April 05, 2006
Thinking Of You, Mom
Getting Her Shot. My Mother at Painted Desert-Petrified Forest National Park Holbrook Arizona, July 1986. Already suffering from Parkinsons, she managed to walk nearly a half a mile to get to this rise to take a photo. She was a published amature photographer and often submitted pieces for publication.
Dear Mom,
Its your birthday again...I cant believe that you are still with us. It was just a few days ago that we year minded Pope John Paul II's death, and I thought then that you were not far behind... there is no knowing why God allows us to go on and on in our suffering. The Holy Father said that suffering was something we can offer to God just as we offer praise and Thanksgiving, if that is true then you have done more than your fair share.
It has been nearly a year since we have spoken. It was getting too hard to talk, for you to make the words and for me to find them. I didnt have a phone you could hear and you cannot always get to your phone at a time when I could call... At the time, it was The Journey too. A journey that I am not sure you understood. Few people did. I think you felt like my existance was tenuous when really I was safer and better cared for than I have been ever in my life. I have the best life ever, but it is hard to explain that to a person that feels she must know every thing and how it is supposed to go. I didnt always know what was next and that created anxiety for you that nothing I could say would assauge...This has been a year of really learning to let God work things out for His good, and not to try to be in control everything.
Truthfully, I also could not bare it anymore. What you are going through is my worst nightmare, and to not be able to be there to somehow make it better was killing me. There is nothing I can do to change what you are going through or the surroundings that you are forced to live this out in. The nursing home is what it is clean and caring but it is your prison as you said nearly every time we talked. Truthfully your body and the debilitating illness you suffer is the prison you are in. There are no cell doors on a body that refuses to work as God intended...Better to let it go, better to admit that I am a coward and move forward. I can write and tell you in word bites the order of my days... You have a postcard or letter that you can read and read again when you are lonely.
I wish I could be there and see you but also I am relieved that I cannot be there. Truthfully, I want to remember you like I see you in my minds eye... I want to remember the music that you played and how unique that was and, I want to see that will to live that was gone when I saw you last and I could do nothing to help you...
I pray for you all day long, you are in my heart.. I love you
Your daughter
"Hokulea"
