Category: Introspection

I was surprised the other morning to find tears running down my face.  I was not particularly sad or distressed.  They were contented tears.  I had simply been reading something that moved me.  A few moments later I noticed that my blouse was wet, and was itself tear stained.  

 

How wonderfully remarkable. 

 

Once I was a woman who cried at everything.  I cried when I was happy.  I cried when I was sad.  I cried at sappy movies, no matter how predictable.  I cried when I heard beautiful music.  And then I lost the ability to cry.  In the past couple of months I have started crying again, tears of sadness and loss, tears of grief.  But I hadn't quite gotten back to being that person who would let tears slip at the simplest of things, that person who could allow herself to be easily moved to tears, unbidden.  Slowly the door I closed a few years ago, the door I closed because I needed to be strong, is becoming unstuck, and is beginning to open.

 

Once again my heart knows tears of joy.

The last couple of weeks have been a struggle in some ways although in other ways that same period was one of extraordinary gifts.  It is this paradox that strikes me now, how I could feel myself struggling even as I experienced deep joy and appreciated the fortune of my life, even the recognition that it is the very nature of that sense of struggle, of floundering even in the currents and responsibilities of life, that allows those moments of joy to shine all the more brightly.  I am sure that I will resolve nothing here in this post, resolution and understanding take time, often revealing themselves long after the spark which ignited them in the first place. 

In fact, sometimes when one is feeling at odds with the world, those little things, those small joys, take on a sharper significance, and one can appreciate them all the more.  Take a hibiscus blossom for example.  The large showy flowers make me smile every time I see them, and I experience a tiny seed of disappointment on those few days between periods of bloom.  But on a melancholy afternoon, a large yellow blossom is like a beacon of hope, with an impact far greater than its physical presence.

 

 

Not surprisingly,  it all started with a bout of exhaustion. I run around all wrapped up in the world of doing, not wanting to miss anything. Yes, there is time to  stop and notice the flowers, the blackberries, the joy of time spent with friends. But I really don't allow enough time to rest, not until my body just cries out "enough" and I am overwhelmed by exhaustion. Exhaustion does not, in and of itself, imply depression, and if it did this time, I was perhaps too eager to blame my ennui on my own self-perceived failings than on any real understanding of myself or the world.  And therein lies the problem.  It seems that it is too easy to both to blame myself for failings that aren't, in fact, failings at all, and to blame everything on the most obvious thing that pops to mind.

 

I was exhausted and I blamed myself.  "How could I not know I was overdoing it?" I would ask, ignoring the fact that I had not felt tired and that I had allowed time for rest.  I was not really listening to what my mind and my body were telling me, that this was just a period of refueling that was necessary before I could make the next leap forward, a leap I did indeed make, a leap that surprised me because it was so unanticipated.  The whole process makes me wonder how much any of us really know and understand ourselves.  It makes me wonder if understanding only comes after the fact, if our comprehension of the world and ourselves actually is more retrospective than current, if by the time we see where we think we are, we are actually looking at where we've been.   I know that I am often initially wrong when I try to explain why I am unhappy or upset; that I latch onto the most obvious answer, and although that supposed event may indeed have been a trigger to my feelings, it often hides something deeper, something that had been biding its time, waiting to surface.  If I only look to the obvious triggers, I miss the opportunities for growth that come with allowing the depths to surface, even though the dredging process is often uncomfortable, and I don't tend to see the actual benefit until days, or weeks, or months afterwards.

I was exhausted and I blamed myself for my exhaustion, driving myself further into despondency. I was self critical instead of self-accepting.  It is true that I needed physcial rest, but primarily I needed to allow myself to listen to my body, and my soul, and respect their needs according to their schedules, not some predetermined time-frame determined by an overfilled agenda.  I suppose that finding balance is one of the problems of modern life, we have too many options to fill our time, and experience too much pressure to keep our lives full, to the extent that rising to the occaision takes on a greater importance than just letting ourselves rest and letting our minds wander. But tiredness wasn't to blame for my melancholy.

 

I was exhausted and I was frustrated with myself. I was frustrated wtih the process of healing, frustrated with the slow process of getting stronger, frustrated that I cannot do more.  Worse, I was annoyed with myself for pushing myself too hard, for exhausting myself to the point of not being able to function.  And then, beaten down by exhaustion,  all my self-doubts would rear their ugly heads and I would fear that the world see my inability to function, see me for the overwhelmed, irresponsible flake I really am.  And of course, feeling like a failure, I would wallow in my own sense of uselessness rather than tackle some small task in order to regain a sense of accomplishment.  But one can only wallow for so long.  And although frustration and insecurity may have been the shadow demons that haunted my thoughts, they were only symptoms and not the cause of my melancholy. 

