There are sometimes having MS is harder than other times.
I have made mention that I hate social media and all of its fake-ness although I was the biggest offender once upon a time. I avoid it for the most part most days. Other times I feel the need to see what's happening in the land of make believe.
I hopped on FB two days a go and saw a post that made me so insanely sad. A neighbor from when we lived in Woodlake how many years ago had passed away. She lived across the street from me.
My neighborhood in Woodlake was really idyllic when I think about it. I had a network of neighbors I could rely on seeing as most of us were from somewhere else and had precious little family to help. We had the reciprocal pantry as I like to call it. Need eggs? Send your kid to go banging on one of your neighbor's doors. Need potato flakes from a box because someone’s daughter has pneumonia and that’s all she wants to eat? My pantry is your pantry. Chili powder? Do I have some you can borrow? Of course! And it was never expected that you had to replace it because you knew that someone (or their kids) would be at your door asking for a food favor in return.
Worked the same way with all of our kids. Need someone to keep an eye on a kid while the other one needs to go get her chin stitched up? You need someone to watch your other kids while you go to the hospital because your water just broke at Midnight? It was never a worry.
I used to laugh when I saw my oldest on one pedal of my neighbor's exercise bike she kept in her garage and her best friend, my neighbor's son on the other side, pedaling away for hours at a time. Or the time those two were doing karate kicks at my garage and said son's shoe flew off and went through the window on the garage door. I was pregnant and sort of large and grumpy at the time. The exchange was pretty hilarious when I think about it now.
My heart is kvelling thinking about these thoughts.
My neighbor who left this world had a Corgi that I loved. She (and a few other neighborhood women) gave me a baby shower for my fourth kid. I made a treasure chest birthday cake for her daughter’s Pirate themed birthday one year. That daughter grew up in to this marvelous young woman. She even gave Bonni Blue Bell (my bike I did my IM on) a new home so she wouldn’t languish and rot in my garage.
It was a really amazing place. But because of all of the kids our family had? We outgrew that Woodlake house and had to find more space. Slowly our neighborhood started to dismantle. We moved to another subdivision, families moved for jobs etc. and I lost track of these fine people, as our lives diversified, who made our move to VA a pretty easy transition. There might be three of the original families there from that time in our old neighborhood. Whenever we are feeling nostalgic, we drive through Highberry Woods and look at where we used to live.
Anyway, come to learn one of the OG from the neighborhood left this world for a better place and my heart sank. I reached out and contacted her daughter. Offered my condolences as shallow as that always seems and asked what we could do. I asked what her arrangements were. When her daughter told me the time and place that was when I realized I had no ride.
Here is where MS is more hated than other times in my life.
Brad was out of town for the next two days, Katie was working and had clinical for nursing school, Erin is in Arizona and Heather had school. Bailey offered a ride and I was going to take her up on the offer of help.
Then Heather got up at 3 in the morning being stomach sick. I didn’t get back to sleep from there pretty much. Ok, I will be staggering along. MS and not sleeping properly, or resting well is a bad combination for me. It's ok I said to myself. I have my cane and will use it, sit right away when I get there, it will be fine. Then Bailey called that morning to let me know Ant was feeling sick and not going to school. So essentially my way to get there wasn’t able to do it anymore.
I convinced myself that it was only a mile to the Methodist Church where her service was. I could walk. It might take forever, but I could try.
This is when having MS sucks more than usual. While I was formulating a walking strategy I had to sit. The 3am wake up was sneaking up on me. So I sat, tried to get my legs underneath me again as I say and decided to find something to wear. That knocked me on my ass and I had to put the thought of that walk, even though it was something I ran a bajillion times once upon a time, to rest.
I was going to get in touch with her daughter again to ask for a ride but seriously? This wasn’t about me. Wakes, funerals etc? They are to help the grieving process. Help the living deal with the pain of their loss. In reality, I figured not at all in this equation. She needed to be there with her dad. This wasn’t about me. The last thing I needed to do was place my need to be there to say good bye in front of her needs, or her dad's. Their need to grieve and process their loss was way more profound than anything I was feeling.
I texted my best friends asking for absolution. I felt so badly about missing. But one said to me that my friendship with Julie was "a snapshot in time kind of friendship". That we all have them and mourning her loss on my own, with the nice memories of those things I did with her and a prayer offered for her would be a really nice thing to do.
Truth....
So I made myself sit and I thought of her. Prayed for her, her family and close friends. Hoped they could find solace somewhere. I thought warmly of our old neighborhood. Of the people, all of the fun, how it was good to know you had a network. A village who had your back. Ask me about Halloween there and how one of my neighbor's husband would hide in the sewer hoping to grab ankles of people who walked by as we took our kids Trick or Treating....
Rest easy Julie, I hope for nothing but peace for you and your family and I will happily donate to the RAL for you in lieu of flowers as your family asked. Thank you for being so uniquely you, it was a pleasure to be your friend.
Say not in grief that he is no more, but in thankfulness that he was ~ Hebrew proverb
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