A little more to the story...

The mountain is calling me... My whole being needs to get up there... to be away from everything... After having a hard time sleeping last night I have been thinking today.. about what kept me awake.. and as I posted earlier... I am scared about Friday, going to the doctor to see what is in store for my knee... I am scared... scared that PVNS could be back.. and if it is... scared of it consuming my life again... that's terrifying... in many ways things in my life have settled down and there have been things to celebrate even... and I do believe good things are on the horizon.. no calls for interviews yet.. but I am hopeful... but this is when I get nervous... when things are going well... nervous that the universe is once again scheming... and I have fear that the rug will be pulled out from underneath me... the last time I put fear aside and dove in... was with Matt... and we all know how well that turned out... I had the same fear with him, even told him that fear... and he assured me nothing would come out of the blue... anyway... so PVNS is rearing its ugly head.. and maybe it's not growing back... but... maybe it is... Friday in general will be a day of anxiety... getting up early, having to drive into Boston... I hate driving in Boston... and the drive there gives me time to think.... overthink... and think some more... after my appointment I am going to meet up with a friend of mine from college... who recently lost her dad to cancer... we haven't seen each other in 14 years... we are 'friends' on facebook and she reached out to me to ask me how to say good bye to her dying father... thinking that I may have words of wisdom... I look forward to reconnecting with her, but it is awkward that the connection will have been initiated by us both being in the 'I lost a parent to cancer' club...

And then there's the house thing... which is kind of hitting me hard tonight... my dad is selling his house... the house where we moved when I was in seventh grade... I am happy for him, to be putting that chapter behind him, but it is still hard... he has cleaned it all out... it's empty apparently... and it is hard for me to picture it that way... that house has a lot of memories... good and not so good... my father has even more memories than I have there... there is a lot of death there... my great grandfather, whom I never knew, was killed while he was sitting on the porch... so the story goes... a drunk driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, drove off the road, and right onto the porch... my grandfather had a heart attack there and while the ambulance had come to take him, he had died before he left the house... my great grandmother had come to live there after she had gotten sick and she died, of old age and heart failure... and of course my mom...

Dad was part of the last three deaths... in the middle of the night he went to that house (from the house we used to live in just down the road)... to help get my grandfather into the ambulance and to carry my great grandmother's frail body in an effort to get her to the hospital... and was at mom's side the whole way... I lived in two houses growing up... the one that was down the street and this one... from seventh grade on... this is the house that I associate most with the word home... but it is also the house I associate with losing my mother... since Mom died there... it has been incredibly hard to be in that house... I don't know how Dad has done it for the last two years... When I drive up there and pull in the driveway my heart rate increases, my stomach gets queasy... and when I walk in I immediately look to the corner where the hospital bed was... where my mom list her battle with cancer... and even thought he furniture had been rearranged... the image was clear in my mind... that house... the stone fireplace my grandfather built that kept us so warm... where I could look at my dad and look at the fireplace and could usually convince him that his little girl was cold and he would start a fire.... I remember my grandmother's chair that used to be there... a real old fashioned recliner, that in order to recline required that you get up and move the metal bar from one notch to another to change where it was supported... the floor where I used to use my grandparents' dog, Mandy, as a pillow... where I had my first crushes... those boys names are still painted on the plywood under the carpet in my old bedroom... where my sister and I shared a room for a brief time... where my water bed spring a leak in the middle of the night and because I was somewhere between awake and asleep I thought I had wet the bed... It's where Mom opened her first craft shop...where I tried to do something nice for my dad by mowing the lawn and when he came home, he smiled and told me it would come out better if the blade on the mower was actually engaged... where Dad put a couple of trash cans on the lawn so I could practice parallel parking before my driver's test... where my grandmother used to park her school bus that my sister and I used to play in...where graduation pictures were always taken in front of the lilac tree...and the rhododendron grew so tall...where on bad days I would walk into the yard with my notebook and sit under the poplar trees and write about things that I was upset about or wondered about... where I began writing as a way to process things without burdening other people... where under my grandmother's carport a robin built it's nest in the clematis plant every wpring....where my mother's step-brother let Mom know as she was dying that he wanted the house... classy, right?... where I medicated my mother with morphine to keep her restful and calm and hopefully pain free... where I watched my father say good bye to his beloved wife... where life as I knew it changed forever...

Mom and Dad had planned on selling the house... to move into something smaller... they had planned that for a long time, even before my Mom's mom had gotten sick.... it was something that was always in the works... until Mom got sick... I remember when Mom was really sick... and she looked around the house one day and apologized... she told me that I would resent her when I was cleaning out the house... well Mom, I didn't really do anything...Dad has done it all... the amount of effort it has taken him is something none of us will really know because he's putterer... and I am sure there have been tough tough moments for him... He told me today on the phone, that Friday was a hard day for him... that makes sense to me...

One of my friends, who had lost her mom a couple years before Mom died... told me that grief is like waves... sometimes those waves are small and other times they knock you over... I think that's one of the best analogies... putting the house up and selling it (fingers crossed) is a pretty large wave... and it brings much of the sediment to the surface... things that I thought had settled resurface...

I know it is what needs to be done. I know it is what is right. I know it is what is best. And yes the house is important to us... but we all know it is symbolic... seling the house is a sign of something bigger... somethingmore final... and it's hard...

So the mountain is calling... because up there... my heartrate decreases... I breathe easier... my soul finds peace... where my head and my heart seem to align... I can't wait to get up there... soon... very soon...

Dad.. from afar, this is a hard journey... I cannot imagine what it has been like for you... going through EVERYTHING... pictures, boxes, tools, notebooks, trophies... all of those memories... all of that pain... You are so strong... I think that you doing this... emptying the house, cleaning it... getting it ready to sell... is one more way you have taken care of things for our family... for mom... Thank you. I love you.