Sunday, December 11, 2022

 Sunday, December 11, 2022

  After church today, I asked Fr. Lio if he could help me get the engraved gravestones out of the back of my car, place them on the grave, and get the cement wedges I want the gravestones to rest on in my vehicle. I hate the way cement looks over time. It just looks dirty. I want to paint the wedges before the gravestones are attached to them.

  I had to take my car from the library to the church parking lot. I waited until the church parking lot was mostly empty before pulling in. I had one idea of where to park; Fr. Lio had another. 

    This cemetery is small; no roads are running through it. We park in the church parking lot and walk to the grave sites. Rather than park by the entrance to the cemetery, Fr. Lio wanted me to park in a parking spot close to the site. He told me to back my car into a spot. I insisted he park the car, explaining that I had a bad track record when driving under five mph.  

  Fr. Lio’s idea was the better one. There was a low rock wall separating the cemetery from the parking lot. With the help of another parishioner, the two men took the engraved stones out of the car and placed them on the rock wall. Then they picked up the two 200 lb. cement wedges resting on the gravesite, placed them on the wall, climbed over it, and placed them in the back of my car. Then, they put the two engraved stones on the gravesite. While the job wasn’t quite finished, people could find Mike’s grave until I was ready to do the next step.

  I have been agitated. I focused on the screaming I heard in my mind. Not of someone screaming at me, but my screaming in pain. Mike once said that one day I would start crying and wouldn’t be able to stop. I cry more easily these days. When I do cry, it’s these deep, racking sobs that sound like laughter. And where is Mike when I need him? Of course, his absence has brought this to the surface.

  I saw Mike as a refuge, a sanctuary, and a shield. He protected me from my mom. I only recently wondered if her behavior would have reverted to the worst if he had died before her. She understood and respected him as a shield. He’s gone now, and my tolerance for endless correction, criticism, and verbal attacks has shrunk. That is not to say that Mike was never angry at me or I at him. I would be suspicious of any relationship where that is true. As my father said, “If two people are always in agreement, there is only one mind at work.”  It’s just that neither one violated some bottom-line agreement that was the basis for our deep trust in each other. 

  Now, I am without him. I feel endangered. Realistically, I am no more in danger now than when he was alive, just more vulnerable. That is my reality. I have to accept it in myself and set appropriate boundaries.

  That screaming voice in my head quieted when I envisioned my mother saying things to me to hurt me. She had a sadistic streak. She liked frightening the cats and startling us. She’d whack us on the rear end, making us jump sky-high and call it a love pat. She did mean it lovingly. I think she was a little confused between kindness and cruelty. An understandable confusion, given her experience.

    My mother was born with a benign tumor in her upper back. If it hadn’t been treated, it would have grown at the same rate she did and crushed her heart and lungs, killing her. In 1903, medicine wasn’t that advanced, no less pediatric medicine. Her mother brought her to the hospital every other day. Alcohol was injected into the tumor and the area around it. The area was sore and infected. She must have been in constant pain. This pain was inflicted by caring people. Caring people sometimes have to inflict pain to make you better. We are all lucky she didn’t come out crazier than she did. Both her children survived and made good lives for themselves. That’s pretty good statistics.

 Sitting with this aspect of her quieted by internal noise. Ah! She didn’t do anything to me in the image. It was like watching a large cat snarl at you from behind cage bars. I felt safe. It hurt to see my mother be that way with me – to anyone. But it’s over and done with. She’s been dead for over twenty years. That leaves me to work out my PTSD.