A YEAR HAS GONE BY

Since I last blogged and 18 months since Charlie died.   You would think that God realized my heart was already shredded.

On May 30th 2018 Bernie and I went to the Bahamas on vacation, to Little Exuma to be exact, at my brother Albert's invitation.  Bernie died in little exuma of a massive heart attack.  He could have been saved, he was alive for 5 hours after the heart attack, but there are no doctors, no hospitals NOTHING in Little Exuma and we had to just let him die.

It has me so traumatized that I did nothing to save him.  I know there was nothing I COULD do, but still, it has left me feeling so much pain and guilt.

RIP babe.

Feelings are so complex

Bernie and I went with Kristina, Derrick and girls to Cuba March  26 - April 2, 2018.  We went to Varadero, Pinar del Rio and Havana and everyone loved it.  The girls were comfortable and affectionate with my family and my family fell in love with them.

It was a hard trip for me.  I could not get Charlie out of my head the entire time.  I kept thinking about what he was missing.  How much he would have loved to spend this time with his sister and the girls.  I felt he cheated these girls of a wonderful uncle and cheated the rest of us of his presence.  It just HURT.  You know?

Everything we did I felt him there.  I felt him hurting that he could not be with us.  I'm sure that is just all in my head but that's the way I felt.  And the guilt.  Oh the guilt.  I wonder if I am ever going to be able to enjoy something without feeling guilty that I am enjoying my life while my son is dead. It's an internal battle that keep me from just being in the moment.

My word for this year - acceptance - is bittersweet for these reasons.  I know that finding acceptance will release me from his spider web of pain I am stuck in, but it also makes me feel guilty that I am looking for acceptance instead of grieving my son.  I need to reconcile these feelings to where I can do both - accept my son's death and grieve him at the same time.

So many great books this month!

I am doing Ali Edwards One Little Word again this year.  My word is acceptance.  The challenge for March was to do something repetitively - a practice.  I love to read (obviously) and since I had two weeks vacation in March I was able to read a bunch of great books.

It's so great to get lost in a good story.  You can forget about your pain and focus on stories and characters that pull you into these books.

HOME

I have been subscribed to Ali Edwards Mostly Story Kits and Story Stamps since it's inception.  I have every single kit (about 38  now) and have only just started to use them.

The theme this month is HOME.  It's a great theme for me as my feelings about "home" are all over the map.

All my life I dreamed of having an "American" life.  To me it meant my parents would purchase a home and life there their entire life.  I have no idea why I considered that to be an "American" life but I did.  I wanted the same for myself, I wanted to purchase a home and live there all my life.  Raise my children there, they raise their children visiting there....  It just always meant so much to me.  But it never happened.  

When we arrived in the United States in 1966 my parents were 34 years old with three children, no marketable skills and speaking only Spanish (my mother never did learn to speak English though my dad was able to speak and understand some).  We went to live in New Jersey.  I remember our first house in this country.  It was really big (or at least that is the way I remember it) and we ALL lived there.  My parents, my siblings, my aunts and uncles and cousins.. my grandparents.  ALOT of people in one house.  Everyone worked to pay the bills.  After visiting Cuba for past 20 years I realize that Cuban families really do all love to live together.

From there we went to live in a flat in Elizabeth New Jersey.  I remember my aunt and uncle and cousins lived upstairs in the flat upstairs.   There were only two flats in the building that I can remember.  There was a little mom and pop grocery store downstairs where we would buy candy.  I can remember my father pouring salt on the stairs that led out to the sidewalk because they would ice over in the winter.  I don't know how long we lived there but I know it wasn't too long.

From there my next memory is all of us (and I mean ALL of us) traveling in a caravan to Florida where my Uncle Isidoro had purchased a house.  I remember sleeping on the floor (where your feet go) all the way to Florida in a brown and beige station wagon, singing Raindrops Are Falling on My Head for my dad who loved it.

My uncle had bought a house in Hialeah (6161 West 14th Court) for everyone to live in until we could all find our own way out.  I don't remember when we arrived but I do remember being SO excited.  My brothers, cousins and I started running around the yard like crazy people whooping and hollering that we were HOME!

