest thing a mom can provide is an appreciation for music and for the gorgeous gems that lay buried waiting to be found by the one who can see through the dust and dirt.

Six Degrees of Seperation and Finding the Yin and Yang in Music

My mom had an old Gulbransen piano. In a dark room back in the farthest corner of the house. Tucked away with a hoarder's fair of other things in piles all around, items shoved in the closet, stacked in heaps; clutter and chaos seemingly organized and purposefully placed. I loved that piano from the earliest point of my life that I can remember. Not only did I love it, I felt like I was a part of it and it was a part of me somehow. Metal, wood and strings, golden letters, mahogany finish, ivory keys, some chipped, some a little crooked. Mom played hymns for weekly church services on Sundays and I would watch and listen any time I heard her practicing. I would sit beside her, watch as her hands moved, watched her looking at the notes out of an old hymnal that never left the piano. Eventually, she started showing me a few things; how to identify the notes on the page "Middle C, you can find every other note from Middle C if you just know where IT is." Middle C became my home base for everything else that layered thereafter. Center of the piano. Great place for both of your thumbs to lightly lay, ready at a moment's notice, either side left or right, to strike that familiar, comforting sound that only Middle C can vibrate. She didn't teach me a lot of things, because as was typical, the more she tried telling me what to do, the more I resisted her telling me what to do. Defiant to a fault. Independent. I wanted to let my own soul figure it out. I felt like somewhere deep inside I already KNEW. The piano had somehow told me about everything I needed to know about the language of music and its beautiful voice that speaks across waters, through the universe, from one culture to the next. I didn't need it "explained" to me.
She lovingly let it go. Let me just fumble and bumble and try to sort it out on my own. I kept watching my hands, watching how they could be efficient in their movements on the keys. One way leads to too much effort, another way seems easy.
Over the years, I received six months of lessons as a gift from my grandmother and aunt and learned to love a woman named Mrs. Wanda Derry. She gave me books. She gave me patience and understanding. She gave me a sense of calm and quiet peacefulness. And she challenged me to push myself to new levels and to keep going even past those points and plateaus. Six months wasn't long, but it was long enough to be a foundation that has never cracked, moved, or faltered.
I eventually came to where I am today. I no longer have my piano, but instead a guitar or two that has the same ability to take me into another world, away from pressures and worries and fears. During my last lesson, I figured out one of my missing pieces in my understanding of music. I know there are several missing pieces in music theory that I have totally missed that if I knew, I think I would have a new sense of empowerment and an ability to arrive at yet another peak. I'm getting there. I can feel it. During my last lesson, the teacher showed me major keys (the sounds that make "happy" noises) and the relationship to their relative minor keys (the sounds that make "sad" noises). He explained the way to find the relative key is six units (notes) away. Just like the theory with people... being separated by six degrees. We're all inter-connected in a web so close, just as musical notes are bound together. Within those two keys; a major and its relative minor, you can play the same notes within any chord combination and nothing you play is "wrong" or sounds as if it doesn't fit. I don't know if I am explaining it properly or effectively, but all of a sudden I saw something, FELT something I hadn't felt before. Yin and yang, beautifully portrayed in sound. Happy and sad are the same, they just begin and end in a different place, six degrees away from one another. Nothing is "wrong" inside either, it's simply part of the music, part of the sound of a song. We have this complex matrix of different options, different choices, different directions we can take, maybe... just maybe no matter what choice becomes the right one in accordance with our lives, with what has gone before and what is coming up next. It's beautiful. And it's grace, knowing that if you are doing your best, (and aren't we all?) whatever step you take next, whether up or down or sideways, as long as you're carried on a wave that is part of your authentic self, the choice is perfect.
I'm so thankful my mom didn't force her knowledge on me. I'm so thankful she simply opened up a door and then let me go and let me explore what is beyond, waiting for me to discover and uncover in my way and in my time. I don't think it would have been so hugely impacting being told to a young me who hadn't yet experienced what the older me has.
"Life is a song. Love is the music." ~ unknown

The Good Heart

Quietly and joyfully living each day

In a way

As it should be.

Free.

Unencumbered by abuse, misuse, trials and piles

Of things that maim the tenderness inside

The Kindest  Heart.

She walks in the valleys while soaring above the clouds

Proud.

Laughing loud.

Finding calm where others don’t see

Peace.

She projects an understanding that says

It’s all right to find the best.

Leave the rest.

A mess, time and time again.

The climb to better health only to be beaten back down again

By forces inside ravaging her cells

By forces outside.

Cowboy boots kicking, voice screaming, shoving, shouting, pushing anger of one she loved with all of her Sweet Heart.

Above and out, destroyed, rebuilt

Over and over again.

Nothing can touch the eternal light given.

She knows. She loves.  

She lives the secret of the Good Heart.

Erase and Replace; Everything Is Temporary, Even Me

Sometimes life takes you directions you had no idea you could ever go. I’m feeling really raw right now. The loss of a former student to suicide, the loss of a childhood/young adulthood friend, the loss of a musician friend who I’ll never be able to hear again on this side of the tracks. And the losses of dreams, of an expectation of how life will play itself out. And under it all is this silent constant – a mourning for the mother that I used to know and the realization that she can no longer surf facebook, that she is changing more and more and I’m having to learn painfully how to let go of the one person I never ever want to let go of.

It’s all causing a lot of self-reflection. Even more so than usual. And in the mix, sprinkled in, are other life circumstances that keep pulling me and trying to twist up my heart. I’ve thought how ultimately? Yes, we’re all individual, but mainly, we are REPLACABLE. We like to think we are special. That we are different or unique. And granted, I believe we are to some degree, but there’s this common thread of insignificance that also remains in play. Each of us is simply a number. Here for such a short period of time. In each other’s lives temporarily.

