AFTER THANKSGIVING

Well, Thanksgiving is over and I have to say I'm glad. We did have a really good time with family and nobody went home hungry.

I am the least likey person to be able to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, but, amazingly, I did. It's not the first time but I don't think I'm very good at it. I only like dressing made the way my mother made it but I don't think it was anybody's favorite. But if I'm making it I can do it the way I want. I have only cooked one turkey in my whole life and don't intend to do that ever again. I just didn't like touching it. So I bought a smoked turkey breast and it was really good and I didn't have to touch it at all. I got carried away with the mac and cheese and made way too much. The pan was too full and cheese ran down the sides as it baked. I didn't eat it but a lot of it was consumed so guess it was passable. I did cook a ham but we ate a big part of it on Wednesday.

We had family on Friday (we didn't eat the family, we fed them). We had navy beans, cooked from scratch, spaghetti, country ham and cornbread, along with a few leftovers. It was a good day.

Now I have to look toward Christmas. I don't like messing with Christmas trees but like them when they are up and decorated. But at midnight on Dec. 26, I am finished with that tree.

I used my mother's dishes for Thanksgiving. I didn't go get them until late Wednesday night. I'm glad I used them. She had them for years and never tired of using them. They did make the table pretty.

I bought candles but lost them, only to find them Thursday night. I guess they will keep for next year.

The cats enjoyed the scraps, they had a festive Thanksgiving.

I should begin right now and purge the house of clutter and stuff. But I probably won't since I like it all so well. My children can deal with it when I pass.

Now I want to read, write, paint, art journal and nap. All at the same time.

WISHING FOR RAIN

I just took a chocolate cake out of the oven. It is going to have cherry icing. Susan's favorite. It will put all my pounds back on. Maybe I can make myself just eat a tiny little piece.

I don't know what to read. I keep starting books but they don't keep my attention. I start them over and read a little more, then lay them aside. I know that will change but it drives me crazy. I like to be lost in books.

I wish it would rain, buckets of rain, making rivers in my back yard. I would like to have lightning and wind, great raindrops hitting the windows. I wish it would come just at the gloaming and run into the night, keeping me awake, then lulling me into a deep sleep.

I DREAMT OF TREES

As soon as I got home from Wales, my dreams began to change. Since my mother died, I hadn't dreamt of her, but now I started to do so. The dreams weren't sad or anything out of the ordinary, she was just in them. I could remember the dreams vividly but there didn't seem to be any real significance to any of them. Then they stopped.

Then I dreamt of trees.

I walked out of a house, leaving people inside. I held the screen door to keep it from slamming. The porch was made of wide boards, once having been painted, now peeling yet still sturdy. The edges of the boards were unfinished, some with jagged places, others worn smooth. I didn't go down the steps but if I had, my feet would have felt ancient rocks full of fossils. The yard was dirt with patches of green grass, dogs, cats, chickens ambling about.

Looking straight from the porch I could see a stand of trees, in full leaf, green, lush. The sky was blue, deep blue, with a few white clouds, a breeze blowing.

As I watched the trees, the leaves began to change, although nothing else changed around them. The trunk and branches of the trees stayed the same. The leaves first turned white, like icy particles in the shape of summer leaves, a light began to come from them, not through them or around them but from them. The white turned to a translucent silver, continuing to give light.

The dream comes to me all the time, day and night, awake and asleep. I like for it to appear. It makes me happy. I don't know where it takes place but it makes me think of Wales. I know there is a connection , I may never know exactly but then, I might one day.

WALES

I'm in Wales spending time with dead relatives.

This morning, I set out to get rid of some stuff. So far, I have thrown away newspapers, empty plastic bags, stale bread, crumpled paper, detached price tags, and spilled cat food. I really intended to cull some serious stuff. But I like my stuff. I moved things around a bit, put buttons in a bowl, stacked art paper, put pencils in a container, sorted pictures, made a pile of shoes, took clothes upstairs to the closet. Now I'm tired and sitting in the chair. The stuff will wait.