 

I was also lonely. And yet at the same time I wasn't lonely.  I am surrounded by friends and my life is full.  But something was different and I hadn't quite accommodated myself to the change.  For the first time in months, I didn't have someone coming in to the house every morning to help me with my morning chores. I could do the chores myself; I didn't need help.  But I missed having someone to talk to in the morning.  I reliazed that I had counted on that bit of conversation to start my day.  But lonliness has nothing to do with living alone.  One can be lonely in a house full of people: there were times in the last years of George's life when I was never alone and yet I was lonely.  My inner Yoda was telling me "Live alone you do, yet lonliness you must not choose".  Upon reflection I realized that I don't feel alone in the world.  And happiness must come from within, not because a few kind words from others. Lonliness was not to blame for my melancholy.

 

Then one morning I woke up with bright eyes and dancing spirits. I lept out of bed with a glad and cheerful cry.  I had been missing this part of my nature; I had wondered if my inner lark had lost her way, and there she was, brightly singing her morning song. Suddenly my days got easier.  I did more, did it more easily, without explanation.  In this constantly measured and quantified world, I jumped from walking 6,000 steps to 8,000 steps a day without even trying.  But I also rest more easily. I still get tired, yes, but now when I am tired, I am simply tired.  That zombie-like state where both my mind and body seem to shut down has passed, although I am sure that if I tried I could force myself back into it.  But why would I try?  I can focus again. How did it happen?  Why now?  Why was I melancholy even?  Was it really that simple? Did I simply have to accept that I was melancholy, simply have to accept that melancholy is a normal state of existence? Or was there some seismic shift that I am only just beginning to understand?

 

Oh, my mood shifts are not gone forever.  I am certain that on an occasional tired afternoon, when I hit my usual 3 o'clock slump, my mind will wander off into the shadow lands.  But I am also confident that it will wander back into the light again as well.  Perhaps my inner lark can only sing when I can acknowledge my own insecurities and imperfections, in accepting them I give them less power to weigh me down. Understanding lurks somewhere on the fringes of my mind and helps guide me even as I can't quite put my finger on its pulse. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few days ago, when I was writing my last blog post, my mind was filled with plans about what I would be reading next, I had neat stacks of materials at hand:  books, kindle, laptop.  The organized stacks still surround the bed, but somehow, even though there is less physical distinction between my week and my weekend, the weekend was spent in more frivolous pursuits.  Well, I did read some of the papers, but perhaps not in as much detail as I should.  Apparently I just let my mind wander, dabbling in pursuits as I felt so inclined, playing around on the computer, watching the play of light and shadow on the ceiling, dreaming of possibilities rather than fretting about the future. I enjoyed some time encouraging a friend's 5 year-old granddaughter in a bit of dress up play, had a lovely lunch with another friend, knit a little, but not really more than a row or two.  And here I am, on Monday morning, rambling along with nothing really to say. 

 

I suppose some of my computer play was of a useful variety, searching out possibilities for a summer trip, but I actually spent a significant part of my time on various life-style websites, looking at pictures of food, reading recipes and dreaming of cooking again. I have always loved to cook and altthough I do cook for myself, of late it has been a very simple and utilitarian kind of cooking.  Food must be eaten, and I'm rather particular, so I'm much more inclined to cook than to just grab something. But sharing food with others brings a sense of nourishment that eating alone can't equal. So it may be a good sign, this interest in food.  Perhaps it means I want to be social again.  Perhaps my rekindled interest in cooking is a reflection of a rekindled desire to share.  Maybe I am ready to look at myself as sharing in the world instead of looking at myself and the world as separate entities, existing in bubbles that may touch each other but remain forever isolated.

 

Or then again perhaps I just have been in bed too long.

 

Or maybe this is all just part of the winnowing process.  Too much independence is not so good. Too much isolation is not so good.  I like having people around, I like companionship and conversation.  I don't have to shut the door.  But too much busyness is not so good either.  I do need that contemplative time.  I want to do everything and I know I can't.  I've always known that, but I've also always struggled with this inner whirling dervish that just wants to run toward whatever has captured my attention at the moment.  But too much spinning around makes me dizzy; I break down and everything stops.

