Saturday, November 15, 2008

Anxiety in the middle of the night

Having lost a loved one very recently, I am realizing there are parts to life one recognizes deep in the mind, which are evasive when all is calm and routine. When life's balance is interrupted by tragedy or unexpected death, or even expected death in the family, the human mind can reel off various triggers as one sleeps. Such a trigger went off this morning, alerting me subconsciously that something was wrong. Then the conscious part of the brain too over and I woke up. Not to forget the incident and in fact share it, I am writing this little entry into the blog.

So what happened? Nothing and that was the problem. For years, I have looked after my 87 year old mom who lives in another city, making sure someone was doing something for her or someone had something planned for her, or I had contacted her and said something to her to please her and make her feel loved.

I woke up in panic mode, thinking I had not done anything for a long time and had let things slip.

She passed away six weeks ago. Lesson? Be there for your parents when they get old. Make sure they are part of your daily routine. They will not be there forever and time moves so quickly! Part of liv'n is dying. We all know that. Also part of liv'n is caring and making sure those who are dying get to enjoy that which remains. We may be less aware of that. Everyone living is dying. We are probably too busy to realize this. There is less urgency in it.

1 comment:

Babs said...

Randy,
This was beautiful and thought provoking. There will be many nights we will awake and find her gone, but what a gift she has given us.
In her leaving, she left us with an understanding that the beginning of life is the beginning of the end. I never truly understood that before.
Mother lived; she was not just alive. She lived every day as it were the most important day of her life and it was. It is a lesson well learned by me at this juncture in my life.
We now have the family that is left and I lavish in the fact that living never meant so much to me as it does now. How proud she would be to know what kind of impact her life and yea, even her death had on us all.