Descent into Memories and expectations of future past...

I've steered cleared from blogging for a while, as much as I enjoy setting thoughts, ideas, probable "thought universes" and stories in writing, it seems I also enjoy using a journal (paper, pen, and pencil drawings) quite a deal more.

It is obviously a different audience, a Blog, even one as seldom visited as this one, is inherently public to the "internet", my journal, unless peeked upon is quite more private.

And Private thoughts is what I have been setting on it's pages lately.  A good friend of mine recommended it as a therapeutic tool to deal with Grief, and I felt that, I would do as he said, but Blogging.

Piglet helps the writing process. Don't knock it.

If you've never really done a Journal, let me tell you, it's really almost totally unlike blogging; or at least to me it was.

The way I uses it, is as IF I am telling myself things through letters, or, recounting the main highlights of the day, opinion pieces (like I've had a few here) are seldom written there.

It's a more raw approach to "me".

But, that's hardly here or there, the reason I came back today, was that I actually was going to come back a week ago, but still didn't have my thoughts properly aligned.

A week ago today, it was the one year anniversary of the last day I spent with my mom.

Pretty heavy.

About a week ago, Driving down to my Aunt's

You know when people are sympathetic to you because they feel that the one year anniversary of someone's death is really hard on you?

Well, in my case, the hardest part was remembering the last day we held each other, we said our good nights and we were able to share our daily toil and troubles.

The fact that she passed away in the middle of the night with me by her side, is probably the cause of this, but; having her anniversary come up, was the tip of the iceberg when compared to "the last time we were able to talk".

That's the anniversary that will haunt me.

So, with that in mind, I had made the decision that while memory is fleeting and, considering the history of possible memory deterioration in my family, I'd go for a very permanent reminder, and memorial art.

I went ahead and got a tattoo.

Dun dun duuuuun....

It's important to me, as while I love the art form, I had NOTHING so far that I felt merited the breaking of the skin, sure, lots of important things have happened in my life over the years, but one as determining and final as this one.

It's a work in progress so far, and the idea is to build on it as more things happen, to me and my family.

I went for a Polynesian style tattoo, done by a very talented local artist, the way we went about it, was that I told him everything, my story, my mom's story, the type of mother/son relationship we had, and he sat down and used pictographs to convey the meaning that I wanted.

I love it, I will probably do a piece (writing) of ONLY this process as I seriously felt it was therapeutic and grand.

So, that's the new story, that's the message.

I still miss my mother a lot, but she's never stopped being a part of my life and if this post came in a week late, it was mostly due to the fact that yes, I just couldn't put everything into the right words.



"I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all

Still my guitar gently weeps"