Wisdom In The Weekend Wind

It was the weekend that left it's grin on my heart.
Here in my small town life,the Art In The Park festival arrives the first days of October,every year.
We are the Vintage oasis outside of Las Vegas, NV.
It is very common to greet my first festival morning with a few thousand people walking and chatting and enjoying this little world that I hold so dear.
Yes, some of my neighbors are unsettled by the influx of influence from the community just over the hill.
We are quiet, they are full of loud, constant movement.
I do not concern myself over these things.
I have lived in this little cottage for 11 years and it is still fun for me.
The days before all the noise arrives, I spend my time cleaning up my front porch. Then I carefully place my collection of pumpkins and silk leaves around the door and the wooden chair so the community of Artists and visitors that arrive can find inspiration, as they walk by.
The festival always brings the musicians out of the private cocoons we create to survive the triple digit heat of desert summers here,too.
Perhaps it was a humid weekend but it was still wonderful.
I sat with friends in the sound booth most of the second day and it was a way for lost friends and acquaintences to find me and hug me and tell me how life has been since last year.
Today, the tents are gone and the traffic is quieted by the promise of the new week and it's intentions and responsibilities.
Fall temperatures will arrive by the end of the week, but we were a force of Nature, weren't we. We were all good for something more than we are, in our day to day, and I am forever grateful for finding this little desert island. The joy in the weekend far out-ways the cost of living in a small town, with it's limited ability to provide the supplies and services and variety some larger communities can provide.

Still, in the midst of the calamity and confusion, the grins and giggles, the munching and buying, buying, buying, I found someone asking me for advice about how she should feel, now that she has helped her mother meet end of days.
They find me and I listen. If I can be of service, we are more.

It had been a hard road. It often is.
She said that her mother exhibited a form of dementia but that it was not recognized and so she was sometimes feeling like her care wasn't enough. Can you imagine this daughter's heart?
You might be surprised at how often I find a child's perception expressed by an adult who has been there for the end of days.
We question the time we had with the parent who has departed.
We are forever children in this way, I think.
As I listened to this woman who was a stranger to me, I attempted to find those places in her story that I could help her recognize her strength and love for her mother. This same strength and love is what her mother saw and felt, in spite of the seemingly endless hopes for her daughters "better life".
Parents do that and it is our belief that this is a gift that we give to our children.
The gift that we graciously gave to ourselves was our children.
Why don't we understand and make the effort to release our children from this pressure to be more, before we leave them and go on to the next spirit activity that death can release us to?
I believe it is because we don't always realize what our hopes become after years and years of expressing them to our sweet, sweet daughters and sons.
Made me go home and love my son. Called my daughter, too.

The beautiful part that stays with me is when she told me how she could see it all working.
She said that she had lost her job and was frightened about how she would get another one. Two months after this loss of daily employment, she found her mother needing her to move in as a caregiver. If she had been employed, the required caregiver would have been a stranger who required payment. Even the budget to pay a professional was a concern but most of the pressure for the three children was to provide the loving understanding that their beautiful mother deserved. These were children who came from an Italian home and the love was never lacking in their lives. Now it was their turn to care for their mother and this woman's siblings had children of their own, to be responsible to.
The woman who shared this story with me did not have children and though her mother had always shared her hopes for more grandchildren and what she perceived as her daughters chance for true joy, now it was clear which daughter would have the life that accommodated the responsible care that their mother needed.
That understanding touches my heart.
If you are still reading, I think it touches yours, too.

Often people express a story of regret. It does not serve us to do that.
It does not celebrate the life that ended if we only consider what we did not do, while we had the time to.
It only re-enforces the feeling of loss.
Be kind to yourself.
Remember it was the mere fact that you lived, that pleases us as parents.
In the end, you were the joy to behold and if you can be with us to greet our end of days, we are blessed.
We feel we were blessed to be there as you greeted the beginnings of your days.
Time with you is all that we really hope for.
Too soon, we understand that we are on to the next thing.
We eventually understand that we will no longer have a physical to hug you with.
Though this woman's mother offered her grumpies and complaints, all that she really asked was to be heard by someone who truly loved her. This daughter made her mother feel safe and I attempted to help her understand that fact.
In the end we hugged long and those tears looked like tears of relief to me.
I was blessed to be in service to this woman on her very private but somehow shared path.
I told her to look around at all the people who wandered the festival.
I tried to help her see that in each of us is a very private, very personal, most often silent little war that we battle.
If we remind ourselves that every person we interact with is fighting some personal war with themselves, perhaps we can remember to be kind.
To remember to respect this really does serve us well.

If you are open and you are able to keep your heart open, you will find those places that you are needed. I hope that you respond with a loving ability to be more than you realize you are. The world needs you and your knowledge is quite useful to others.

Believe it.

Live it.

Maintain the miracle and make the world a better place, just by being here.


Always.
Nancy McEldowney