Happy heavenly Birthday

You’ve been gone for so many years Dad, and still sometimes it feels like it’s brand new. I’ve missed you for nearly 48 years now, and your loss hasn’t gotten easier over the years. It’s just something I had to learn to live with and accept, yet the hole in my heart it left behind is just as big and the pain burns just as deeply. I am in Germany for your birthday this year and I am close to your final resting place. I don’t know if that makes a difference as I carry you within my heart every day, but I am sure that I will visit you and Mom many times during my duration here, and for sure, I am here today, on your birthday. Happy Birthday Dad…I love you.

I have a feeling that I will have company with me when I come. It’s your older brother who is born just a few days before you…well, and some years. I wonder if you celebrated your birthdays together growing up. I have learned that he has cared for you a great deal, having to come to terms with your loss in his own way and he will always see you as his lil brother. I can see a smirk on his face when he talks about you and I am sure you two have shared some stories of mischief. I hope I get him to tell me a few of those stories while I am here. Just the other day he told me that he found a video of you holding me in your arms while I was still a baby and I’m waiting for him to show me. Maybe I can show him some old pictures of you with your clique and he might know a person or two himself of the people you hung out with in your youth.

I have to confess something and talk to you about something. It’s no secret that I have always shared a special connection with your brother and I never quite knew the exact reason. I can’t pinpoint it to one thing and perhaps it is his sense of humor that closest resembles your own nature, always ready to crack a joke and not seeing life so seriously. Always caring for family above all, and always wanting to protect the ones that mean the most. Maybe it is because he has always treated me with respect, even as a child. Or maybe it is because I saw you in him once you were gone. He became my legal guardian and I never knew it until just a few years ago as I had to dig through papers after Mom passed. He had forgotten all about it and never had to spring into action. Mom always took well care of everything, and there was never a need for him to interfere.

Living in the US, we never got to see each other a lot, yet the connection was there and intensified in 2019 as I was back for Mom’s funeral. His wife was in the hospital at that time and I was able to give him a lift a few times to visit her. We had a lot of time to talk and we got very close to each other, especially once his wife passed just a few months after Mom. We shared grief and pain, an understanding of what it’s like and we leaned on each other. I remember telling him that it felt weird and empty not to have parents anymore. I told him that I felt like an Orphan, and I told him about the paperwork that I had found saying that he was my guardian. The memory of it came back to him and I feel there is more to it, that I simply don’t know yet.

What followed next happened very fast but felt natural. He told me that in that sense he was my 2nd father, that I was and that he wanted me to be a part of his immediate family. I started to call him Dad. It was for the first time since the age of ten that I could use this word, addressing someone close to me and it had a good ring to it. It was bittersweet and it brought to the forefront all that I had been missing all of this years. A father, my Dad, YOU.

It was the beginning of January and I was back in the States as he emailed me an adoption certificate that his oldest son made on the computer, officially adopting me and welcoming me into his family. It looked very professional, almost like it was the real deal, not that I would have known what the official document, if any looked like. I was overcome and I burst into tears as I saw it. I felt very touched, even loved and cared for. I thought it was sweet and generous, but soon I would find out that he was serious about the adoption and wanted to legalize it. Even while I was still in Germany, I remember that he mentioned to family that I was his daughter. Not the daughter of his younger brother, but his daughter. He introduced me this way to other family members like he wanted them to get used to the concept. It felt good to feel this care, the love of a father I never knew, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I enjoyed us being closer and it gave reason to the closeness I had felt towards him all these years.

Two years have passed since then and he has been serious about making it legal through the courts. The legal process has been started and he is hoping that we can finalize it while I am here. I can feel how important this is to him and I can feel a story behind it, but I don’t know the reasons in great detail yet. I do have to wonder about the importance and after all he just turned 85 years young. And because of it, it has also become important to me. He wants to experience what it’s like to have a father daughter relationship before he leaves this world, and perhaps I seek a similar feeling, wondering what it’s like to have a Dad, although I know that in my heart you will always be the one, my true father, the one I miss every day. Now I sit here and I wonder how you would feel about it if he adopted me! You already know that nothing will ever erase you from being my father and the person I have looked up to and missed for a lifetime. And I don’t think that this would be what he wants anyways. He is not here to erase you. Your memory is strong and it lives not only within me but also within him. I wonder what your relationship was like with him. Would you be at ease, knowing your older brother is looking out for me and is helping spread his guardian wings around me.

