Queen Mary 2 Leaving Southampton

Small things can bring perspective to living. 

As I stand on my balcony on Deck 5, I know I am less than halfway up the ship's deck levels, nonetheless, I am looking down on a host of seagulls feeding on whatever has been churned up by the side thrusters pivoting this vessel 90 degrees in her own length. 

Looking down on birds gives me pause. I have never experienced bird flight from above them. Wow! I don't care that gulls are scavengers and are not noble birds. As they feather their wings to catch the updrafts enhanced by ship movement, they are objects of grace and delicacy. 

And, just when I am becoming accustomed to looking down at them. I am again jolted as one soars inches away, looking at me as I watch his brethren. (Good thing I had a tight grip on my camera!) 

As I watch these birds, I can't help but wonder what else I may have missed by living my life at eye-level. 

Today's lesson: some times you have to look down to look inward.

Coping

BLAST!!

I have been coping really, really well with Mom's passing: no crying jags, a few weepy bits as I began to transcribe her journals and stories,  moments of frustration when I began to call her. Mostly over the past months I have been sad/glad that she is in a place where she neither hurts nor suffers personal indignities. I have been grieving but not mourning and believing she would be pleased with this approach to the situation.

Then I saw a commercial for a Mother's Day bouquet. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks that this is the first year in my entire life that I have no mother to send a gift to on Sunday! DAMN!! It hurts!

This delayed reaction to personal loss is nothing new. Every time I have lost a relative or dear friend, I have appeared rational, calm, organized and unflustered until 5-6 months have passed. Then, WHAM! Some small thing ignites memories that overwhelm me for a while.  Five months after Daddy Fred died, I was walking down the stadium at a football game, smelled his pipe tobacco and fell apart before I got to the Ladies' Room!  Grieving for Baba came when I scented White Shoulders during a Christmas open house. I was poleaxed the day I found a Valentine card my Dad had sent me in college. Tim's mourning was prompted by the arrival of a pitcher of Budweiser at a sports bar. I realized Emmy was really gone when I finally had to throw away my too-cracked-to-use-anymore Bojangle's cutting board. EP's moment occurred the day I gave one of her angels to a friend whose troubles were overwhelming her.

The people I've loved and lost are still with me, part of me; they are significant to my ability to "put on my big girl panties" and go forward. To paraphrase George Wade from Two Weeks Notice, they are the people in my head advising, encouraging and consoling me . . . forever.