unedited, just sending it

I just got back from the cafe and made lunch, but before I can sit and set, I feel 'urged' to send this out.
I have not reread it, another urging to just let this go. Here goes...

I am sitting here at the outdoor cafe.

Today I am wearing a blue skirt with little dark pink and white flowers. I am wearing a dark pink t-shirt that is 'snug' lets day.

I have also, the first time taken my laptop outside the house.

It is also the first time that I have sat at a table and asked for a cappuccino. (I usually stand at the bar, pay for it and then go outside to a table.) 

Sunday is a busy day.  There are lots of people all around.  I think I prefer it during the week.

Tonight is also the last day of the festival.

Today marks one week left in Umbertide.

I woke up this morning and it was stuffy in my room.  (I had closed the windows due to the outside noise.)  I opened the smaller window, it was probably dawn, and fell back into a deep sleep.

When I finally woke up, I took it slow.

By the time I got downstairs it was 9am.  I starting getting dressed in my running clothes. It didn't seem like a decision, it was the thing to do.  Like yesterday, I sense this 'no choice' zone.  It is less of a "my way" feeling.  It isn't a weak feeling and I don't feel like I am not involved, it is a different sensation, as though I am using a different tool, a new pathway that is not logical, it does not communicate in words.  

While I was eating some cheese and grapes, standing in the kitchen (as all good americans do, ha!) I looked out the window and thought about my stay here.

I leave in a week and rather than have the packing being a task, I thought I would do a little each day. (That felt gentle and loving)

Then this statement comes into focus: "Did I get what I came for?"

Instantly I reply, "But I didn't come for anything."

Oh bliss.  It is true.  I had no goal, there was nothing to achieve. The 6 months I had before the trip were about getting here. I can't tell you the number of times I would say to myself, "I am going to Italy."

There were a hundred times when a part of my mind wanted to think more on it, but it was as though there was a block set up that I could only go so far.  I never pushed it. I honored it.  I would also come back to the idea that I need to go.

Showing up WAS the goal.  I didn't let fear or reason or anything else stop me.  I was going, no matter what.  I tore my rotator cuff (severely) a month before the trip. I was going anyway.  I've had pain that is a solid 9 on the 1-10 pain scale since I have been here, it doesn't matter.  I am here, THAT matters.

My illness has flared up, it doesn't matter, I am in Italy.

I've endured, I've suffered, it doesn't matter, I made it to Italy.

I can die now.

Seriously, in a real way, I feel completed.

No matter what happens, the shoulder surgery with the months of rehab…the lupus…my foot pain…trouble walking some day…the lupus skin outbreaks…not being able to work…the days when I wonder why the hell I have to be sick…the hospital…those guys in white coats sticking needles in my legs for the nerve tests, the bags of blood taken out to keep my ferritan levels under control…the lab tests..the endless round of 'what ifs' if these illnesses spiral out of control..

NONE OF IT MATTERS because I got to go to Italy.

(I am crying now, overcome with emotion.) 

It has been quite the adventure these past 2 years. My sister Liz, died of lupus in March 2010. The divorce in Aug 2011. The numbness in my hands and feet in Sept 2011. The MONTHS of tests at Dartmouth (MRI, CAT scans, tubes and tubes of blood tests) The tubes down my throat, into the small intestine and the biopsy, the celiac disease dx.  The nerve biopsy. The liver biopsy a month later…the scars on the liver due to the high ferritin.  The ferritin affecting my pituitary, throwing me into menopause early, the bone scan (THAT was normal, yes!)  In May of this year, a rash on m torso, neck chest, back, and scalp.  Another biopsy (skin) and the diagnosis that scared the living shit out of me, the same as my sister Liz  Connective Tissue Disease and Lupus.  But you know what got me through, I KNEW I was going to Italy in August, no matter what life threw at me, no matter if I had to sell everything I owned, no matter what part of my body ached.

My immune systems is attacking itself, in a way, I am killing myself.

It is a hard line to love who I am and be so angry at my body for this self-destruct mode.

Thankfully my children are healthy. No celiac, no hemochromatosis (body stores iron [ferritin], it is a genetic disorder, Irish ancestry)

I am going home to a calendar full of medical appts.  It's okay.  

If someday I cannot walk, I will remember these morning runs along the Tiber, the walking up the steep steps in Perugua and Assisi and Cortona. 

I have lived a life I dreamed. 

I am overcome with emotion right now, because as I sit among the others in the cafe, no one knows how much had to happen for me to be here.

If I hasn't gotten sick, I wouldn't have talked to Marjorie about the things I want to do before I die.

It has been the pain, the suffering, the sad news, the deaths, the sitting alone in the waiting room at 8 in the morning wanting to break down and scream to everyone "what are we doing here? life is out there!"  It is the sitting in my car in the huge parking lot of DHMC (Dartmouth-Hitchcok Medical Center) after an appointment and not being able to drive because I am crying so hard.  It's the calling my boys from my cell and not letting the fear get the best of me.

It's hugging my oldest son when he says "Momma I feel so bad I can't do anything to help"  It's crying when my youngest writes in my birthday card how he admires me for going through so much and thanks me for helping him stay true to himself".

It's been quite a ride.

A few days before I left for Italy, I wrote out my funeral plans…just in case.  I had a sense of death.  Understanding metaphor and myth (and dreams)

the way I do, I considered much of this as figurative rather than literal.  This trip in some way was about death.  

My funeral plans were simple:  Burn my journals,  I am an organ donor, cremation, a handful of ashes buried at my sister Kathy's plot(I don't want here to stay alone), the rest of the ashes put into the ocean out of the end of long island, NY, at Montauk..  No priest, no mass, no crappola.  Have a potluck with the few people I am close with and leave it at that.  My life insurance would go to the boys and I wrote that I wanted them to use it to travel.  I don't own much, but whatever I have they could keep or donate.

Like I said, my life feels complete now.  I don't know if my time is up or just a new chapter. Either way, I am open to it.

I am tired now, I wrote more than I thought, but that is where the fates led me.