Hard to update, but your messages brought me here

As some of you know, I try to blog when I am writing from a position of calm.  My most disturbing entries have been about issues I've already moved through and learned from. I have distance.  When I blog about current problems, while the support from you all has helped me beyond measure, it isn't what I want to do.  My blog, for me, is about the lessons learned AFTER Hell... when time has passed and I've been able to see what I learned, see the angels whose wings carried me out of the fire.

Just this past week, I put out the call to my angels and they came.  They came with money, when I was just $500 short of having no money at all, anywhere.  They came when I had fallen three times in three weeks and had now battered a knee and my back was swolled to the point of not being able to wear any clothes that had to fasten around my waist.

They came when my millionaire relatives canceled my visit to them once they knew I was not well and in need of help. My aunt is withering from Parkinson's and they live five hours away. My uncle had begged me to come and I told him when the house was on the market and I had had time to recover from getting it ready, I would make plans. He said he would put me up in a hotel for two nights, for the trip there and the trip back. A friend of mine switched her vacation plans so that she'd be available to help with the first 3.5 hour drive to the hotel, and to help me debrief from the visit. They are toxic, but my uncle had, for the first time in my life, called FOUR times because they were worried about me. I knew it would probably be my last chance to see my aunt who, while becoming increasingly selfish and bizarre in the last twenty years, had been a mother to me when mine could not function through my late teens and twenties. I wanted to remind her of all te GOOD times we've had, and not convuse things. Foolishly or not, I wrote in advance to tell my uncle what he'd been asking. He had said he wanted to help.  I was down to ONE month's bills and found that the only insurance for which I qualify costs $1500/month! I cannot be without insurance, particularly while I OWN anything!

So I wrote and said that whatever they could do would be welcome, but that I did not want to cloud the visit with this. I wanted to be there for Joy and have us just enjoy one another one more time. I prepared them for the fact that I do not walk well and cannot stand up straight. I didn't want them to be shocked at the difference of the last three years.

Two days before departure, my uncle called and told me they didn't want me to see them. That my aunt did not want to see me this way, but to remember me as I used to be, and that she could not cope with my being in such dire straits. And my uncle said, "Try a reverse mortgage. Ask your son to go over your finances to show you how to manage."

When it was clear that I had exhausted the obvious avenues, he said HE would come at some point perhaps, to show me how to manage my finances. I said, "There are no finances to manage. I have x money to my name. I have a car and a house. That's it. Done. No need to come, Jack. Either you care to help or you don't, and I shall not bother you with asking again."

"Well. We didn't mean to offend you. If you want to hear Joy tell you not to come, she is right here."

I said, "No thank you. I do not care to hear my failing aunt tell me she doesn't want to see ME because I'm not what she remembered. I think you two have hurt me enough."

He said, "Perhaps. Okay." Click.

Folks, I hit bottom. I did not think these two or ANY of my remaining relatives could find new ways to be cruel and horrid to me. I was mistaken.

And I told my REAL family and the angels flew all around me. Even the one I least expected to show up. She came.  I reconnected on FACEBOOK with a woman of my parents' generation whom I have missed for years. SHE found me. She had heard from somewhere or other that my life was hard and she just wanted to stay in touch. And these last couple of weeks, when I hit bottom for real?  HOW IS IT that so many of YOU chose this time to simply say you care?

How? I don't know. I don't care. I know only that suddenly I am solvent for four months, even with the new insurance.  That my doctors are rallying and ASKING my attorney what else they can do to assure that the hearing that is STILL at least three months away is, as my Primary physician says, a SLAM DUNK. For my birthday on the twenty-fifth, friends sent checks... one from her dead mother who thought Delores needed a check. She said to me, "Oh, I know your name is Jeannette, but you look like Delores to me." All my cars are named Delores.

And the friend who changed her plans, who really is NOT close to wealthy, said, "Book a hotel closer to home, where we can do a few things and do NOTHING. A NICE place. We're getting the HELL out of here." And she treated us BOTH to two days of luxury, lolling, lobster, and Key lime pie!

My life is day to day. The pain of the spinal damage is unbelievable. The housing market is horrible and who KNOWS when the place will sell?

***

But right after my birthday I decided I could not wait for my new life to start, just because the house hasn't sold and I don't have disability yet and I have NO idea how on earth I'm going to figure out how to function with this worsening spine of mine. I began three new paintings on a card table in my living room. I can dismantle the mess in twenty minutes, if it is completely in mid-session... ten minutes if I have put things in order for the end of the day. I cannot photograph my work. Several friends have tried and they do not translate well. When I have at least ten, THEN I will pay a professional to tackle it. As one said, "You need to stop giving them away now." True.

But painting allows something different for me. There is a calm, a zone, a place wehre I do not have to reach through the horrible static of pain. Writing is a different art form, from a different place. It has been impossible for me to focus these last months, for more than short bursts. When I paint, I UNFOCUS. It is almost like meditation.

And the fear of the situation I've been in was very, very real. There still is uncertainty, but now there is also a world of hope where I had lost hope. I found it. And my angels found me, as I have written before. I don't know what to call them--I'm not really a Heaven and Hell kind of woman. It's an image. My women. These mighty eagles. Phoenixes, one and all... but when we need help? The wings are full of light, soft, fluttering, but inordinately large and strong.

I have felt such love around me, so much support of people who believe in MY STRENGTH and beauty where I could not believe for myself. And who are offering what I need to be able to get through this time, to help me get to a point where I can rest for a couple of years as I try to find a way to stand and then to fly again.


***

I do not know why so many of you have chosen this last ten days to remind me that you are still there. To remind me that you find my writing something to look forward to. I have not had a time of so much struggle since my Jessie died.  I ALWAYS know that there is the possibility of enormous gifts through such times, but while I'm in them, I have trouble writing more than my jotted notes of journals.  The lessons are here, and for the first time since early Spring, I find myself believing I'm going to make it again.

I believe I will figure out how to work around and then through this pain. I forget that it takes a long time sometimes to adjust to a big jump for the worse. I forgot it took me over a year to learn to walk the first time around. It took me two years to figure out how to develop a work schedule I could sustain for a few years. then I had to do it again, adjust for a worsening spine. Now? I haven't a clue, but I will.

For now, painting is the place of peace. For today, the chaos has disappeared and I wanted to leap into here and thank you all for hanging in.

It matters to me more than any of you may know. There is nothing virtual in the caring that I feel from my fellow bloggers. Nothing at all.

Later.