Springtime skies clouds passing

Yesterday on my hour walk in the sunshine and icy wind, I watched the clouds form, move and pause. Often our skies are clear and cloudless but after an icy, wet, greary (my word for grey+ dreary) weekend the sunshine was welcome.    The waiting is over, Florence passed on Saturday April 13,afternoon about an hour after we left the nursing home.   Relief now because hers was the most miserable death I have ever witnessed although I know others depart worse off.  Jerry, while relieved too, deals with grief in his own way, he, the ever dutiful son  has done above and beyond and yet for some reason that it is finally over with Florence, his mother, circulates through his mind with odd reactions at times. Grief effects everyone differently,  I observe, listen say what I think prudent and let the rest go on by like the clouds in the skies.  

I wrote what I could for her obituary but could not bring myself to add flowery gushy sentiments that would not fit, so it  is simple, as are her arrangements, she will be cremated and ashes shipped to California where she will be buried in Riverside with  her 2nd husband, Lyman, father of the Larsons.  Ironically Lyman asked for cremation and she did not honor his wishes, sticking him in  a box in a grave then  being across the country she ends up cremated.  We could have arranged committal here in the cemetery where her sisters and parents reside, but she had reportedly made her wishes known to her daughter who agreed she would handle it after Jerry reminded her.  That was Florence's way tell someone but not everyone nor the one who had the task.  Make it a bit twisted.  

Jerry now has decided he will fly to California  for the committal service while I choose to not.  I feel a freedom that I have not had for so many years and will not allow disruption of my peace.  If I went to California all I would want to do is visit long time few friends who are there, and would not participate in the charades of fools.    I am done as only I can be done, fully, peacefully and completely.  Words from Joni Mitchell's song, "I've looked at clouds from both sides now......" seem appropriate.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg

 As a child I'd lay on the ground and watch the clouds in the sky, my granpap Teofil said "clouds don't have to tell you where they are going but sometimes they get loud and shake the skies..."  I memorized The Cloud written in 1820 by Percy Shelley (1792-1822) long  ago, in school days.  Today it fits  as an epitaph for Florence.   I share the first verse and a few lines from Shelley's poetic metaphor for the unending cycle of nature and shudder at the line, "I arise and unbuild it again."   We are released from her unbuilding things including her unbuilding of any semblance of family relationship.  She did not encourage togetherness amongst her children, preferring instead to be the one central hub and thereby  the three remaining are only children.  Everything was her secret to twist or gnaw on as she would, a rather desperate selfishness, no sharing communication, the few mutual celebrations were her 80th and 90th birthday parties that we planned and hosted and her younger son's wedding.  Unable to name her grandchildren and their descendants to the  great greats, because we do not know all their whereabouts nor last names, unwilling to delay this for tenable responses, I chose the adjective "numerous" and considered "scattered" for the obituary describing her survivors.    How different from my considerate relatives who had helped write their own obituaies years before they passed and who explicitly planned and specified their  funerals.  Not so with her, as Jerry said,  "nothing easy about her....."

Here it is  the first verse  from Shelley,  "The Cloud"  available on You tube for listening

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fsRyQQjeVg

" I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder."

  And  from the  2nd verse describing  the weather we endured this weekend along with her passing...       I sift the snow on the mountains below,   And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast.......

I slightly ponder how this will perceive back over years.  But for now, forward, onward in life.  Whatever.