People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards;

sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are. ~Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

Friday, May 11, 2007

My mantra.

People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards;
sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.

~Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

Life is weird. I posted this title for my blog when I first moved to Honduras. It wasn't until Beth asked me about it this past weekend that I realized how much I needed to keep reminding myself of it.

I had made an observation to Becca a few months ago, that while her, dad and I may look the same and even sound the same from time to time, in that one moment, in the instant that mom passed we all died with her. And in that very same moment we began what I assume will become a very long process of becoming entirely new people; not as good I imagine, and not quite as whole, just new. I think most of the time people don't understand that we aren't the same anymore. I'm not who I was a year ago today and I'm not who I was February 18th either.

I am reading, per Becca, Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking". In her memoir she continually expresses the moment her husband passed due to a heart attack, by saying: "...one second you sit down for dinner and the next you're dead." and I know she meant herself as much as her husband.

I think the hope after such an event is to find a way back to normal, but normal no longer exists. Too often I am wishing for normalcy, completely oblivious to the fact that what I am really wishing for is my mom back. Nothing is normal without her, so what I'm really waiting for is to figure out who the new me is going to be. And I guess I will keep trying until I figure it out.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

How cute was she!







My version of her obituary, for my aunt Beth

Janaan Stewart Diemer completed her baptismal journey February 19, 2007.

Those who were screwed include Janaan herself who never made it to Cabo, her loving yet now bitter husband Dan, her two daughters who are now at loss of a direction in life, Rebecca and Miriam, her sister who didn’t have enough time with her, Linda and her brother Scott who wishes he hadn’t picked on her so much, and her parents Ray and Myra who now wonder where they will go for the holidays if not warm New Mexico.