Information, Please

Going through my emails concerning next week's retreat, I clicked on one not part of that group.  It was one of those forwards that people who don't use Facebook like to send...often I delete them without reading them, often nightmare new age "chain letters" designed to guilt someone into saying "Yes, you're my friend" ten times a day.  Yet, I realize, too, that many people don't know how to communicate any other way.  Some people send cards in the mail, and just sign their names.  Me...I always have to write something that let's you know you are special. As a result, I have about three drawers in my desk in the den stuffed with letters and cards, begun but never sent...and some of the people I've tried to write died six years ago...yet, if I send a card, and just sign my name...my friend is often miffed...because they know I write volumes, and they feel cheated.  There is no win here. The truth of my "broken" ways of communicating leave me exhausted and pained, because often people never know how much I love them, pray for them, am thinking about them. 

Today is my daughter's birthday. I will not be seeing her, though she lives about three miles from me. We don't communicate well. I trip all over myself in her presence.  I say the wrong thing. All the time. The only peace I have is knowing it's a generational thing. The mother that raised me, I felt she never heard me...and I finally stopped talking to her, too, until I had a Methodist minister teach me that the world is not here to serve me, I am here to serve the world. Life get better when we stop expecting the world to be nice to us.  I never taught that to my daughter. I didn't learn it until she was all grown up. 

Got a message from my mother's brother this morning...the mother that gave me life, the mother whose blood runs in my veins...he saw the picture of my daughter getting her first bath...in the kitchen sink (we were too poor to have a baby bath tub)...and he wrote me: I'm going up the hill to talk to her now...

He was going to the place where my mother is buried.

If you could see me now
You'd see that
It is still hard
To accept that you are not here
Another May
When I might have had the chance
To hold your hand
And
Even though
We still were broken
We had each other

If you could see me now
You'd probably not care too much
About all the mistakes that were made
In the name of love
You'd just be glad
To look into my eyes
And I could look into yours
And we could tell each other
"It's gonna be alright."

Nearly 30 years ago
And I can still cry
Still wanting to hear your voice
Hear your stories
Drink coffee with you
And maybe take a walk
On this fine spring day.

I would have liked to introduce you
To your granddaughter
And let you hold her
And let her look
Into your green eyes
And you look into her blue ones
And maybe together
You could have shared a lifetime in that moment
So the now
The being alone
Might feel different

If you could see me now
I'd tell you that I'm glad I'm here
Even though it is hard
It is still beautiful

"I had you
All to myself for one week"
Those are my favorite words
on the cassette you left for me
on the coffee table
the day you died.

And I had you
for five glorious hours
in the airport coffee shop
though neither of us thought
to bring a camera
we were so nervous

Both wondering
"Will she like me?"

If you could see me now
I'd say
"Thank you for my life."
Broken pieces
Trauma too much
Sins forgiven and unforgiven
I got to float down a river
And climb a tree
And kiss an astronaut
and give birth
to two beautiful, healthy babies
and go camping
and walking under starry skies
and hold my grandchildren while
they read or sing to me

If you could only see me now
You'd know how much I love you.


Love, Cindy