Life Changes in Minnesota

I am in Minnesota this week, assisting my parents in moving from their home of 46 years into a senior apartment. The house is a place where the memories are here and now, hanging from the walls, on the bookshelves, in the china cup collections.

In this place of memory, my Dad is in the process of losing his memories, slowly, painfully, with great struggle. The self we used to know sometimes shines out during a meal out as it did at the Yangze Restaurant this evening where we shared a meal with my cousin and psychic medium Suzanne Krupp ). At other times, there is a fight to preserve everything just as it has been for years. It is a desire to keep things that have long since lost their function, to move a freezer loaded with food to a two-bedroom apartment.

I gave him Reiki this morning and felt incredible heat at the top of his head as he dozed in a chair at the kitchen table. Everything seems to take longer here, my emotions are floating near the surface, my connections with people are more important, more intense, more raw. I have been allowing my feelings to come, whether they are of sadness, anger, frustration, or just bewilderment at the quantity of stuff a lifetime in a home can bring.

The Reiki Principles definitely apply here: just for today, I am letting go of anger and worry, I am grateful for this moment and its memory, I am working VERY hard at moving things forward, and I am trying hard to be kind, even when my feelings make me want to be less so. I am being given a wonderful gift: to walk as a Boddhisatva, a being here to help others, maybe not in a specifically healing context, but being a healing presence when I can and am allowed to minute-by-minute.

This afternoon, with my sister Bonnie, I asked her what she was grateful for from her time in this house. She said, " what a strange question." I find myself grateful just for the tasks I remember. I am grateful for the myriad of family events I have spent here, even 30 years after I left for college. I am grateful for the intensity of my growing up: it gave me the ability to be a healing presence as a Reiki healer. I am grateful for the ability I have to organize, write, communicate, moderate, and love. I am grateful for my own home, my Reiki friends, my partner, my life in Maryland. I am grateful for so many things that just days ago seemed boring.

Thanks for listening.