fighting for the kennedy's

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stock image of the Kennedy's

When I was little, I thought my family was perfect. That was the feedback we always got, anyhow. 
"They're so well behaved!" 
"They are so polite!"
"They are all amazingly beautiful!" 

Actually, I don't know if anyone ever called us beautiful, but I sure thought we were. Especially my mom. Not only could her smile win anyone, and I mean anyone over, her sense of style was out of this world. It's funny, because even though she was my mom, she always felt a little foreign or exotic to me, as if she were from a different land or time. She just had this way about her. I'm guessing it helped that she spoke slowly and had an unusual speech pattern. It was almost as if she was as unsure of what she was going to say as you were. As the words slowly left her mouth, she'd sometimes smile. It seemed she didn't even realize the story would end this well, and it made her happy. I loved and continue to love my mom so much.

She left this incarnation recently. Not sure if this is the best word to describe my thoughts on death and reality, but for now it works.

I don't know what I expected her absence to feel like, but not this. I mean, there are days when I feel good (rested, fed, and relaxed), and she weaves in and out of my day. She is with me when I try half-assed to meditate (practice not perfection). She is with me as I sing along to my music, forgetting lyrics now, just like she used to before Alzheimer's dropped in on her. 

Isn't that amazing? Once she started forgetting new memories, she suddenly was able to recall ALL lyrics to every song, as she had NEVER been able to do before?! What's even more incredible, is that she didn't seem remotely surprised by this. Like, no big deal. I'm seventy something years old and now, for the first time in my life, I can sing the words to every song. I remember how she used to marvel at my ability to memorize lyrics, and as it turns out they were in her mind all along. How wild is this? Sorry, let me get back to what I was saying.

One thing I didn't appreciate until just recently is how she must've kept us all together. She must've been the glue that I didn't even realize we depended on to stay intact as a family.
Since her death, it's like we don't quite fit right anymore. I try to figure things out, try imagining how I might fix us back into place. But it seems the more I mess with things, the worse I feel. And nothing changes because, oh right, it's NOT for me to FIX. 

Maybe we're all just grieving. Maybe we have to pull away from each other in order to feel closer to her somehow? Or perhaps now that mom is no longer close by, we don't have to worry about upsetting her by stepping away from each other? I hope that's not the case. 

As a kid growing up in the 1970's, it was a family goal to be as well-presented as the Kennedy's. I remember thinking we were a lot like them, since we were a big family, Catholic, Irish (on my dad's side), only our mom was even more beautiful than Jackie. As time wore on, media tore apart any fantasy our country had about the integrity and happiness of the presidential family. But us? We remained united. That is, until recently. Now everything feels a little f*cked up.

And that's life, well, mine anyhow. And that's actually only how I see it. Maybe I'm just longing for something that never really existed to begin with. Wouldn't that be something? But, seeing as how I'm the one who gets to decide what type of reality I chose to live in (paraphrasing William James here), I'm going to imagine a story in which we figure out a way to come back together, broken parts and all, and create some new kind of family, one in which we can possibly be our grown up, true selves. Because as we all know, there is no such thing as a perfect family. We are all messy. We have all done hurtful things; either to ourselves or others. We are human, after all. Striving for perfection is a lost cause, because it neither has nor ever will exist, as far as I can tell. And Thank God. This is all far more interesting. 

Fight might be a bit too aggressive, maybe I'll aim instead towards hope first. 



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