Since reading TINKERS by Paul Harding, I haven't read much. It has taken over my head and I can't think about any other book. But something else will come along. I want to read THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin. That might be what I read on the way to Wales.

June 21 is the departure date for Wales. I have been thinking about what I should pack. I can't take more than I can carry. But I like clean clothes. I should make a list.

The kittens must go next week. I said that last week.

Silas House has written a most wonderful blog entry. http://www.silashouseblog.blogspot.com/

BOOKS

I should be shelving books. Well, I could be shelving books is I had anymore shelf space. Books take up every space a book could possibly fit. In many places, they are double shelved, which I swore I would never do. But it became a necessity.

I had a much longer post and lost it somehow. Now I'm too tired to write it again. It can hold until tomorrow.

KRISTIN

My greanddaughter, Kristin, is 17 years old today. She is such a delightful girl. I love her so much. I wish I could make her happy all her life.

FREEZERS

My freezer has stopped working. I discovered it when Olivia wanted a popsicle. She likes those red, white and blue ones. It was mushy. All the ice cream was lost but the meat was still solid. The only thing I could do was take it to Mama's freezer.
Well, I hadn't cleaned out Mama's freezer yet. John Michael hadn't been to her house since August of 2008, since she left there to come here.I know it was hard for him to go but he said he would help me take the food. I took garbage bags to clean out the freezer. There wasn't really a lot left there, some Schwann, a huge brisket roast, corn, peppers, and onions she had cut to freeze for making soup or spaghetti. Most of what was in the freezer were things she had prepared herself. There was a zip lock bag that held 4 cornbread muffins. She made them all the time and would put leftovers in the freezer, ready for company or to make dressing. These little corn muffins made me so sad, they were so typical of her, something she had done thousands of times in her life. I had a hard time throwing them away and am tempted to go get them out of the garbage. I know, that's really silly.
So now my food is freezing nicely in her freezer.
John Michael says he can't think of anything he wants from the house. But I know he will. He commented on a blouse hanging on a door facing, left where she hung it when she took it out of the dryer. He looked in the cabinets wwhere he used to store her freshly canned green beans. Her shoes were sitting on a chair. Most of the house is still just like she left it. Other things have had to be moved. Her essence hasn't left the house.
I have a lot of things to clean out at Mama's house. I guess I'll get it all done one day.

WEARY

Tonight, I'm weary, dreary, bleary. I haven't been able to do any of the things I should have done today. I did cook supper and that's about it. I spent some time outside, cutting limbs, pulling weeds, talking to the birds and cats. And yes, they talked back.

Maybe if I go to sleep, I'll do better tomorrow. I've said that before.

I'm coughing and have a bit of a sore throat. I should have gone to the dr today but it was just so much trouble.

If it wasn't for Frasier, I would be asleep.

RAIN

It has rained and rained. We even had a storm last night. The plants are soaked but they don't seem to mind.

I'm sad about all the flooding in Nashville. I love Nashville.

The baby kittens are needing a new box. They also need homes. Maybe if I advertise them for sale it will make people think they are really special. Well, it's a thought.

I'm trying to not be sad tonight, but not having much luck. I'm going to bed to read so maybe that will help.

The rain is over. But not the flooding.

STORM

The tv keeps telling me a storm is coming. I love storms. It aggravates me when the weather forecast is wrong.

I'm reading HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY by Richard Llewellyn. It is slow going, it makes me sad. I read it years ago and have read bits and pieces of it for years. My mother was always quoting her favorite parts. Then we would weep.

A MONTH OUT

My mother has been dead for a month now. The days have been strange. I have done really well maintaining my composure in most instances. I learned well from Mama, we were always private mourners.

It is hitting home with me all the things I have lost. My mother was rarely critical of me, she should have been but she wasn't. She was proud of everything I did, everything I read or wrote, my opinions. Of course, our opinions were the same. I've lost being able to put my feet in her lap for them to be tickled or leaning my seat back in the truck for her to scratch my head. We had a kind of language, facial expressions, body language that all made communicating a private affair. She would drop everything to go on a road trip, we were lost most of the time, but it didn't matter.

