SILVER LININGS AND POTS OF GOLD AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW

Ok, I will not lie.  I should be studying Mendelian genetics, epistasis and other patterns of genomic inheritance.  I know this.  My professor giving the exam Monday knows this.  My husband (yes, my husband... yes, I'm pretty sure I did mention it somewhere) would know it as well if I weren't over here pretending that I was studying avidly.  So please don't make me feel more guilty than I already do even contemplating writing this. But as you all are well aware (and if for some reason you missed my previous muse on this topic, you can brush up in Part One here) when turmoil arises; when strong emotions arise; even when overwhelming indigestion arises, I find my center in words.  

4 years and one week ago I posted a blog about the roller-coaster of life.  And it hit me tonight, as I read the words of my 36-year-old self, how much we grow, and how much life continually teaches us if we actually bother to listen to the lessons and search for the silver linings hidden in the adversities we face.  That woman writing 4 years ago had an inkling of how her mother's illness would change her.  She had already begun re-evaluating life, making changes, starting to live actively rather than passively.  But she could never have guessed that out of such a cloud of grief and heartbreak that was the illness consuming her mother, there could be hidden a beautiful lining of silver.  Maybe she wasn't supposed to know.  Perhaps it would have been easier in some ways if she could have guessed. Perhaps it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference.  But today, as my 40-year-old self had a conversation with a new acquaintance about the deep lessons of life, I was able to articulate to her just how powerful it is to know that out of adversity can come things that may never have come otherwise.  

A case in point: my father.  Dad and I have always had a rocky relationship with a seemingly impenetrable wall that kept us from having a really meaningful relationship.  Perhaps it was the impasse in our ideologies and our collective stubborn inability to let go of differences in life philosophy, religion and politics.  Maybe we just didn't know how to find common ground upon which to relate to each other.  Whatever the reason, I never imagined having a truly meaningful relationship with my father.  A sad thing to admit, but the truth nonetheless.  

And then one day - I believe it was not long after I took Roy down to Florida to meet everyone for the first time - my phone rang and it was my father.  My heart immediately hit my stomach, because I knew something was wrong.  For my dad to call me, out of the blue, most certainly meant something at least close to approaching bad.  The first words of my mouth were along the lines of, "Dad? What is wrong? What happened?"  "What?" he said, "Can't I just call to see how my daughter is doing?"

For the first time in my memory, my dad called just to talk.  To actually talk.  To me.  And not even about anything in particular.  I kept waiting for the motive to reveal itself, but it never did.  The phone call simply was. 

And in the intervening years, the phone calls became more and more frequent and amicable as we actually began really talking TO each other - not AT each other.  The more my mother slipped away from us, the more I found solace in my connection with him.  He knew.  We shared that great love for my mom, each in our own way, but each as powerful and true as the other.  We finally shared that common ground, my mother being the platform upon which our relationship was sown.  It is a gift that I may have never found if we had not ever had to lose my mother.

4 years ago I wrote:

One of my aunts cares for her [my grandmother] every day and she has one of the most beautiful attitudes of acceptance about it that I've ever heard. I'm sure that she went through this initial roller-coaster of emotions, but it is the place she is on the other side that I look at and hold up as a light. My aunt said to me, when talking about it, that even though her mother doesn't know who she is, she is one of the neatest old women she knows and she loves being with her. I can't wait to reach that point, because just thinking of that inevitability - acknowledging that my mother, the woman who holds me always as her child, who knows all the countless hurts and boo boo's, the childhood triumphs, the only person in the world who holds my entire existence in her mind and heart, will look at me one day in the not-to-distant future and not see ME...

I wanted to find that place, but I couldn't imagine getting from there to here. Mom died August 8th, almost 2 months ago. And the most precious moments I carry with me are those moments when I did make it to the other side. Those moments when my mother looked at me, as I helped her in the bathroom, and said thank you. That moment when I fixed a long towel around her neck because she wanted a cape and she looked me in the eye and asked, "Does your mother know where you are?"

"Yes, she does," I replied, "and she wouldn't want me anywhere else."

"Really?"

"Yes.  And in fact you look just like my mother."

"I do?"

"I think maybe you may be even a little more beautiful than her."

Remembering how my mom lit up, as she always had when I paid her compliments, how she laughed and said, "Noooooo" in a way that meant, "Really? I am?"  Remembering each smile that I could drag out of her, every single laugh, and knowing that even though she didn't know who I was that she at least really liked me... I realize that I made it to the other side.  The side that holds the joy in each moment of being able to help her, and hold her, and give back to her even just a fraction of what she gave to me.  That moment when she curled up on the couch in my arms like one of my own children, cape intact, and finally slept, when I could just hope that my arms were giving her a much-needed sense of peace and security and wish that I never had to let go.  I realize I made it.

Dad came to visit this weekend, and for the first time in 4 years, my kids got to be with their grandpa again, even for just a short time.  And for the first time in his memory, Kellen actually got to meet his grandpa and have the gift of falling in love with him - something he has missed being the youngest grandchild shoved away by a devastating illness that he cannot understand.  And I got to hang with my dad, just he and I, and take him to visit our close friends who remind me so much of the close friends my parents had all their lives.  And when I hugged him tonight and watched him drive away, to begin the last leg of his journey north on to my brother's house, I was shocked by the tightening in my heart, not knowing when I will get to see him again.  And realizing that I am at a place I never imagined I'd be in my life - a place where I actually miss being with him.  Perhaps one might look at this and ask was the silver lining worth the cost of the cloud from which it came, but I prefer to think of it as a silver lining that ensures that the cloud was not in vain. 

And I have no doubt that I will eventually find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, either.