And sooooooooooooooooo we move on......................
I remember last St. Patrick's Day. I made a Reuben sandwich thingy that the adults liked but the kids didn't. The washing machine had broken down because I had kept overloading it but we found a great repair guy to come out. We tried to catch a leprechaun in a homemade trap using Lucky Charms cereal as the bait. We didn't get him but he left us gold chocolate coins instead.
And now here we are a year later. Where we are is about as far from last year as Ireland is from Egypt. Years ago, maybe just before I found my Huggyband I was in a ladies bible study and the question arose about whether or not we truly wanted to know the future. The older ladies insisted that they were glad they hadn't known their destinations before they had started down some roads. But me? I insisted that I did want to know the future because all I wanted to know at the time was if I'd ever get married and have kids. As if just having or knowing that would make everything ok. Well............ having them doesn't make everything ok it's a whole new ball game. A year ago would I have wanted to know the truth about what was to come? Absolutely not. In the words of Jack Nicholson "you can't handle the truth." It's been a very, very, long year as if the leprechaun who visited brought us bad luck, cursed us even with the horrible, awful year. But here we are again, safe and sound for now, we're not in a worse place just a different place and the journey to get here was hard. Planning another leprechaun trap this time using duck tape. And once again I'm planning a corned beef meal that I'm sure nobody will eat. As I prepare that meal I sift through the memories of the last year; again trying not to waste the pain and see the lessons.
One of the lessons I've been thinking about is the difference between rescuing and protecting. Somebody told me a few months ago that he wasn't going to rescue me and that shame on me for always wanting to be rescued. I'm not so sure I see what's wrong with rescuing. If I force myself to see the other side then I see that maybe a small amount of struggle is allowable? unavoidable? That's where the lessons are learned? It doesn't excuse others from inaction though. If you're not going to or just can't RESCUE somebody then you must at least PROTECT them. In hospice training I learned to protect the dying. Some patients in hospice care have Do Not Resuscitate orders, which basically means just to let nature take it's course when the heart stops. For many, many reasons I won't do CPR; a skill I once used to teach. I can't rescue my patients from the dying process but I can protect them. Protect them from things like bed sores and minor infections and visits by nosy neighbors.
I think of how that applies to my own depression. Last summer when the suicidal pull was at its worst I couldn't be rescued. Nobody could make the decision to live for me; that push and pull was all my own; nobody else was responsible for it. But when my struggle with depression became public and others judged and said damaging stuff and then left I sure would have liked to have been protected. When your self loathing takes you to suicide then you need to be protected from yourself (yes I know I should have been hospitalized) but no one can do that for you. There does need to be people who will protect you from others.
When we were grieving the loss of our first son we needed to be protected; we needed somebody to run interference for us. Not to rescue us from the pain of grief but to protect us while we healed up a bit.
And then I think how that applies to how we treat others in general. What if we all just tried to protect each other? Look out for? Defend? Cover each others backs? Guard them from the rough things in life while they deal with their own stuff? Because in the end aren't we all dealing with stuff? Aren't we all just a little fragile, in danger of being hurt? And wouldn't we all benefit from people making sure that we don't feel any more pain than necessary?
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