Bets & BA, thank you for the kind thoughts and words. My mother has made some good progress in some areas; however, she will never regain her full sight ever again.
I woke up this morning to a short email from Ms. Wonka saying "wow" about the uproar over the laws being passed in Indiana and Alabama that allows "religious" people to discriminate others as they see fit. Crraaazy. I think I've learned a bit more about Ms. Wonka's pattern.
I've already established that she usually reaches out to me approximately at least once per month after long radio silence. The epiphany I've realized this morning is that Ms. Wonka will use any issue to reach out...never coming out directly just to say "hey...how are you?" or anything like that. It makes me go "hmmmm...isn't this interesting?" to borrow from Stubborn's book.
Today, I went to the storage to start clearing out some things. I've been wanting to do this, but been putting it off. It's ridiculous that I am paying for two storage units after clearing out stuff from my late father's house.
I came across this graduate paper that I wrote for one of my classes and I just sat down to read it this evening. I was particularly struck by some prescient comments made over 20 years ago. Then I looked at the title page and it was written just under a week before I asked Ms. Wonka out for the first time. Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up to attention. Apparently answered some general questions from the professor and I can only guess at them. The paper was autobiographical in a general sense. I'll re-post some salient comments peppered in the paper at various points here.
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I was insecure for the longest time after the divorce. I was also angry and resentful of how my inner world was in a disaray. These feelings come and go periodically in the present time. I have learned to deal with the divorce.
Interestingly enough, after the divorce my distrust level rose to great heights and I withdrew into myself. To this day, I have not been able to reclaim myself. I have become more and more shy around strangers as the years go by.
The turning point of my life was the divorce. I was absolutely shattered by the experience for I was 11 when I first learned of it. BBlah, blah, blah. On...the downside of the divorce debacle, I was eextremely mistrustful of people that I did not make close friends easily as opposed to superficial friends.
The life adjustment problems I am most concerned about the anticipated deaths of my immediate family members such as my parents, sisters, and grandmother. I would be absolutely devastated if my father and paternal grandmother were to pass away soon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Crikey! Did I foresee my own MLC??! Gosh, that really raised the hair on the back of my neck. The passing away of my paternal grandmother dealt a heavy blow to me which precipitated my own MLC.
I find it very interesting in how I handled the deaths of my paternal grandmother and father.
My grandmother's death set me squarely on the MLC journey on the USS Wonkie Enterprise.
How I dealt with my late father's death was vastly different than my grandmother's that occurred more than a decade prior to his passing away. There's no question in my mind that I probably would have completely fallen apart if my father had passed away FIRST before my grandmother.
It's funny how events of the past influence your present and in the order they take place. I grew up and matured after my MLC journey which has made me better equipped to confront and deal with my father's cancer and his death. There's no way on Earth that I would have been able to handle this if my grandmother had not passed away first or if I didn't have my MLC.
Yah, I think I was deceiving myself a bit about coming to terms with my parents' divorce in writing that paper. How I felt about their divorce back then and now is like night and day. Viewing things from the DB prism has helped me to really see that my parents were struggling and were trying their best to deal with their own chit in their own ways. They were flawed human beings with very poor coping skills in handling the natural trials, tribulations and triumphs of a marriage in constant transition.