Dad, I miss you and you too always treated me fair, like an adult, never once raising your hand at me. There was never a spanking, but there was a love that was unconditional and undying. I miss that. Every day, I miss that. I miss you. Now I am here on your birthday, with your older brother, standing at your final place of rest and I wish that I could talk to you and see you again. I am sure your brother has already talked to you about the adoption and I bet he talks to you a lot either way, regardless of the subject. In the end every road always leads back to me and to what I think about it and to what I want. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t consider if this could betray you in any way. I can’t see it and I know my loyalty and my heart and it’s definitely not like I am turning my back on you. I know my heritage and I need to learn more of the reasons. I know I am bringing purpose to his life just as he brings purpose to mine. Still there are a few questions and I need to understand why this is so important.

I love you Dad…happy birthday. 💙

The nights are the worst

Sometimes, I crave solitude and an escape from the chatter when things get too busy. Yet when I have it and when I am alone, these night of solitude become the worst ones of all. When the day comes to a rest and I’m no longer distracted, the truth of these haunting walls where Mom lived and resided for so many years, close in on me. I can feel their loneliness, their pain and I can hear their cry’s, while adding my own. Some days my heart feels heavy and I suppose even those times are needed and a part of the process. Being right here, where it all happened, where only walls heard the cries of loneliness is yet different vs thinking about it from afar.

For the longest I contemplated moving back, to transform this sadness and breathe a new life into these walls, letting my love cancel out the pain. I always knew I could, and I was convinced of that, being stronger, allowing love to cure all. Eventually I realized that it would merely be a sad attempt to take away the pain, to lift the burden for the one who carried it all, and who is no longer amongst us. Today my own cries add to these walls because I too was left behind and I too miss someone dearly.

I love you Mom and I miss you every day.

The people who didn’t say goodbye

Albena Vatcheva

There are people who cannot say goodbye. They are born this way, this is how they die. They are the keepers of promises and what moves them does not wear out. Their loyalty will tear apart your clocks. These are the people who can hear the music in songs. They are the Vow carriers. The grandmothers who always leave the porch light on. No one is lost to the one who sees. These are the women widowed by men they never married. These are the girls who wait even when you don’t come. These are the mothers of orphans, they can turn a fake into an original. They will hear the prayer in your self-contempt. As distance is measured, people do not end. It is one of those stories that cannot be written down except across a lifetime of open doors. There is a holding on beyond the letting go. There is a reunion in everybody’s chest. This is how we come to make a family from strangers. This is how we light candles. These are people who will remember you when you meet them. These are the people you can always call at night. They’ve are humans turned angels by your asking. With each separation they go to seed again. These are the men who carried you on their shoulders. This is the one you are lonely for, the one who begins and ends your hunger. This is something that does not wear out. It is the third part of any two people who join. It opens and closes. There are people who are alone who are not apart. This is why we listen to the madman when he speaks. People change but they do not stop. This is how we learn “Forever.” There are people you can count on. They are the keepers of promises. They are candles lit from each other. They can teach us eternity. We can get what we can give. This is the instruction. There are people who do not say goodbye. As distance is measured – you are one of them.

~Merrit Malloy

Big Bertha, phobias and fears realized

I’ve aged 20 years this morning. Since my arrival here in Germany I’ve been thinking about Big Bertha. It would be a matter of time until we cross paths, perhaps not with her directly, but one of her cousins or the likes of them.

Big Bertha is a humongous spider that lived in the closet of Mom’s vestibule. I can’t even post a picture of what she looked like because I literally have a phobia of spiders, and don’t even care to see pictures of them. It started at the age of 9 years old as one of those huge bodied, black as the night spiders jumped on my head. I’ve been traumatized ever since and even killing one takes an act of extreme courage, overcoming, not thinking too much about it or looking at it too long, but just doing it and getting it over with.

Getting up this morning I stood for a second in the doorway to the living room. What would I tackle today, what was the game plan? It would be the last sunny day, I would also need to do laundry soon and although today seemed like the most logical choice being able to hang it outside, I felt that I needed to make some progress in the house since yesterday was mainly spent celebrating a family birthday.