 

Patience.  It always comes back to patience and pacing.  They are related.  Why hasn't that truly sunk in before now?  

 

The last time I was an independent person, with no one I was sharing my life with, no one I was sharing expectations with, I was in my 20s.  At that time in my life, early spring always seemed like a transformative period.  Perhaps the dreariness of winter would lead me to a period of introspection and spring would bring with it some sort of transformation or awakening to some new realization or understanding of myself in relation to the world.  Of course I was young and finding my way.  Now I am no longer young but am once again finidng my way. Spring and rebirth is a good metaphor for this ongoing process of renewal, as is Lent and Easter. To some extent its not the actual words that matter, although there are specific meanings and patterns in the traditional timing of feasts and fasts, of celebrations.  Intention however, does matter.  

 

This year I gave up cursing at other drivers for Lent.  That may sound strange but it is a habit and not a good one.  I don't get made at people I know or see personally, but other drivers are just that — others — in another vehicle.  It is easy to dehumanize them and associate them with their vehicles, to not think of them as people. And I believe that even such a small step of dehumanization is an ugly trap.   I'm not a perfect driver either.  We all get distracted, we all have worries, we all just want to stop going and get someplace where we can just be.  I've been successful so far, I haven't cursed at a driver in weeks, but I'm not sure that this is due to any conscious effort on my part but just that when I was driving I was more focused on just driving and getting myself home safely and comfortably.  My focus was on the moment, and my main thoughts when they strayed from the road were more likely to be "please" as in "please just get me home".  Now this is more extreme than I would hope would be normal, but I am hoping it is the interruption in the normal chain of thought that is important here, that once interrupted, the old patterns will not so easily be resumed.

 

I'm not in any bigger of a hurry than anyone else.  I'm not more important than any other driver on the road.  If I'm late, it is my own doing and I could change.  But it is easier to blame others, outside forces, easier to condemn others as a way of comforting ourselves. Buckminster Fuller said "God is a verb".  According to the Old Testament, God is "I AM".  Well so am I.  I am.  Perhaps it is true that I can never "be" in the fullest sense of that word; I probably cannot even imagine what pure being would entail.  But I also can't imagine what "I am" would be like if I let myself just be present and atuned to the world and people around me at all times.  It may be impossible.  But it seems that we humans have trouble with the present tense of life.  We remember the past, perhaps hold on to it a little too dearly, and we worry about the future way too much.  When I am cursing other drivers I am not really fully there in the moment, I am usually thinking of something else, thinking of where I am going, what tasks are on my "to do" list, fretting about having enough time.  Perhaps I just need to learn to relax. 

 

Perhaps what I am really doing is trying to spend less of my life worrying about who or what I will be or what I will do and more time just being present and aware in the moment. And this is where I get back to browsing the interweb, and pinning pictures of food, and clothing that inspires me and makes me want to sew.  That sounds all kind of aspirational doesn't it?  And it could be.  Once upon a time, not that long ago really, when I was not happy about the changes that were taking place in my life,  the internet was my escape valve, an avoidance technique.  I was looking for something that was missing in my life, but I wasn't willing to do the necessary work that would enable me to actually get anywhere. It was like standing under the lightpost looking for your keys even though you dropped them 50 feet away in the dark.

 

This weekend, that was not the case.  There has been more connection and intention in my electronic meanderings. Yes I clipped, yes I pinned, tweeted and checked Facebook.  I sent a lot of emails. But I didn't dwell on it.  I accept more things.  I asked questions.  That looks good. Would I make it? Yes? No? Do I want to remember it?  Why? Do I care if I do it tomorrow or in 20 yeas or never?  Does looking at this picture make me happy, remind me of something important?  Or does this make me feel like I'm not enough, that I need to do or be something else? Does it let my imagination soar, or does it chain to false expectations? I do far less frittering on the internet than I used to, and I am far more intentional in my browsing, far more aware of the conversations I am having with myself. 

 

And yes I did save recipes that I may or may not ever make.  I don't really care about that.  But I do like to look at the pictures, imagine tasting the dishes, knowing that someday what I've seen and imagined will materialize in something I do or make on that particular day, and that experience will be shared with others.  And I hope I am paying enough attention be present and enjoy it when it happens. 

