Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Breathtaking

 

The tree house and swing at the edge of the woods with the purple redbuds behind. Don't you love green fuzz of new leaves beginning to swell on the trees?

         With all the beauty of spring time in the mountains, it is impossible not to smile at the deep satisfying goodness of life. The forsythia and flowering pear may be fading, but the lilacs, redbud, and apple blossoms are taking over. Oh, and my apologies to the dogwood. How could I forget you, sweet things?! The landscape is a new riot of pink and purple with strong hints of green. I mowed the lawn for the first time this season and the aroma of cut grass was intoxicating. I continued mowing a perimeter around the field because Henri enjoys his walks there and the field grass is quickly getting too tall. All this tromping and riding around the property helps me to observe and take stock of the things that need tending. The list grows ever longer and includes moving the swing to a higher branch, transplanting the daisies to a better location, getting rid of the diseased peonies, and installing flashing on the horse shed. The list is much, much longer but I don't want to overwhelm Steve if he reads this : )
     I'm also seeing the home and property from a grandparent's perspective nowadays. The children love to play outside when they visit hence, the swing, tree house, and fields will be playgrounds once again. It seems like it was only a short while ago that our own daughters were running through these same fields, jumping from hay bales, and galloping the horse up the hill. I'm glad this home place wasn't quiet for too long between the generations. There's much more enjoyment still to come and we'll keep the bonfires burning and the marshmallows handy as long as we're fit and able. My hope is for Nonni and Pop's house to be a place the grandchildren enjoy visiting. I won't try out the swing before we move it because I know for a fact the branch isn't safe, but I may climb up into the tree house to be sure all is in order there. I might just take a book and pillow up there and stay a while.
     I had a day's worth of bookkeeping to do this morning and I had been at it for a couple of hours when I rummaged through my inbox and stumbled across a letter my mom had penned a few months ago. It broke my heart to see her handwriting. She couldn't see and therefore struggled to write. Grief ebbs and flows at the drop of a hat, the sound of a tune, or the appearance of a letter. A good cry later and I took Henri outside where we both benefited from the fresh air. It truly is a beautiful day even with the chill and breeze. My heart swells with gratitude for nature's beauty and the healing properties with which God has imbued it.  

When I photographed the lilac I noticed the dogwood up on the hill behind it. Perfect!

We had visitors today. They came into our field and their presence taunted Henri to no end! They are the cutest things to watch, waddling in formation.

Preparing for Abundance

     It started out as an obligation to the calendar, marking tomorrow as Easter Sunday. A year hasn't gone by that I haven't prepared our home for Easter, but this year my heart wasn't into making a celebration. To overcome this, I made it a purpose to dedicate Saturday for Easter preparations. Dutifully, I hauled the tub of Easter baskets up from the basement and with a sigh I climbed up onto the step stool and carried down the cartons of decorated eggs from the cabinet. I laid butter and cream cheese out to soften for baking and spread recipes on the counter for reference. I had committed this day and I would stick to it.

     One thing I have learned over the years about grief is that it causes scatterbrained thoughts and general overall fogginess. It's hard to stay on topic and it's so easy to be distracted. Along this trend, I soon found myself trying to do three things at once from my to-do list. I half started a cupcake recipe, I was arranging flowers in a vase, and I was trying to decide which Easter grass to use for a basket. About this time Audrey walked in with her dogs for an impromptu visit. Her visit made me want to sit down and do nothing other than chat. I realized I was beginning to drown in my lack of focus and I needed either to stick to it or give up. I sat for a few minutes with Audrey, then I got up and got the cupcakes into the oven with the promise of walking the dogs while they baked.

     After circling the fields, we came back in and started going through all the Pysanky eggs together. We handled them and talked about the colors and designs. We arranged only a few and put most away, which was perfect. Audrey ate an unfrosted cupcake and I finally finished arranging those flowers. By the time I started a soup for dinner I began to feel like I was getting back into the grove of my kitchen and home. It felt good to re-acquaint myself with my favorite Saturday hobbies of baking and cooking. I also began to notice a shift in my thoughts. Rather than dwell on the things that life was lacking, I began to feel life's abundance and God's goodness in all of it.   

 

     In recognizing that Christ the Lord has risen from the grave, we prepare our hearts and souls for abundance. In our sorrow, God's love is abundant. In our pain, God's love is enduring. In our future, God's plan for us is life everlasting, in peace and goodness. Whatever we face on this earth has been answered. It is finished... abundantly!

