My Mom posted a quote on her facebook page. It read:
Amen.
And then, I made the choice to let her upset me. There is something loss has made me realize with a gentle heart: Sometimes things are about more than you. She says to me: "I see Moose is having some to do in February. Are you coming?" No, I says. I'm staying with the farm, you know that. "Well then, I'm not going." Well, this isn't about you going or not, I says. Me not being there is absolutely not a reason to bitterly decide you're not going. What if you weren't invited, even if I did go, I thought, because you're not for this exact reason.
The conversation proceeded south very quickly. About how it's not fair that only Moose goes back, how he always 'abandons' me. Despite having the conversation for the hundredth time that this farm is a choice we both made and that it comes with sacrifices, as she puffed away on her cigarette, held tightly between two finger suffering from diabetic neuropathy, I came within a hair of saying firmly: I choose not to come back to watch you puff away on your cancer stick and kill yourself in a slow, painful fashion. Phase one: immobile invalid. *Click*.
I thought about it. Tasted the words and smelled the smoke of her cigarette as memory can recall, like it wafted through the phone's speaker. And I thought, I'm better than this. Gotta go, I says, dinner's ready.
And I got to thinking about choices. Learning experiences. Consequences. Systems of belief.
I have a 1500lb learning experience, and the subsequent consequences that put me back to not validating honest people by their portrayed system of beliefs. They're like laws. And some people look at those belief systems like some people look at laws: they apply to everyone else, not them. I can forget about the 1500lb learning experience for brief periods of time.
But I can't put away the offended feeling from my phone call. I want to grab her and shake her and say: "Wake up! Your life has been slipping away from you for at least 40 years! DO SOMETHING! Make a decision! Grow the ---- up!" She'd hang up on me, and call me back an hour later crying, saying she's sorry and she'll change for me. Yeah, we've been here. I'll say you can't change for me; you must change for you.
And I'll make the choice that she won't get to me, that if she dies of cancer, loses her limbs or withers away, that I won't have regrets because I did all I could. But then, will it truly go that way? Is that a choice when it happens?
How does one train themselves to make different choices? To move on and detach? Sometimes things are about more than you, but to acknowledge that, too, to understand that is a choice. In this case, it's not mine to make.
Everything you do is based on choices you make. It's not your parents, past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every choice you make.
Period.
Amen.
And then, I made the choice to let her upset me. There is something loss has made me realize with a gentle heart: Sometimes things are about more than you. She says to me: "I see Moose is having some to do in February. Are you coming?" No, I says. I'm staying with the farm, you know that. "Well then, I'm not going." Well, this isn't about you going or not, I says. Me not being there is absolutely not a reason to bitterly decide you're not going. What if you weren't invited, even if I did go, I thought, because you're not for this exact reason.
The conversation proceeded south very quickly. About how it's not fair that only Moose goes back, how he always 'abandons' me. Despite having the conversation for the hundredth time that this farm is a choice we both made and that it comes with sacrifices, as she puffed away on her cigarette, held tightly between two finger suffering from diabetic neuropathy, I came within a hair of saying firmly: I choose not to come back to watch you puff away on your cancer stick and kill yourself in a slow, painful fashion. Phase one: immobile invalid. *Click*.
I thought about it. Tasted the words and smelled the smoke of her cigarette as memory can recall, like it wafted through the phone's speaker. And I thought, I'm better than this. Gotta go, I says, dinner's ready.
And I got to thinking about choices. Learning experiences. Consequences. Systems of belief.
I have a 1500lb learning experience, and the subsequent consequences that put me back to not validating honest people by their portrayed system of beliefs. They're like laws. And some people look at those belief systems like some people look at laws: they apply to everyone else, not them. I can forget about the 1500lb learning experience for brief periods of time.
But I can't put away the offended feeling from my phone call. I want to grab her and shake her and say: "Wake up! Your life has been slipping away from you for at least 40 years! DO SOMETHING! Make a decision! Grow the ---- up!" She'd hang up on me, and call me back an hour later crying, saying she's sorry and she'll change for me. Yeah, we've been here. I'll say you can't change for me; you must change for you.
And I'll make the choice that she won't get to me, that if she dies of cancer, loses her limbs or withers away, that I won't have regrets because I did all I could. But then, will it truly go that way? Is that a choice when it happens?
How does one train themselves to make different choices? To move on and detach? Sometimes things are about more than you, but to acknowledge that, too, to understand that is a choice. In this case, it's not mine to make.
