Confessions of a Suburban Housewife

Phrophecy Song

Claudia — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 04:06:52 +0000

This song has been such a great gift to me. Especially now as my family prepares to bid farewell to LouLou I find so much comfort in this beautiful song. I post it here today for LouLou’s birthday on August 9th. I’ll play it for her, and I hope you enjoy it too.

I discovered Joanne Shenandoah 12 years ago, when Sage was just being conceived! In fact, when Sage was an infant she fell asleep every night listening to Joanne singing chants for the first year of her life.

A Prayer…

Claudia — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:28:43 +0000

A Prayer for the Small and Scared

In the night time, when I am very small and scared, please help me.

When my fears and worries are as huge and terrifying

as the monsters in the cupboards and under the beds of children

– please help me.

In the daytime, when I am face to face with realities

I never thought to see, please give me strength to put my self aside.

When someone needs me to be strong, please help me to be as

warm and comforting as an old teddy bear.

When my loneliness, my terror and my needs overwhelm me

– please come and let me hide in you.

Please cuddle me, hold me and whisper in the dark that

one day I will understand but that for the minute

it is all right for me to cry.

And please help me to remember that

you are always, always there –

and it is never the wrong time to ask for your help.

written and submitted by

WendyWu

More Prayers….

Claudia — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:38:58 +0000

Let nothing upset you;

Let nothing frighten you.

Everything is changing;

God alone is changeless.

Patience attains the goal.

Who has God lacks nothing;

God alone fills every need.

~Saint Teresa of Avila

I know a cure for sadness:
Let your hands touch something that makes your eyes smile.
I bet there are a hundred objects close by that can do that.
Look at beauty’s gift to us – her power is so great she enlivens the earth, the sky, our soul.
~Mirabai

Submitted by bodhran

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always on your back,
May the sun shine warmly upon your face,
And the rain fall softly on your fields,
And, until we meet again,
May the Lord hold you in the hollow of His hand.

~Submitted by Gregory

Prayers

Claudia — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:11:28 +0000

Make Me Brave for Life

God, make me brave for life: oh, braver than this.

Let me straighten after pain, as a tree straightens after the rain,

Shining and lovely again.

God, make me brave for life; much braver than this.

As the blown grass lifts, let me rise

From sorrow with quiet eyes,

Knowing Thy way is wise.

God, make me brave, life brings

Such blinding things.

Help me to keep my sight;

Help me to see aright

That out of dark comes light.

— Author Unknown

Submitted to me by my friend cardlady22.

I belong to a Tarot community. I asked my most special friends from the Spirituality forum to share their prayers with me, and this series of prayers is the result of that request. Namaste.

For more information about our forum please visit www.tarotforum.net

Video of the Month: The Earth is Our Mother

Claudia — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:52:36 +0000

I like many of the chants by Libana. Celebrating the Earth, Gaia.

Camp

Claudia — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:28:53 +0000

I picked Lou up yesterday and took her out for a few hours. We got her some big greasy french fries from Papa Gino’s, and a McDonald’s Caramel Frappe. Then we drove over and picked up our father and we drove out to our childhood camp. We camped at this camp for 16 years, never spending a single summer in the city for our entire childhood. My parents would move us out to the woods in the spring, and they would commute to work from the campground. There were packs of kids there when we were little and we’d play all day everyday creating all kinds of adventures, cooking on the fire, sleeping over at each others campsites, and singing songs.

It sounds idyllic, and it was. We have so many beautiful memories at that place. The big problem is the new owners. They sort of ruined the whole vibe of the place, and when we visited you could see that he has moved from family camping to senior citizen camping, raised the rates blocking out the less fortunate campers, and instituting rules about the trailer- the year of it,(has to be newer than I think 1990) and so forth.

We could only drive through, and we did. I drove all over the camp, past our old site, and all the places we played. It was amazing. We know every inch of that place, the smell of it, the feel of it and the taste of it. I could hear a gentle sigh in the rustle of the the leaves and I knew that the trees sensed our presence.

When we got to the water and my Dad headed off to the restroom I whispered to Lou, “The trees know your name LouLou. They know we’ve come home. Can you feel it?” And we sat looking out over the water, each of us thinking our own thoughts, caught up in a maze of memory and emotion.

It was as if we were watching the ghosts of our childhood splashing in the lake, running to the campstore for Charleston Chews, sqaure dancing and running and playing through the trees….

It was different than I thought it would be for Lou, she was very quiet. At one point she said, “This is so lovely.” But I can see that her near death experience last Wednesday has taken more from her than we first thought. I can’t put my finger on it, because everyone else around me keeps saying how good she looks. But something is missing, something essential that was my sister seems to have diminished in a way I can’t describe. I’m crying more, so part of me wonders is it me that has changed, me that is lost. But after spending time out of the safe environment that is nursing home I saw her in a new way, in a way that is truly nearing death.

When we got her back and washed up and in bed she was so happy to be in her bed. Her supper tray came and she looked up at me, she is bent over more again, and she said “I can’t use my legs anymore, I can’t walk.” And my response, “Honey, Angels don’t need legs.” felt sort of too pat. I thought to myself what if she hates that, what if that didn’t help. So I asked her if that made her feel better, and she said, Oh yes Claudia, that was so nice.

I don’t know why some people seem to just evaporate and leave the planet after only a few weeks of being diagnosed with an advanced cancer, and why others linger. I know this is my sister’s death and that it isn’t really about me. But I have to say that since I know Lou is dying and I’ll be here hopefully for a while afterward, well I can’t help thinking that I’m supposed to be getting something here. Maybe that is why Lou is taking the slow road, because I’m supposed to be learning something, and maybe I’m not getting it.

