How To Say Goodbye – Don’t

October 31, 2014October 31, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

This is Day 31

Thank you for joining me during the month of October for #write31days. Now that we are ending the series, I am just getting started with this rodeo. Was this a practice drill? Is tomorrow really November 1? More about that later.

To read the series in its entirety, click the page tab at the top of the home page. Spoiler alert, there are not 31 posts. Right, I know, I fell short of the goal. But I don’t really see it that way. More about that later.

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I do not like goodbye’s. Unless I am leaving the DMV or the dentist. But even then I have usually tried to connect with someone in the place and have done some sort of bonding, making it difficult to leave. So goodbye’s, I am not a fan. When I say bonding, I mean I hope I have gotten past how are you’s and how is the weather’s. I am a digger. Though I try to be gentle. If we were having coffee I would be gently going deeper in conversation rather than keeping it superficial.

If you are a regular reader here, it is rare to hear me speak. Usually its a lot of poetry. And I like it that way, but today is a horse of a different color and I am feeling a bit chatty, sentimental and having a difficult time saying goodbye to this series.

Perhaps it is because I am struggling to say goodbye to my beloved old English Lab who is hanging around this thin veil of living and leaving. It is painful and yet there are moments laced with such tender beauty. I am clinging to the moments and praying for a miracle. I am seeing signs of love and life and glory tinged on the edges of her illness. The tail wags, a barometer of life. She rolls on her back and lets me rub her sweet spot, an indicator of emotion. And the food? If she can still eat her beloved peanut butter treats, she’s not going anywhere anytime soon (she says hopefully and expectantly).

So perhaps saying goodbye is best when we focus on the hellos, the gratitude, the blessings of the life and life experiences rather than the void. I do not know how to say goodbye’s well. So do not listen to me. But as I map out the end of this series I want to focus on gratitude.

My best goodbye is a big hello, thank you, blessings on your head.

If you have read here for a season, you have come across my words on aging and dementia. This is a theme of sorts in my life as I walk through this confusing disease with my mother. It is a journey of discovery. Of pain and joy. Of surprise and disappointment. I do not want to say goodbye to who she was before dementia, I choose to say hello to who she is becoming every day within the new paradigm of her life, aging with dementia. Hello, thank you, blessings.

I want to choose to embrace the moment, savor the moment and declare the gratitude in the moment.

I guess the best goodbye is a hello till later.

Maybe that’s the best I can do on this Day 31. I hope this is hello. I hope this is see you in November. And I hope you will be around for the book. Because the book is coming, I trust the timing. And no, I do not know the details, I just know my heart’s desire on the matter. And I hope you will help me explore the newsletter and join me if it is birthed and takes off.

So this is my postcard from me for today. Hello, thank you, bless you, warmly, e.

If I have met you through this series, thank you. If you have subscribed to the blog to follow my writing during October, thank you.

I hope to see you in November and all the months ahead.

I am dreaming of a weekly newsletter which contains writing that would not be found on my blog. If you think this sounds interesting, intriguing or has any merit at all, drop a comment in the comment box and say, “I MIGHT be interested in that”. And if you are subscribing, you will hear me announce here a place to sign up if I go forward with it. I think a newsletter may be fun for all of us. (Rather than a second blog.) Yes, I did mention that as an option earlier this week.

Please Pass The Words

October 7, 2014October 7, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to Day 7 in the #write31days series, Postcards From Me.

I am celebrating your presence here. It is a gift. Words without eyes and ears to ingest them can get a little lonely. You know. Crickets. Quiet. Pin drop quiet.

To read the series in its entirety click here

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Please Pass The Words

There, beside the heap of hot comfort, mashed potatoes
Steam rising up, like Old Faithful
Butter running down, like sweat off the brow

There, beside the pickled beets
Garnet red bleeding wild and running free around
The cracked blue willow plate

Please pass the words
Excavate them from the deepest parts of you
Chisel, unearth them with a horsehair brush

Brush them gently as an archeologist would
Handle them with loving care
A mix of lover and scientist

Cup them in your hands
Clothed in moleskin gloves
Breathe the word fragile, over them again

There, resting beside a decade ago and
Many decades before that, hiding still
Please pass the words, they’re getting cold

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Join me won’t you as I journey through the challenge of writing 31 days in October. I am joining over 1000 bloggers at The Nester’s writing home. Come and read along.

Laughter, The Joy of Giddy

October 6, 2014October 6, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 3 Comments

Today is Day 6 in the Series, Postcards From Me (#write31days).

To catch up and read the series in its entirety click here or go to the link at the top of my homepage. Welcome. You bring Joy. This challenge and journey are better with sojourners along for the ride.

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My poetry asked for a three day weekend. I said since you work so hard…. you deserve it. Take a little vacay. Just please come back tomorrow. Because I am doing this series and you are a big part of it. Don’t leave me hanging. Don’t abandon a girl in her time of need. So that leaves me with prose. Prose today again. Tomorrow poetry. Or a hybrid blend. I love surprises and hope you do too. Come back tomorrow, won’t you and journey through this October series with me.

Subscribe & walk through the entire 31 day series. Just like laughter, it is free. And follow along on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google plus and Facebook. The cruise director in the right sidebar should direct you where to go.

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I am beginning to think that if I have one small regret, it would be I should have laughed more. So I am making up for lost laughter. And the timing is good. Very good. Because I do not know how we would wage these little mini battles with Dementia if it were not for laughter. It is saving us. A lifesaver for our souls. A healing gift from The Creator. Lord have mercy, laughter is good for the places touched by pain.

She throws the door open and waves the bag of dog bones, thrilled at the photograph of the dog on the front. It looks like one of hers and that delights her, turns her inside out with joy. Laughing and smiling and finding joy in a micro-moment. Like the packaging of dog treats.

