And In The End…

Happy New Year 2013 (Photo credit: Mark Kens)

Last post of 2112:

After my rather solemn afternoon,(see the post before this one: https://hibernationnow.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/bloody-foolish-me/) I pulled myself together and we had a wonderful early dinner as a family, the food was exquisite and our children 18 and 20, entertained us, as usual. The no fighting/no texting rule was in effect. There was much laughter and seriously good food. For my foodies (and I am one of them, here is most of the menu)  Appetizer: There was a choice of raw tuna with tofu, lobster bisque or gnocchi with mushrooms. I chose the gnocchi, our son chose the bisque and my husband ordered the raw (really hard for me not to say EEW) tuna and tofu. I’m trying to be serious here, it’s tough! Our daughter had a salad for an appetizer. You will see why later.

For our entrees: choice of filet mignon (yes, please for the three of us) with mashed potatoes and mushrooms that tasted like frizzled onions, were divine. I eat red meat about once every six months and I dare say, I enjoyed it. Our daughter (the vegetarian) had the gnocchi as a main dish, no mushrooms, in a tomato sauce. In my opinion, they should have stayed with the white (cream?) sauce that we had and my daughter agreed. The other options were…..I have no idea as soon as we saw the filet mignon we didn’t concentrate, sorry. Wait, my husband said there was also chicken and a seafood risotto and maybe something else. He also said once he saw the steak he couldn’t concentrate. On the table there were slices of dark raisin/walnut bread and some hard wheat bread.(Okay, so I ordered more bread for the table so I could have two slices of the raisin walnut bread with butter.) It was an occasion( and I have been eating like a bunny.)

For dessert there were three options: Linzer torte (we’re HERE!!!) or chocolate mousse cake with coffee crunch ice cream ( or vanilla) and pumpkin cheesecake that we all laughed about. My husband and I could not decide so we ordered one linzer torte and one chocolate mousse and split both in half. Sometimes, you just need both. They also offered sorbet ( seriously?) but our family doesn’t even count that as an option but they did offer it so I thought I should tell you.

It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m grateful. Grateful for my loving family, grateful I got through the day and that I talked to both my sister and my mother, grateful I can put my nightshirt on soon. I will feel happier when my daughter texts me when she arrives at her destination, moms worry like that, yup, we do.

To all my readers, I am GRATEFUL for you. Thank you for keeping me going, for your comments, for your dedication. I’m about to reach 1,000 posts really soon!!

This would not be complete if I did not acknowledge some very special friends that I feel extremely close to (even though I have never met them in person) These women I feel honored to call my friends and my support system. I actually feel closer to these women than some that live around the block. I mean that with all my heart and as they know, I wear my heart on my sleeve.  Great love and hugs to: Judy/Judith, Maureen, Rosemary, Ash, Michelle, and Tammy. I LOVE all of you. If your name is not mentioned I swear I came to a complete blank. You know who you are, please forgive me and just write your names in here _________________ and ___________________. I apologize.

Wishing you all a HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2013.

WITH LOVE,

From me, Hibernationnow.wordpress.com

Laurie xoxoxo

Bloody, Foolish, Me

English: Women with Broken Heart (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am not just a sad woman, I am a bereft child who is sobbing in the shower,

clinging to the metallic shower handle so I don’t collapse.

I  thought I knew myself,

I’m surprised, ashamed, disappointed

pompous me,  I was fine,  I said.

I had received “messages” from my dad from the other side and they did comfort me.

That was then, this is now. It’s the night of THE DAY. He died, eleven years ago at 10:20pm.

It surprises me every year when I think I have everything under control,

Ugh, Rubbish.

These raw emotions find me, sneak up on me, reopening bloody, sore wounds

as if I was being stabbed right through the heart, anew.

The hairy monsters that used to hide in my closets when I was young

don’t have a daddy to tell me all is well. Never again, is hard to take.

I want to curl up in the fetal position and cover myself with soft, blue blankets and blankets reaching to the sky.

I want to see no one

but I have my own family now and I want them to have their own happiness.

