Author Topic: C'est La Vie  (Read 7161 times)

helene

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C'est La Vie
« on: April 18, 2012, 07:23:16 AM »
It goes on doesn't it. Life, I mean. The days flying by with a mad flapping of feathers, desperate sounds of an unseen bird caught in a closed-off room, I am alone in this stasis called 'Life Without Lesley'. While the clock tick-tocks and chimes on the perpetual half-hour and the people struggling in my therapy group telling each other of their pain, mine too, afterwards staggering out onto the rain sodden downtown street, cars honking and work again tomorrow, ominously looming, where my ass will be put on the grill, like Dickens' Mr. Gradgrind: "Stick to the facts, Helene. Only the FACTS!" Hard Times indeed.

Other women are reminding me of Lesley these days. The schizophrenic with the long, strawberry-blond hair and Irish lilt who talks incessantly about all the conspiracies of her life. Lesley had to watch out for 'them' too. The artist who lives upstairs on her disability pension, never painting any more when once so brilliant, I've seen her paintings as I saw Lesley's, and know the hell-hole of that dried-out place: the empty crater where all that art used to be. Lesley too was there, her long hair so like those beautiful models who shimmer in Man Ray's 1920s Parisian portraits, their beauty now bone-dust like Lesley. So like Lesley! And last night I made a quiche in prep for tonight's dinner, the Last Supper every night, the days piling up like logs washed ashore on a west-coast beach and me, scuttling, crab-like back under another rock, to hide in that dark beause that's all I know in this blank thing they call 'life' since Lesley died. Life without Lesley. Being sucked down, down, down into that syrupy vortex, spiraling deeper and deeper into the depghs of me, where death hides waiting, biding its time while the clock chimes an enthereal faraway bong...bong...bong...bong, whispering: "Lesley is gone, gone, gone, gone."

C'est la vie my friend. C'est la vie.


Written todya by Helene.


Helene & Lesley

AC Mom

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2012, 04:53:43 PM »
Helene,

You have such a way with words.  Have been thinking about you, glad you posted!

Love
Peggy

Doug1222

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2012, 05:32:33 AM »
It goes on doesn't it. Life, I mean.

I agree, Helene. You have a beautiful way with words. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. I try to read everything you have to say about (and to) Lesley.

((((((((Helene))))))))))

helene

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2012, 08:35:38 AM »
Thank you Peggy and Doug,

I haven't been writing much lately as I've been getting into this group therapy thing and reading a lot. It is interesting how grief just keeps on continuing. It changes into different kinds of grief somehow, at least that's the way it is for me as I come up to it being nearly two years since Lesley died. (Now my grief is a deep, melancholic sadness that is like looking at life through a thin, blue veil - everything tinted darker than it really is, but there it is for me.) I made the mistake of looking through some old photographs the other day (perhaps a poem may come out of that too), and Lesley was in many of them. I kept looking at her and thinking: "How can you be gone?" It still makes no sense. Probably never will. And then when I'm at the library most every day during my lunch hour (because it's only 1/2 block from my work) I start many times when I see some slender woman sitting hunched over a newspaper with short dark hair and think: LESLEY! But of course that person is not Lesley. I feel a profound sadness at the way things turned out with my family: us all estranged from each other. I sent my mother an Easter card that I drew and painted (a tiny chicken looking very bemused sitting on a giant egg - the kind of ludicrous humor my mother likes and I made the card myself). I received a card back from her with two white doves flying in a blue sky with a bright shining sun. Is this a symbol from her trying to somehow reconcile things between us before she too dies? (She'll be 90 this June.) But I am so afraid of her ice-cold rejection (because I've suffered from that from her too many times in the past and cannot handle any more rejection from her) that I do not phone her and she never phones me. So I wrote C'EST LA VIE because life is so sad so much of the time. There are things - many family things - that cannot be undone it seems.

Anyway, thank you for 'listening' and being there for me. I am listening and here for you too!

Love from Helene.


Helene & Lesley

browneyedgirl

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2012, 01:40:18 PM »
Helene ~ I am glad your mom responded to the card. 