On Saturday, Lisa, over at Privilege put up a post about being a morning person.  I am a morning person.  I wake up before the dawn, really not so hard in Tennessee where the sun seems to rise so late.  It is in the early moring that I miss NY the most, those 6 AM walks in my garden, cup of coffee in hand…. but I digress.

 

At least I am basically, by nature a  morning person.  I awake early.  I jump out of bed with a glad cry.  And by mid afternoon I am already beginning to fade.  When George was alive, I called myself a nap person.  Naps were  my way of coping, of bridging the gap between my inner lark and his inner owl.  I thanked heaven that my working day usually ended earlier, that I had time for a brief nap between the business of work and the business of home, but still, more often than I care to recall, I fell asleep on the sofa my head on his shoulder or chest —  safe.

 

But that is not that my point either.  My mind wanders. The problem now is that I am but a shadow of a lark, a morning person wanna-be.  I awaken early.  Such is my nature.  I lie in my comfortable bed, I stretch, I imagine the world as it should be, full of promise.  Then I try to stand and my world is shattered. We think I have a problem at S1, a herniation really.  My doctor probably knows by now but I do not.  I had an MRI last week, but I won't know the results before Wednesday.  We anticipated that I will have a cortisone injection and once I can manage the pain I can begin to heal.  My life is never without back problems, it has not been so since I was 10 years old and was diagnosed with scoliosis.  I am grateful for my life.  I have done well, I have been blessed. But this is different from anything I have experienced so far.  Yet I know I will survive it.

 

Please remind me of that statement early in the morning when I am struggling to cross the kitchen floor.  Suddenly, I am not a morning person…. or I am a morning person imprisoned.  My brain and my soul rejoice in the morning yet my body is not convinced.  I lie in bed dreading that first step… will I scream in pain?  Will the 20 feet or so to the kitchen, the cat bowls, and a new ice pack, the symbiosis of drugs that help me cope, that maintain the myth that I can actually function, be hell on earth, or merely tolerable disomfort?  It is  not my nature to worry so.  For the last two weeks, a normal morning means that it will take me 2 hours just to contemplate being able to stand long enough to take a shower. There I am, mentally wide awake and ready to dance around the earth welcoming the dawn (even thought technically dawn isn't even awake yet) and my body is still clinging to the bed.  And yet I know there are people who are worse off.  I have a new appreciation for pain, for the things pain can drive people to do. I can even understand the horrible choices that people are sometimes driven to make.   

 

For my morning-person self the worst part is the evening.  My brain is beginning to shut down, my inner worry-wart is slowly rearing his ugly head, and my body, which took so long to wake up in the morning, is not yet ready to get comfortable for the night.  It doesn't matter if I was up, or if I spent the day resting….the body is not ready to wind down, even though my brain is fading and is begging for respite.  So I lie awake praying for pain free sleep. 

 

Who knew this could happen?  Surely not I?

 

This is not actually a complaint.  It is just what it is.  Here I am writing this post, late at night, late for me anyway, although I will post it in the morning, living a life that is me and yet simultaneously is not me.  What am I to do?  I have been blessed in my life in so many ways, although I admit I have not always seen it as such.  I am blessed now.  People are willing to help me.  I have hope.  I cannot imagine not having hope, and yet such is the life so many must endure. I drove someone to church on Sunday, even though I was initially unsure as to whether I would be able to walk into the same service.  I delivered a meal.  These small things bring grace, and make everything worthwhile.   Today I am able to sit.  I am able to type this post.  I haven't yet figured out a way to write when I am flat on my back, but if that were my only option I am sure I would find a way.  So much of how I understand who I am depends on my ability to write it down.  

 

Here it is, late at night, and I realize that there is no point to what I am writing.  I have no conclusion, no denoument as it were.  So I will say it again.  I am blessed.  I have friends.  Long ago when I lived in NY I was in the hospital for a week and no one wrote me or emailed me, no one called, no one came by.  I was not particularly ill, and although I was there for a reason, it was mostly for obsevation.  No one wanted to bother me.  Here people email.  People call.  I am lucky to have found this place, these friends, friends I wouldn't have thought possible.  Perhaps I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So this is what I ask.  Pray for all those people who don't have people who email or call.  Pray for those people who don't feel loved, who don't feel hope.  If you don't believe in prayer or God, think of them anyway; they need your thoughts, your psychic karma.  In the end it doesn't matter if you are laid low by chronic pain or a hangnail, if you can't walk to the freezer, or if your boyfriend forgot to call.  We all suffer.  We all need love.  Share the love. 

