Waste Management

He has always been the heart in our family.  People think I am just the sweetest thing.  They have no idea.  I come from strong stock....my stock has been trampled and beaten and starved.  My stock were warriors.  My idea of dealing with adversity is to fight, and to fight hard.  I don't have that willowy, bend into it, yogic reaction to this loss.  I am royally pissed off.

When you deal with a small child, you have the entire future to imagine.  When they put deodorant on the top of their head, you laugh playfully.  When they plug the toilet to overflowing, you scold them lovingly, wondering all the while, what in the world they got into and what world they were exploring whilst ruining your plumbing.  When they ask you the same question over and over and over, you smile indulgently and appreciate the expansion of their mind and the growing storage capacity.  When they wander outside and talk to neighbors and strangers, you watch them carefully, never wondering what it is you will have to explain to said folks, or if you DO have to explain something, both of you will laugh heartily at the whimsey of youth.  When they put on 2 pairs of underpants and no undershirts, when they have on three pair of pants, buttons done all wrong, zippers undone, you know they will learn.  When they use the electric razor to brush their teeth, the remote control to answer the phone, or put their pajamas in some safe place, never to be found again, you shake your head in amazement.

When he does all those same things, I get angry.  Maybe I talk about anger so much because I am ashamed of it.  I know he can't help what he does.  I know he's suffering from the devastating confusion.  I really do know that he has amazing grace about what he's going through and that I could never match it if our positions were reversed.  My heart breaks watching him suffer through it and aches for myself as I struggle to release the anger and just love him.

I gaze outside while he brushes his teeth for the second time, because he was trying to shave.  The wind is blowing in that gorgeous way that only an autumn wind can blow, bringing the excitement of imminent change. The sun is shining, intermittently, playing chess with the dark harbingers of the winter to come that are scudding across the sky under the jackhammer blinding light of an autumn sky.  The trees are bowing gracefully under the onslaught, obviously smarter than I am about this dance, and yet, like me blissfully unaware, though suspicious, of the disaster that is coming.