Time Lines
The week of rest and reflection continues restful and reflective. What more could a Nut Job ask for? Never mind. . .
While I can't retain the detail of which day ends my current rental agreement on this room, I find myself trying to piece together a time line for the current family storm series. It has been a rough series. Every member of the family has a different series to chart, from the newborn granddaughters to the departed octegenarians. The fact that I can't retain the detail of my rental agreement is a nag flag. My memory damage is in need of monitoring. Easy does it. Be patient with the process.
My estranged birth family is a snotty knot in the time line. By deliberate design, the estrangement has given Hubs and sons very little real world context by which to know any of my family grief. I answer their questions with all the simple honesty at my disposal, but I seldom discuss my childhood outside my therapy network. Receiving answers and forming bonds are two distinctly separate processes. They are heavenly bedfellows, but still as distinctly separate as love and sex.
Which timeline do I chart? Each of the aches in my heart today pulses to a different timeline across multiple generations. The timeline I found the greatest clarity with yesterday was this current road trip. My departure from the North Texas job site for my brother's funeral pilgrimage was mid-March. My mother's funeral pilgrimage began near enough the end of my brother's pilgrimage that I feel like the two pilgrimages merged.
But I haven't spent much time at the home base since August 1st, 2016 when a broken hip began the FIL's final decline. The three-city shuffle was all inside the Texas boundaries, but Texas is a big state. It is possible that three-city shuffles racked up as many miles as my pilgrimages from Texas to the Midwest and Northeast US.
Sigh. . . Which timeline do I chart? Hardest part of statistics is deciding what to measure. . .
Replies
Maybe don't think linear. Think... spherically. These time/event dots are in a sphere around you, and you're the center of the sphere... ? This exercise helped me a lot in being a nerd in school. Allowed fluidity of thinking and connecting data points with more than one factor (line).... But that's just me. I am trying to find my sphere today, so it came to mind.
REst. Reflect. Puma peace to you.
Good notion, Leo. Worth a try during meditation. Thanks.
Proofs unavailable, but most of the med pros I have discussed it with seem to agree that I suffer actual, physical memory damage which isn't likely to ever heal. I watchdog and exercise my memory functions like torn tendons, using brain plasticity theories to compensate for the existing damage.
Inside my current phase, the time-lines are a memory exercise for me. *Just* saluting the nag flag. I turn into a one-woman comedy skit when my memory gets flaky. It is worth an ounce of prevention.
Or. . . I am but a mile or three from the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz museum. Maybe I should just let my freak flag fly. It'd be hard to get any freakier than that dynamic duo.
Fly the flag of Freak proudly!