We will go together for an early dinner, the kids will move on to their parties,

and I will come back home, begging for tomorrow to come.

it’s too cold out, i’m lazy as shit

Just another Tequila Sunset… (Photo credit: law_keven)

ramblings from a woman in bed 2:

i could blame my four going on five days of staying in my bed on m chronic illnesses,  fibromyalgia: because my muscles and bones or as we call them bone-ces do hurt and I am unsteady on my feet and off balance. I could say my auto-immune disease, hashimotos-thyroiditis is making me feel weak and that my immune system is whacked, how I still don’t know. but basically in this random writing, i’d be lying and that’s one thing I try not to do. cause I sure hate it when others do it to me.

it’s cold as a bitch out there, the winds are past blowing, they are swaying the barren trees and the unfortunate people who are out there. i’ve been in bed for the last 4 days, the thought of going outside seems unreasonable and impossible, it would hurt too much. if i had to go out and it was an emergency i know i could do it but with my kids home and hanging out, there is no need. hubby took this week off and he does not mind cold weather like i do, it’s been this way for over 25 years. i’ve always hated the cold weather but especially since i got sick with these chronic illnesses. the cold tenses up my already stiffened muscles and makes me suffer with even more pain. why do that if there is no benefit? once it is reasonably cold out, i will go. i’m not boycotting it, i’m just rebelling. let’s be reasonable.i need warmth, sun, beach, water; i’m keeping my eye on the prize.

i’ve talked to friends who have the same illnesses and they too are nestled in their soft pajamas, staying in bed and drinking tea in a mug with milk and sugar or strong coffee, or sipping water from a big, clear bottle. the only thing i want to eat is soup and i remember i have a large container of home-made pea soup with ham and lots of carrots (for sweetness) waiting for me in the freezer. you can hear the wind howling, it thrashes by my windows with fury, the new windows, of course which do nothing but cost a lot of money that we do not have.

my life would be easier if i loved cold weather but my husband and i have been fighting ok discussing this for years now. so far he has won. but when both children graduate college, it’s my turn. i want to see the bright yellow of the morning sun, to see the red velvet sunset on the beach and clap at the beauty. i want nature and water in my life and not once every five years but daily, at least for a time. i would compromise, i’d be a snowbird but this i will not do much longer. this makes me unhappy, it’s going to be my turn next. I need more nature in my life, more sunshine. the ice pellets are now coming down quickly stick to every surface; black ice hides sneakily where you think you are safe. the cold, nasty, biting wind just slaps my soul.

Haiku Heights – New

Happy new year (Photo credit: Amodiovalerio Verde)

Another year ends

I turn inside to reflect

Lessons to be used.

*****

Embracing myself

like a soft, warm, purple, shawl

Leaning on me, now.

*****

Traditions now gone

With silver, I start anew

Confidence is rich.

*****

Attuned to your soul

Squinting from the glaring light

Always be truthful.

*****

Young bodies in light

Whispering their secret dreams

Pale, white bodies touch.

Free Write: Kellie Elmore (Resolve)

Description unavailable (Photo credit: wakingphotolife:)

I stared into her eyes of lead. I would continue to stare until she blinked. She had been abusing me verbally for years. I would take it no longer;  she was the one who was mentally unstable not I. As a child and teen I spent hours sobbing from her nastiness, the cruel streak that ran up and down her ruthless spine. I refused to call my mother “mom” I could barely call her by her first name, Joyce. It was a little better when our dad was alive but not by much; she hid it from him but we knew better.

People who met her thought she was charming and well-mannered. Peals of laughter wafted from her enraptured audience, that sat around her at the tennis club. Her friends would hang on to every word.  I’m sure to the public she appeared charismatic. She introduced me to her friends without name, as if I were her maid. Maybe my extra twenty pounds didn’t fit her expectations of perfection or beauty. I had always felt ugly and ashamed of my body. As a child, I hated to shop with her, although she forced me to, never once thinking about why I didn’t want to go, not bothering to question me about it. Instead, she left magazines open on the oak, wood table in the kitchen with the New York Times open to the black and white pages of “Sleep-Away Camp For Overweight Girls.” Subtlety was not her strong suit.