Even though my family likes me, it's conditional. With my mother, it wasn't.

CHANGES

I've been thinking about the changes for me since mama died. The one that seems to giving me the most worry is that I won't ever have an unconditional relationship again. Mama liked me no matter what and no matter what I did, it didn't change anything for her concerning me. I get on everybody else's nerves, a lot of people disapprove of me in one way or another. I always knew that she would be fine with whatever I did, even if it was stupid. That's a big thing to lose.

CRASHING

I've been crashing in the oddest places. I am very good in the art of self control. I can usually put forth the attitude I intend for others to see but not always. Elizabeth and I stopped to eat at Waffle House on Monday. I had gotten a copy of the eulogy from Bob and took it in with me. I started to read it and had a total melt down, yes, right there in Waffle House.

More than once, I've been suddenly sad, driving down the road, for no particular reason, just sad. Once or twice, a smell has made me sad, and sounds.

My mother was in our house with us for a long time. Right after she died, I caught myself going in the book room to check on her or looking around the corner from the kitchen to see if she was ok in her chair. But already, I'm beginning to think of calling her at her house or running down to see her. Some mornings, it crosses my mind to call and just before I go to bed, I think of it. The last days of her life are the most removed from my memory. Not that I've forgotten or want to forget, I just remember earlier times with more urgency.

There are kittens in our basement, 4 of them. There were 6, but 2 went to Kitty Heaven. I had to cut one of the dead ones away from the live ones. Their cords were all dried together. Don't ask, it was strange. The 4 remaining ones are healthy and fat. And quite relieved, I'm sure.

TWO WEEKS

It's been two weeks since my mother died. Time is a strange thing, confusing and misleading. Time makes you think all is well or nothing will ever be well again.Time throws everything off. It zips right along just as if nothing has happened.

I knew my mother would die. She told us so just a few days earlier. But the main thing that told me she was thinking about dying was the way she started to bend her arm at the elbow and put it under her head. This was a clear sign.

I have never liked burials, especially leaving the casket sitting above ground while everybody leaves to go home. So I decided to do it differently. After the funeral we went to the cemetery, took our places and Bob read a short scripture with a prayer. The casket was then lowered into the ground, not a vault, but the dirt. I took a shovel, filled it, and threw the dirt into the open grave. The sound of the dirt hitting the casket was unlike anything I had ever heard before. The shovel was then passed to the rest of the family and anyone else who wanted to participate. Then the tent, chairs, fake grass were all removed and the gravediggers filled the grave and smoothed the dirt as best they could. We all went home.

It was a healing thing to me to stay until the burial was complete. I felt like I had finished taking care of my mother.

Now that two weeks have passed, I find it difficult to express my feelings. My mother and I were much alike, we mourn privately. I don't like for anyone to see me cry and go to great lengths to see that they don't. So most of my sadness has been by myself. My mother would have understood that.

AFTERWORDS

Since my mother's death, I have been with my Cousin Jane, which has helped me in so many ways. She will go home tomorrow, Janie will take her to meet Emily. I'm going to miss her.

Elizabeth is here for spring break, Olivia here tonight and she will probably be in and out later in the week. We all went to bed earlier, each one reading our own book. I love to read with them. Then we turned out the lights and I told them a story. They were soon asleep. But I had to get up to take my medicine. Now I can't sleep.


Olivia has been sad missing Mama. It is hard for her to understand. She spent a lot of time with her and now she has a lot of sadness.


Not many days before Mama died, she told us it was going to happen. It may have been the last time she was in her chair in the living room. She made a lot of jokes about dying but she wasn't joking this time. She was right.

More and more I'm wondering how it happened that I wasn't with her when she died. It was the first night in months that we had been gone. It was so important for Leah to have us at her recital. I've had several people tell me Mama waited for me to be gone before she died. But then I wonder if she died because she thought I wasn't coming back. But the important thing, she died with people who loved her and cared for her every need.

I think Mama had the perfect eulogy. Bob talked about all the things that were important, books, reading, family.He's sending me a copy, I'm anxious to read it.

Tomorrow I'm planning to blog about the cemetery.