Sunday, August 14, 2011

Change. (and the complete F%$#^%$%$$! inability to deal with it)

A childhood friend died after a long battle with cancer and treatments and today I'm going to spend the day with his family, across the street from the house I grew up in, in which my parents no longer live.  The tent is being supplied by another neighbor and she and her four sisters will be presenting all of the desserts. It was a good neighborhood and I haven't been there for a long time, and childhood was even longer ago... sometimes.  In watching our kids we get some of our memories back, which is an astonishing miracle of memory... and for all of the 'grownup' learning that we do, how death is part of life and decay and cycle are all one, the shock of death shows up the lie.  I think I'm so thrown by this death because it is a signal of the change of the generations, a possibility that change and mortality are around the corner.  all the 'knowing' that all of life is impermanent is shaken by the personalization of it.  What will I do when Mrs. King is no longer sitting at her kitchen table? when Mr. King is not splitting his own wood?  when my Dad is not raging against the politicians and/or the woodchuck? when my mom is not politely thanking me for having her over for dinner?  who will i become when I am the last holder of my memories?
Will I really be unchanged? really? How long am I going to define myself as the woman from a small house... in the face of this new gigantic-ness?  where I have come from becoming 'less' than where I am ? or, does it work that way? Do the memories of long ago get bigger as we age? it seems like that, when faced with many elders... reminiscing seems to be the powerbroker in the game.
when faced with the constancy of change, why is there so much resistance? am i really so idiotic, so patterned in my battle against reality? expending energies in impossibles? certain improbables?
oh, i love words. they roll, baby, they roll.
and distraction, i love distraction too. 
and, if i am looking forward to a funeral to see so many people from the deep past, what does this say for me? aye?