CHOICES.

sitting in a restaurant on a Sunday afternoon in Unionville with three major loves of my life…my Mom, Triggy, and Rylee.  too long had passed since our last lunch and now we were all here.  smiles abound as we discussed our last six months of life.  six months?  wow time flies.  my Mom in great spirits.  much different than the last time I saw her when she was filled with stress and anger. a once loving little girl turned hard by life’s events.  many deaths.  many abandonments.  many struggles.  many fights.  many lies.  and many tries.  a long life coming closer to the end as she sits and smiles and talks about memories of youth and memories of love and memories of Rylee as a baby.  memories soon to be gone.  floating away into the cloudy sky.
Anyway, we all had a great lunch filled with love and filled with great conversation and even greater listening.  great conversation with our waitress and then great conversation with Bill’s daughter, Christina, who works at the restaurant.  then great food.  and great drinks.  and then great conversations again about family.  FAMILY.  is there anything more important and more real and more fulfilling and more lovely than FAMILY?  family can cause so much pain and cause so much sorrow BUT it can also be filled with so much LOVE.  Unconditional love.  love of the son.  love of the daughter.  children laughing and playing.  exploring and crying.  inquisitive little beings growing literally both in body and mind.  forgetting that my MOM was once a little girl playing in Bournemouth and having fun with friends and family.  and at that time she probably thought that she would live forever and the world was great and that “someday she would become somebody very important” and now she sits across from me at a restaurant in Unionville and she looks lonely.  smiling but lonely.  her Mom and Dad are long gone.  her husband is long gone.  many of her friends are long gone and her full time job is also long gone.  many things gone but she is smiling and happy.  her body tired and in pain but she is soooooooo happy to be sitting in the same booth as one of her sons and her daughter in law and her grand-daughter.  a booth filled with love amidst lots of loss.  sad lives coming together for some moments of joy.  a young girl in Rylee dealing with so much at such a young age but these events making her into such an amazing young “tween” as she likes to be called now.
LOVE CONQUERS ALL EVEN WHEN THERE IS ANGER AND HATE AROUND.
we finished our lunch and had a long but fascinating talk with our beautiful black waitress.  we learned that she was taking Kinesiology at U of T and that she was travelling around Europe last year and that she met a Spanish guy in Spain and then ran into him in Rome.  LIFE AT IT’S BEST.  why is there so much hate in this world?  most people want to love and learn and grow and have fun.  people from all races and cultures getting along but rich leaders from all countries ruining life.
we left the restaurant and drove my Mom home.  back to 11 Lindaway.  the same house that we lived in when my Dad died forty years ago.  my Mom never gaining the courage nor the strength to move on.  and now we drop her off and she walks lonely into her lonely house.  a lonely house filled with so many memories.  both good and horrific.  as we are about to leave we honk the horn and my Mom comes back outside for one last wave.  we all wave as we all smile.
love is much better than hate.
life can be so beautiful but it can also be so painful.
choose love over hate.
choose to hug.  choose to kiss.  choose to feel.
CHOICES.
I love you Mom.
I love you Triggy.
I love you Rylee.
I know that life will end one day and that I won’t see Rylee get old and that pains me.
live in the moment.  live in the moment.  live in the moment.
LOVE.