Tag Archives: gratitude

Mother’s Day Thoughts …. Mug a Mother

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She gave you life, and you’re getting her a coffee mug?

Oprah’s Headline next to the rumoured fear that Prince Harry’s wedding would be canceled due to bridal fears. It’s the Mother’s Day weekend and I know this can be a day of mixed emotions. It would be wonderful to share a special coffee mug with my mother, but this will be the first Mother’s Day without her … while it is easier to saintify your mother’s once she’s have passed on; I’m sharing a tribute my daughter sent for the funeral ten weeks ago.

From this granddaughter’s perspective, we need a little more Margaret on this earth…

In MY world—of juggling a hundred commitments to a thousand people in a million places,

We need people who just Show Up and are fully present. Right here, right now, every time.

     That’s what my grandma did.

In my world—of dreaming big dreams, traveling to exotic places and achieving amazing feats,

We need people who can delight in the mundane and find joy in the ordinary.

     That’s what my grandma did.

In my world—where me-time, introspective self-analysis and often-hasty critique of others consumes heaps of our head space,

We need people who can breathe deep gulps of faith and just get on with it.

     That’s what my grandma did.

In my world—where my dreams and my goals and my vacations and house and opinions and achievements and my, my, my, my… are the accepted life-goals of the day,

We need people who graciously shine the spotlight on others and enthusiastically elevate those around them.

     That’s what my grandma did.

In my world—where dodging discomfort and avoiding suffering has become a pursuit at all costs,

We need people who grope for gratitude in the darkness and make the hard choice to stick it out for the benefit of others.

     That’s what my grandma did.

In my world—of unprecedented affluence and options and any-dream-can-be-your-reality,

We need people who sometimes just pull up their raggedy boots of courage and walk the path in front of them.

     That’s what my grandma did.

In my world where finding oneself has become of utmost importance,

We need people who are OK with just being themselves.

     That’s who my grandma was.

From this granddaughter’s perspective, we need a little more Margaret on this earth…

Happy Mother’s Day for those of you mothers … if you still have a mother on the planet, I hope you have a chance to talk to her.

Motherhood is a high calling.

Travel from room to room

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The work to forget, can be as difficult as the trying to remember.

Frederick Buechner

“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.”
― Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces
Four years ago on the first of September, I landed in an unknown hometown. A wary excitement filled me for this new beginning, a fourth new beginning of what had been a series of unrequested life events. I remember the excitement of seeing the mountains from my dining room window, this prairie girl with prairie bicycle legs. A town in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains was a scenery change of significant elevation.
Landscapes of the physical variety are easier to modify than the minefields of the mind. For many people, it seems easier to plod on in a difficult known, than to move into the unknown.
And yet radical life changes require radical responses. Radical choices.
My mother of ninety-one lives in the room to remember. She may not remember what she had for lunch, but, start her up on a memory lane conversation and she can tell you how the fly ball felt as it smacked into her bare hands to clinch the game. She was the hero of her country school! Of the days of her drinking husband, she says: “Those were hard times, but we got through them.”
She has a selective memory. Memory can be revisited.
I would like to remember my life as worthwhile and wonderful.
The past is a foundation for the day, the future gives hope. The past and future collide into this IMG_6694moment of today, this present, which is exactly that – a present moment, a gift to be opened and deeply appreciated. I want to live my life in such a way, that when I am my mother’s age, my room to remember will be positively full. For today I am here, in this moment celebrating the lives I have lived!
Here’s to the anniversaries you celebrate today. A reason to be grateful. Thanks to my sister-in-law for introducing me to this musical artist, Josh Garrels, and this song about understanding further along:  Check out this song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IctD9l4F-ag

Jocelyn is the Author of Who is Talking out Of My Head, Grief as an out of Body experience. 

