I Am Me- It Is Enough!

Thursday marks 6 weeks since we buried my Mother. Yesterday my stepfather was admitted to the cancer ward of the hospital and told that he has 5 to 10 days to live. There are times when we are offered that question "if you knew this was your last day on earth what would you want to do". Apparently he had some ideas that he was getting close to that question as he had the sheets off his bed and out by the washing machine with his towels. He had the house all neat and tidy. If he was asked that question I believe his answer would be, I would pull these d@mn tubes out of my arm and go home. Go home to his wife, both his first wife and his second wife, my Mother, go home to his Mother and Father. Instead he is in a hospital bed being re-hydrated and medicated till his children can get there and decide what to do with their father. I wish them them well. I know what it is to fight for your parents right to live or die based upon what their wishes are. I will not be fighting them unless they forget what we all know- He is tired and just wants to go home.

I have been fighting my own battle of late. My body has decided that it is tired and wants to take a break from the world- I am not fully opposed to that thought but there are others who believe that I have things to attend to and should get out of bed each day and venture forth. Earlier in the month I tried to swan dive off the porch steps at the office- this put me in a nasty leg brace for a bit- and being me- just one visit to the Dr. about it. The pain continues but I have forgone the brace- made me walk like a peg-leg. Mostly it put too much stress on the other knee which got all twisted in the almost fall. Since then it has been a spiral downward. So I am not walking too fast, or too much if I can help it. This is a very sad thing as my new toy is in the basement and she is calling me to come down and play.

Thanks to my Mother I was able to fulfill a big dream and purchase a long arm quilt machine. I got an APQS Millennium which I named Maxine after a name my sister and I coined for my Mom during the last few days of her life. It is a name that brings a smile to our hearts and a twinkle to our eyes when we remember Maxine. I had great hopes of getting the basics of quilting under my belt and being able to quilt not one but two large quilts for the quilt show coming up in a week. I did manage to get one large scribble project done as I call it, and my challenge quilt for the quilt guild. After that my body said enough, I am going to bed and you are stuck going there with me. I had to withdraw the quilts from the show and remove that stress from my life for now.

I have been doing the health guru visits and no one seems fully able to figure out what is going wrong with me- we are find things that are working right after 23 years and that is great but....in 2 weeks I must leave for the annual elk hunting trip to Idaho where I am the only true hunter of food stuffs- I do my hunting in the local grocery- costs about the same as a license and I bring home things ever so much more edible then what the boys bring off the mountain- snicker- guffaw! Basically we know that my adrenals have full shut down and that I am totally dehydrated because of that. That makes a whole lot of other things not happy in this little party my body is having and explains why I am still in bed at 2 PM.

And so now we must put my stepfather into this mix and shake it all up and for now play the wait and see game. I figure he will make it just long enough for me to not be able to make the funeral. I am really OK with that. The only thing I would want to tell him is that I love him and I appreciate how deeply he cherished my Mother, and that he was a good father figure in my life. I did tell him that I loved him the last time I talked to him at which point he said goodbye- I wish Dan Godspeed to his new home. I know he is longing for it and I know that he is finished with this side of the world. Good bye Dan, and please tell Mom and Jessie hello for me.

Oh yeah, the photos through out are from my challenge quilt entitled I Am Me- It Is Enough! I had to make a quilt that contained the color gold and the color lavender. If you look at the gold crayon it is actually more brown. It is my autobiographical attempt at who I am becoming. You can not see it but the fruits of the spirit are quilted into the body. The edges of the quilt were left unbound because my life is still expanding and I am still a bit rough around the edges.