Saying No to a Return of the Past

Throwing all previously made plans to the wind, Mama made the decision to send Granny on to rehab in a city about 50 miles distant, one which has evening visitation hours only during the week. And one which has extremely painful memories for me. I balked when Mama suggested the place, not because it isn't a good facility, but there did seem so many more things going for the local nursing home, including its nearness to us all.

But it wasn't until it was all settled that Mama told me about it and then I bumped hard against a lot of emotion I didn't expect. And realized that I can't, I simply cannot go to this rehab hospital to visit. Thankfully Granny will only be there ten days and I can talk to her via phone.

There are just memories I prefer to set fully aside, and rehab is one of them. It was such a horribly painful time, such a place of complete aloneness, such a time of intense fear and worry, that I literally feel physically sick thinking of revisiting that place. And so I'm going to do something I seldom allow myself to do: I am not going to put the big girl panties on. I'm going to give in to my emotional response and say "No, sorry, can't do it." I've had enough just lately of putting aside my feelings, and this is a place I can't/won't/am not ready to, face again.

I've been reading a blog called, My Messy Thrilling Life. This young woman went through the break-up of her marriage, a career change, job loss, emotional struggle after struggle and more over the past four years. Recently she made the decision to stop writing the blog. She's turned thirty this month. She says she's ready for a fresh page. I know just how she feels. There's a point in your painful life where you simply have to pack up the past and let it be and that's what she's done. You don't have to save it for dealing with later, because by heavens you've lived every single intense moment of it already, dealing with it as it came along. But you realize that moving forward isn't possible as long as you leave the squirming, messy, stinking box of raw emotions wide open to be seen by all and sundry and to daily remind you of where you've been. It's when you say to yourself "Enough, already!" that you realize it's time to put it all away once and for all.

I've bumped up against that painful era in my life at least three times in the past five months. I had to forgive some really hurtful incidents in order to take over Mama's care when she broke her ankle. I tried to revisit a church I'd gone to at that time in my life and through a pure fluke missed the services. I realized later that day that the 'fluke' was God's intervention, that I didn't need to revisit that place in my life, nor dig up those memories. It took a little while for it all to gel for me, but I realized the same yesterday about physical rehab. I don't need to revisit that part of my past. And I will the moment I pull into the parking lot and walk through the front doors.

Will I catch flack for it from my family? You betcha I will, but the person who really counts is my husband who fully understands. I've been a glutton about revisiting the past, remembering the hurts and the pains and trying to sort that portion of my life out, to the point of almost compulsion. For me to say that this is a place I simply do not want to revisit is a relief to him. He's seen enough of that side of my life. And so have I. So have I.