Author: Joanne Corey

Please come visit my eclectic blog, Top of JC's Mind. You can never be sure what you'll find!

bubbles

Note:  I wrote most of this post last Tuesday, but just got back to finish it in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

It’s a week today since Grandma died. The shock is diminishing and we have carved out a few bubbles of not really normalcy but times when we could focus on something else.

Saturday was my dad’s 91st birthday. B and I took Nana and Paco downtown to meet their youngest grandchild, our niece S, at the bus station. It is only a short jaunt down Interstate 81 from the campus where she is a first-year. We went to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, then back to Nana and Paco’s apartment to visit for a bit before we had to bring S to catch her bus back to campus. Paco’s three other grandchildren called during that time, including a skype call from our daughters E and T. It was our first time doing a group call with them. When Paco was growing up, if someone had told him that one day he would be able to communicate with his grandchildren in Syracuse and Honolulu at the same time, he would not have believed it.

Of course, we had not forgotten about Grandma during this time of focusing on Paco’s birthday. After we finished all visiting together on the skype call, B and I went into another room to talk with E and T about how things are going with them as we continue to deal with Grandma’s death. We also discussed trying to schedule a time for the burial later in the spring, which involves trying to work around several commencement dates and long-distance travel.

Another bubble of focusing on something else was Easter vigil on Saturday night. Although the liturgy deals with death and resurrection, it was a way to focus on belief and faith, rather than on my own little recent experience of death.

The third bubble has been the time spent trying to complete my first week of the MOOC I am taking. I was a good student back in the day and apparently my inability to skip out on assignments is still there. I honestly don’t know if I will be able to keep up, but I managed to complete the first week on time.

 

Shock

On Monday, I posted about some re-prioritizing I was doing here at Top of JC’s Mind as I prepared for a busy spring.

Somewhere, the Fates were snickering behind their hands.

Monday afternoon, I wrote poetry with my friends at Sappho’s Circle. Just as I was preparing to drive home, I got a call from B. He was at the hospital, waiting while his mother, known here as Grandma, was in the heart catheterization lab. She had had a heart attack.

I was not far from the hospital and got there as quickly as I could to wait with him.

The cardiologist was able to remove the blood clot that had caused the heart attack; there was no need for a stent. The nurses got her settled into the cardiac intensive care unit and we were able to spend several hours in her room, as she gradually woke from the sedation and B and I answered dozens of medical history questions on Grandma’s behalf.

We left the hospital at about 8:00 PM, with Grandma stable and resting under the watchful eyes of the ICU staff. We all expected a few days in the hospital, maybe a short stay in rehab, and then back to her cottage at her senior living community.

We didn’t sleep well. At 6 AM, B’s cell phone rang. Grandma’s blood pressure had dropped, but they had been able to raise it back to an acceptable level. Then, she became short of breath, but it was difficult to address it. They might need to put in a breathing tube as a short term measure. We dressed and headed to the hospital. It turned out that, as we were en route, Grandma’s heart had stopped.

We waited near the nurses’ station as they continued efforts to revive her, but they were not able to.

Less than 24 hours after her heart attack, Grandma had died.

Shock.

There just isn’t any other word for what we have all been feeling since that moment. Everyone that we have had to tell, everyone who has spoken to us, we are all in shock. “But I just saw her at the movie on Friday.”  “But she was here Monday morning, after her PT session.” “But she was at dinner with her friends on Saturday.”  No one quite seems to be able to wrap their brains around the fact that death can be so quick.

Everyone is grateful that there was not a long period of pain and suffering. It was one of the things that Grandma had feared the most. She loved her cottage in the retirement village and did not want to leave it to live in the Health Center. We are grateful that she did not have to do that.

But we are still in shock.

And we are sad.

B and I have been doing our best to talk to people and deal with paperwork and start sorting and make lists and not miss anything that is important to do.

It’s been less than 72 hours at this point, but it feels so much longer. I have to remind myself what day it is.

And that it is Holy Week for most Christians, including my denomination.

As I write this, it is very early on Good Friday morning.

I had tried to sleep, but couldn’t, so I got up to write this.

Before I go to bed, I want to go to the website for my friend Angie’s memorial fund. It has been eleven years since she died. In 2005, March 25th was also Good Friday.

I don’t quite understand why I am not crying.

It must be the shock.

One-Liner Wednesday: Gloria Steinem quote

“Imagine we are linked, not ranked.”
~~ Gloria Steinem

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/03/23/one-liner-wednesday-its-als-fault/  Enjoy our badge by nearlywes.com.

