Not every week is sunshine and blue skies, a piece of cake, a bed of roses … sometimes it sucks. This past week found me floating down crap creek through depression valley in a boat with a hole in it. Yep! That about sums it up. Life is not what we portray on social media. We post happy pictures and funny pictures, but behind the facade is real life – sadness, brokenness, conflict, anger. Life is the thorns on the rose bush.

Hubby and I decided the time was right to take care of those “life” things such as updating our wills, making sure beneficiaries were in order and power of attorneys signed on the dotted line. Things like these can stir the pot releasing all the burnt pieces stuck to the bottom. The attorney asks a simple question like if your husband is deceased or perhaps not in a place to make medical decisions for you, who do you want to make those decisions. If you are me, you have no answer. The silence in the room is deafening as you sit there and think there’s no one other than my husband who cares. I have no answer. He’s sitting patiently while I sit and say nothing. It is like you are back in school and the teacher asks you a question and you have no answer.

Unless we are in an accident, together, I’m probably going to die first. I have Leukemia so it’s not that difficult to weigh the odds. But what happens if God has other plans and he’s not around to carry out my last wishes? The one where you pull the plug because I really don’t want to be on life support forever.

Well, seems that is where you have a meltdown. Your heart just rips open and the hurt and the anger gush out. The attorney grabs a box of tissues that he keeps on hand because this is not his first rodeo. This is an easy question for most people. It is not for me. I have no one.

I have a brother but I wouldn’t want to place that burden on him. I have sisters but they told me years ago I was no longer their sister. That’s a story all by itself. The world is made up of two types of people. People who respect that God made us all different and we should celebrate the differences. Each person has something to learn from us and something to teach us. I think God gave some of us the grace to realize this. Others do not have that grace. My sisters fall into that category. Because I do not “see” things their way, they tell me I’m wrong. Because I do not react to things the same way they do, there’s something wrong with me. My life has formed me. I’ve been through the death of a sibling when I was a child. I was raised by a controlling mother. I was married to a narcissist for almost twenty years. Trauma and pain have shaped the person I’ve become. Instead of accepting my brokenness, they chose to shun me. God has blessed me with the grace to forgive. He uttered those very words as he hung on the cross. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” We can do no less.

So, no sisters to entrust my dying days to. Next up, would be one or both of my daughters. I’ve been told by one that she doesn’t want me in her life. The other has said the same with her silence.  It’s a lonely feeling to sit there with a movie of your life running on replay before your eyes, reaching out to children who truly have no clue what happened so many years ago, not wanting to know.

I’ve often wondered how I could just be discarded so easily, without a second thought. How I could go from being the parent always there to being shoved aside with no explanation. I have years of unanswered questions and I’ll never have answers. No one talks. I’m in the dark. Twenty-three years of hurt. Twenty-three years of pain. Twenty-three years of brokenness. Twenty-three years of not being seen as a person. Not once have I ever been asked why. Not once have I been given the opportunity to speak. So many unanswered questions, and

The sounds of silence…