  

Cleaning, Therapy Style

     We all have our ways of coping. Whether it be from stress or grief or loneliness, we react in a myriad of ways. We may overeat or drink, meditate or pray, snap at people or withdraw into solitude, whatever combination of the above, our minds and bodies are attempting to cope. Some of these methods occur automatically and we react without giving it a thought. Other coping mechanisms may be more intentional, like prayer. I tend towards a particular combination of coping mechanisms for stress and grief, but there is one quirky little thing that I've learned about myself over the years and that is my obsessive compulsive need to clean when life feels out of control. It's not a scary, life altering OCD reaction, no. Rather, it's a day's worth of channeling what I have absolutely no control over into something that I completely control. I guess the reasoning goes like this, "My mom has died and I can't do a thing about it, but I can clean, damn it."
     I can usually detect when the urge to clean is barreling in and my thoughts organize around what cleaning jobs I will tackle. I become very focused and my attitude is forthright. "Everybody stay out of my way and no one will get hurt. Hand over your toothbrushes, I need them." Normally, I would never do hard labor after the dinner hour, but this particular night you might find me scrubbing cabinets at 9:00pm. I hope my family knows me by now and there's no need to worry at such a sight. I'm simply coping.
     Wonderful things come out of this particular coping mechanism. Obviously, the first result is a clean kitchen or perhaps an entire house, depending on my energy level. Secondly, I discovered a new cleaning tool that has upped the game. I saw this on someone's blog but I can't recall where in order to give them credit. This little scrub brush holds soap inside and dispenses it as you scrub. My cabinets have never been cleaner. It even gets at the nooks and corners in the cabinet doors where greasy kitchen dust collects. Lastly and most importantly, we all know that busy hands free the mind to think and wander. Mindless work lends itself beautifully to prayer and thoughtfulness. Memories flow forward, unfinished business is contemplated and routed out from the crevices of both mind and dirty corners, and God lends His ear whenever we call upon Him whether we sit quietly in a chair or on our hands and knees, toothbrush at work.
     So, we are coping. I'm learning what hurts the most, what I can and can't do alone, and who to call on for what. I know that sometimes things have to get messier and harder before they get better. I'm in messy and hard now, trying to reason what just happened these past eight months. I ask myself what did I do right or wrong and what have I learned from it? If the scope of cleaning and renovating projects on my docket is any determination of what I still need to work out in my heart and mind then I'll be at it for a while. Some aspects of caring for my mom will never be resolved and I will need to come to grips with that, too. It hurts, but it hurts because I loved. That, I can accept.
     
    

A New Hand to Hold, It Is Well

     And so, the cycle is complete, life and death and death and life. There is no better way to assuage one's grief than to have a sweet babe placed in one's arms. 

 

 

 We've been pretty much holed up for two weeks with only forays out for necessities. I've only just begun to cook again after friends and family drove out with breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for all these days. It was an amazing outpouring of love to my family. Chelsea and Simon drove from New York with Hugo, arriving the day after my mother's death. Claire and their three children arrived a week later and filled the house with life. We've taken walks, visited in the wee hours of morning when Hugo couldn't sleep, been entertained by the antics of little ones, and mostly relaxed. 

     In two days everyone will have gone home and it will be time to pick up the pieces and take stock of what all just happened. I was in the mindset that I would be caring for Mom for some time to come. I quit my part time job last summer when she moved in with us and I hadn't thought much beyond her care through this coming summer. Now I'm here with nothing but empty time in front of me. It won't be wasted, but goodness it happened so fast.
     One of my first tasks will be to go into Mom's room and handle her belongings. The few times I've forayed in there since she died were difficult, so I know this will be the hardest task. She lived and died in our home and memories of her are everywhere. But such is life. It is very, very beautiful and it is very, very sad and through it all, God is very, very good.

