(Etneded forecast of central Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Image courtesy of The Weather Channel.)

I got stabbed in the heart while seated in my wheelchair at the dining table. It was a reminder from the flower shop in the Little Village By the Bay about Mom’s birthday. I always sent flowers for that event, and for Raven’s later in the summer, and the anniversary in September.

No requirement for that now, unless it is to send a floral bouquet to myself in remembrance, or to the cemetery in Pennsylvania. I don’t like it when sentiment sneaks up on me like that, and I clicked through the menu to delete the account.  Then I remembered that this is the coming weekend for the funerals- and there is no getting around it- I am going to be traveling again.

Damn- it will be 22 days since the surgery by the time we get to next weekend, and the ceremonies and burial of the ashes of the folks. I hope I can pull off my little portion of the event with a little class. Then, suddenly, I realized I needed to publish something about the ceremony for any of the distant relatives who never left the hamlet there in south-central Pennsylvania.

And I realized I ought to think about flowers for the gravesite, and maybe glance at the extended regional weather and see if we are going to need a tent. Ten percent chance of showers, they say. I guess we will take our chances.

Thinking about Mom’s birthday drew my attention to my own. I normally try to ignore it. Last year was one of the round even numbers and it freaked me out a little bit. This one is not so bad- it is a low number, albeit in a decade I did not ever really anticipate actually happening, and there are many more of them before I have to confront something with a “7” at the beginning.

That I would be spending the birthday in a wheelchair is something that would not have occurred to me this time last year. What an amazing journey it has been.

Everything I knew was wrong, and you can start the list anywhere you would care to and it winds up the same way. I get the sense that the world was shouting to get my attention and not succeeding.

It finally did, big time, and now I am healing, and remembering, and thinking. The sense of loss has diminished, except for those occasional stabs of sudden immediacy.

It is a lovely day. I can make it out to the balcony and catch the late afternoon sun. The pallor is leaving my skin. Looking at the extended forecast, I think that life is good, with a ten-percent chance of showers.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com