A very short time after we moved into that house, my aunt Clara and her baby boy were hit by a truck while riding Albert's bike and were both killed.  It was 1970 - I was 9 years old and I remember it like it was yesterday.  What an awful day.  My uncle and father went to the site of the accident and came back to tell everyone else.  From that day forward none of us were ever allowed to have a bicycle.

My parents, my siblings and I moved from that house to a house that had french doors in all the rooms.  Don't know where it was - just that we were not there very long.  Eventually we moved to 4814 East 8th Court.  It was 1973.  My best friend lived across the street and my "crush" lived in the apartments behind my house!  Couldn't get better than that.

Wow..... there were so many more after that.  I love these story kits.  It makes you think about your life and inspires you to write your stories.

This is my life......

Grief blisters like third-degree burns, trying to form scabs, struggling to heal, ripped off without warning by the sight of his favorite things:  iced tea, his gray sweater which he should have gotten rid of a long time ago but was his favorite, his favorite cologne still clings to the air.  I see him in all of these things now, but he quickly evaporates, setting off a silent alarm that plays full volume in my head.

A single moment in time divided my life into before the after.  I most remember just feeling numb to the bone.  I didn’t even stay in the bathroom with him.  I touched his face, so blue – so cold, and all I could manage to say was “Oh Charlie….” and then I walked out and told my husband, who was already talking to 911 that we was dead.

At first, his death leveled me in such profound ways I wondered if I could ever feel human or sane again.  The loss of my baby boy, my heart, transported me to the ends of the earth and then dropped me into an abyss of unimaginable proportions.  You are dropped into a foreign country filled with darkness, cavernous landmines, silence and solitude.  You crash land there, exiting the world as you once knew it – now stark naked, without a passport, luggage, any sort of itinerary or knowledge of what to do or how to act.  In that precise moment, it felt like a one-way ticket to hell with no way out.

I remember thinking – “I want my life back.”

And then telling myself  “this IS your life.”

A NEW BLOG

I didn't WANT to open a new blog!  I loved my blog!  But here I am opening a new one because I can't post on my old one!! I have no idea why. Maybe it's a good thing. Sometimes we have to hit a reset button on our lives.

My last post in elenaismyname.blogspot.com was Charlies services.  My baby boy died on January 12, 2017 and I blogged about it on June of 2017.  I guess that was the first day I could handle sharing the pain.  It was the most awful year of my life.  I think I have made great strides in overcoming the numbing pain, the desire to die.  I am here, I am living and I am blessed.

I'm not sure what the focus of this blog will be.  Probably none.  There are so many different facets in our lives, so many things the we can share with each other.  World events, politics (with respect please! LOL).  Our ever-changing family dynamics.  

And of course ART.  The one hobby that has kept me sane.  I have wonderful friends who "get me".  Who truly "get me" when it comes to my obsession with this stuff!  


THE YEAR OF LESS by Cait Flanders


I just finished reading a wonderful book The Year of Less by Cait Flanders.  She did exactly what I keep thinking about doing and don't do.  She decluttered, gave herself a mandatory shopping ban and saved money.  The decluttering came first.  I think the smart thing about that was that you know what you actually have.  

She made a commitment not to buy anything for one year unless it was on her "approved purchases list" or unless she was buying something to replace something else that would be thrown out.  For example, you don't buy deodorant unless yours is over and you are throwing it out.   You don't buy a pair of jeans unless yours are so destroyed that they can not be mended and are going in the garbage.

It sounds like such a simple concept doesn't it?  But I think in real life it would be daunting.  I am going to give this a try in smaller increments.  3 month commitment instead of one year commitment.  I am an impulse buyer.  The amount of money I waste is outrageous and it really has to stop. 

I am an electronics hoarder!  I buy every new gadget that comes out.  For example, I have a new iPad and decided I wanted the bigger one (which I have yet to turn on) so I gave my smaller iPad to my daughter and got in debt for the bigger one.  Ridiculous!

Again, this is my new goal.  I love this book and am going to read it again.  I am going to start to declutter (everything except my art studio!  I'm not willing to do that yet) and see how that goes.  

I am not going to lie to myself that I will be as extreme as Cait was, at least not at the beginning.  But I love the whole idea of minimalism and hope to be able to embrace it at some level.

STAY TUNED.