Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 54

Grief Thoughts

I know grief well. A little too well.

I often thought of my family as the six of us riding in our 1977 gray Impala station wagon for a vacation. My parents would be up front, my older brother and sister in the middle, and my younger sister and I relegated to what Mom called the "back back." In some ways it reminds me of the Game of Life plastic game pieces with the pink and blue people sticks that are added throughout the game.

After my dad died, over ten years after my younger sister's death, I realized that a third of my family was missing from the station wagon. And after my mom's death two weeks ago, the reality is that half my immediate family has died. As my sister Karen said, taking video at the cemetery on Saturday, the day after what would have been our sister Denise's 39th birthday, "Here's half our family at the cemetery."

A Changed Routine

I was probably the only person who got up earlier than usual the week of of daylight savings. 

I had recently decided that while I had been writing almost every day, I need to make a commitment to myself to raise the bar on the quality of my writing. For me, writing at the end of the day doesn't work that well because I am tired and it's reflected in what I create. My most creative time is early in the day.

However, it's easy for me to get caught up in catching up on email and doing little things on my desk that I know won't take me long to take care of. It was a bad habit but because I do have work each day, I realized the only way for me to do a better job writing is to get up earlier.

Where the Writing Life Began

I would not be the writer I am without my mom.

From a young age, creativity was very much enouraged in our home, right down to every inatimate object (Barbies, Raggedy Anns, and aother assorted stuffed animals) all having voices and personalities. Mom always made sure we had plenty of paper, crayons, and markers to draw on. We had endless notepad and scrap paper not to mention a huge bag of crayons that rivaled the Crayola box of 64.

My writing career began with a drawing on Holiday Inn stationery where I dictated the story to her. It advanced into picture books that I created and by junior high I was writing stories. In high school I started writing my first novel. 

A Quiet Faith

On Satuday evening at Mass, I held my mom's clear-beaded rosary. This was the one she carried in her purse for as long as I can remember, only replaced by a turquoise one I bought her from Albuquerque. And while the turquoise one had broken and was sitting in a bag on my bookshelf until I found someone to fix it, that was the one we buried with her. But it's the clear glass beads that remind me of her and the quiet faith she held deep within herself. 

While I sat there in Mass, I grasping the the rosary, I thought about how many times she had grasped it in the same way, praying for a multitude of things I would never know about. I'm sure she prayed for the happiness of all of us, her children; the ability to find love and happiness in her own life; the strength to go forward after the deaths of her parents, my dad, and my younger sister. And there is no telling what else she prayed for.

To me, that rosary holds a lot of history even though it's history I will never know. 

Faith, especially Catholicism, was an integral part of my mom's life. There were expectations: that we all would make all our sacraments and attend religious education (then known as CCD). She taught us to pray each night before we went to sleep. Mostly though, she led by example.

Remembering Mom

After my mom died suddenly and unexpectedly last week, most likely her heart giving out, at 76, my aunt said how difficult it is to put her life into just a few memories. And when I decided to give her eulogy, I was faced with trying to sum up her life in a few minutes. While I had my notes, it helped when the priest said, "Michelle will share with us what her mother meant to her." And so all three blogs this week will be related to my mom.

My mom didn't have a perfect life, And while none of us do, I believe that she struggled to feel love. She had polio at age five and walked with a limp the rest of her life. She never felt fully confident because of that. Then we lost my younger sister to suicide twenty-one years ago and she lost her husband, my dad, eight years ago. What I do know is that she is now out of her physical and emotional pain. She is happy, she feels loved. And she already has been sending the signs that she is with us– starting with a monarch butterfly my boyfriend saw in my backyard on Sunday and a robin chirping in my sister's backyard (heard by her partner). Finally, there have been issues with the flashers on my sister's car since we left the church after Mom's funeral Mass.

Why Night Before Sunrise

While I admit to not being a night person, I do believe there is an importance to night coming before day. It's like we need winter because everything must hibernate before it can bloom again. Having that chance to go dormant in the winter helps nature to be stronger when springs comes.

And so we also need night. We need a break, we need time to rest and reflect before we tackle a new day. Most mornings I run in the dark and by the time I start the run-walks with my dogs, I can see the outline of the mountains.

I love the sound of the birds in the silence of the darkness. I know day is coming and a new day no less. That new day is like a chalkboard washed clean the night before. It's a time to go forward and make the most of what is ahead of us and leave behind what already happened.

While I realize it can be a challenge to let go of the day before, especially when something difficult happened, life is about going forward and each new day gives us that opportunity.

Running from Scratch Twenty Years Later

On our way to a high school track yesterday so I could run repeat miles (which Greg also ran with me), the Beatles song "Let it Be" came on the radio. I was immediately taken back over twenty years to when my high school head track coach Mr. Moody handed me a notecard that said "Let it be!" on it. He had heard the Beatles song and it reminded him of me and how that was what I needed to do. It wasn't coincidence that I heard it on my way to run a track workout, my first in over ten years.

As a high school runner, I had an incredible ability to push through the pain except on race days. Instead, on those days I would put too much pressure on myself and end up blowing off the races. Running meant everything to me: it was a means to a future of a dream of a college running career and the Olympics. I so badly wanted to make the state meet. I wanted to show the people in my life who hadn't been nice to me that I was so much more than they ever thought I would be. But I couldn't stop the mental side from getting in the way during competition. 

L'Wren Scott's Suicide

In the twenty-one years since my younger sister's suicide, I have heard countless stories about suicide loss, about suicide attempts, and about suicidal feelings. I know firsthand what it's like to lose a family member to suicide. I have watched people I know struggle with wanting to die. While I have no recollection of it, my high school journals show me that at one time I struggled with my own thoughts of suicide when I suffered a stress fracture and couldn't run during the spring of my freshman year of high school.

I know stories of people who dressed family members and made them "look" normal while suffering from severe mental illness. I have read countless suicide notes for a research study of people who then ended their lives. I've seen how they were "checked out" and most concerned with the logistics of life ("Make sure so-and-so gets the $100 I owe him") rather than spilling their love for anyone.

Letters to God through the years

I often talk about how I didn't feel God growing up. I went to church because I had to although by the time I reached high school I refused to. The worst part was that I felt as if people around me made me feel bad for not feeling something they did. And it confused me that I didn't feel it.

Now that I'm older, there are many more things I understand about my life and the parallel of spirituality that ran alongside it. A relationship break up, my first, at nineteen sent me to church, not knowing where else to turn. My parents had established in us the importance of the church and it was only because of that, that when I needed the church, it was there for me. And then again for me when my sister died two years later.

The Patience Reminder

Each week when I go to Mass,  I always say a short prayer either on my way there or when I arrive, asking for a message that I need to hear. Sometimes I get ideas about something I am writing or other things things I need help with. I heard once that God is more likely to speak to us through action than words and I always remember this when symbolism makes an appearance in my life.

I showed up at Saturday Mass this past weekend and immediately went to buy a candle. Each weekend, I purchase a candle, including any coins I found that week, and go across the front of the church past the altar to a kneeler where a display of candles is placed under a cross.

I wasn't paying much attention as I walked across the front of the church this time and I was nearing the second group of candles when I realized someone was praying there. I didn't want to walk back across the front of the church so I kept walking by the woman praying and out the doors to where there is a statue of Mary and another group of candles, with two kneelers in an alcove.