Thankful Thoughts

The past few days have been less than stellar for me.

Waiting for Ghost Month to end its run and the disturbing developments in the news keep on coming. I really should consider giving up watching television for a while. But then again, how realistic is that? Hmmmm.

I have to make a conscious effort not to foam at the mouth or hyperventilate as I recount the various issues that upset me - usually issues I can't really do anything about. It's a losing and pointless battle, I know.

Having Lupus has been a tiring experience - today, I woke up feeling worse than usual - with my body screaming in various degrees of pain and moving seems to be punishment for not being dead.

It's also been interesting living with bipolar disorder, but I've managed fairly well without medication for a while now, it is only recently that I've been having anxiety issues again.

In this light - I start to think of what there is to be grateful for.

I'm grateful for my dog. Logan is the love of my life. My raison d'être. He makes waking up a worthwhile thing.

I'm grateful for my family. Their support and understanding has been phenomenal and I am so lucky that I was born into this crazy coterie.

I'm grateful for my friends. Lucky that I've been blessed with so many creative, colorful and quirky individuals who I love to spend time with and who always make me feel so blessed because they are in my life.

I was told that better days are coming - and in my sarcasm - I hope that means that all the bad people will drop dead or will all be thrown to the sharks or lions to be disemboweled or ripped to shreds. But all right, to be more reasonable, I'll settle for World Peace. Is that too much to ask?!

The Universe loves me, and I shouldn't forget that.

So, I'm grateful for another day on this planet. Thank you to all of you who make my life so memorable. Your support has been instrumental in vastly improving my quality of life, simply because you are all part of it.

I wish you peace. I wish you freedom from pain and anxiety and of course - I wish you love.

Better days are coming, and I'm sure we'll all be there to enjoy it when it does.

And the beat goes on...

Maybe Alanis Morissette says it best - it IS Ironic.

One has to constantly work at being positive and practice mindfulness.
Just when you've got yourself convinced that life is golden, and that everything is
perfect something comes up to make all that positivity go black like a burned out light bulb.
The moment of epiphany quickly turns into a dark room with no windows in sight.

It is just so easy to slip into a destructive, non-productive frame of mind that makes it seem that living is so difficult.

Being alive can feel so...deathly tiring.

You live, you learn. Sometimes the hard way more often than not. You've usually got post-it notes taped in the most conspicuous spots, the bathroom mirror, by the computer, on the wall by your bed - notes that are part of the "landscape" of your everyday life that you end up not noticing they are even there. Then you might as well take down the scraps of colored paper littered around you.

Life doesn't stop till you're dead. You can either bitch about that, or just get on with the business of living and just take it a day at a time.

There is always someone who is having a harder (more boring, more tiring, more stressful, more drawn out, more challenging) life. It's all about perspective - and when you're down in the dumps, feeling like you're lying in the gutter all by your lonesome, if we stop the pitying ourselves long enough, you will look around and notice that - it's crowded down here in the gutter of hopelessness.

I often hear - Life isn't fair! Well, who says we deserve for it to be anything but?
Life is a challenge, an adventure that we either face as intrepid adventurers or miserable wayfayrers.

Choose.

Life is what we make it.

The glass is always either half empty or full - it is the fool who has a more determined point of view that makes a happier fool. Does that make any sense at all?

Let's take that example. A glass of water (or Pepsi). To someone who doesn't like soda - to see the glass as half empty might be a relief if they are *required* by some twisted rule - to FINISH the soda. To someone who is thirsty and has no other drink available, half a glass is not enough, so they'll take what they can as quickly as they can.

So which is better now? Half empty or half full?

Perspective, darlings, that's what it's all about.

When I feel so overwhelmed, I take a step back from everything and just - do nothing.
Re-assess where I'm at and how I truly feel about things, and try to take a good look at the state of my life at the moment.

Things could always be better, but there doesn't seem much sense in complaining.

Acknowledge your lot in life, and make the best of what you've got.

I told a friend today that even negative feelings can best be dealt with by just letting the feeling sit with you. Identify, Acknowledge, wallow if you must (but not for too long), and move on.

Keep moving.

You're alive, be glad that you are.

Things can and will get better.

Believe it.

Life is good, regardless of the circumstance... The Universe Has A Plan, that's what I'm sayin'!

The 18th of July Anniversary

(Amelia "Mely" Valencia Juban 29 December 1921-18 July 2008)

Three years ago, today, sometime between 2:50-3:00 in the morning of July 18th, 2008, you went to meet Poppa God.

You were diagnosed with Cancer of the Parotid. A condition that dovetailed with the onset of Alzheimer's Disease which, towards the end, robbed us all of a chance to fully live your last days with you in what typically would be frought with invitations to lie down to nap at mid-day, or sit down to merienda, or to come down to breakfast, lunch or dinner before the food got too cold, or the commentaries on how this bag or that was perfect because it had so many utility pockets, or whether or not the main dish we ordered at the restaurant to celebrate a graduation or special occasion might be too pricey and...my favorite - did I want you to place a call to your childhood friend to have me work for a prestigious local broadcasting network. (?)

