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Good bye Nana

You were 90 years old, and I believe I can say 90 years young as well. You never seem to age and your heart just continued to grow. I never met anyone who had as many friends as you. There were so many people who wanted to visit you, to sit and chat with you and just be around you. That is only a testament to who you were. Who you will always be.



You were not that old in terms of life experiences when your husband died. You had an 18 year old and your three older boys. I never thought how hard that must have been on you to go back to Scotland after Papa died here and your boys and you brought his ashes home. What was life like for you?



I always wished we lived closer. I often felt like you would be the kind of person I would love to have tea with and listen to your stories of growing up. Maybe I was being idealistic but there seemed to be a connection between us.



We both loved pictures, and cards. I think I must have sent a million cards and almost as many pictures. Each year I sent my class picture to you, and for every birthday, Christmas and every other occasion I could count on a card from my Nana.



I am not sure how to say good bye to someone I feel I was just starting to get to know. I am not sure how to say good bye to someone who was a hero of mine and I just realized that if I am one quarter of the woman that you were then I will be an asset to this world.



Good bye Nana. I know you loved me and I know you know I loved you.

Teach me to say good-bye.

Nana

let me teach you to say good-bye
to learn to trust the process
and not to always just to cry

Show you how to say I love you
and let me go from here
even though you want to still hold me dear

You want me here and want me to stay
yet we all have to know that
this is truly not the way

My life on earth has been long
sometimes full of joy and sometimes full of pain
but I still just want sit with you one more time again

Even with me being so very far away
We always felt there was a connection
and I think of you each day.

I see your picture sitting up high
on the shelf in my living space
and your eyes seem to tell me
to say goodbye with grace

Your eyes seem to look at me and
say this much is true
I know that you love me
and in return, I do too

Take care of your father
take care of yourself as well
because I am will watching
and hoping time will tell

Hope time will tell you
that nothing gold can stay
that my time was good and
I'm so sad I cannot stay
So try not to be sad and hold
onto those tears
Knowing you that you cannot let go
does nothing to ease my fears

I don't want to leave you
and see you feel so sad
to know when you think of me
you won't be always be glad

So hold my hand and
tell me you love me
keep close by side
until the time has come
to cross to that other side

There are so many waiting
those whom i held so dear
who went before me
and I shed a tear

They are so close to me
and surrounding me near my bed
and when the times come
be assured that I will be led

My husband will open his arms
with my son at his side
and they will help me cross
the bridge to the other side.

God will be waiting to
greet me with open arms and heart
to tell me he missed me
and was sad we'd been apart

I will ask him to watch and care
for you all
but for now I need to heed the call

My time is almost gone and I want you
all to really know this
to let me go
is the greatest gift

i am not leaving to a place
you cannot find , in part
because I will always reside within your heart


I leave my three boys
and many grandchildren too
legions of family and friends
the old connections and the new

You all came to visit
to comfort and to care
I still cannot believe
all the love we had to share

But now my time is drifting
and I need to find a way
to teach you how to say good bye
to me in your own special way

To teach you it is ok to be
sad and feeling a little blue
but I need to you say good bye
not for me but for you

I don't want to go
and leave you all alone
but it really is time
for me to go on home

So you'll have to learn
To say good bye and let me know
That although you'll miss me
It's ok for me to go.

You see, I love you so very much
that I keep holding on
and if you need me too
I will keep fighting on

But I am so very tired
and have grown weary of the fight
and I see the beauty of the end
It really is a beautiful sight

So I will teach you how to say
good bye to me, my friend
hold my hand and stay with me
until the very end


When the time has come
and I will be gone
Just now that my love for you
will always go on.

So listen to me
one last lesson I have to impart
Let me go with love
and fill your broken heart

Life’s a time to be
loved and memories are to be shared
I know there are so many of you that truly cared.

Life may feel long
and the days may stretch on
but in reality it is awfully short
and time you cannot count on

So let me go my dear family and friends
I will be ok and you will be too
Because you loved me
and I will always love you.

What time is it?

Ideas floating around in my head.

So, since November my mind has been tossing around some old ideas that I had long stopped listening to. I have been trying hard to stop thinking about what I want. I have had a life long habit of watching what others are doing and seeing that it makes them happy/fulfilled/inspired and then decide to give it a try. Most of the time it is a half hearted try.

Most of what I do seems to me, at least, to be half hearted. I have Grey’s Anatomy on in the background as I write this blog entry and a woman who has an aneurysm said that the aneurysm was her best friend..That it woke her up from her life that she had been sleep walking through.
SLEEP WALKING THROUGH LIFE.
This is not a new concept nor feeling for me, that I have been sleep walking for the last 20 years.

I am 36 years old right now. This last 3 months I have felt alternately so young and ready and at the start line of life and then positively middle aged. It is so disconcerting, yet I am welcoming it. I feel zaps of energy, hope, confusion and restlessness. I wonder what this all means?

I am going to be getting credit counselling to see where I stand in that area of my life. I am at Weight Watchers and am finding my momentum there again. I love teaching. I am getting closer to my family and like that, just sad that it took losing someone in our family to wake us up.

I want to see if moving to renting a place for a few years is a good idea. This way if I decide to teach in another board or province then I will not need to sell. Can I handle the insecurity of renting or do I need the feeling of owning. Does either renting or owning really matter? Is it more of an internal thing?

The most prevalent ideas that keep coming back to my mind are travelling and bringing out my creativity. I think the core of both is OPENING up.


It has taken me almost 2 hours to write the above…can you tell my mind and soul are both haunted and restless today.