I am also glad to see that you're getting into the group thing, I was wondering how that was going for you.

lots of love
Tony Repola 07/20/66 – 03/29/09
I know you are fishing in the oceans and streams of heaven

helene

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2012, 07:30:39 AM »
Hi Pam,

Thank you. Yes, the group thing is intense but they are all very good people, like everyone here at Webhealing. I don't know what I'd do without you all!

Love from Helene.


Helene & Lesley

browneyedgirl

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2012, 10:12:38 AM »
Glad it's going well. :)
Tony Repola 07/20/66 – 03/29/09
I know you are fishing in the oceans and streams of heaven

Terry

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    • “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” –Vicki Harrison
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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2012, 12:32:58 PM »

Good for you for sending Mom a card. Doves are a sign of peace so maybe that's exactly her intent. It's healthy. It's healing to forgive. To find that hidden place where only anger, regret, guilt and so much sadness live and to invite in love....well, that's what it's all about. Most times we can't repair a broken relationship, but we can stroke it with love and that love feeds all involved, bringing that broken relationship to another level and out of that dark, hopeless space, that helps no one.

You've been reaching out in all directions, Helene and that has to be a good feeling. One day at a time!

Thanks for sharing.

Much love to you,
Terry

helene

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #8 on: April 27, 2012, 01:58:38 PM »
Hi Terry,

Thank you for your most kind reply. Regarding my mother: I AM SCARED!!!!!! I WANT to try to have some kind of recociliation before she dies because death can't be very far away from her now as she turns 90 this June. I am afraid of her icy coldness that is the equivilent of being put into an instant deep-freeze and having your body temperature turn into a 'death-zone' in less than seconds. That's what my mother can do to me.

I feel that time is running out and I also feel the irony here. My mother isn't dead yet, and yet, Webhealing is about our loved ones who have died. I write about my mother because a) I feel time is running out, b) that she and I have some very unfinished 'karma' that maybe I still have a chance of doing something about in our lives - this life. c) For all my mother has negatively done to me and my siblings, I cannot help still loving her. Is this a kind of love that transcends this corporal life?

I am feeling a kind of muted desperation here regarding my mother.

Love from Helene.


Helene & Lesley

sevenofwands

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #9 on: April 30, 2012, 07:58:50 AM »
Hello Helene:

Having read all your posts I think you have every reason to feel desperation. 

But, you are capable of love and loving.  That is what is so wonderful in all of this.   You don't have that splinter of ice in your heart.  Despite all that has happened to you, despite the treatment and behaviour of the person who is supposed to be the primary caregiver you are still great.

I cannot say to you to hold out much hope of sorting out unfinished business with your mother at this stage.  And I would worry that you would be hurt and demeaned yet again.  As you say yourself "I AM SCARED!!!!!! " 
But you know, we live in hope. 

Very warm regards,
Seven

helene

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #10 on: April 30, 2012, 12:20:09 PM »
Hi Sevenofwands,

Thank you! I feel a very 'ancient wisdom' in you, someone I would call an 'old soul' (even if you're only 21 - early age is irrelivent here!) So, I really, really appreciate you taking the care and time to 'talk' with me.

I am afraid of my mother and deeply sad. I have thought about and am thinking a lot about karma and have read that it's much better if we can 'undo' or 'repair' deeply rooted hurt in our earthly mortal times rather than trying to do that kind of work when we are 'on the other side'. I feel that if I could somehow a) forgive my mother, b) trust my mother, c) find the courage to somehow reach out to her before her death, that I might undo some very negative and powerful karma that I know obviously exists between us. I sense that  - and I have to admit my interest in reincarnation here (and I'm sorry if this offends some people) - I sense that my mother and I have been 'at it' for a long, long time. It seems to me, that it's constantly 'pay-back' time between us - one harming the other more in one existence and then it going the other way in the next and so on, with nothing ever being resolved. I feel a terrible heaviness and deadly WEIGHT upon me when it comes to my mother and I sense she feels it too. I also know that she has terrible karma with everyone she has encountered in her life, especially her two husbands and her four children, including me.

