An Arch

June 10, 2025June 10, 2025 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

Life gets more cherished, not because I’m going to lose it, but because I have become aware of how precious the everyday was with others that I cared about.

Last year the daughter of a friend died and the funeral reception was held at a restaurant in Bernardston, Mass, that had a large separate building for such occasions. A woman I have known most of my life was there – indeed, most of the people there I have known as long – but she has always been special to me, even though most of it was periphery when I was young, and she was a decade older. It’s funny how that gulf seems so long when you’re young and you know it’s barely anything once you’re beyond that.

She was, and is, beautiful – inside and out, and she was not just kind, but present, whenever she was around- and I regret that I didn’t spend the time with her that day that one of my contemporaries got to, but I was overwhelmed by the multitude and had to leave. I did, however, sit next to her, and got to rest my head on her shoulder for a few minutes. Time fell away and I was 12 again.

She means so much to me, and I can see the arch of our lives. She was a contemporary of the majority of the people we were involved with, and I was a child, but soon going into my teen years. She seemed so cosmopolitan to me. She had a daughter several years younger than me and I enjoyed every moment she shared time and attention toward me.

She didn’t know my inner world. For all I know she thought I was fine and getting what I needed because I had learned early on that something is better than nothing, in several aspects of my life. I wasn’t consciously aware of that back then, but I am now.

She read a story with me and her daughter, but I knew that I got more of the ironic and funny bits than her daughter did, and we got to share that. That moment is emblazoned on my heart and in my mind forever.

It’s painful that I feel the ghost of that girl wandering through my psyche, still holding onto those precious bits like those desperate people who panned for gold in California must have done so long ago. I want her to get what she needs, and I don’t know why the well is so deep.

There are other forces at work, of course, but she deserves a full well. She deserves to breathe quiet and unburdened. I just have to figure out how to give it to her.

But I honor, and am grateful for, those who stepped in fully present – whether on purpose, or by happy accident. I’m sure it is in no small part of why I am still here.

Longing

February 28, 2025March 7, 2025 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I wish I could have you back, Mom. The little one inside of me wasn’t ready to let go, even though I did let go in my teens. It was different then. I was different then, but this part has remained much the same.

I want you back for myself though. I was always your needy one, but I learned to shut down and stop having needs as best I could.

You did show up for the practical things, and I love you for that. School clothes, pencils, erasers, and a pencil case. A notebook, and a ruler.

I hold onto those things because they were your love, and the most that I got, but I wish I had had more of you.

I wasn’t alone, there were others around, but none of them were you. They focused on their children, and told me to go to bed when they put their children to bed, and then to get up, to go to school, to brush my hair and my teeth. and to do the dishes, or sweep and mop the kitchen floor.

Sometimes you were there, and I liked those times the best.

You were so indignant when my best friend’s parents wanted to adopt me because I was there all the time and no one took much notice that I was gone. The commune was dispersed over several towns and houses then, but I lived there, where most of the other children were, and my sisters were, and it was during the school year.

It didn’t bother me that I was on my own a lot because I had my friend, and connection with the other kids there often, but I could stay at my friend’s house whenever I wanted.

I didn’t know that it was unusual that no one knew where I was, and no one was relieved when I came back. Maybe they would have known after a week? I never stayed there that long, but it was my home away from where I lived.

One woman who had a daughter several years younger than me once read me and her daughter a book out on the porch steps on a sunny summer day. She pointed out aspects of the illustrations to us, and laughed at the idea of a cat catching a robber by meowing loudly and waking up the family. The picture showed everyone downstairs when the police got there, and they all had a cup of tea – even the robber.

It’s now that I can voice why that has remained a seminal time and memory for me. I was included, I mattered, and a fun and loving moment was shared with me – on purpose. Her daughter was too young to really appreciate the irony of the tea-drinking robber, but I wasn’t.

My friend’s mom and dad were good and I liked them (more her mom because my friend’s dad intimidated me as he was a tall and stocky man whose presence resembled my violent father). They weren’t my people though, and I never thought of them as surrogate parents.

I knew my mother had abdicated her responsibilities when I was nine, after the divorce from my father, and she had a sort of mental breakdown. I didn’t blame her for that, but she never fully came back to us.

I think I’m mostly experiencing hiraeth – a Welch word that loosely means ‘longing for a home or place one has never known’.

