Hard Memories

It was a picture that "popped into" my feed as "you have memories;" yet, it churned up a whole pile of memories, some hard! 

That fall, I was exhausted trying to balance the challenges of cuddling two brand-new miracles, in two different cities and supporting their parents, navigating new-parenthood. 

My mother was still living at home, with heaps of support, and a palliative care plan.  There were more bad days than better days.

It had been just a few months since my decades-long-marriage ended abruptly sending me into an era of living in my car, juggling decisions, and visioning a cloudy future. 

It had been months of talking to no one, other than my therapist, and doing nothing, other than driving from one site needing-wanting my time and energy to another.

There had been many days when I did not eat (other than energy bars and coffee from Mobile on the Run) as I fueled my car before heading to school.

Then, after a long illness, after years of waiting to join my dad, my mother died. 

In the days that followed, I cleaned and organized the contents of her condo taking a few pictures to share with nieces and nephews so they could  take and make their own memories.    

To be honest, I think I my emotions vacillated between empty and relieved as I tried to capture photo images, late at night.  Facing a cloudy future, I took nothing, not even that family tree with roots in the 1800s.  

Yet, this morning, as I stared at photo on my phone, I saw, for the first time, the light on the picture.  

Clearly, there was a message in that memory: Even in the hardest of times, there is light if you stop to notice it.