I cannaot help wondering where Lesley is now, in all of this. I always felt Lesley's 'ancient' kind of wisdom too despite her horrible menttle illnesses. I will stpo for now. I ask: is there any kin d of 'karmic resolution in cutting a harmful - very harmful - person from one's life for self preservation and survival reasons? Lesley was also deeply troubled by that question regarding her (our) mother and her (my) older brother Daniel.

With much love from Helene


PS: HORRIBLE time at work. I feel myself imploding when I am supposed to be the 'strong' one in our marriage - my husband and I - both from broken families. Too broken to ever have children of our own.  Sorry for any typos!



Helene & Lesley

sevenofwands

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #11 on: April 30, 2012, 01:01:24 PM »
Aaaah, thank you, Helene.  I only wish I were twenty-one! Heh heh.  But I like all my ages.

Now, I think you can forgive your nmother, in your mind and in your heart.  It is probably hard to do that, so dn't try forcing it either.  I feel it will be very difficult for you to trust her, or reach out your hand.  I suppose the worst that can happen is that she may well - figuratively - bite that hand.  Only you can decide.

Karma is basically about decisions.  Decisions big and small, all of which are like a pebble thrown intoa pond.  The ripples are the effect.  We all know, in our gut, whether a decision is going to be the right one.  Thing is, all too often one ignores the gut!
So, listen to that small voice telling you whether ornot you should take the step you are contemplating.

Of course, as a small child you had no power of decision.  A child is powerless in the hands of the person who is supposed to be the primary caregiver.  Your mother, on the other hand, was and is an adult, and therefore took decisions (by that I mean things she said, did, didn't do, acted...).  Those decisions affected you, and your sister, and no doubt everyone around her.  And remember, she choose her husbands.  But her four children can in no way or manner be described as "terrible karma". 
Nothing  in any way your fault at all.  There are people who probably should never have children, because they are not mentally equipped, for whatever reasons.  But it is not the children's fault.
The negative and powerful feelings you experience are a result of your mother's own actions and decsions.

As you say yourself, she is "harmful, very harmful".  That is so desolate, so sad, I agree.
It is hard to cut free, because being such a humane sort of person with natural tendencies, you want to try to resolve what is perhaps unresolvable.

I hope matters at work and in marriage improve for you.  Do reach out to your husband, as he is now your companion in life.

Take lots of care and mind your health.

Seven

helene

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #12 on: April 30, 2012, 01:35:56 PM »
Hi Sevenofwands:

The words 'thank you' start to sound as stupid and useless as 'I'm sorry', the latter of which I became better than the best ventriloquist during my life-time traning from my mother.

To try and forgive my mother on my own through my own heart....I think that may be workable....perhaps. Actual physical  (phone or in person) 'contact' with her may, in fact, end up being impossible as, at this point, I am surmising that what has plagued Lelsey and I regarding our 'mother' may very well be what is plaguing Lesley's full older brother Daniel in a terrible way andmay have led to the 'rest' regarding Daniel.

What does one do about that horrible fatigue. Of wanting no more 'of it all'. I'll try to tell more to my husband but he perceives his own baggage greater than Thou and perhaps he's right.

You ARE  Wise Seveonofwands!!!! I love the Tarot you know!

with love,

Helnee.


Helene & Lesley

helene

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2012, 01:39:35 PM »
CORRECTION PLEASE - Seveonofwands!!!!


My quip on the otherworldly and 'divine' nature of 'thank you' was based on my OWN uselessness with the term 'thank you' and certainly NOT yours!!

A thank you coming from you means the WORLD to me! I hope I make sense here. Please believe me!

With love from,

Helene.


Helene & Lesley

sevenofwands

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Re: C'est La Vie
« Reply #14 on: April 30, 2012, 03:46:12 PM »
But of course, Helene, I know what you meant, and I do thank you yet again for your kind words.   That awful mental fatigue I do unerstand, and can only hope you find release and relief from it. 

Just take care of yourself generally, and your physical health too.

Thinking of you.

"The Lord of Valour"
(sevenofwands)