Over the hump....

OK, Saturday was a day of mixed emotions. Started the day at my Uncle's house after a night out in Baltimore watching the Orioles beat the Indians! We sat in the kitchen, drank too much coffee and talked about remodeling homes and my inability to be "handy." I believe the handy thing will come in time though.... Dad came to pick up Jim and I and we went to play a very slow 9 holes of golf! I'll elaborate on my golfing later. During the golf I noticed I was thinking about Mom a lot and caught myself staring off into space quite a few times.

I think I have finally accepted her death, but not sure I am comfortable just yet with the whole deal. Its been a year, hard to comprehend the speed in which time goes past us when we carry on regular living. I think that's all that can be done really... just carry on as usual. Much to my dismay, I can't turn back time and bring her back or fix what happened.

One day last week I asked my father how long he thought she had been sick without knowing. He said it would be hard to tell. My mother was very stubborn when it comes to health issues. She hated going to the doctor, no matter how she felt. She would always just suffer through whatever pain she was feeling. Ah... there I go again... thinking about how if I just would have encouraged her more to get regular check ups, maybe this would have been conquered.

I have gone off on a tangent... I need to finish my story of how my Saturday went.... After golf, we to the grocery store to get some staples for the "cookout" we were to have later that evening back at my Uncle's house. I emphasize "cookout" that way because that's what the intention was, but it was too cold to actually spend any reasonable amount of time outside. I was going to make a big batch of guacamole. My Nana loves my guacamole. Now, we are a family of Irish/German decent, guacamole to us used to be that ugly green goop that you would see in a can in the grocery store. I learned to make it after living in Texas over several years, and now everyone is a guacamole convert! YIPPEE... So, the grocery store trip was spent combing the isles of a "Yankee" grocery store for the fresh ingredients of my Nana's favorite green goop. Oh, I bought strawberries too... needed to make dessert later.

Once we got back to my Uncle's house the cooking lesson began. I really enjoy cooking and sharing with others tips and recipes. I think this passion for cooking comes from growing up in a family that cooked nearly every day! I used to help mom a lot in the kitchen, but mostly just got in the way and ate out of the pans before dinner was ready. I was just "testing", really... I realized as Patty and Nana were there watching me assemble the various ingredients, and Dad was taking seeds out of the tomatoes, that I was surrounded by the people I loved the most in this world. Although I fought back tears most of the day, I felt like the luckiest person on the face of the planet. That happy feeling was in some way complementary to the emptiness I was experiencing as well. On the one year anniversary of my mothers death, I could not have been in a more comforting atmosphere.

I left the next day and when Jim and I finally got home after picking up the dogs and fighting our way through the baggage claim, I watched Koppel on Discovery: Living with Cancer program on the Discovery channel. I cried a lot. But, after listening to the panel of Lance Armstrong, Elizabeth Edwards, and Leroy Sievers, I took yet another perspective of the disease. Another one, of a list of many ideas I have about cancer. My thoughts on that program are another post in itself. But, Ted Koppel summed up the show by saying that life itself is terminal. Its what we do with the time that we are given that moves and shapes the world and those around us. I'm sure I'm butchering what he meant to say, and I would love to quote him on this blog if only I had the words in some sort of transcript. But, alas, I don't and I'll just have to make due with the memory of what he said. It was very meaningful, and struck a cord in my soul. (Yet another reason to continue to write this blog.) I realize that life itself is terminal and that sometimes people are dealt with a better hand then others. I'm going to do the best I can with the time I am given and play the hand I'm dealt for as long as I can stay in the game. I'm over that hump of the first anniversary, and it wasn't as bad as I originally thought.

- ps... if there's any chance, visit Leroy Sievers blog which i linked above, or read the page dedicated to the show i saw... I hope there's a rerun... both are very enlightening