I published this on October 28, 2012 @ 20:46, it was my second blog post. Second I had EVER written, on this site and on any site.
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Daily Prompt: Do-over!
by michelle w. on April 9, 2013

Go back to a blog post you always thought could be better, or were unsatisfied with — now, fix it.

[from Journal entry – 1st page – Oct 10 2001]
Don’t know where my other journal is but ~ lets start anew.

No fresh beginnings or new, exciting possibilities though. Only heartache and fear, sadness and loss. My goal will be to find that elusive happiness, that silent joy, and the promise of good things to come – because life moves on and I want to move with it.

Mom had a stroke. She has 2nd stage cancer {I thought 4th, but it had metastasized to her brain} and now, from this perspective of unknowns, there is a lot more negative than positive.

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[written October 28 2012]
We brought Mom home not to many days after that. She died October 31, 2001. She passed away in the living-room of her childhood home; our family home that had been in our family since the early 1910s. It was in that house generations of my ancestors had taken there last breaths.

It was hard, it was sad, as it had been for them. Yet, it was still filled with some of the most beautiful moments of my life….and probably theirs too. Moments like saying goodbye to old friends she grew up with,  or eating Popsicles on her bed at 1:30am during a thunderstorm with my sister. Just us girls. Mom had lost her voice the day we brought her home; had her second big stroke. I spent the night before at the hospital with her – the whole night lying beside her bed. Saying goodbye, asking her stuff — like what her favorite memories where. AND…..she said being a Mom.

Man. Out of all the things? She was so dazed by this point. So not my Mom in some ways. Through all that she still managed to make sure we knew how important we were to her. How much she would miss us. Miss my big blue eyes, and LilSis’ way of always, somehow, speaking truths. These moments, these memories will never, ever fade. The wound heals, but the memories remain.

Next — Later that same year

A decade later in 2010 is the next set of entries from that Journal from these first posts. So many allusions were found out, and truths were found lacking in fact. I was struck down, my things were taken from me, and I was abandoned. That journal leaves the WHOLE other 10 years out – these journals, nor any journals cover that time between 2001 to 2010.

I had once had another journal, but THAT journal is lost – Tim did something with it that year in 2010. Something in it about my time with my ex-husband, but he destroyed it, or did something with it, but I never saw it after that year. I had left that lake, left Tim, left that place and I had lost so much…and god help me I guess I felt so scared that I wanted to make sure that ONE thing remained. ONE thing was not lost. That was the Red Duo-Tang. Man, you have no idea how very joyful I was this week when I found that book.

When I started this site I thought the Red Duo-Tang was gone forever…I had no recollection of the fact I had hid it in that dresser. I therefore never even mention it once in any of these early posts, however I thought about it all the time. This was the first entry for this Journal, and this is therefore where I felt this blog should begin.

I remembered after I had published that post today on that duo-tang, I remembered all of a sudden doing it. I saw myself tucking it in there, for safe keeping. For if ALL was taken from me that book was the most precious of ALL of it. Every antique, every piece, every damn thing…but not that Duo-Tang.

I want Lexi to read how Mom felt. That’s why she wrote it. To remind us when maybe even she had forgotten … all the firsts, the thoughts, the messages to the Mom’s to be. Why else would she have done it? Why write it all down? We never asked her why. Lil’Sis has one too. I would imagine she wrote it all down to remind maybe even herself, that being a Mom is full of joy, full of fears, tears, and all that being a Mom means. I don’t know what being a Mom feels like, I don’t have children, but I can read about how SHE felt as one. What she remembered, observed, felt.

So this site is alot about what my Mom gave me. What she gave us, both of us, Lil’Sis and I.

I guess this being the second post, means to let you know that there is a first. The first post, was about the last death to happen to me. The last being Tim. He died of Cancer in October, and that first post I changed to a page – The Prologue. We got back together, come hell or dry land I loved him and I feel I did the right thing, even though he died. I was able to be there for him, to help him, to mourn him. To maybe even tell the truths so others may learn from, understand from, identify with.

These two deaths have bookend a time in my life that has so far been the worst of times, and some of the best. There are no short cuts towards truths here, so you will not find brevity, but rather a meandering plot, of random stories, and lost treasures towards what end? I do not know, nor care. All the things that make a life are found here.

When I feel like writing, I write, when I don’t I try anyways … just not perhaps EVERY day …  but almost. That I feel I need to state clearly, even just to me. I don’t want to feel like I HAVE to, it’s good for me, I want to WANT to. I have to strip down to what it is I love about writing, and do that. And just that.

Yours Truly & Happy Trails
Paula B