She fully admitted that if she was in her twenties now she would have lived a different life. She would NOT have had children, she would have had a successful career,  she would have lived in NYC and would have been an executive. She would have gone to the theater, eaten dinner out in small Parisian cafes, lit by candlelight, attend the ballet. She wasn’t the “motherly type” we all knew that. We think Dad even knew that but he humored her. Her nurturing skills did not exist, there was no evidence of her common sense skills either. She blurted out words and sentences, never thinking about how the other person would feel, never knowing the hurt feelings she could cause because she only thought about herself. “She didn’t mean to do it” she would say as her defense; she would vow that she would resolve that problem by trying to change. We rolled our eyes; this was her standard line; we all knew that it would never last. She might try for a day or two but then she would turn it around and become nasty, trying to make us feel bad for her lonely life. My little brother, Brian, took it the hardest. All I wanted to do was protect him, to take him out of this house and run away.  I just needed a few more years to earn money and then I would take him with me and we would disappear. She could have the life she wanted then, we didn’t care. We just wanted to get away from her poison. We still hadn’t gotten over the loss of our father due to a massive heart attack many years ago.

Joyce was a troubled woman, an even more troubled child. Her own parents had been killed in an automobile accident when she was seven. She had been adopted quickly by a family who adored her yet she never got over her own anger. She never trusted another soul, because they could leave her too. As a mother she knew her children would leave her when they grew up, so why get attached to them? This was not the life she wanted anyway.

Mellow Yellow Monday

Noodle Kugel (Photo credit: ShellyS)

My goal is to try new things so I decided to bake a “Noodle Kugel” which is made with yellow egg noodles

milk, sour cream, eggs, cottage cheese, sugar (brown and white) cinnamon and raisins. It’s a very warm and comforting

dish; my sister has always made them before. While not perfect, for the first time, it came out very good, indeed. I

actually made it because my son, 20, loves it so much; needless to say he wasn’t “hungry” last night!

Noodle Kugel (Photo credit: cjbakker)

Carry on Tuesday: I have wiped the slate clean

Description unavailable (Photo credit: wakingphotolife:)

There was so much anger and resentment in my past, in my youth, it piled up like a bloody automobile accident on an icy winter day. Black ice that you can’t even see, like feelings that you didn’t know you still had. They snuck up from deep inside me and burst, like popped balloons. Years and years of self-teaching and negotiating and drawing lines and speaking up and creating boundaries had finally come. There had been teachers and books and confrontation to arrive at this peaceful place now, a place of breathing and thinking, forgiving and living in the present. It took a lot of work but I was proud of myself, finally.

I had wiped the slate clean and all the baggage of my past was behind me. However, I look across at you, my lover of five years and I fear it is still in you. I begged you for years to come to therapy with me, to work on our relationship but you refused. Does it mean anything to you that I have done all this work for our relationship? You shake your head back and forth and say in a low tone: “Not really.” You scratch your beard and stroke it, a habit that I have come to detest. I shudder from the cold temperatures in the room and in your answer which is void of emotions. You do not like change, I know, why would you like change; you haven’t noticed anything was wrong to begin with. I sigh deeply. I don’t know what to do, how to respond to you, you are a creature of habit and you annoy me now, this highly predictable presence in MY artist’s cottage. I don’t know if you belong here anymore, I mutter that under my breath but you don’t listen to me, even if I had shouted it out loud. You never listen to me, do you? You just hear what you want to hear, as if you were a five-year old boy, plugging his ears with his fingers and screeching some vile noises, getting louder and louder by the minute. I want to slap you but I have to control myself because that would be getting nowhere and I abhor physical violence in every form. Look what you have almost made me think of doing!!

I get up from our scratched wooden kitchen table, I feel sick to my stomach and head to the sink and heave into it, my long brown hair falling far into the sink. I am trying to vomit the destruction out of my body but nothing comes out. I want to look at the decay, describe it, name it, show it, but I can’t. I can’t even do that right. Nothing comes out of my body except the decaying dry heaves of a woman starting to become undone. No, I will not let myself do this. I stop myself and breathe. Slowly.

I lay on the sofa, with a red and blue crocheted blanket tucked around me that my mom made for me years ago. I’m tired, confused and feel very much alone. I don’t know what to do right now. I know in my heart and deep inside me, just one thing, we need to separate.  I need to be free, he is stifling me and I feel I can’t breathe anymore. “He had” no idea, he will wail, I’m sure, when I would later say this a mere week later. But, it was in the room with us for a very long time. He just wasn’t paying attention.