Couldn’t We

May 11, 2024May 11, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Couldn’t we just go back for a visit so I can ask you questions that now hang in the air unanswered?

Like, did you used to thin out the hasta plants that grew along the walkway?

We were gifted several hasta plants last year and now they seem poised to take over the whole garden.

I don’t remember you gardening when I was little. Maybe I was in first grade?

I was wondering if you had wanted me to help you clear out and organize your accumulated stuff, but I never asked you. I don’t know why. I guess I thought it was enough to visit or bring you swimming at Laurel Lake, and going out for ice cream after.

Maybe we were just different, but you never failed to help when I asked. I was your ‘needy’ daughter I read in a letter you sent my now deceased sister.

Couldn’t we just meet on a sweet summer day and walk together and talk?

You could tell me more stories about your life, about my relatives.

I know it was a hard life, Mom. I know. It was hard all over, and it is again. You loved going to your French Catholic boarding school. I’m sure it took you away from whatever else was happening.

You had friends that made your world – and Harvey who was your first boyfriend and I never knew why you broke up, but he remained in your life through letters and occasional visits your whole life. I think he really loved you.

Couldn’t we have time to be together more than snippets in a dream that were strange and unsatisfying? I suppose something is better than nothing, and I’m glad I saw you as a young, radiant woman.

You offered me food, or were carrying food. Was that a message to myself from my subconscious? Maybe I need spiritual food now?

Change is tough, but so much changes all the time you’d think I’d be used to it. But I’ve also lived in the same place for ten years, but I don’t expect that will always be so. I’ve had the same routines, hung out with many of the same people – so there’s a sense of stability even though we’re all changing all the time. We’re growing older, and friends and relatives are leaving or have left us.

I heard your voice say “what a rainy day,” as I looked out the porch window onto the steady rain dampening the days plans.

I thought you were really there for a moment because I hadn’t been thinking of you, but it was your voice I heard. It was both comforting and filled me with longing to see you again.

Thank you for what you did for me, and for loving me.

Past Present or Present Past

February 13, 2024 / Hermionejh

I dreamed I saw a young woman who had red hair in a long thick braid like my sister used to wear her hair when she was younger. I didn’t dream of my sister – just a stranger.

What did that mean? Anything? Nothing?

I’m stuck in this wanting place. I recognize it but I don’t know what to do about it.

Why am I hanging onto the past? What do I think is there? Maybe it’s a kind of protection from the reality of now.

The past is long gone – I know that. I know there’s no going back, nor would I honestly want to. It sucked back then – but I was a part of a tribe.

A fucked up tribe, but it was as fun and interesting as it was terrible.

I didn’t know how to live this life. I only knew how to react to it.

I dreamed of being famous because it looked like an inoculation against the hell of life as I saw it.

I didn’t know that they were just people in another kind of hell. Some of them were genuine and good, and some were shit in reality. I wouldn’t know that for many years. I only saw the fantasy and the potential ticket out.

The older girls I got to hang around with seemed worldly. My sisters didn’t want me around them, but they were overruled by the clan leader. She was the arbiter of all things back then – at least to me.

She deemed me worthy, and so I was – at least when she was around. Mostly the older girls, including my sisters, kept to themselves, but I always got to hear about their adventures.

One of the girls, just a year older than me, was a true friend to me, but even we seemed to pass in and out of each others’ lives. We had a bond beyond time and space though. We belonged to each other without having to declare it – although we did become blood sisters by cutting our fingers and pressing them together to mix our blood.

She pierced my ears when I was 12. She was a mother hen toward me and did what she could to protect me.

I didn’t know that I needed protection, but she saw how I blew with the wind. She kept me safer than I would have been on my own. The wolves were always at the door.

She left the world last May and I so wish I could talk to her about my sister’s death and hear what she would say to me.

I keep thinking I should just go join her, but I can’t for several reasons, the biggest being that I don’t know if I would find her out there. What if suicide fucks you up on the other side from here?

My therapist said to hear what she would say to me, but the thing is she almost always said something I wouldn’t have thought of. She also didn’t judge me or tell me to have a better attitude or that everything would be alright. Just that she loved me and was here.

But she’s not anymore.

I have to figure it out from here.

I guess I always did figure it out anyway, but knowing she was in the world helped.

My sister was a jerk to me quite often. It was how our family abuse twisted her, but she came into this world with her own essence just like I did – just like we all do.

