anamnesis: December 2009

We awoke the day after Halloween, to dark skies and rain, chilling us to the bone. After so many glorious fall days, it seemed only fitting that this transition time, the time between autumn's harvest and winter's solstice, this November should be ushered in in such a fashion. November and I have never been great friends; it has always been my least favorite month. And with acknowledging that really I should have celebrated allsouls, for my Father... Well. Why pick just one day, one month for that? And yet, it is another case where November has seen me fall. What else for it but to make a big pot of steaming soup... And that's where my strong certain singular memories of this November stop. Right where they started. New found struggles with my children in their health and schoolwork. And. So many days filled with worry over family members struggling 3000 miles away, one, my brother, with cancer, another, my brother-in-law, with threatened bankruptcy of a 40 year family business, and, my dear eldest sister, a wife mother grandmother rock of her family there and of our family of siblings (it is only us and our families left now in our childhood circle) with the collapse of her health and seeming sanity-- crushed by months long insomnia, weight loss, and near constant constantly increasing anxiety, depression, fear & exhaustion.

My brother sought to treat his cancer himself. Will not discuss it with any of us and though his wife promises that now, 10 months later, he will soon be seeking professional medical treatment, we have not heard, nor will our questions be answered. Only silly emails and cards, brief evasive phone conversations come our way.

My brother-in-law faces the loss of his business, and with it all their financial security, it would seem. But rather than be able to focus his full energy to save it, he is focused on saving something much more precious to him, to all of us.

My Sister. No doctor, after months of seeking, will with confidence advocate for her, treat her comprehensively or immediately. It is long and complicated and I don't understand how this can happen, but it has. She is crumbling before us. Each day we take turns trying to call, to offer love and support, to trade any news or hope. I know it is getting to be more than she can bear, and though originally sought to buck up for brief talks with us, and that in those stolid moments was able to rip herself away from terror and terrible thoughts and fears that plague her; now she is worn bare, will say again and again in a tearstrained reedy voice how she's not sure she can take any more. If she could just get more than 2 hours of sleep in a day, if she could tolerate the prescribed medications without nightmarish side effects that she is too fragile and fearful to tolerate, if she could find a way to brave it through, or if somehow someone could with certainty hold her securely through treatment, fearlessly though compassionately disallowing her refusal to follow certain hopeful though difficult treatment attempts, the hopes we have had could be fulfilled... please pray, if you are so inclined. Please.

And now, in this November, I have been stunned-- deeply saddened to learn, someone I know, that I care about,I would like to call a friend, who lives 4500 miles in the opposite direction, has lost their other half, their children have lost a parent, in a senseless act that (oh wishful heart) that cannot be undone. My heart reaches out to them, to their family, to their dear friends. It will continue to do so... across the miles and across time.

So my heart grieves. But it grieves not for November's passing. In November, my heart played only two songs: silence and pangs of a painful discord that come of helpless empathy.

Welcome, December. I have a lot resting on hopes that you will deliver us out of the miasma your older sibling left us in...

I pray that we should all be mended in due time. Time is due. We have only so much.

Heart's hoping for a benevolent December for us all.