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I think part of what is making the emotional recovery from the trip hard is that i am not ... implicated ... in the painful emotions. Whether it's chance or the result of many years of learning, none of the things that have disturbed me are things that i'm involved with particularly. Talking to my sister as she was recovering from surgery today -- alone in her hospital "room" -- i flash back to visiting her home on Friday after Thanksgiving and her palpable pain and frustration with being a firm parent for her three year old son. She knows she needs to set boundaries, and she does, and he rebels, and she has to be firm, and it takes so much out of her -- she is such a wonderful mother and she's coping with her own battles with depression and anxiety. I witnessed the pain and frustrations, experienced it, boxed it away, and focussed on the joy and the delight i had being there with her and her children.
It's like i need to relive the visit, slowly unboxing the boxed up feelings from witnessing my dad's technological and financial anxieties, listening to his aching pain in trying to make my mother happy, the feelings from listening to my mother's litanies of complaint and analysis, witnessing my sister's struggle to find balance, witnessing Christine pouring herself out to support her sister (and then gasping as she was drained dry only to drain more with tears).
My aging aunt and grandparents.
The sprawl of Orlando and the tiny remnant acre of orange grove near the cemetery.
My mother's ache as she placed flowers on her mother's grave (my guilt at forgetting her mother's birthday was on Thanksgiving).
None of these things are really about me. I've learned how to deal with my anger and reactions, learned how not to hold on to my mother's litanies of critical analysis by recognizing it's not about me.
The feelings i have boxed up aren't in themselves poisonous or toxic or damaging. They are just the grief and sorrow, the shadows of the joys of the trip, and some how i need to learn the right way to feel these in the moment and not lock them up for such clumsy unpacking.
Exhale.
It's like i need to relive the visit, slowly unboxing the boxed up feelings from witnessing my dad's technological and financial anxieties, listening to his aching pain in trying to make my mother happy, the feelings from listening to my mother's litanies of complaint and analysis, witnessing my sister's struggle to find balance, witnessing Christine pouring herself out to support her sister (and then gasping as she was drained dry only to drain more with tears).
My aging aunt and grandparents.
The sprawl of Orlando and the tiny remnant acre of orange grove near the cemetery.
My mother's ache as she placed flowers on her mother's grave (my guilt at forgetting her mother's birthday was on Thanksgiving).
None of these things are really about me. I've learned how to deal with my anger and reactions, learned how not to hold on to my mother's litanies of critical analysis by recognizing it's not about me.
The feelings i have boxed up aren't in themselves poisonous or toxic or damaging. They are just the grief and sorrow, the shadows of the joys of the trip, and some how i need to learn the right way to feel these in the moment and not lock them up for such clumsy unpacking.
Exhale.
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