It feels stupid to miss her. But it’s complicated. She brought fun & high adventure in our early lives regardless of her prickliness.

I don’t know if anything truly exists after this life, but her story has ended.

The ringleader of the group of older girls died a few months after my friend died, and then my next oldest sister a few months after that.

I’m worried that I’m just going to see all my friends and loved ones die before I do, but I have no control over any of that.

I wish we would all just leave this world on the same day and have a plan to meet on the other side – if there is an other side, but it’s not my deal.

Being here at all was never my deal. But here we are, so, good luck, I guess?

I’m not pondering or railing against anything that hasn’t been pondered or railed against before, I know.

There are thousands of books and programs and gurus and religions who all say different, albeit similar, words and thoughts about the why of this place, but the bottom line is that no one knows – and anyone who tells you they do know is deluded or lying or mentally ill.

“Life is pain, Highness, and anyone who tells you different is selling something,” from The Princess Bride.

Love Remains

January 15, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Sometimes I wish I could visit my friends and family during the best times in my life.

I would ask my favorite Grandpa & Grandma what their lives were like, and if they felt content. What challenges did they face and surmount? Did they ever ponder life’s existential questions, or was it a life too busy with ordinary concerns?

Like so many stories about going back in time, I don’t know if I’d change anything that would affect my life now (unless it was for the better).

And even if I thought that changing something would obviously better my life, I’d still be taking a risk that the opposite would be true.

It’s not really situations that I want to re-live, it’s to revel in my connections with friends and relatives – especially those that have passed on.

But, if I could time-travel, would it be helpful or harmful for my mental/emotional health? Would I find what I was looking for?

Am I just imposing what I wish now on what was?

I am betting those moments I want to recapture in their fullness are only partially, or even barely, what I’m attributing to them.

It’s deep and abiding connection with those who share my values, kindness & humor I seek.

Laughter is one of my favorite lights in the dark. Gladness and companionship continue warming my heart long after parting company.

‘Cultivate what is missing here and now,’ my inner wisdom whispers. Trust that my loved ones passed on will greet me at my end – but that I still have (hopefully) many good years to carry on in this world, and to create the kind of life that matters to me.

I’m not forgetting them; I’m bringing them with me. Their laughter can still ring in my ears, and I can revisit the love & goodness we all shared any time I want or need to.

Love remains.

She Was Here

January 11, 2024January 11, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I pick up a paper from the growing stack of papers, and sympathy cards scattered here and there on the table, and I put it back down. I seem to walk in circles – doing mindless tasks, and chores – but nothing that requires real focus because I can’t seem to get myself together lately.

I’m supposed to be writing her obituary, but I can’t. It nauseates me to think of it – like maybe I’m making it real? I don’t think that’s really it. Maybe it’s that I have to face all that her passing means.

Any chance of a closer relationship is gone. While we both lived there was the possibility.

What is an obituary anyway? So much is left out. It’s the highlights, the best of them.

We don’t talk about the trauma much, if at all – or the pain and lingering hurt. That’s for me to work out alone, but it makes the writing seem disingenuous.

She was this, and that. She did these things, and then she left.

She left in the middle-ish of her life, and didn’t want to go – but not many of us do, regardless of our age.

She had a small life that she enjoyed, and she worked hard.

She didn’t know that she was getting sick, or that once she got sick it would be two & a half months of progressive hell with the hope that she’d regain function that never happened.

Her partner is devastated – shell-shocked really – and just a shadow in his own life now. Work is what saves him from the gaping hole of grief.

Her chair sits empty – her belongings mostly gone. How quickly physical traces got erased.

Do I want a shrine to her? Don’t we all deserve a shrine? We lived, dammit! WE WERE HERE.

I see my favorite picture of her in my mind’s eye. She is standing on a hill, maybe, with an Aruban breeze whipping her long copper red hair into her brightly laughing face. The beaming sun brings the feeling of warmth and being fully alive into that moment she was captured mid-laughter.

That was one of the happiest periods in her life. That’s when we were friends & I got to enjoy her company – her sense of adventure and be part of her strong, independent and earthy existence. She was fearless and exuberant. Her life was filled with activity: camping, canoeing, sunbathing, swimming, singing, dancing, and laughing.

But life moves on. She was better at letting go than I was. She went to nursing school, and finally got her bachelor’s degree focusing on diabetes education where she began a career.

She liked her house and her garden – so many things she did on her own.