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Re-jiggering

Friend to bloggers everywhere, Opinionated Man of HarsH ReaLiTy and A Good Blog is Hard to Find, both of which I highly recommend you follow if you aren’t already, has long advocated splitting blogging time in thirds, one third each for writing, reading, and commenting.

It’s a good idea, although not one that I have been able to follow very meticulously.

Lately, though, things have gotten unbalanced, even for me.

I have been spending tons of time reading, liking, and commenting, but not so much time writing. I also have (many) tons of in-person commitments coming up this spring, so I’ve decided to re-jigger my blogging priorities a bit.

Step One:  I’ve separated my blog email from my personal email.

I’m hoping this will make my personal inbox easier to handle, with less likelihood of personal notes, poetry notifications, and, oh, bills and statements, getting lost in the shuffle.

Step Two:  I will also try to spend more time with posting, even though that will mean less time for reading and commenting.

Which is sad, but necessary at this point.

One of the things I am making time for in the coming weeks is my first ever MOOC,  Psychology of Political Activism: Women Changing the World, from my alma mater, Smith College. I’m hoping it will generate some posts here at Top of JC’s Mind.

Stay tuned!

SoCS: watching eggs

On the news this week, there have been several features about eggs.

Specifically, a pair of bald eagle eggs in a nest in the National Arboretum in Washington, DC.

One of them has hatched and the eaglet has enjoyed its first meal. The second is expected to hatch over the weekend.

There is a camera for people to watch a live feed of the nest:  http://www.eagles.org/dceaglecam/

The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States. It was almost killed by DDT, which bioaccumulated in the adult birds and caused its eggs to be so fragile that they could not withstand the weight of the parent when they were being incubated in the nest.

Since the banning of DDT, the population has slowly recovered. Locally, from our area in the Northeast US, we do sometimes spot bald eagles, which would have been incredibly rare twenty or thirty years ago.

Will the second egg hatch? Will both eaglets survive? We can keep a lookout via the camera and find out.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “egg.” Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/03/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-1916/

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Fridays are Magical: First Grade Poetry Workshops

This evening, in the adult version of Binghamton Poetry Project, I wrote my first tanka. Here, I am sharing the precious post about some of the first grade poets who are loving, learning, and creating with the BPP.

InterSpiritual: Delving Into Sacred Wells to Stir the Heart Awake

My friend Jamie shares another post about interspirituality. We met in person at a local interspirituality conference and it is definitely a way of being that draws my heart.

Sophia's Children's avatarSophia's Children

Underwater cave in a tropical coral reef (Photo from 4freephotos) Underwater cave in a tropical coral reef. Public domain photo courtesy 4freephotos.

Here’s another lovely musing from fellow mystic-writer (etc.) Mirabai Starr.

I recently shared a perspective from her on the Feminine Mystic.

This one is how she describes her own experience of walking the InterSpiritual Way.

Different from interspiritual or multi-faith, Interspirituality is the path of exploring the commonalities and underlying wisdom that can be found at the mystic-heart of many traditions … religious, spiritual, indigenous-ancestral.

Here’s how Mirabai Starr responding to one question in an interview with Tami Simon of Sounds True. You’ll find the link to the full interview just below.

“Brother Wayne Teasdale coined the term Interspirituality, and it refers to the interconnectedness of all the spiritual ways of the world.

The Interspiritual movement is much more about sharing prayer, sharing spiritual practice, sharing those heart-opening and spirit transforming experiences of the Divine that…

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One-Liner Wednesday: Abigail Adams

“I long to hear that you have declared an independancy—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.”
~~ Abigail Adams in a letter to her husband John Adams, March 31, 1776

This One-Liner Wednesday quote is in honor of Women’s History Month.
Come join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/03/16/one-liner-wednesday-much-ado/

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Warm February

This article on the warmest February on record does a good job of explaining how much of the warmth was attributable to El Niño and how much to climate change. Hint:  It’s mostly climate change.

As the scientific evidence mounts, we need more articles like this one to explain to people the gravity of the situation and spur them to action.

Please read and share!

 

inscrutable stats

WordPress stats can be weird.

At the moment, for today I have 29 views, 20 visitors, 43 likes, and 3 comments.

It seems strange to have more likes than views.

I’m guessing that means that some of the likes are through the reader or through people who get instant email messages of new posts.

Maybe there are reasons I don’t pay that much attention to my stats page…