Some days the horror of how far gone she is hits me like a wall and I can’t move. When I start ticking off all of the little horrors that plague her, her weight loss, the necrotic areas, the fact that now we see neurological involvement, and her head is actually shrinking, her forehead actually starting to cave in a little, I want to scream. And Lou, worried how she will look with eyeglasses rather than contact lenses!

So maybe if I try a little harder to figure it out I’ll see what it is I’m supposed to learn and my sister can fly away and be at peace. And maybe that is the lesson. She is at peace. And I’m the one still looking for the quiet place.

Clean-Up? What Clean-Up!

Claudia — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:44:15 +0000

It was crucial to keep the oil out of the marshlands. People suggested hay, they suggested screens made of hair. In the end what did they do? Chemical dispursants and a whole lot of nothing. Can someone explain this to me?

BP’s Gift to the USA

Claudia — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:29:25 +0000

June’s Video of the Month.

I have so much more to say about this horrific event. More to come. For now, this says so much.

Remembering Mummy

Claudia — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 01:09:02 +0000

My mother and father were big fans of Nana Mouskouri. Here Nana sings one of the songs I grew up hearing. I remember going to see her with my parents when she came to my hometown. My mother would play her songs over and over for hours. Even our next door neighbor Chrissy remembers Nana playing at our house. We laugh about it sometimes…..

Enjoy!

The Dress

Claudia — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:35:05 +0000

Each night before I fall asleep I stop for a moment and think of my sister in the nursing home. I think of her lying propped up by pillows, the rubber catheter her constant companion. Lou has found a place there, a place among a sea of silvery heads and a few younger folks living there short term waiting for housing, getting their diabetes regulated and exercising their bodies after surgery.

Lou sleeps for hours on end now. She has fallen into a routine that she both loves and despises. Up for meds at 7am, rest until the breakfast tray arrives at 8am, rest until about 10:30am and then she gets washed up, dressed and into the wheel chair. Soon after this her lunch arrives and after lunch she gets back into bed for her afternoon nap.

She both fears and loves her naps. Without the nap she is semi-conscious, nodding off to sleep as she sits up in the wheel chair trying to stay awake. With the nap she can pry her eyes open and have conversations, but after only a few hours awake she is ready for bed. Lou fought the nap schedule for a long time, I think that she felt too different from the rest of the younger residents when she would succumb to sleep. But trying to stay up all day in her wheel chair was disastrous for her. She became so weak that we thought she would pass by the end of the week. Once she started napping, we saw her return to a bit of her old self.

Her slow but steady decline has been heart wrenching to watch. Her skin is breaking down all over her body. She has bedsores on her bottom, a bruise on her back turned necrotic, her heel is black and hard after having been black and oozy. Even the place on her hand where her splint rubs on the soft place between her thumb and finger is bruised and showing signs of splitting open.

Her ear is blackened because she slept on it wrong one day, and her elbows are becoming more and more fragile. The muscle wasting is to the point where she is a skeleton covered by a thin brown skin, with only the tumor in her stomach growing larger and larger and pushing her organs outward.

There is a luminous quality to the skin on her face. Lou’s facial skin is perfect and smooth, quite beautiful in fact. Her eyes have lost their sparkle, and now with an eye infection threatening to take whatever beauty she has left in her face, it is hard to look at her and see that beauty anymore. This cancer has ravaged her in every way possible taking from her everything she once was except for her spirit. While all of us looking at Lou cannot understand what could possibly be keeping her here on the earth Kelly reminded me yesterday that Lou still has moments of joy.

Lou loves her visits with her nieces and nephews, she loves seeing her family, and she now has all kinds of new friends at the nursing home. She is at the center of so much love, and I believe that it is this love that she drinks up like ambrosia every day. Lou has formed a new attachment to our cousin Dawn, and she waits for Dawn to arrive in the morning with soup and a smile, and of course, a big kiss.

I lie down in the bed with mysister whenever I can and pull her next to me in a body hug. I try not to think about how bony her hip is when I lay my hand on her, and I can count each rib, each vertebrae in her once strong back.

I pray for her and for myself. I pray that when I ask God to end her suffering that I’m not really asking for an end to my own pain. That I’ve had enough trips that to the nursing home, that I’ve had enough of the sight of her frail body trying to stand, that I’ve had enough of watching her try to stay alive each day only to spend it sleeping.

I’ve looked for the signs that my mother is coming to fetch LouLou and that our ancestors are lining up waiting for her to cross over. But just when it looks like Lou has had enough and she is ready to cross she bounces back a little and I walk into her room to find her sitting up and smiling and calling my name as I walk through the door.

Lou has written letters to her family and closest friends. She has written out lists and had me and my Dad sign them that detail her wishes and who will get her charm bracelet, who will get her rings, who will get her last remaining treasures. She has planned her funeral with Pastor, and now she waits for me to buy her a flowery summer dress to wear to her funeral, and I am dreading this shopping trip and the ensuing trip to her room to show her this dress. There seems to be no end to the horrors this disease places upon our shoulders.

It seems selfish of me to complain at all about this shopping trip or any other trip that Lou asks me to make. She herself never complains. I have never heard one word of complaint from her. Yes, she makes endless requests for drinks and cups of ice. But even when she was in constant agony in her hip and leg she bore the pain and did not complain. She might weep on occasion, but she never complained.

I will go tomorrow to begin looking for the last dress that my sister will ever wear. And I will bring her several choices so that she can have the final say about this outfit. I hope that I am able to find whatever it is that she has in her mind, whatever lovely statement it is that she wants to make. I hope that she likes what I bring. There are going to be so many tears shed over this dress. I can feel them even now.