She was good to my son, her nephew.

Time took away her sense of fun – or maybe that was what she thought maturity was.

Maybe we all figure out what’s comfortable for us, or what we’re willing to accept. Or maybe time just goes by regardless of what we’d like.

She was important to me. She was family. She showed up and made a point to have at least four gatherings a year.

I wished she had been kinder to me as time went on, but I didn’t recognize that maybe she was changing in ways that she didn’t understand herself.

Accepting how she changed was hard for me. I’ve changed too. Time changes us all whether we know it or not.

We have an essential self that gets buried under life’s burdens, but we can still shine through.

I will remember that laughing young woman, grateful for all she gave me as her sister, and hoping that she remembered the goodness we once shared.

I love you Twyla. I hope you’re in your happiest self, sparkling among the stars.

That Was Then, What Is Now?

November 18, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

It’s ok if you go, but it’s not ok. Or maybe I don’t know how I feel.

It’s so complicated. This life. Our trauma. You were so mean to me growing up and then we became friendly and we had so much drug-fueled fun together.

You were fierce and brash – so full of your youth and life.

You laughed a lot then, and danced and sang and played.

Life slowly chipped away at you and you reverted to being mean to me again.

I didn’t understand what happened. I remained who I always was. I’d glimpse your old self now and then, and my hope for friendship’s return brightened, only to be dashed with your harsh words. Your inner bully grew, even though I sensed the conflict within you, the desire to be free again.

‘Nothing is wrong with me,’ you would declare. ‘I’m not crazy,’ you spat out from your deeply wounded, deeply guarded self.

No, you’re not crazy. You’re wounded in a way it takes professional help to navigate, but that’s only for weak people like me, right?

I got to be the scapegoated one. You got to see me as more fucked up than you because I couldn’t contain my trauma. The irony is, neither could you – not really.

We were brutalized. We suffered PTSS before it was given a name.

But you pulled into yourself and declared war on the world – and pushed me out.

I never left. I still loved you & waited for the day you might remember the joy we had through the pain that was easier to ignore in our exuberant youth.

I hate seeing you stripped of your vitality and strength. You’re still trying to bully your way through this illness that does not compromise or get worn down. It just keeps punching.

Getting well means accepting that you’re not in charge, and it’s calling the shots. Your chance is in letting go and finding that resilient affirmation to live.

You’re scared and so am I – and I’m still on your side through it all.

It’s ok to go, but I’ll be sad we never got back to the goodness we once had. I’m accepting that it belonged to back then, not now.

I lost you long ago, but keep holding out hope in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

I’m sorry. I forgive you, please forgive me. I love you.

Super Memory Not So Super

September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 / Hermionejh

It was within the last few years that I realized that my memory is sometimes radically different than family members and friends. I don’t have exact daily life recall – and certainly don’t remember all events – but I have vivid recall of full or partial conversations and situations from my childhood, and continuing to the present day.

I recently asked a friend if she remembered something from when we spent a lot of time together in our 20’s, and she didn’t, but it was significant to us both at the time.

I didn’t know that my recall of family and friends past activities, events, and conversations was extraordinary – and was often puzzled that they remembered something vague or nothing. My next-oldest sister didn’t even remember that we had gone to see the band, The Police, together until I texted her a picture of the keepsake ticket stub.

Even my son says he barely remembers his childhood – which is either a good thing or a troubling thing – but if I bring up a specific event, he might have some more recollection, but it’s still way more vague than mine.

I heard a scientist on Alan Alda’s podcast, Clear and Vivid With Alan Alda, who remarked that some people are super rememberers, but then he went on to describe how difficult that must be, and it made me break down sobbing.

It hit me so hard because I didn’t have a name or place for that particular grief for the last few decades since I started feeling so alienated, especially from my sisters. I didn’t know that they don’t have the same vivid memories of closeness and togetherness that I do. I thought they just didn’t like me much anymore.

It’s almost like I walk into a room in the past and I see the setting, the people, and re-live certain conversations, and experience the feelings that I had then – hear the jokes and laughter, or the cutting remarks, and sharpness – and they don’t. At all.

I didn’t know that was a not-so-super power of mine that set me up with expectations that we are all still the same as we always were. I mean, I know we’ve changed and grown (or regressed), but I am still the essential self I was born with.

I have to forget my memories if I want to have current relationships with my sisters, but it’s like having to cut out a part of myself – a real, present self that also lives the past. It’s painful.

