Some Changes
Well it is a new life in many ways for me. My Mother died. Now that both my parents are dead I have begun to feel much more adult. I can no longer see myself as a child who could go home if things got bad. Now I am on my own. I have a partner who is wonderful and I have wonderful friends, but I am on my own.
My mother was very ill. She had been so for about 3 years. She had a blood disorder that was causing her to die, and she did not do anything about it. She chose to let life take its course. That was her decision and the hardest part for me was to support her in that decision. I did not have to see her physical decline in a personal way because I live in Kansas and she lived in North Carolina. But I talked to her often and noticed the difficulty. She lived near her sisters, she was the oldest of ten children. They watched her decline and told me about it. She went to the doctor only when she was very near death and could not take it anymore. She got a couple of transfusions and this helped her feel less ill. But eventually the illness took its toll. It was going to happen anyway, but she chose to live life her own way. She did not want to prolong it artificially. So, she died on 6/7/05. I miss her. I am happy she is out of pain. I am mad at her for not taking better care of herself. I am happy that she got to run her own life. I am very sad that I do not have my mom around anymore. I have difficulty taking in that she is actually gone. I am depressed. I am relieved that I no longer have to worry about her. I am feeling more adult and more in control of my life. In other words I am just having a normal human reaction to an extraordinary event. There is no right way to do this, and no wrong way. I see that I have physical symptoms related to this event. I am having trouble sleeping, I have aches and pains, I have trouble concentrating. As a mental health professional I understand that these are normal responses, I also understand this as a person, but it is not as easy to see it when I am in it. So I have not been writing here. Writing this down would make it more real, and a part of me has not wanted to give it that much awareness. So I have been somewhat quiet about it. I have drawn inward and let my natural instincts take hold. It has been good for me. I am letting it happen naturally, like mom. It is a complex and multi-layered process, just like life.
I am now going to look for ways in which to live my life more completely. I am reading about a conference that recently took place in Nova Scotia. The focus of this conference was on Greatest National Happiness (GNH) as opposed to Gross National Product (GNP). It concerns living life at a more holistic level. Enviromental sustanability, economic equality, and governance based on the best for everyone being the core features. I am intrigued by this concept. I feel as though the entire top down type of control is arbitrary and destructive. So who knows perhaps we will learn something from our mistakes and go in a different direction. I will keep watching.