Shadows

I deal with life by writing about it. This has been fairly well established and won't be a surprise to anyone reading this.

Right now, words are sort of failing me. I want to write so many things about my mom, who is not doing very well in the hospital after we had hoped she was rallying.  I'm not really ready to do so, and I'm afraid that writing too much will somehow jinx her, but I also know that my blog writing doesn't have anything to do with what is happening in that hospital room right now.  While I have handled my dad's death and other family members going so well I wondered about myself a little bit, I don't think I'm doing very well with this one. 

I remember once when I was a very little girl riding in a blue truck, nestled between my dad, who was driving, and my mom, who suddenly fell out of the truck door and rolled down the steep hill we were on.  I think it was kind of a parking lot of some sort.  It seemed like a long hill, and it seemed like she rolled forever while I watched her go.  My dad stopped the truck and she came back and was mostly fine.  She had scraped her arm pretty badly and never could wear any jewelry with nickel in it again because her watch had gotten into the scrape and she had developed some kind of traumatized allergy. I don't know why the damn door opened and she fell, and/or remember much else about that day. 

This feels kind of like that time, though.  Watching her rolling down the hill, helpless to stop it, not knowing what will happen-- will she get up or will she just keep rolling until she is out of sight for good? 

I also used to have this reoccuring nightmare of being in the trailer where we lived at the time.  My mother was asleep on the bed, and the whole place was on fire.  I kept trying to reach where she was with the water hose but it would not stretch, and she would not wake up and save herself.  Classsic anxiety of kids about losing their safety source, their mom.  Clearly about me, too, because I always try to save people, especially when they aren't trying to save themselves.  Sometimes to my own detriment.  

My trouble is, I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that question already.  It feels like a heavy sort of knowledge and it turns out, my ability to be unreasonably grief-stricken over a cycle, a natural part of life, in a way that my mom would scold me for, is just fine. 

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Incidentally, the picture above is my mom with my older sister, Dottie, not me.