Only a few seconds past as I glanced to the reindeer fur hanging on the wall next to me, which immediately made me jump back a step. There she was, Big Bertha in all of her ugliness and fright. I wish I could have called someone to remove her for me, but I was alone and I would have to handle it. I didn’t know how else but to smack her with the fly swatter. Carefully I took aim with the much too short handle. I couldn’t afford to miss and I finally struck. The fur made her bounce off towards me as if she had jumped onto a trampoline. I backed up further and she landed on the dark brown carpet somewhere. WHERE 😩. If there wasn’t enough panic already, this was the moment as I frantically searched, while looking for any movement. There, a few more swatting motions, lost legs, and then the cleanup. I am sorry if you love them but I was crossed out and while I doubt she will be the last sighting, secretly I hope she is. I just can’t deal with it and if I could be hypnotized or else undergo some treatment to lose my phobia over spiders, I would definitely consider it. I was uneasy for hours and I might even have manifested her by thinking so much about her, but changes are she’s been here, living undisturbed. Chances are she didn’t like all the commotion and disruptions I have caused in each room. Now I have this picture stuck in my head and wished I’d never saw her. And this goes back to the first closet sighting, years ago, which I never quite forgot either.

Stitching a new quilt of humanity

Artist: Paula Cumez

There is no time like the current. What a time to be alive. You have felt the changes, the things that don’t quite make sense yet, the highs and lows of every emotion, of every lesson learned no matter how difficult it was at the time. Your world is ever changing and not the same as you once knew it. And yet you are still here, looking back in hindsight, perhaps a few more gray hairs richer, and so is your soul, your wisdom, your knowledge and your sense of accomplishment. You are richer than ever before and it shows. You wouldn’t change a thing anymore and strangely all of a sudden the prize paid, seems worth it, needed and even essential. There is no way you would go back to your previous version. The one that might have seen less pain, but now seems so outgrown from where you find yourself now. She has served you well, and so has every version of yourself that you have shed, but a new quilt is waiting to be stitched. A new quilt to inspire and change all of humanity. A new quilt for the new world. And here is a little story about this new quilt we are all such an essential part of.

“The old threads are unraveling, get your needles ready. We are stitching a new quilt of humanity. Bring your old t-shirts, worn out jeans, scarves, antique gowns, aprons, old pockets of plenty who have held Earth’s treasures, stones, feathers, leaves, love notes on paper. Each stitch a mindful meditation. Each piece of material a story. The more color the better, so call the tribes. Threads of browns, whites, reds, oranges, women from all nations start stitching. Let’s recycle the hate, the abuse, the fear, the judgement. Turn it over, wash it clean, ring it out to dry. It’s a revolution of recycled wears. Threads of greens, blues, purples, colorful threads of peace, kindness, respect, compassion are being stitched from one continent to the next over forests, oceans, mountains. The work is hard, your fingers may bleed. But each cloth stitched together brings together a community. A world, our future world under one colorful quilt. The new quilt of humanity.” ~Julia Myers

City of my heart

All I have for you today is a picture of this beautiful city that has stolen my heart so many years ago. I get to sleep here must nights during my stay and for me it is a magical place that calls itself Rothenburg o.d.T.

Two important people

Two important people share a birthday today. Two important people mean the world to me and both are family. One has been like the sister that I never had, while the other has been like the father I never had and lost way too young in life. These two, are my heart and I am so excited to be there to share their special day. It has been the highlight of my trip prior to going and no words can express how much these two mean to me. It’s like a once in a lifetime occasion now, one that I might not get another chance to experience.

The amount of help, unconditional love and selflessness they have shown me, simply because of being family takes my breath away and leaves me nothing short of amazed. Nobody is left behind and there is a place where “I BELONG.” I never knew where that place was for many years and it’s an emotional trigger for me. Another chapter to be seen, addressed and to be healed during this all important trip. I imagine I will have a lot to talk about once this is all over with. I imagine I will never be the same again as I prepare to shed yet another self, another layer. I imagine that this trip will blow my heart wide open, wider than I ever imagined it could be, and fill it with unconditional love, growth and healing. I imagine that I have seen nothing yet and if I believed my heart was open already, spirit might have a surprise in store for me and humble me once more.

Fleeting time

Fleeting moments, fleeting time is a struggle that seems to get worse with age. When we get older, time becomes an even greater gift and we can value and appreciate it through old and tired eyes, and yet, often with a new, crystal clear vision. The days pass, the months move by, and before we know it another year has come to an end. Living in awareness has been a great gift to me and although I can’t slow the rushing time, being more aware of my days, of my moments has allowed me to take them all in at a more profound manner. Here is a little pondering about fleeting time from an unknown source in collaboration with my own thoughts.

