Final Goodbye

Lee, my niece and writer of this touching post, Saying Goodbye, expresses the pain of burying your mother. She talks about the mundane and the deep feelings of not wanting to  let her go.

http://littleleeway.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/saying-goodbye/

Her mother was my sister, June. For days I've thought of her and what I owe her for the life I lead today. I've thought of what I can say at the burial, if I can hold myself together enough to talk. There is  no way to sum up the long life of such a special person. I will tell about my admiration for her from the time I was a small child. 

Imagine that you have someone living  in your house who is as pretty as the movie stars on the  covers of the magazines. And imagine that she loves you dearly and will do anything for you. So different looking from my sweet mother who had lost her figure long before I was born, but just as loving as my mother and as kind and caring for her young siblings. 

She was meant to have a happy life because she sacrificed so much for others, but as a young woman with two teenage children, she faced the death of her husband. Her world fell apart and the weight of raising the kids alone seemed overwhelming. She had not  held a job for fifteen years. 

She was a resilient woman who persevered under grueling circumstances. The family had to move where she could find work that  would support her family. The children didn't fare well in the new school and June had to rethink her situation again. 

All I wanted to  do was save her from the overpowering grief and sorrow that had stolen my sister's smile, her love of life. But I could not fix her problems. Now I know that grieving is a personal and private matter that no one can ease  for another. 

She raised her  girls and they are both doing well. She finally found another man that she could love and who adored her. But their happiness was short lived. Less than ten years of marriage before her health deteriorated. She knew when it was time to go, and she passed away with her family around her.

Now we must say a final goodbye. I can hardly bear it.

My sister, June

Fears and Phobias

Tonight I watched a man overcome his fear of heights by being hoisted high in the air, and a woman put her hand in a bucket of worms although that was one of her biggest fears. The treatment for those phobias, a fear that is irrational and obsessive, is exposure therapy. It works.
At one time mountain roads terrified me. I clung to the car door or the hand grip in the car when we drove over Blood mountain. I wouldn't look over a precipice. But once I rode my own motorcycle down a steep mountain road, I no longer feared riding that curvy road in a car.
Wow, did that feel good. When we overcome that which held our emotions and our well-being captive, we feel as free as an eagle soaring over an Alaskan bay. We feel shame because of our fears and we don't talk about them, but talking about them and facing them head on is the only way to overcome. Writing about them is sometimes the first step.

  I recently realized that I lived in the fight or flight mode even as a  child.
What was I afraid of as a child? Snakes, the dark, bad people who might come in the night and harm my family, bad weather, and the death of my mother.
I didn't understand that those irrational fears were not normal. I don't know why I had such a fear of my mother's death. I didn't fear for my father.
Of course, I didn't think fear of snakes was uncommon. Mother deliberately frightened us.We lived in the country in south Georgia. Snakes lived in the barn, in the oak tree in our yard, under the smoke house, in the blackberry brambles, and she was scared we would be bitten.
Mother's words to my sister and me, were, "Run like crazy if you see a snake no matter what color or what size."
We saw a snake crawling on the oak tree, and we ran screaming to Mother. She came out and with a hoe chopped the snake to little pieces. We were told to stay clear of the reptile even after she cut off his head.
"Snakes don't completely die until the sun goes down, " She told us.
I admit the more I learned about snakes, the more mesmerized I became. In Sunday School I learned about the evil snake, the devil,  in the bible. My skin crawled when I thought of a snake. It didn't help when my brother played on my fear and tossed a non-poisonous snake at me. He never thought it would wrap around my neck and knock me to the ground. Terrified and breathless, I ran for my mother. My brother still regrets that act and says he never meant for the snake to touch me.

All of my nights were scary. While my little sister slept beside me and my parents snoozed in the next room, I curled into a ball, tense with fear, unable to sleep. When the wind whipped the limbs of the big oak tree outside our window, I was sure a hurricane was coming and the tree was going to fall on our house and kill us.

A jacket hanging on the closet door turned into someone evil waiting for me to close my eyes. The sound of a distant train became the footsteps of an intruder approaching my room. Many nights I didn't fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning, when exhaustion overcame my fears.

I became obsessed about my mother's life when I started school. Something told me I needed to be with her and  everything would be all right. This apprehension continued into my college years.  I am now free of that fear. When she passed away, I was forty years old and I had to face my worst fear. I didn't think I would survive, but I did. 
At this time in my life, I've been exposed to everything I feared, including my fear of flying, and I have survived. Even death has no sting.

Did you have childhood fears? How did you overcome your fears?


You can subscribe FREE to this blog and have new posts delivered to your inbox.
See Sidebar and write your email address where it says Subscribe. Free!