That last morning, standing at the foot of your bed, with everyone else who was there, I found myself hearing muffled voices through the many thoughts buzzing in my head. Thoughts like: "is this really it? time for you to go?" "wait, this is a dream and they didn't really wake me up to say goodbye", "why are we standing about at this hour, and why is everyone quietly crying?", "why are you not awake and out of bed yet?" "why are your eyes not open with you smiling up at us saying you'll be okay in the morning?" "Wait! You can't die! You're supposed to get better!" Who was I kidding. Talk about false hope. But that was how it was for me. I remember the growing panic which was masked with a stoic and dumb stare as I watched you slowly breathe in and out until the time they said you were gone.

You died peacefully by the time the clock struck 3am. The wave of awareness washing over me as surely as if I had been engulfed by a silent but no less fatal tsunami at the shore of the land of the living.

You slipped away long before you actually said goodbye, so maybe it was best this way.

All of us who were at your home, the moment of your "departure" were properly woken to bid you a final farewell. But I never really got a chance to say goodbye. I stood there, clutching at your feet, by the edge of your bed, watching - as you took your last shallow breaths...as i listened to the final pronouncement na... "Wala na ang Mommy."

My grandmother, the one who figured larger than life itself with her shy prepossesing demeanor during my growing up years lay dying and I couldn't say goodbye. The grandchildren - myself included - all wrote and recited our 'memorials and farewells' to you at the wake on the morning of the funeral, but - I never really said goodbye to you. Maybe that is why I have to write to you today, on your Third Death Anniversary. I've let you go, yes, it was - as everyone says - and I agree - better this way. That you didn't have to undergo much more discomfort, suffering or loss of dignity. And although I should have been 'ready' for your death - I wasn't ready when Death finally came to claim you. I wasn't prepared. I was.. Not ready to let you go.

After we buried you, I went to visit your grave as often as I could (which makes it convenient that where you are now is a shorter drive from where we stay), and for a spell, wondered if I had spent four years in college only to choose a career as someone who tended a grave for a living.
I would troop to the cemetery with a bottle of oil, a rag to clean and shine your marker, candles and a pot of flowers, sometimes with mom, but sometimes alone, to 'visit' with you.

During those times I'd talk to you out loud (but not too loud, of course) and tell you how things have been, or complain about this thing or another or this funny incident or what-not that occurred since my last visit. After I'd cleaned your marker, I'd sit there and feel the breeze in my hair and tell you it was a nice afternoon and that I'm glad to be sitting there quietly with you. I've taught myself not to cry openly as much when I am there because - well, f I did that too frequently, the roving guards might have cause for concern - and I didn't really want to be taken away by the "men in white coats" or have my shrink alerted due to any excessive display of emotion on such a regular basis.

It got easier to visit you as the months went by, but like I tell you each time I visit, and on the morning of your funeral - I MISS YOU EVERYDAY.

Growing up with you has shaped many a thing in my life, in my personality - I even attribute my fondness for sweets and my first taste of coffee to you. You and the ten teaspoons of sugar for a glass of Calamansi juice meant - a glass of Calamansi juice would never be quite as perfect if it didn't have the right 'sweet twist' to it. Di ba? You said ten teaspoons of sugar!
The fondness for doughnuts, don't worry, I developed that on my own. haha.
You always laughed at the corniest of my jokes, and never failed to make me feel like I was the cutest, smartest and wittiest person you happened to be speaking to - ever. You always were, ready to give - even if it was the last money you had. I remember the one time I fancied that I "ran away from home" and showed up at your gate unexpectedly (I was still in high-school) and you were insisting I take the only money you had on you - your last Twenty Pesos, from the pocket of your house-dress. You were sure I could deal with it and go back home to "face the music." I don't even remember how I got home that day. I think eventually you called my mom and she and dad had to come fetch me and bring me home.

My tastes were partially defined by the comments I heard from you growing up, my habits formed under your tutelage - you insisted on tying my shoelaces for me till I was nearly 15 years old, even when I insisted I could do it myself - and even when you let me - you'd always remind me - "itali mo ulit." insisting that I double-knot it, so it doesn't come loose as I walk. I forget to do that sometimes and as I retie my laces, your voice always rings in my head... "Dapat kasi Babe, di-noble mo yun tali."

I measure my choices by the way you would feel about the decisions I make, by how you'd feel if I chose one thing over another and basically - if it was (or at least felt like) the best thing to do at the given moment. My choices aren't always stellar, but I know you'd understand that I was (and continue) to grow into myself as my own person.

You always had faith in me - even when I didn't have faith in myself.

Up until before you slipped into the fog of illness and Alzheimer's and we'd sit up and read the paper, your vision was still much better than mine. Something I found truly amazing. I developed drug induced Cataracts, YOU never got Cataracts! And it was only because of you that I stuck to those piano lessons because I knew how that was one of your frustrations. (I still feel that Mark plays the piano a whole lot better than I ever could)) But I stuck with it, and I can read notes! Now, I'm glad you were so insistent about the piano lessons, thank you. But I do NOT regret refusing to take those ballet and jazz lessons you suggested I take. haha. See? I can imagine you smirking at that. Even my sense of humor has been colored by you.

