Feb 5 - At Sea (Western Mid-Atlantic)

SANDY SHORE : The sicker I get the more shut down emotionally I’m starting to feel. I think that there is a connection here between the illness and the issues. This ship has everything on board including a full gym, an acupuncturist, yoga classes, mineral baths and saunas… what they’re missing is a good therapist or someone to talk me down.

This traveling far, far away and leaving control of my life to others is well making me feel a little out of control. Then that brings up the question of why I need to be so in control. What is at the heart of the matter here?

The image I keep getting is that my life has changed so drastically since my mom become ill and she has essentially left my life. I can’t help but feel a sense of overwhelming grief and heavy heartedness and damn it every time I travel it seems to set in. This being such an extended journey and so far away, there’s a sense of urgency attached to these feelings. I suddenly miss her with all of my heart and I feel like I rushed my childhood and young adulthood and didn’t take more of our relationship in… I mean we had a very close bond, and she supported me in everything, or nearly everything I chose to do with my life, but I feel as if I didn’t pay close enough attention in retrospect… I didn’t take enough pictures or write down enough recipes. I wish I could convey exactly how deep this loss is in words, but as hard as I try I only access images that are flooding into my mind in the shape of Polaroids of the 1970s and 80’s when I was growing up and the times when we traveled together and she made life so interesting and hopeful, never giving away any of the plot so that I could figure out my own story.

I knew I had something special with my mom… I’m pretty sure from day one. I always believed that she would be there, at least for a good, long while. I know that she wanted to be. She gave it everything she had and she still does, even in her current state of neurological breakdown.

I can't help but think that she and I both are certainly well within the age demo of youthfulness and many of my contemporaries enjoy relationships with their healthy parents. Now while this is tragic, my mom would probably say something like, "life isn't always fair, we do the best we can..." followed by "everything will fall into place."

Ahhh... traveling to where you’ve never been before, confronting pain w/o distraction… ~ss