Carry on Tuesday: A ray of hope flickers in the sky, Newtown, CT.

Infrared Background Light from First Stars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s been said that when a child is born, with all their innocence and sweetness, that a ray of hope flickers in the dark, dark sky. That if you look up at the time of the child’s birth, you too, can see the bright star of illumination descending to earth as all of us above are around him or her. We surround the baby with joy and laughter, we murmur and sing with happiness and grace and a quiet round of applause. We welcome your child, every child to the world so each child born already feels special, like the unique miracle they are.

But, when a child dies, we weep. You may not hear us, or feel us amongst your grief, but we are right beside you, holding your hand, touching you and never leaving your side or your child’s side. We know about the tragedies that happen in your world and don’t think it doesn’t upset us because it hurts us too. We must stay calm because we know how beautiful the other side is and it is our job is to take the physical body of your child and guide it to the other side. The love for your child and the child’s love for you is never taken away, please know that. The spiritual side of your child is with you forever, love never dies; it is always around in different forms. Some of you may need to get used to that, others take to it immediately. If you are open to it, you will receive messages but it may take time.

Of course you will miss the physical body of your child, that IS gone forever and nothing can change that, not even a miracle. But know, with the same joy we have delivered your child to you, we have brought them home to heaven and there they are safe, and happy and know that both us angels and you love them very much. They are watching over you now, and telling you not to be sad, to try to remember their memories with laughter and happiness when you are ready. They don’t want you to be sad anymore than you wanted them to feel pain. This lifetime is over, but a new one is beginning, the children have been laughing since they arrived. Move on from the past, look forward to the future, do this for your child and for your family.

Please know that when a child is taken from his/her family they do go to a better place, they are no longer in pain. But, also know, it does not go unnoticed in our world above; the star that flickered bright when your child was born to you is extinguished in the sky to commemorate your child’s loss. It is how we grieve your loss. We are always at your child’s heavenly side but we will never forget about you either.

Mellow Yellow Monday – Jelly Beans

I love jelly beans, they make me smile, especially the yellow ones! I leave the red ones for other people.

Baby Jelly Bean Heart (Photo credit: Carol Munro was rgtmum)

The Scent Of His Cologne – REPOST

. (Photo credit: Gwenaël Piaser)

IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER WHO DIED ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, 11 YEARS AGO

I was sitting on my bed today, legs crossed, listening to music when over my right shoulder I smelled a fragrance. I sniffed several times and looked to see if I had put perfume on an item of clothes that I was wearing but since I was still in my monkey night-shirt and bear sweats, it was not even a consideration. I looked around, in front of me and behind, saw nothing and then I knew….my father had sent me a message for Christmas from Heaven. I haven’t had a message from my father in such a long time and it felt so good. I could feel his presence to the right of my shoulder. My eyes filled up with tears and I whispered “Thank you, Daddy.”

My father, when he was alive, used to have a “shaving lotion” collection or as most American men would say after- shave cologne. Some dads played golf, others collected stamps, still others played tennis, our European dad collected after shave cologne. He had a shelf built especially for these different sized bottles and he would go to different countries to add to his “hobby.” I’m not totally sure but I think he never had more or less than thirteen which was his lucky number.

Signs from the other side don’t scare me, as they do my mother, they comfort me and I appreciate them. Christmas used to be my Dad’s favorite holiday; the last Christmas he was alive I sat next to him, eleven years ago, and held his very, soft, hand. It was a softness that I knew I could not replicate. I knew it would be his last Christmas. He died New Year’s Eve, one day before my parent’s wedding anniversary on January 1st.

I received a gift from him today, one that means more to me than any present I can unwrap on Christmas Day. I know that love never dies, I’ve written about that many times before. I also know that while the physical body is dead, the spiritual one lives forever and that I never stopped loving him and he will never stop loving me. But, every once in a while, it feels so wonderful, and special to have received the gift today that is more precious than any memory.

I love you, Daddy.

As we used to say “Thanks for stopping by.”