Mothers can become erased by time, disease, distance, miscommunication, misunderstanding. Another mother can walk in. A wife or husband can be disregarded, and another enter the picture. A child can go missing, either deliberately or not, and another can come in and melt one’s heart. A father can leave or be pushed away, another be introduced. A lover can be taken for granted or forgotten or mistreated, another walks in the door. Layer by layer, I feel life has forced me to LET GO. Let go of what isn’t really real. And one of those things is a fairy tale I’ve always held; that someday I would be the difference. I would be noticed as irreplaceable. I would be cherished as “one of a kind”. But I’ve had to put on my big girl panties as age and time and circumstances have played themselves out. And I’ve had to reach deep inside and find that nothing and no one remains intact and solid and concrete. We all cling to that notion. But in reality, we’re as fluid as the mist that creates the rainbows. We shine for awhile in each other’s eyes, but someday vanish into memories held. When this first hit me today so clearly, I literally cried. Then I searched further and found some kind of comfort in the fact that life is all about change and creating itself new. And the easier it is to let go of what we think we see and embrace that reality, the more complete is our own enlightenment and our own personal power. Only I have the ability to know every ounce of my own worth. And only I have the ability to recognize it in everyone else… even those who hurt, destroy or knowingly or unknowingly break me apart. And that is where I came face to face with the strength that is labelled “grace”. One by one we are a collective unit, held in place by gravity and time for maybe, if we’re lucky 85 years. Ever replacing and being replaced with the hope that during the process, we manage to make a slight difference in the life of another human being.

BaLANciNg AcT

I admit it.

I can’t call my mother. I’ve talked less and less often with her. And I’ve struggled with all kinds of guilt and all kinds of other emotions.

It’s painful.

It’s painful to be so far away from her. Painful to know she is trapped inside most of the time. Painful to know she might feel trapped inside her confusion and inside a brain that is drying out from the outside in. Painful to experience (for the third time) the knowing that the women in my family share the Alzheimer’s thread. Painful to feel the ominous understanding that someday my mother will be another huge loss. And selfishly, it’s too hard to deal with most days.

Painful to feel so helpless.

As is often the case, my work on another – my compassion for another - taught me something profound today. While in session, I had this sentence go through my mind, “For every healthy SAD, you need to counter balance with healthy JOY.”  And the bigger the sadness, the greater the need for heavy duty injections of joy. Sounds simple, right? But how many of us get swallowed by the things that are difficult? The things that make us mourn, sorrowful, sad? It dawned on me today, it’s so easy to know sadness. But it’s so crucial and so vitally important to find that same intensity of JOY. Intentionally find things, large and small, that even out the pressure your mind, body and heart feel when dealing with loss. And I haven’t proven it, but I’m pretty sure the AMOUNTS of joy, the number of occurrences that make you smile, laugh and feel warm fuzzies needs to be GREATER than the sad in order to bring about a homeostasis in the soul. All of a sudden riding on that thought, I realized we all need to give ourselves permission to find those reasons to giggle. Discover what things, from hobbies to warms baths to sky diving or whatever it may be, add to your well-being in order to stay healthy and balanced and “whole”.

Don’t just find joy. Seek it out. Live it. Become it and let it keep you upright and let it elevate you on purpose.

No Soliciting, No Proselytizing

A couple from a religious organization repeatedly knock at the door.

An elderly woman inside cowers in fear, hiding in her closet; shaking, tears in her eyes and down her cheeks, wishing they would just go away.

I can’t get this real life scenario out of my head. Nor can I ignore the lessons glaring at me because of it:

#1. Learn how to have a backbone and say “no” when it’s in your best interest.

#2. Stop trying to people please. There’s a difference between being kind, being kind to oneself and being kind to others. Be kind, but don’t sacrifice YOUr integrity, finances, body, heart or anything else that takes away from your own spirit, or depletes at your own expense or makes you fall behind to lift another.

#3. You don’t have to do anything that doesn’t fill you with joy and happiness. Walk away. Or go to the closet and stay until it’s safe to come out.

#4. People often try forcing their views and "good" intentions upon others. Don’t be like them.

#5. Only really open your door if you want to open your door to the outside world. And be cautious about who you let in.

#6. Listen to your inner voice. And don’t just listen… Follow.

#7. Too many times there is simply nothing that can be done. People you love are sometimes too far away to reach, whether physically or emotionally. Send love. It might not be felt or received, but it creates a bridge that keeps a connect when things out of our control cause a sense of loss or grief or disappointment. No matter what, love.

#8. Feel sorry for others, hurt for others, but it isn’t your job to fix them or to try to change their minds or bend their wills to match your own.

#9. Stand firm in who you are. Don’t be afraid to know who YOU are, to represent who you are every single day. Peer pressure is for cowards (both sides), unafraid to think for themselves and too afraid to venture out into unknown places or open their minds to explore the limitless “what if’s”.

#10. Free your mind from attachments to fear. The worst that could ever happen? In any scenario, the worst has happened somewhere, to someone and they’ve either survived or not. Chains are usually invisible. Everything usually is all right in the end. Breathe.

My mom trained me, along with other people and other organizations that it’s the “right” thing to give and give and give. I’m arguing today, that while it’s noble, it can also be so damaging. It’s not “right” to deplete yourself beyond the breaking point, past the point of “empty”. Too hard to repair damage done. I usually preach about having an open heart, being a good person. But today? I’m thinking in order to be the best at anything we choose to be, it’s vital to protect and take care of the most valuable gift given:  You. Care for your temple – your body, your mind, your heart, your soul.