Tacos and Tiaras

I'm just being all-zen-and-shit

Hope

Hype and Hope: Celebrate Before The Opportunity is Gone

Compassion, Family, Hope, Kindness, Love

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its joy.”

– Leo Buscalgia
18 December 2018. It’s not the prettiest picture of Mommy and me, but it’s the last picture of us together before she died. On Facebook, I posted the caption: “Guess who had a big day!!! Thoracentesis extracted a liter of clear fluid. Breathing trial success; therefore, extubation earlier this evening and graduation to a cpap! Good job, Mommy!!! Thank you all for the kindness and love for Mommy. She’s still got a lot of recovering to do, but this was a HUGE step forward.”

Seize the moment. Carpe diem is made of carpe momentum, strung together… or maybe it’s just one moment in one day. I may have regretted missed opportunities, but I feel certain I have not ever regretted a celebration… even when the joy turned out to be short-lived.

In addition to the picture and caption above, my Facebook memories showed me a post from earlier that day: “Earle and I were the opening act for Mommy’s Thoracentesis (Live! From the ICU, Vol 2). He played Le Cygne. Then he played cello to accompany me singing, Domine Deus Agnus Dei. Mommy wanted more songs, and she adamantly nodded her head when I asked if she wanted me to sing Caro Mio Ben. I closed the set with Pieta Signore. I am sooooooo out of practice, but Mommy doesn’t care.

I mentioned it in another post – my mom was my biggest critic when it comes to music performance. However, she let go of that when she was in her hospital bed and most likely wondering if she was going to die. Thinking about our own mortality really is a strong catalyst for deciding what matters most.

Mommy didn’t ask for perfection. All she wanted was to enjoy listening to me sing for her.

When my mom was in the hospital, I felt more afraid of missing opportunities to make her smile than fearing she was at the beginning of a “downhill fast” illness. She deserved every bit of hype for coming off the ventilator and every bit of hope for recovery because all we knew was her condition in the present.

I felt grateful for the gift of time.

I felt more afraid of losing hope than losing my mom. Life goes on without my mom, but living without hope, what’s the fucking point? It just sounds like such a dreary life to miss out on anything because of thinking what could go wrong or knowing “it’s all going to end anyway”.

If everything is temporary, then I am making my life a hope-filled, no-missed-opportunities, messy-with-mistakes but magical, miraculous, carpe momentum, all-zen-and-shit life.

Life is too short to wait for perfection. Time is too precious to spend on fear and letting fear rob me of both success and failure. It’s easy to feel like failure sucks and try to avoid failing, but hey, at least failures steered me to the better path towards success. While on the path of learning which one it will be, I also have opportunities to feel happy while making a mistake before I know it’s a mistake or ideally before I know I got it right.

If you’ve been putting off something because you think the time isn’t right or you think what you offer isn’t good enough or you think you’ll fail, then please consider this a nudge to stop thinking – quiet your mind and listen to your heart… and if you hear your heart telling you even one small thing you can do to carpe momentum, just do it.

And if you have the opportunity to love someone, then love them, especially when that someone is yourself.

Love is never wasted.

Love never dies.

Luceat lux vestra.

Dance The Dance, Love The Love

Compassion, Family, Hope, Kindness, Love, Luceat Lux Vestra, Mindfulness, Reflection

And now, I’m glad I didn’t know / The way it all would end / The way it all would go / Our lives are better left to chance / I could have missed the pain / But I’da had to miss / The dance”

– Garth Brooks, The Dance
Mommy and Chief Daddy in February 2018 at the Fort Belvoir Officers Club. Photo by Daniel Gallagher

Facebook memories again… reminding me how everything played out two years ago:

“No new news to share about Mommy. She’s in good hands with her medical team… Mommy and I finished reading The Little Prince, and I’ve been reading her morning and evening prayers to her because those bring her comfort. She seemed pleased to see that I haven’t forgotten the Our Father or Glory Be. We listened to a bunch of music this afternoon – mostly Francis Lai and Henry Mancini. We finished with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Call me Spinderella, haha. Mommy slept more today than yesterday, which is good. She needs rest to combat her infections. On a good note, no high fever today. Go, Mommy! Thanks for all the love, kindness, and caring for my mom.”

Looking back / on the memory of / The dance we shared / beneath the stars above / For a moment / all the world was right / How could I have known / that you’d ever say goodbye?”

– Garth Brooks, The Dance

I can look back and remember feeling how important it was to me to focus on what I could do to help my mom feel comfortable and do for her what she could not do for herself. I guess as her daughter, I had the hospital-recognized privilege of staying by her side, which allowed me to actively participate in her care rather than passively offer thoughts and prayers. (And don’t get me wrong… thoughts and prayers have value, but if I am able to, I do things for someone else’s needs either in addition to or in lieu of thinking, praying, sending light and love…)

The present moments were the only thing certain and the only time that mattered. My mom couldn’t read her own prayer books, and when I brought them from the house and showed them to her, I remember her closing her eyes and giving me the slightest nod and pleased “smile” even while intubated when I offered to read them to her.

I wouldn’t even say that I had an optimistic or pessimistic outlook. What would be would be. At that point, I knew the obvious – her condition could go either way – but why invest any energy in trying to see the future?

Holding you / I held everything / For a moment wasn’t I the king / If I’d only know how the king would fall / Hey, who’s to say / You know I might have changed it all”

– Garth Brooks, The Dance

During my mom’s hospitalization, we didn’t know how her condition would change by day or even by hour. I still feel very strongly that she deserved to be the queen in every moment, and I stayed mindful to not get ahead of myself with what ifs and the possibility that she would not recover.

In those moments, it was never about me. Mommy was the only one who mattered.

Being strong for someone else sucks. And really, my mom was so sedated, she couldn’t say whether she hoped to recover or if she was just thinking she had enough of that shit and was ready to go. She and my dad wrote and signed their advanced care directives more than a decade before, and I feel grateful to my parents for that gift of making their wishes clear so no one had to guess what they wanted or if we were making the right choice for them. Seriously. That was one of the most loving things they did.

And yes, I felt sad when I thought about the reality that everything was changing, and I felt scared about the inevitable that my mom often reminded me about by saying, “We are on borrowed time”. Even in the times when she was most likely trying to be manipulative and throw a guilt trip, she was right. All we had was the present. (By the way, learning not to take the guilt-trip bait as well as healing from and letting go of the past are stories for another day.)

Sigh… everything else I have to say is about love… I think I said it already in other posts… Someone Else’s Needs… Now is All We Have, But Love Never Dies… Rolling the Dice on Love… Perspectives and Ideas: Give Yourself Room to Learn, Grow, and Love… and yesterday’s post, Love Is…

I reckon I’ll write another post tomorrow when Facebook reminds me what I chose to share, but I remember the dates. And I remember that two years ago, the next day was one of those days when things changed by the hour.

Luceat lux vestra.