Getting “over myself,” as I had been admonished to do throughout my early years, was a big fail. I just learned to shut down, but not get “tougher”.

Being sensitive is a blessing and a curse. Not only am I highly sensitive to moods, but I almost always know when there’s a ‘presence’ – whether a spirit or left-over energy somewhere – and I seem to have the ability to direct healing energy, but I have zero idea how that works. I just know I feel it, and people tell me they receive it.

The irony is that I can’t seem to heal myself, or my progress is glacially slow.

I am hoping my new understanding about being a super rememberer will somehow help me feel less estranged from those I care about. I’m not the only one like this, even if I’m the only one in my immediate circle.

It’s also a reminder to get my memoir done while my memory is still so sharp!

Peace, Love, Grief

August 20, 2023 / Hermionejh

There have been better days lately. I’ve been doing my best to fill up the friend-shaped space she once occupied.

We don’t know what, if anything, awaits us after this world, so it’s a crapshoot if we’ll ever meet again. We won’t have eyes to see one another, mouths to talk and share a laugh, or arms to give a hug, but we will recognize each other if we retain consciousness outside our body.

I saw another old friend today that I haven’t seen in years. He was part of our large mutual friend group when we were teens, and I’m grateful he hasn’t radically changed since then. Matured, yes, but still true to his essential self.

After we parted I was hit with a wave of loneliness or sadness that seemed outsized for the situation, but later realized that it was about belonging – and about loss, because my friend who died in May also belonged in our friend group.

It’s kind of silly that I wanted to cling to him emotionally, as if his presence would resurrect our friend, but she’s gone, and no one can bring her back.

We both had places to be, so we left, and I walked myself through the mental patch of grief left in his wake that he really had nothing to do with.

The starkness of grief can trigger my leftover childhood neglect trauma. It feels like standing alone in the midst of a crowd.

My inner peace comes from the center of my heart, because I have no peace without love, but it’s very hard to find the love without peace. Thankfully, it’s still possible, even if it’s only moments.

I’m still in my life. I have things to do and places to go. It’s ok to still be here. It will also be ok when I’m no longer here.

I wondered earlier today if the experiences we have and the knowledge we gain are not ours alone, but are directly feeding or enriching the spirit world.

It might be that that is not how any of this works, but it made me feel like I’m possibly contributing something worthwhile to the whole.

Who knows?

Good Grief

July 26, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Time has been a strange concept for me. Sometimes I feel like my life has been one long day, and other times it feels like I’ve lived several lives since I was born.

I have clung to people in my past that didn’t cling back, even though we seemed so close at the time. I am lucky to still have a few people in my life that have been my friends through a lot if not most of the journey so far.

I try practicing the Buddhist idea of non-attachment, and try as I might, I still have attachments. I have put time, love and energy into people who seemed to feel the same, but have detached, or our connection didn’t mean to them what it meant to me.

We change. Our desires or our focus shifts and we either fall into, or choose, new groups of friends or acquaintances that give us more of what we’re looking for, maybe?

It’s about acceptance too. I keep hearing the lyric: “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with,” from Love The One You’re With by Stephen Stills.

I naively assumed that the people that were with me then experienced our connection the same way – that it mattered as much to them as it did to me.

It’s not bad or good, it just is. The challenge is to accept that. It’s not like I hadn’t been living my life anyway, but I have to incorporate it differently in my mind, and not interpret it like there is something wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me – or at least nothing that the right pharmaceutical can’t dampen. (Kidding – sort of). I’m still waiting to get into a therapeutic psychedelics treatment.

Honestly, losing my mother, one of my best friends, and two other very good friends in the space of three years has been really hard. I miss my mom so much lately. It’s more the idea of her, I think – like my longing for someone to make my pain less raw. It’s more archetypal than actual because my mother wouldn’t have won any parenting awards. I think I did better, but guaranteed I still fucked up my kid no matter how hard I tried not to.

This has felt so convoluted, but it’s not, it’s grief. Grief is weird and distorting. It feels never ending and frightening to me – like if I feel it deeply I will dive into the darkness and never resurface – but that’s just not true.

Amnesia seems like it would be an ideal solution, but that would just cause other problems. Balance will return, but it will take a lot longer if I keep stuffing this grief under every internal couch cushion I can find, or shoving it way into my psyche’s back closet.