Author: caroline

3/12/2013, the date that Audrey died, or so I’m told. The blur of events of her essentially having a cold, to gone from this world, all in about 12 hours, I didn’t know which day what happened. All I know is ever since then, I’ve distrusted 12s and 13s. 

My mother told me once that my great-great grandmother, who I knew as a little girl because she loved to be almost 100, wouldn’t sit at a table of 12 because she didn’t want to be the unlucky 13th. So perhaps I come by it honestly.

Now it has been 12 years, and I don’t have any clever lessons to share. No metaphors. No revelations. In some ways, I feel her loss has diminished me in ways I’ll never really grasp. My energy, my ambition, my optimism, my focus… would it all be some level higher if she were here? Over the years, I have cycled through heartbroken to angry to resolute, over and over and over. This deathaversary, I just feel tired.

Not in a major way (Mom and Dad, if you’re reading this, I’m fine, promise), I’m just kind of exhausted from trying not to feel like an alien and have meaningful connections. I’m tired from trying to be a good mom but feeling like I’m not quite hitting it because I’m damaged in some way. I look around the world and all the big, snowballing, pointless problems and cruelty around us and feel like I’m a thousand years old.

But if there’s anything the last twelve years have showed me, it’s how to get the eff on with it the best I can and carry on with whatever I’ve got that day when I wake up. I will keep doing that. And I’ll be glad when the 13th anniversary is over next year.

Today I’m thinking about mindfulness, which for those who haven’t indulged in the amount of navel gazing I have, means being conscious of the current moment instead of obsessing about (gestures in the air) all the other stuff.

I remembered a revelation I had about this when I was learning how to drive about (cough, cough) 30 years ago. Growing up in rural Indiana, driving on country roads and through three stoplight towns, one of the scarier things to learn was merging onto the interstate.

Our particular exit felt like it was a half mile long. You turned on, and as a new driver, you had what seemed like 30 seconds to obsess about how you’d merge in. How many semis are there? Is traffic heavy? I spent a lot of time worrying about this.

Eventually, I realized there was no use thinking about it at all until that last few hundred feet. There’s nothing you can do further up the ramp, and it often changed from your predictions anyway.

This is how I think of the current moment. What moment is that, you ask? I feel on the verge of several merging realities. I might lose my job if Medicaid funding is cut significantly. My kids’ education might diminish significantly if the Department of Education goes away. My parents’ and in-laws’ situations might change significantly if Medicare or Social Security changes. All of our health futures seem uncertain with the possibility of bird flu, measles, and polio (!!!) epidemics. Not to even consider climate change. 

WHEW!

Anyway, this is all the future. Right now, I’m on the ramp. There’s nothing to merge into, match, or adjust to. I’m not holding still, I’m moving forward, but I’m in this moment.