 

Summertime Blues (the cure)

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We unlearn desire. Quietly, over time, we succumb to the dependable script of the expected life and become masters of the middle way … after a while we no longer even notice the pathways off to the side … John O’Donohue (Beauty)

“The summer is almost over,” my 91 year old mother declares with authority on our weekly Sunday IMG_4182phone call. I already know her next line: “Before you know it, it’s going to snow. It will be Christmas.”

A writing course had occupied my spring and when I hit “Submit” for my final paper on June 30, I also hit “Break Free” for the summer … and here she states the truth: Summer is Short.

In Canada it is very short, and also the reason it is full of outdoor activity. Canadians know its brevity. As if to verify my mother’s words the picture of last September’s snow came to mind. For the sake of the course, I had put off my summer and now my days were numbered.

Three days ago I picked up a friend from the airport, who is returning to be in the presence of an aunt in the final stages of cancer. The struggle was closing in. Last summer, another dear friend lost the battle with a heart issue, her family motherless before the end of August.

Oh the summertime blues. The life time blues … it comes and it goes. Life, breath, beauty, flowers, illness and departure; like the river current moving toward a final destiny.

My own grandchildren come to visit in a week. I have been anticipating this time for what seems ages, and before I write my next blog that moment-in-the-sun will have passed.

The elusive speedy nature has me either lamenting or rejoicing.

So what will I do now that the summer is almost over? … I plan to enjoy every remaining moment as much as I can. It begins with cleaning off of my small patio, setting up the deck water fountain, planting the flowers I got on the end of the season sale.

I want to build good memories that will warm those cold winter days. I want to connect with nature as much as I can. Listen to the music. Enjoy the richness with those that cross my path. There is only one summer of 2015. I want to smell the flowers.

Above all else, I want to practice gratitude.

IMG_4084That gratitude that started July first, where in a moment of unprecedented Canadian patriotism, I joined a small town crowd for the raising of the flag, the singing of Oh Canada, the picture taking with two handsome red-suited mounties. To quote my mother: “I am so thankful for the country that we live in.” She is thankful; she has health care, she feels looked after. She feels safe. My only on-the-planet daughter lives in a region where recent terrorism has taken a deadly toll.

Below a black squirrel hops across the traffic filled street, only mindful that he needs to live in this summer moment, oblivious to the cars that will soon sweep his path … he pauses in the middle of the street, I think he winks at me and scurries to his destination. My pot of recently planted petunias smile at me in shades of blue-lavender. A dahlia from a friend adds the exclamation mark.

Life like summer is brief.  Gratitude precedes the joy … The thunder heads will roll in, we had hail on Saturday, but for this moment, this brief spell, I want to Be in The Beauty, the beauty of a summer morning ripe with anticipation.

MAKE YOUR LIST & CHECK IT TWICE

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I received a serendipitous gift at a coffee shop recently.  I couldn’t help overhearing as Eddie read to his partner, and when he asked her “What do you think?” I joined in the conversation to say I thought it had been a great little article, who had written it? It was his own …. for me it was a chance encounter–to meet a fellow writer further along the road. (His website is listed below) Writing, like life is a process, and I learn as I go and grow. These little gifts come at the most wonderful of times, so I practise keeping my spirit open to them.

The line that caught my attention was–to make a list and check it twice. He was referring to a dream list, although I immediately thought about a gratitude list. It is easier to see what is not going well in my life, although I want to practise gratitude. As I walked home the world looked brighter, I was writing the things-I-was-grateful-for list. Being thankful is a mood changer.  87791726-person-making-list-photos-comTry it– make your list and check it twice, make two lists, one of gratitude and one of dreams.

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas here, we just received what I dub the “Christmas Eve snowfall”–three inches of soft white frosting on the entire landscape, including my mindset at the moment.  You can get on my gratitude list easily, by leaving a comment–what are you most thankful for this season?

DSC_0053Richest blessings of the season to you and yours!

Jocelyn

Eddie Lemoine is an author and motivational speaker, to visit his website go to  http://eddielemoine.com/