Tonight for reasons i do not know, i feel my slavic roots. In my bones, my being.
Maybe too much to drink, or maybe the strength of my ancestors. Or both.
I feel the strength in me like my mother’s eyes, as she lay suddenly paralyzed by stroke, saying she wanted to die. I said, not having a clue in this catastrophic event, putting cream on her poor lifeless foot, I said, ignorantly, give it a try and then see what happens later.
Her paralysed foot jerked and moved, (my father saw it) and her suddenly dark eyes were spearing, boring into me, holding me, and drew me breathlessly spiraling down into generations of time.
I knew, with awe and humility and fear at this happening, I was looking into the being of the generations of strong slavic women. I am one.
Her bodily eyes were hazel.
A few years later, after wheelchairs etc, and devastatingly dementia (total left neglect is not for weaklings), she told my dad, this is no good. She began to strave herself to death on November 17th.
But it is very hard to do, when you have dementia, and can’t remember you are not eating, especially when offered food. However, to witness her strength, she did throw up an awful lot.
This was a prolonged and ugly passage.
Of course this whole story is ugly and horrid, and i have only outlined some of it. And can hardly bear to.write this much. What my sister and brother, who lived nearby, dealt with, daily.and weekly, with both our parents, is unimaginably worse.
Yes millions of families are going though these traumas.
I know we children are all scarred and it is hard to imagine how to survive this awful-on-top of awful family story. The back story need not be spoken of, nothing salicious, just normal (we kids thought) child abuse. They didn’t know and we didn’t either. Suffice to say, these days, i would call the kids help line but there was none then.
When my dearly loved father died, i went to the window of his care home ròom as he lay dead, and from my mouth, unbidden unexpected unknown, came a sound, from my being, a howling grieving noise
I know it set him free. And me from him and her.
But there have been too many times lately when I dream or think on a person, and they emerge.
My slavic baba said i was the seventh eldest daughter of an eldest daughter. White witch, she said.
I know naught of all of that but now, when i aging and grieving, need their strength, i feel my slavic bones stirring.
I will be strong because i come from strong bones.
CaringCV 