Joy and laughter are a balm to this family battling Dementia.

Laughter bales the water out of our sinking boat. Buoys us. Anchors us to safety. And elevates our spirits.

We sit in front of a blazing fire. Warmed by each other, the routine of a daily reading from some of our favorite writers. And the cackling wood and flame. Now is the time to start the day well. Now is the time to begin rooted in The Word and in quiet reflection.

We read the words of Anne Lamott, along with Brennan Manning, Oswald Chambers and more. But it is Anne who turns up the fire in our belly’s with hardy belly laughs. The room is turned on its head. We are overtaken by side-splitting cackles. Though laughter is contagious, repeating the phrases which sent us into an hysterical tailspin, well something may get lost in the translation. So I won’t.

But you know the ways your funny bone gets tickled. And how the slightest of nuanced phrases and simple word choices can bring levity to the dark moments. For, indeed, we were discussing some heavy topics, when laughter entered our hearts. Like sickness and pain and divorce. It is not that they are funny. No. It is that the soul balm of laughter and a playfulness in the midst of pain brought a lightness which we needed. Cried out for. Thirsted for.

May laughter and silliness, play and light- heartedness seep into your day. Soothe the hurt. And be a balm to the aches and pains of your heart.

Thank you for joining me for Day Six. You are a treasure.

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Joining Laura Boggess at The Wellspring

I am enjoying Laura’s New Book, Playdates With God, available on Amazon. Every page I’ve read has touched me and left me with a sweetness. It is simply a beautiful, delightful read. I hope to do a giveaway before the end of October of the book. Stay tuned for more on this.

The Beauty Of Repetition – A Story of The Bats

October 5, 2014October 5, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Thank you for joining this journey of poetry, prose and photography. To follow the series click here for all posts in Postcards From Me — #write31days
Grateful to have you along on this 31 Day Writing Challenge. You breathe joy onto the pages here as you accompany me on this journey.

The Beauty of Repetition – A Story Of The Bats

Good Night Moon for the two hundredth time
Crispy fried chicken from the colonel from Kentucky
Hot macaroni and cheese
Orange or yellow, boxed, or home made
And a glass of cold milk at bedtime
Cheek on cold pillow
Rhythms and patterns, the labyrinth of life

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I start out to gather my words, herd them into a poem. They said, “no can do”. My words talk back to me. They can be headstrong like that. I know they won’t conform to my poem so I give them up and open the field of prose. Let them run wild and free.

I think they like it there sometimes where there is more openness, where it is wider, bigger more like South Dakota. A lot of space to stretch and breathe. And be the words they were created to be. With less fence lines and gateposts and cattle gates with locks.

Plus, it is difficult to write about bats in poetry. Unless you are Billy Collins or some other very creative and poet laureate-esq writer. Because the words, patterns, memories, recollections that have tried to form a poem have put their collective feet down and said “tell this in prose.” I assume your words talk back to you in a similar way.

She keeps telling the bat stories over and over again. And we laugh and feign misery and say”no not again, don’t tell the bat story.” And then we spell as if she can’t and say, here comes the b-a-t story again. Being a child and being an adult are not that dissimilar. Familiarity is comforting. And patterns are guideposts to our living.

Repetition comforts. Pattern calms. Tradition and customs and pilgrimages restore our souls with the balm of the familiar.

I walk to the spring and stop. Stare at the water trickling down. Measure with an invisible yardstick in my memory. Check to see if the water is coming from the spring in a rapid or slowing rate. Twenty something years of going to Wynne Lithia Spring and it’s new every single time. The beauty of repetition restores me. I stop and lose myself in the beauty of the spring. And remember my memories of this place. I have stockpiled them. Hoarded them. Hold them tight.

She asks me if I have read this book, the one in her hand, the one by Flannery O’Connor. And I say yes parts, until I realize it is a different Flannery O’Connor book. And I remind her of the author’s love of peacocks. Thinking we’ll discuss the short stories with tales of the peahens and peabiddies. And she said yes, “I see that now in technicolor on television.” And I haven’t a clue. Until I catch up with her mind and her world and where she has gone. She is not in the room. Her look is far away. Empty. Vapid. And I am lost.

Dementia is a game player. One moment we are discussing Flannery O’Connor and the next she is remembering NBC’s early logo from the television of her youth. I go there, with her, in my mind. And follow this trail to her past. Where I learn. And revisit. And uncover. And secretly wonder about this place of distant remembering that she goes to brush off the dust and bring back a treasure from her past.

I was thinking of O’Connor’s beautiful peacocks, her beloved peacocks from her youth. Mother was thinking of NBC. As the crow flies, they aren’t that far away. You must learn the language of dementia before you can communicate with it’s strange dialect. The nuances. The subtleties.

We cross our legs in laughter. Red faced and breathless. The bats came walking into the powder room one day as she sat there. Stunned. Amazed. Bewildered. And then they came from the bookcase during another time in her life. We zig zag through the stories of the bats. And where do all these bats come from. And why is there a series of unfortunate bat stories in this family. And aren’t we all a little batty anyway.

There are other “bat stories”. No not stories of bats. But ones she repeats. The stories of her youth and childhood. The ones that are emblazoned there in her mind. She grabs the photo album. We sit down side by side. And she shows me the pictures of us again. In Boston. I am two.

And I savor her narrative of this faded photograph album.

And listen to her telling of us.

As if it is the first time. Because like my visits to the spring. Her stories are always welcome and new. With an added piece of herself, folded into the telling. And if I listen with the ear of a child, I will walk away, wiser. Changed.

By the beauty of the repetition. And dementia loses another battle. And we are winners, again. We beat back the dark and stand in the light. And say “Wonderful story, mother. Tell us again.”

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