Goodbye Mom, Marian (Maffeo) Giacomino 4/14/22 - 2/22/16

     My mother quietly passed away Monday morning, here at home with her hand in mine. For three days we sat vigil by her bedside, listening to her breathe, even counting her breaths for hours throughout the night. Breath, breath, breath, stop, breath, breath, breath, stop, while two clocks in the room ticked the minutes away. And then the breaths were no more. The silence was a shock. A moment later I noticed the clock still ticked, so I reached over and stopped it. The agony was over but the grief had just begun.
     During the long vigil I whispered loving things into Mom's ear. There's so much to say to someone we love when they're dying. No regrets, no confessions, just loving encouragement for a job well done, a life well lived, and promises of paradise and God's loving arms waiting to receive her. Sometimes I sang songs to her during the long nights. A few times I fell asleep with my head on her arm, aching for my mother because I was still her child. Steve played quiet songs for her on his recorder in the day and it seemed to soothe her breathing. Audrey and Tess came to hold her hand when I needed to leave the room. We prayed and cried as those hours and days ticked by. She was never conscious but we assumed she heard all we said and did.
     How close and thin is the veil that separates us from eternity. Just there, on the other side of a breath, angels do the Lord's bidding. Yet, how wide the chasm that separates our living reach from those on the other side.
     Friends came by to pray and talk. They dropped off meals every day, sometimes even two.We felt the love. I hope Mom felt it, too. In spirit, she's passed on to her eternal home with God and all her loved ones who have gone before her. In body, she begins her journey home to New York today. Oh how she longed to go home!

A Force to Be Reckoned With

     Suddenly there is a shift in the breeze and life blows in an entirely different direction. Words like "palliative care" and "hospice" are in our vocabulary and friends are rallying round to feed the dog, leave pizza in our kitchen, and show up with a phone charger for me at the hospital. I'm learning there are so many ways to spell the word, "love".
     After twenty years of wondering, "What is wrong with my mother?" we finally have an answer. It would have been good to know sooner, but it explains everything. Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, diagnosed with an MRI. Leave it to my mother to live way beyond the projected lifespan for this disease. It will ultimately take her life, but she has fought a good, hard battle with this invisible enemy. It has battered and broken her, taken away her speech and her smile, and yet she survived.
     So, I find myself once again trying to hoard memories and there are too many. They feel like thousands of balloons that I'm trying hold onto by scooping them into my apron. The more I scoop, the more that tumble out and can't be gathered. It's an impossible task yet I feel compelled to keep trying. My father, my sister, and now my mother. So many memories. Lord plant my roots deep and help me stand strong. The wind is blowing and the balloons won't stay in my apron.    
    

Where the Wild Things Are: At Nonni's

     Nonni (that would be me) is still recovering from having her hands (and lap) full last weekend. It was wonderful to have Claire's three children here for the weekend while she and Daniel had a little getaway. I'm very glad we could do this favor for them. Here are a few highlights in words and pictures:

All three children love to have books read to them. I'm glad because I enjoy sharing a book with them just as much. Still in our robes and pajamas, we read, "Where the Wild Things Are".

Mari's Grandma Hoffman picked her up to take her and her cousins to a play of Rapunzel at our local theater. The girls decided to dress up for the play. Here Mari wears a flower girl dress that her mother wore when she was five years old. Tess played Beauty Shop with Mari and braided her hair, polished her nails, and helped her dress. As is true with most little girls, "more is better" and Mari added butterfly pins to her sash, a hairband, multiple bracelets, and both tights and ruffled purple socks beneath. Tess talked her out of wearing all the barrettes. Jack wanted in on the game so Tess painted his finger and toenails, too.

Matthew at fifteen months really enjoyed playing in Pop's chair. I think it was because he could get in and out of it easily all by himself. He was happy to sit with me visit with my mom, his Great Grandma! He spent some precious time getting to know her by reaching out and touching her nose and lips and chin. I could tell she was smiling with amusement inside. The little guy spent much of the weekend on my hip or lap. I'm okay with constant cuddles but it reminded me how hardworking parents of little ones are.

Play-Do was definitely a favorite pastime. I remember when my daughters were little, I got on their cases to not blend the colors of dough together. With the grandchildren I say blend and mush away! I wish I hadn't been so uptight back then. (Steve would say I'm still uptight, but I know for a fact that I've mellowed considerably compared to how I was before.)
Later that evening, Jack became very excited when he saw his family's Christmas card on the bulletin board. It was a photo of his family and he kept exclaiming, "It's Mommy and Daddy! Look! Look! It's Mommy. And Daddy!". It just about broke my heart. We took it down from the board and he slept with it on his pillow that night. He is a loving little boy, for sure.

Coloring, drawing, and crafts are also a big favorite with the children. (As are eating ice cream, cupcakes, and cookies.) When it comes to hearts, again "more is better". Mari was very happy to make an elaborate Valentine for her family.
By Sunday evening, Claire and Daniel arrived and everyone was reunited. We watched the Superbowl game, shared stories of the weekend, and I sat with my feet up enjoying one of my favorite drinks, a Moscow Mule.