The View From Here

The pics shown on this post are the views from my parent's sun room overlooking the backyard. One is a wintry look through icicles of my Dad's garage otherwise known as His Home Away from Home. The other is of the neighbor's and the Pike Hill. It's a view that has become my Mother's only connection to the outside world aside from the front porch. My parents venture outside less and less and spend a fair amount of time simply staring out the windows. I find myself watching them, searching their eyes wondering what is left of their thoughts....are they wishing it would be spring? Are they reflecting on their time tending their flower and vegetable gardens? Are they searching and sifting through what's left of their memories for reminders of better days? Are there any thoughts at all?

Watching their decline is agonizing and I find my own thoughts awash in myriad emotions. I silently feel my own heart breaking at their growing loss of dignity and then I find myself slipping into anger...at myself, at God, at Fate,at what seems to be the utter unfairness of it all. How could these two people who devoted so much of their lives to God and church seem so abandoned by both? I realize it's not a question easily answered and then feel crushed by the inability to fix or heal the situation. How ironic that at the same time I'm railing against God, I then realize that I'm also praying for guidance more than ever....

So, as I've repeated in previous posts, I try to hold myself together by searching for the comforting nostalgia of being here and the healing humor that helps release me from the stress. Today's nostalgia came, of course, in the form of food. My parents get food deliveries from Meals on Wheels and the food is frequently the same food as the hot lunches served in the school system. Today's was my favorite in school...school pizza. It's ingredients may be suspect, but, oh, were we some happy campers in school when it was pizza day. I took a bite of the pizza and the memories were instantaneous. We used to shamelessly prey on dieting fellow female students and talk them out of their pizza. It pales in comparison to, well, pretty much any other pizza but we loved it then and it's memory triggering properties are clearly intact.

The humor today came in realizing that the back of my Dad's shirt had some type of logo on it. Looking at it more closely, I realized it was for West Coast Choppers. I have no idea where he got it but how funny to suddenly think of my Dad as an 89-year-old biker dude. You go, Easy Rider.