Begin— Again?

Long time,  no posts.  If I'd had any idea how long it would take to get back to Lucy Left, I would at least have said "Fare ye well for a while."   I've missed you, Lefty friends.

 

I'll try to skip the most maddening parts of my "journey."   I put my Lowcountry home on the market (after getting it in shape) and got a condo in the Midlands so I can be geographically closer to my mother.  She's 91 and fragile, in bed most of the time, needs help getting in and out of a wheelchair.  She's lost most of her physical strength, but her will and sense of humor remain strong. Thankfully, she has 24/7 care, but there are still things to be done.  I appointed myself "Director of Life Enrichment."  Since the two of us always have been close, it's a good role for me; I know what she enjoys, people she enjoys, etc. I know where her "buttons" are, just as she knows mine.  I drive up 2 or 3 times a week for visits and see for myself how the caregivers are caring for her and how she's responding to them. So far, they're doing a good job, and she likes them all.  She made it clear for years that her own home is where she wanted to spend her last years.  No nursing home.  (I can relate!)  My siblings and I have managed to make that happen.

As I prepared to sell my home—my version of Walden Pond—there were truckloads of emotions to sort and some to heal.  It was there Mother Nature had fed and nurtured my spirit for a decade.  I thought of the Cypress trees in the lake as my guardian goddesses.  I watched seven egrets fly from the Bay across the lake at sundown every single day, and named my giant gator neighbor "Tank."  I will hold all the sunsets I enjoyed in my fondest memories.

 

My mother loved visiting there.  She wanted me to know that if she should die at Belle Isle she would die happy—and if I needed to commune with her, I should look out my bedroom window and know she'd be right there near the massive Magnolia.  I wrote a lot about that home and what it meant to me in Dancing on Mars.  And there I was, about to let it go.  (I did buy a few lottery tickets hoping to be able to have two places, but that wasn't meant to be.) The letting-go process seemed endless and stretched my physical capacities to the limit a number of times; foolishly, I went beyond them a time or two.  But finally I got it all done--and my home sold. I continued to pack and move to Columbia in stages until closing day.  My son came down from PA so he and a generous cousin could help me do the final move with a rental truck for the bigger furniture.  I won't attempt detailing all the work that went into leaving the Lowcountry home and getting the new condo to the point where it might  someday feel like home.  All the while I was doing the sale, the move, etc. I was driving back and forth to my mother's—only 35 minutes from the new place, 3.5 hours from the one I let go.  That part is easier, for sure.

Also during the past year,  a precious friend and mentor who called herself my "other mother" died; my brother suffered through a long illness and passed away.  On the day he died, Mama fell and broke a hip and a shoulder.  There was in-facility rehab for a couple of months, and she did do PT.  She was home and just beginning to use a frame walker when she fell again and broke the other hip.  More surgery but no more PT.  

 

I won't ramble about  other challenges since I last posted because I might never get back to politics and current events, and that's what I'm here to share. Guess I just want you to know I haven't been slack without reason.  Nor am I without gratitude that I'm able to be with you now.   Even now Lucy Left isn't likely to have new posts each day.  Still, I do hope you'll stop by when you can and leave comments if you're inclined. 

 

It's good to be back.  So much has happened, is happening.  Where o where do I start?