untapped
There are certain moments that leave me breathless, trying to keep up with thoughts that are not of me but through me. They come sometimes out of nowhere, like I’m reading lines from a book but these words are printed on my soul, which is fluttery and invisible so it’s hard to get the phrases into focus. These epiphanies are also slippery, or maybe like sands through the hourglass (these are the days of our lives).
Almost every time this happens I don’t have a pen, or my phone to note the thought(s). So I run for the phone or some paper and a pen, and by the time I get there, the soul thought is slipping down past my feet and back to wherever it came from.
Sometimes I get a bit of the thoughts down. Sometimes I completely and totally have no idea what the Thing was that was so good, so profound, so other-worldly.
This happens in the shower (inconvenient) and while driving (also inconvenient), or sometimes it happens as I wake up or drift off to sleep and I’ll think to myself “OH, I’m going to remember THIS ONE, it’s SO good.”
You guessed it. I forget.
One of these thoughts tippy-toed it’s way through me like lightening when I was standing at the counter, bleary-eyed, waiting for my cup to fill with coffee. Then boom, it was gone, while I poured in a little creamer. No amount of standing, waiting, or staring into my coffee cup was going to make the juicy ah-ha thought come back.
But having this experience once again brought me to a new understanding of these moments and who we are as humans; our potential to create from our minds mixed with soul only scratching the surface.
Unless.
Unless there are moments of letting go of the daily grind, our mundane thoughts, our habitual worries…oh, and our insecurities, judgments, and too often, our black and white thinking. Unless there are moments where we are so taken out of ourselves that we can finally see and know.
In my expiernece, the greatest creative moments are born of strife, when I am met with a level of “one moment at a time” that defeats my ability to get stuck in anything meaningless. I see through a new lens. Everything is glittered with beauty. Everything, even the pain.
This is how it has been with my family’s dementia (and all the other things) journey.
I so rarely have a quiet opportunity to pound at my laptop keyboard with any kind of clarity, but these creative moments, the words that surface front and center may not be lost. Perhaps they sit patiently waiting, to come up again. Maybe I will hear the thoughts from a friend’s mouth and breathe, Oh yes, me too. And I will only know because of the struggle.
Last night my mom, deeply swallowed by her deteriorating Alzheimer’s condition was convinced of an alternate former life reality. She was nervous and scared because she thought she had a job to do and recognized she is no longer capable. As I held her tight, through her tears, she said things about recognizing that her brain is tormenting her. I’m too dumb to do this job now. I can’t get it. I can’t remember things. I’m going to have to quit. I’m going to be so sad.
In these excrutiating moments I am left with no profound thoughts to fix it; that’s impossible. But I remain creative, rapid fire thinking on my grounded feet. I try different approaches until one of these ideas makes sense to her, so she can calm down. I have to make things up a lot. Okay, let’s go talk to the boss tomorrow, mom. Then suddenly I see relief, her shoulders relax and she agrees to stop pacing and come and sit with me on the couch. She won’t remember any of this tomorrow so any imaginary plan will do, if it works in the moment.
Isn’t that what we’re all doing, simply striving to believe we’re okay, it’s okay, it’ll be okay. We create realities that make sense to us and are sometimes miraculously struck with even better ideas that resonate deeply in the best parts of ourselves. We lose insights, we gain others. We forget. We remember. We forget again. Struggle reminds us of how alive we are; how full of soul and spirt, even if it hurts like hell.
Last night, just moments after the worst of it, my mom and I sat side by side on the couch. She was making so little sense while also sprinkling the confusing conversation with accidental statements that sounded obscene. I began to laugh, I could not help it. I was dumbfounded over what she was trying to get at and when I laugh, she laughs. We laughed until my stomach muscles were screaming and my cheeks were aching. She amps it up when I get like this — punchy. She becomes a comedian, adding nonsensical silliness on purpose.
She creates.
Moment by moment, up and down, back and forth, remembering and forgetting, slipping away and staying, we are alive with magic.
