I’d like to share with you some of my feelings and would truly love to hear yours. Through each other, I believe we can all find our way home, whether we know where it is or not. While this may seem sad as I start, it’s pivotal in my life right now, creating the beginning of 4 years of questions. So, please, breathe with me and read my words, words I’m struggling to write. You know me worldwide as a professional woman, and I’m very proud of the work I’ve done. I’ve had the privilege of helping so many people around the world, but we all have challenges, and these are mine.
These are some of my personal challenges that I’ve sat with, thought about, and lived with. Stick with me as I work my way through sharing this with you, for as we share, we understand, as we understand, we grow, as we grow, we blossom. And maybe one day, my blossoms and your blossoms come together as one massive beautiful flower.
Dad
The call came early morning. Dad had passed, 4 years after my mother. My brother’s voice was calm, down to business. We all knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when.
I insisted we have a memorial service for him the following week. My brother laughed and said, “In January, in Brooktondale? Are you out of your mind?”
I chuckled. “Out of my mind? Always debatable,” I laughed with him.
“We’ll bury him in the spring with Mom but have a service now,” David pushed.
I insisted. “Memorials should be done at the time of death, not 6 months later.”
David told me to do whatever it was I wanted and to let him know. After contacting friends of my parents to help put together a memorial service for him. I sat down to make my flight and rent a car, realizing I’d need to upgrade to a 4-wheel drive because, of course, a snow storm was coming, and indeed it did.
A few hours later, another call came in from my dear friend, informing me that her husband was being checked into the ICU. I told her I’d be there in a few hours to be with them.
David
As I sat with my dearest friend David, listening to the doctors, watching the nurses come in and out of the room we finally had a quiet moment. He looked into my eyes and said: “What’s up?”
“My dad died this morning. I need to go home to for a memorial service for him..” with tears in his eyes he vehemently tore off his breathing mask and yelled, “ THAT place is NOT your home! THIS IS YOUR HOME.” He said it with the same strength that he has for 20 years everytime I said “home”….to him my home was in Georgia with all my friends
Words that, to this day, are still burned into my brain.
I didn’t argue, he was stressed that I was flying out, but his wife, his sons, they’d all be there for him during the few days that I was out of town. I knew his time was not close, although it was closer than what I ever dreaded.
During that long winter of 2014, in just 4 short months, I lost 12 people that I considered to be dear to me, from all over. Some in NY who I grew up with, many in Georgia, some in Michigan, some across the Pond in Europe. It seemed like the tide of death was hitting and all I could do was hold on, hold on to those who I loved and cherish the memories of those who had passed.