Letting go is easy to say

Those words trip of most of our tongues quite easily. We all know in our head how to do it...you Just Do It. But even when the heart is engaged in the process, somehow the world doesn't always let it happen. Questions about her keep coming in. Some of them are just concerned friends who could just as easily call her to ask her how she is. Do they? Will she speak to them? Some of them ask me to project an outcome based on her ...what? past history? current situation? information I don't have or need to have or even can have? I can do many things but not predict the unpredictable.

Other questions come from professionals because in the end it's easier for her to refer them to Mom rather than answer them herself.  Turning over and sleeping keeps her problem at a distance.  Does she even know some of the details of her own life? Where is her important paperwork? Packed in a garbage back from when she was evicted. Most of us women keep our id in our purses. When we go out that id is invariably with us. We know how it would be needed ...in case. She's rarely grasped that concept. She says it's not important. Once again, it is important.

So today has been 5 days since she's lived in our house but her unmanagability keeps seeping back in with the questions that concern her life, and her choices. This time she has cancer. The stakes are higher. But the pattern is no different. For over 20 years it's been a desire for someone to rescue her, to fix it all, to make it go away. She's 38 years old. One change is that I'm no longer taking that role. I've let it go and said, It's not my responsibility. It's yours.

This time the issue really may go away. Really go away...and then the final letting for those of us still alive will just continue. It's already started.