Zombie easter

Well, on Easter Sunday I watched two zombie movies with my daughter, her boyfriend, and some of their friends. I have never watched a zombie movie before. You see, you can still do new things at 55.

Earlier that day we went to the Maritime Museum on the Halifax waterfront. There were some wonderful exhibits, but I was mostly fascinated with the Halifax explosion,December 6, 1917 and the rescue missions out of Halifax for the Titanic victims, April 15, 1912. It is unfathomable to me (no pun intended) how life goes on despite such disasters. How people pick themselves up and carry on. How cities are rebuilt. How families are re-united, or not. How someone can lose everything and still there is this spirit in most of us that says....ok, let's go on.

Today, I listened to two people I love very much have a conversation. Well, it started as a conversation, then seemed to veer off-course into something else. A fight? Perhaps it could be called that, but what I heard from the other room, as the observer, was two people trying to be heard, trying to be understood, trying to be seen. Each was feeling the other wasn't hearing them, or understanding them or seeing them. And they were both right. And they were both wrong. At different points in the discussion they were both in tears, or one, or the other was in tears. And they just kept soldiering through it. I admire them both deeply for that.

I tend to not soldier through hard discussions. I tend to run. I tend to shut down. I tend to bury my head in the sand, or in a crossword puzzle, or a knitting project, or a tv show. I hate conflict. I always have. Lying in bed this morning listening to these two dear souls, I thought of the fights I used to listen to my parents have. They were awful, loud, mean fights.....and they never changed into anything else. Not to tears, not to resolution, but to stony silience that would last for days.

But these two? They persevered. It didn't necessarily end perfectly, but there was an honestly about two souls struggling to be heard. And what they were both saying, without either of them saying it, is I love you. I want to help you. I want you to be proud of me. I want you to forget the past and see me for now, for today.

So, what on earth do I think this blog is doing: morphing from zombies to disasters to conflict to resolution.

Well, when everything around us is gone. When the threats of the world are coming at us from all the dark corners, all we really have is each other.

Sometimes it is messy. Sometimes it is loud. Sometimes, the moment the connection can be found, it is glorious.

And sometimes, as painful as it is to watch loved ones in conflict, sometimes I have to remind myself - this is not my conflict. This is their conflict. This is their struggle. You, my dear, have to stay the hell out of it.

Now, where did I put that knitting.......