 

 

 

Yesterday I was flying west from Tennessee to Texas.  I was flying in the early evening, apparently close to sunset.  I have a habit of closing my eyes as the plane taxis down the runway and often dozing off.  I am not aware that I am particularly frightened of flying, I am not, but drowsiness always sets in just as the plane prepeares to leave the gate, although I never sleep long, just until we are airborne.  I am sure there is some meaning to this, to why I doze off during take-off but never during landing, and no landing doesn't make me nervous either.  I am inclined to think it is just a period of mental release, of closing the business of "home" with the more relaxed breathe of "away", but pehaps I am fooling myself.

At any rate, when I awoke we were above the clouds.  The sky was a deep deep blue, gradually deepening into midnight but not yet black, and the clouds wee gray and somewhat soft looking below, with a texture somewhat like quilt batting, dirty quilt batting, but quilt-batting none-the-less.  But the horizon was a ring of color, firey-bright oranges and yellows fading to greens and soft blues that started light and became duskier as they merged up into the skies.  I love flying into the sunset and I suppose I sat there, looking out my window lost in the present moment, watching the gradual fading of the light, the slow deepening of the colors, the sense of stillness combined with slow steady change.  No matter that we were rushing toward that change, that was not apparent to those on the plane, and it was the very fact that we were rushing toward it that extended the sunset, that sense of peace and calmness.

I was startled by the flash of a camera.  The person across the aisle from me took a photo of the sunset.  It occurred to me that I might be a better blogger if I took out my phone and snapped a photo to post here, if I tried to capture the texture of the darkness below, the deep glow of the sunset, the placid smooth stillness of the darkness above.  the etchings on the plane window that suggested runes across that darkness, my knitting sitting on my lap, red and yellow and orange of my sock echoing the colors of the sunset.

But I didn't.  I enjoy the sitting in the moment too much.  I admire photographers.  I admire their patience and determination, their art, the ability of the good ones to capture that intense presence of the moment.  But in the act of capturing the moment you lose out on experiencing the moment, and I always choose the latter.

I am traveling. I am not going to compel myself to post during the trip.  I'll be back on or about February 3.

I believe we are all born equal onto this earth.  We may all die equal as well but that is something we are not privileged to know. I believe that if we do not die as equals, that inequality has nothing to with material things or power, it has to do with our hearts and our souls and whether we have attempted to live with compassion or not.

We are all born as equals.  We share certain minerals and biological connections.  We share compassion.  That does not mean we are all dealt equal opportunities.  I would like to think that we all have the opportunity to see to those to whom the world has been cruel as equals, as the people we might have been had our own fortunes been less kind.

We are all born as equals.  How we chose to deal with the blows and opportunities life gives us is our choice.  Whether we chose to see others as equals or not is a choice.  Whether we chose to be bitter or happy is a choice. We all make choices.  We all make mistakes.  The best we can do is to try not to hurt other people either purposefully or inadvertently.  The best we can do is to care.  But it is not our job to judge because there is so much we are not privileged to know.   

Thank you all, the many of you with your kind words.  They meant a lot to me.  Childhood rhymes to the contrary, words do hurt.  But hopefully we have resilience to overcome them.  I had a cup of cocoa and curled up with my cats for a bit, but only for a bit as my step-daughter and her family were coming for dinner, really just an impromptu simple repast of sausage and collards, food to soothe the soul, after which I ran off to the symphony.  It was a perfect concert to lift people's spirits in a dreary January:  The Overture to Die Fledermaus, a Mozart Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Suite, Strauss's Emperor Waltzes.  The music provided the perfect respite for me as well, despite my normal inclinations; it was not a night I would have embraced Bartok.

I can see that I only give a partial portrait here, and therefore much can easily be interpreted in ways I do not intend.  But that is another way all people are equal, we all show ourselves only in shadows and angles and half-formed images. Most of the time we do not bare our souls to any but a treasured few. I am only human, with all the faults and failings that being human entails. I know I like pretty things and some may consider this a weakness.  I suppose happy was not the best choice of words, because although I am happy it is not because of things. 

Those of us in industrial nations, and I assume most of us who read blogs hail from similar lands, live in a world surrounded by things, a world in which one needs things.  It does not seem much to ask that those things, while filling a need, also bring a small amount of beauty or joy or contentment, fleeting though that may be.  But if the cost and name and value of a thing mean more than the joy of using the thing itself, then one is a slave.  One can be enslaved to the sense of not having, to the coveting, just as surely as to the having.

