Last week the last parent we had passed away from Covid. My sister's lovely husband lost his once strong, now deteriorated and diminished by Alzheimer's. Small, fragile, barely eating and unable to walk or care for herself in any way at the end. And the end lasted for a few years.
My brother and I didn't go as the service was out of the country and my passport's expired. This meant I had a day to order flowers and fresh flowers, to my dismay, could't be ordered in time for the viewing. I'm writing this out bc I was surprised how deeply I cared about those flowers. I think this is the first time I've been in charge, or stepped up bc flowers weren't being handled by my mother or sister. I've enjoyed my brother's status, in that.... I didn't have to worry about it.
Come to find, it was an excercise in mindfulness I didn't expect it to be.
The funeral home florists do have us figured out, naming arrangments and pricing a single perfect Phalaenopsis Orchid stem at $90.00 to start........ I want to say I was very happy to build a lovely planter with moss and ferns and 8 plump Orchid stems for what I considered a bargain AND the lady setting up the floral arrangemts coffin side couldn't stop touching the lovely thing standing in our place. That's how it felt.... the flowers carried our sorrow and sympathy for us into that room.
So, there's been quite of bit of weeping for Nonna, my sister, niece and msot of all BIL,, who adored his parents. He's lost his older brother, then father and now his mother within a 4 year period and now we're the family he has left.
Mindfulness practice makes it OK to just feel the sadness and whatever else comes up. There was joy and Nonna wisdom I learned in kitchens, gardens, root cellars and by cold Calabrian fountains running out of highway roadside rockwalls.
When Nonna gave me her bruschetta recipe she ended it with a saying I use all the time....
"If it's not OK.... it's OK."
I'll remember happy Italian meals around the same little tables......canning fresh garden veggies, making homeade sausages and turning a truckload of grapes into 1000 bottles of wine with those amazing, family oriented people who loved their children, grandchldren and FOO above everything in the world. Nothing was so precious to them and I think they got it right. I know they did.
Speaking of being mindful.... I've been focusing on my daughters and baby girl pug. Planning meals, shopping with the girls for them then cooking together. That's overlapped into the Pug's food. There's been weeping around poultry gizzard paste accidently made in the blender bc little stones I couldn't find lead to a more processing that lead to not finding them and to a more processed paste and paste and more weeping. Salt free peas and beans pears ad broccoli and carrots and eggs and egg shells for calcium and turkey breast and gizzards and hearts and codd.
I didnt realize hearts and gizzards aren't secreting organs, and so are considered muscle meat and not organ meat, which is to be limited to not more than 10% of a meal with liver limited to 5% and I suck at math so..... weeping.
But care and focus are present more often in my life right now. Even if it goes out of focus, like it did when I injured my arm and had Covid....... it comes back if I don't give up and becomes something deeper.
I wondered if living flowers would upset my BIL in the house... reminding him of his mother in her coffin and the fact he'll never see her again. Like a beautiful punch to the gut, but then I pulled myself back from that ledge and stopped the chain thoughts. The girls and I began making a card and will send it with drawings and all the sympathy and care possible. These things have always meant a lot to me. I usually write letters and send drawings with my departed loved one if they're buried. I didn't get to send anything with Nonna, but the card to BIL will hold everything I wanted to say.
Lighter