I would utterly appreciate any feedback.

I said goodbye to you today..it was more a see you soon

I wish I knew the day God
Called you by your name
That it was the last day I would
touch your hand
Once again.

I knew the end was coming
The cancer was too strong
But as quick as it came
I’m glad you did not suffer long

It hurt to see you in pain
And trying just to breathe
I wished for you peace,
Compassion, a reprieve.

Your brothers, nieces, nephews
Sons and wife too
All gathered there to help
And let our love send you through

Your sons were strong and so
Deeply torn apart
From the love of a father
They admired from the start

I walked into your room
And saw you were in pain
And wished to have you back
To tease me once again.

The time was coming
The close drawing near
I know that when we prayed with you
The love and words you did hear

After God called you
And took you by the hand
I tried so hard to realize
And just to understand

That God must have needed
Someone up above
Who has a sense of humour
And an unconditional sense of love


So many came to see you
And send you on your way
You would have been so proud
Of your honourable sons that day

I tried so hard to be brave
As we shared this terrible day
But for many times
A smile upon my lips did play

I smiled through the tears
I did not have a doubt
That you were there
To see what it was all about

The people and the words
Were all said with care
About how we would all miss you
Now that you are no longer there

I knew you sat beside her
And held her hand with care
I know that because as Marc spoke
I certainly felt you there

We took you to your resting place
And blessed your final space
The family laid you to rest
With love, sadness and grace

I laid a flower upon the box
That held your body tight
And I knew in that moment
That you had taken flight.

Each time the sun shines
Or wind blows from above
I know it is you sending us your love.

You were loved, you are loved
And will be deeply missed
But all I need do is think of you
And I’ll feel you in our midst.


So journey onwards
And journey well
Knowing we love you
And on the sadness, we will not dwell.

For there were too many laughs
Too many jokes and bbqs had
To only ever remember you in sadness
And leave out the glad

So when I think of you today
Tomorrow and each day on
Know that you were loved
And that will carry on.


~Lesley

Happily Ever After the Christmas card inspired version

Happily Ever After – V.2 – The Christmas Card Inspired Edition


Today I went to my mailbox to find a delight! It was a Christmas card and included in it was a family newsletter. For years I have always thought how neat it would be to do a family newsletter. …Hold up, let’s go back a bit.

I have not yet put to total rest my own fertility, or lack thereof. I have begun to put it to rest and thought I was finished and the up the issue pops again. Sometimes it when I leave a family gathering and see my nieces and cousins, sometimes it is when I see a family with a new baby. Sometimes, it even sneaks up on me out of nowhere and I find myself almost being able to feel a baby in my arms…strange. I feel like I am coming to the end of this realization that I will not be a mother, but cannot say I have totally grieved this loss in my life.

I do call it a loss because at some, no many points of my life I did see myself as a mother. I saw myself as someone’s mother, in fact two or three people’s mother. I saw myself pregnant, with an infant, chasing a toddler trying to keep my sanity and even dreading/anticipating the ‘tween’ years. I never saw it as a wonderful, utterly positive experience where I would be baking Nestle cookies with cherub cheeked (and of course polite) children around me. I never saw it as something that would be the answers to all my prayers and life would be complete. I just saw it as, well I saw it as a part of who I wanted to be and who I thought I was.

However there are other things in my life that I thought equalled what I think was ‘Happily Ever After’ that are not quite here either. I was like I had stash of puzzle pieces in my drawer and I knew that one day they would all come together to reveal my version
Of Happily Ever After. It was not like I had no clue what the whole picture would look like but I was pretty damn sure it would include a family. Since those puzzle pieces where either missing or for some reason just do not fit together any more. Are they even meant to fit to together? Maybe at one time they did but not anymore. I will sometime keep those pieces to the side and see if I might need them later. I am not ready to full put them aside.

Back to today. I got a Christmas card from a friend who I reconnected with in face book earlier this year. She was someone in grade school was an enigma to me because she was ‘different’. I did not like the differentness at first. I recall interpreting it as she was too good for me and some others. I later would think she was bossy and head strong. I would later just feel like she had ‘something’ I did not. In realizing this it made me not like her at times (sorry Fi! I was just a stupid kid). I cannot remember a time I was not questioning what I wanted, what I was and if what I was, was well, good enough to get to where I thought I wanted to go. Even just writing that it sounds very tiring and quite ridiculous!

It seems I did have a version of what I thought Happily Ever After would look like for me. Then the more I went through school I started to change the version of H.E.A…for other people’s versions. The people were confident and happy so what they were doing seemed to work for them so I figured it would be good for me as well. I started to take little pieces of different people’s H.E.A. and thought I could make a mosaic and in that big picture I could find what my H.E.A. The problem was my mind jumped from one person’s idea to another and another and another and I just got all dizzy from all the ideas.

The there came some time in my life where I just stopped listening to myself and cared way too much about what others thought and became a chameleon fitting myself into situations and people’s lives in order to keep myself separate from people and away from any negative attention that would centre on me.

Today a Christmas card came and I realized I wanted to do that! I wanted to send out a picture Christmas card but thought it would be silly and people would laugh because it was ‘just me’ and not family or even one with pets. I opened it and there was Fi, smiling a contented and confident smile. It even included a year in review note…I love that stuff!!!

Maybe my H.E.A. is about just accepting that what I want to do and how I want to share and spend my time is my HAPPILY EVER AFTER

...It was amazing how just coming home and opening a Christmas card may have just been the key that opened up a very locked up part of my brain. That just being me is good enough and ok and if someone else doesn’t think so…Well MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!