“Barely the day started and it’s already six in the evening. Barely arrived on Monday and it’s already Friday. …and the month is already over. …and the the year is almost over. …and already 40, 50, or 60 years of our lives have passed. …and we realize that we lost our parents, friends. …and we realize it’s too late to go back. So…let’s try, despite everything, to enjoy the remaining time. Let’s keep looking for activities that we like. Let’s put some color in our grey. Let’s smile at the little things in life that put balm in our hearts. And despite everything, we must continue to enjoy with serenity this time we have left. Let’s try to eliminate the afters…I am doing it after. I’ll think about it after. We leave everything for later like “after” is ours. Because what we don’t understand is that: afterwards, the coffee gets cold, afterwards, priorities change. Afterwards, the charm is broken. Afterwards, health passes. Afterwards, the kids grow up. Afterwards, parents get old. Afterwards, promises are forgotten. Afterwards, the day becomes the night. And then it’s often too late. So…let’s leave nothing for later. Because still waiting to see later, we can lose the best moments, the best experience, best friends, the best family. The day is today. The moment is now. We are no longer at the age where we can afford to postpone what needs to be done right away. It looks like an eternity, but it’s a short trip. Enjoy life and always be kind.”

Non-stop Action

It’s been over a week since I started this next chapter. Ever since travel day, I have worked nonstop and it’s slowly showing. I am getting tired and I am not sleeping good or long enough to feel rested for each new day. My mind tells me to pace myself a bit and yet it also slightly freaks at all that is still ahead and needs attention. No doubt have I grown stronger and the meds are carrying me through. Sometimes at lower doses and other times with a little extra help. Overall I feel accomplished of what happened and got done so far. All challenges, tasks, extra requirements and even the unexpected has been dealt with and has been tackled to the best of anyone’s ability.

I had a few scares in the house, such as no running water and electricity tripping the breakers, so basically I am without water and electricity. It’s definitely a challenge, but it is what it is. So far, when not sleeping at my uncles house, I have stayed here, walked myself through the darkness and cuddled under heavy blankets, three times so far. I have not found a comfortable medium yet and it’s either too cold here, or too hot at my uncles. Plus I spotted and luckily killed the first mosquito today. I’m not ready to be bitten to pieces, as they love my rare blood.

12 large lawn-bags full of various clothing have been donated to the Red Cross, and there is no end in sight just yet. Numerous other things, mostly still packaged and brand new have been given away to family to breathe new life into the memory of a person who is no longer amongst us. I had a few moments when running across familiar things or when the memories catch up, but I have managed it easier (mostly) then I anticipated. It almost feels like I am anxious to lighten my burden with every load, with every step, with each and every action. It’s bittersweet and some days I cry at night, but there is no way around it and I am holding up, non stop, each and every day so far.

Symptoms, Signs & Messengers

Nothing is an accident or happens by coincidence. Everything has purpose and I have really come to preach this topic lately, haven’t I? New evidence continues coming forward, new knowledge emerges, and new theories are born, supporting the foundation of what I already know. It takes off from there, and I build with new eyes and motivation. Sharing and penning it down, for further reference, making everything I write stick into my memory bank.

For instance, I have become a firm believer that pain is an outcry and our bodies way to let us know that something is not balanced. That there is a lack, a wounded inner child, an old scar, stress, hardship, emotional strains, physical demands, and something that is unresolved that needs mending. Could the way we think and understand life be applied to other issues as well? I absolutely think so.

What happens if we are too focused on the future or stuck in the past? Are we in or out of alignment when we feel this way? Have you ever paid attention? What is begging you to take a closer look and have you dared to see? Life will always happen one way or another and the pressures to be perfect, to be up to par, a 100% all the time will only mount even more in time. So these symptoms, signs, and messengers could actually become our allies if we learn to understand and read them. Here is another example…

What happens when we feel down? When we are sad or depressed? Could this way of feeling be seen in a similar way, as an indication that something within us is seeking to be released. That something is out of balance? Any negative emotion that is in your awareness is only ever there because it is seeking to be acknowledged, to be freed. It doesn’t come up to be pushed back down into hiding, to be fought against or even ignored. No, it has surfaced, giving you the opportunity to fix and resolve it. So instead of fighting that feeling, perhaps we need to seek understanding why it is there. We need to be courageous and dare. Give it your full attention and find out what it has to tell you.

Negative emotions are often an indication that you believe something that either isn’t true or isn’t in your highest good, about yourself, others, or what you desire. Take some time to sit with it. Meditate, observe and view everything through the lens of love. Allow it and shed all resistance, be objective and patient, the false belief will reveal itself and let itself out in time. And the next time when you feel down, when something just doesn’t sit right, when you are overwhelmed by life or the experiences thereof, sit back for a moment and listen. Perhaps an answer is found within the symptoms, the signs or the messengers that are really here to help you through it.