You were among one of the most concerned and devastated when I was diagnosed with Lupus in 2004, and always worried after my health and safety whenever I'd come to visit. Somehow, sometimes I feel that I let you (and everyone else who loves me) down by getting sick with this chronic dis-ease. But I realize then, it may all be just...part of the game of living. Roll of the dice, so to speak. But I'm sorry that you and everyone else in my life, has had to, and for those who are still here - are currently - living through my being not quite 100%. I don't mean to cause undue alarm. I'm fine. Half the time, no one can even tell there is anything different about me, if they don't mind that I might be a little too young to be using a cane.
It's still all good. No worries.

I miss your cooking. I miss your distinctive script and handwriting which I read and touch gently as I ask to borrow and re-read your recipe books. I carry around a prayer you re-wrote for me on a piece of yellow pad paper, a talisman of remembrance, of hope - one you gave me with the promise that "God will make you well!"

And yesterday, we visted your grave. Poppa, Thea and I, where we sat for a bit and said prayers for you, lit a candle and enjoyed the breeze. I was quiet. Sharing my thoughts with you, only in my head. Holding back tears that I desperately wanted to shed. But I was your big girl, I know you are "in a better place" and that it is as it should be.

I know you love me... And I trust that you know I love you.

I love you Loly, even as I carry you in my heart, I miss you everyday.

(not MY favorite photo from high-school, but I was told this was one of YOUR favorite pictures)

Memento Mori

Enjoy life while you can.

The sister of a friend passed away two days ago and I visited the wake last night. I went clear across town - more for the bereaved rather than the one who has passed on. 

This is especially true for the wake I took part in (albeit for a brief period of time) in order to give my friend a hug and to let her know, tangibly that, aside from her immediate family there are friends who will stand by her through what is possibly one of the most trying moments of a person's life.

The sudden, unexpected loss of a loved one.

Many times I forget what a gift it is to have those I love within an arm's length, a hug, a text message or a phone call away.  I am guilty of passing by those I keep near and dear in my heart with not so much as a glance and quick smile.  possibly too wrapped up in whatever it is I am doing or feel that I need to do that I don't have enough time to pay attention to anything or anyone else. This happens more times than I care to remember - why? You ask.  Because they are always there anyway, and it isn't like I won't see them again in possibly a few minutes or in the morning when I wake up.

But...what if. . .
...I don't wake up?
...they don't wake up?
...something unpleasant happens between the time I last see them and the next time we meet?

Not to be setting a morbid, depressing or negative mood here. This is meant more as a  reality check. 

A gentle, although maybe not so subtle reminder to myself, a mental note via this blog entry, as you will - to take every opportunity to let those who matter to me *know* that I care about them.

When I am mindful, I remember to check in and ask family and friends how their day has been, or even the more common question - "have you eaten yet?" if only by way of checking in and letting them know - hey, you matter to me and even in the most mundane way, I'd like to make sure that things are all right in your world.

I want to remember to take the time and check in with those who matter to me, to those who make a difference in my life simply because they are part of it.

Reality check -

Death is inevitable.

Sometimes those we love leave this world when we least expect, and even when their demise is something that isn't too much of a surprise (as may be the case with the terminally or chronically ill)  the moment you find out that they are gone will always be a blow you can't begin to imagine until the truth and reality of someone's death stares you in the face.

I hope I remember to take time to let those I care about know that they are important.
That I am here for them if they need me and that I'd be more than happy to help them if I can in whatever capacity I can muster given the circumstances. MY circumstances, to be more specific.  I might not always announce my availability or willingness, but I can only hope that they trust me enough to know that all they need to do is ask.

Life should be lived, experienced, enjoyed, LIVED.
While we can - for as long as we can.

I don't claim that I have it perfect and that there aren't things in my life that I sometimes wish weren't  so difficult.  There are in fact many days when waking up with a sore EVERYTHING after a fitful sleep makes getting up and out of bed to face the day a less than happy thought - but - I get up anyway.
There remains things to be done, people to see, family and friends to hug, greet, text, share jokes and laugh or hang out with, articles, blog entries to be written, books to be read, books to be written and pets to feed.
(ok, fish count, as do turtles).

As long as I am alive, then I will take every opportunity to make use of the time I've got.
If that includes a doughnut, coffee or Pepsi, then you won't hear any objections from me!

I can only hope that when my time is up, people will say - it was good while it lasted, and she had the time of her life while she could.

And since I am still around, I choose to celebrate life.
I salute those who have gone before, have fun and spend quality time with people in my life who matter and wait eagerly to cheer for those who are yet to come.

If you are reading this - you, yes I mean YOU - Smile, I love you!!!  Thank you for being part of my life, y'all make this a fun ride. Salamat Po!

It's all good, folks. Really.

Mabuhay!