 I am very lucky in many ways.  One of the things that makes me lucky is that I know I could start over, and that I would still be happy.  I've lost everything before.  I've even lost everything that mattered, and no I am not referring to things. But I've been extraordinarily lucky because I've never lost my resilience, and I've always known that I could get help if I needed it.  And that is what really matters.

 We are all born equal onto this earth.  It is only in how we live our lives that we distinguish ourselves. 

 

The problem with putting things aside sometimes is in not just in the sense of loss and absense, but in the taking them up again, especially when those things that were misplaced represented a continuity of sorts which has now been broken.  Rather than muddling over what was, or worse, what wasn't, it is probably best to just start.

 

I lost my voice for a while.  I could not write, not here, not in a journal, not even on scraps of paper destined for immediate shredding.  Words came but they were like a maelstorm, spinning around, taking control, eating me alive.  Not being able to write is like losing your voice, as if you cannot speak, and if you are like me, a person who often can't pinpoint exactly what is going on in either my heart or head until I can put words to it, it was in a sense like losing oneself.  

 

But even though I felt lost, the fog of silence was preferable to the tempest wroght by words. In that silence I was groping, waiting for a beacon of light. In words I was driven toward panic, toward anger, toward despair.  I was clearly not ready for the conversation that words imply, the putting right and "making sense" of conscious reckoning.

 

I tend to be a leap-first kind of person by nature, despite being somewhat thoughtfully and philosophically inclined, and the ongoing struggle with patience has been, and undoubtedly will continue to be, the most difficult of life lessons to master.  I probably never will master it.  I thought I had made great progress.  Losing a loved one slowly, over a long period of time, forces one to reach some accommodation with waiting.  If one cannot embrace patience, perhaps one can achieve detente.  But of course, detente is not a solution, merely a postponement.  Patience with others does not imply patience with oneself.  

 

I did not anticipate being blindsided by confusion. Knowing intellectually that moving forward often involves a step (or two) backward was no preparation for the actual fall, does not prepare one for the constant questioning of how one came to be the person one is, for the challenging of assumptions, for the clamoring of forgotten emotions, thoughts, wounds and joys that bound up threatening to overwhelm the fragile structure one has spent a lifetime creating.

 

It seems that there are times when silence is the only answer. It seems that I had forgotten that the seed must rest in the cold damp earth before it can martial enough energy for new shoots to emerge. Sometimes it is the attempt to take control that causes the most confusion, and the letting go that gets us what we need.

 

I am fine. The holidays were good.  This blog is here, and once again so am I.  

A week ago I was driving home to Tennessee from a trip to the Hudson Valley and I was struck by the idea of home.  G, at the time of his death, knew that he lived in Tennessee but still felt that the Hudson Valley was his home, whereas I had a hard time giving up the idea of the Hudson Valley as my home, had a hard time accepting Tennessee as my home, but somewhere along the line had realized that Tennessee surprised me and welcomed me and had in fact become more of a home than the place I had left.  On my last morning in New York my thoughts were focused on returning home, and I knew I had successfully traversed a great divide.

Ostensibly this trip was to be a farewell, a closure of sorts, to a husband/father/brother.  But I never felt that way.  It was a trip I dreaded not because I disapproved of what we were doing, scattering George's ashes in the Hudson river, but because it was too soon, and I had not yet returned to that place that had been our home, had not yet stared memory in the face.  In  some ways denial was easier in Knoxville because, although I lived in a house with G, G's life in this place was very constrained and remained centered around home.  Nothing here reminds me of him, there is little we shared, my external life in this place was always a separate life.  Nights were hard of course, but during daylight it was easy to escape.  The Hudson Valley, however, was where we shared our lives for 29 years.  I needed to return to this place filled with echoes of the past, echoes of the person I had been in that time, but I needed to return on my terms, to face my own memories, not the memories of others.

 

Besides, grief does not accommodate itself to human convenience, and closure cannot be achieved simply by a ritual act if that ritual act comes too soon.  Our inner selves require far longer than a few short months to acclimate themselves to loss, and if we try to cut the experience short, much as society seems to pressure us to do just that, we deny ourselves true peace. 

 

The plans changed as I drove north.  The boat had engine trouble.  We were not to sail, and, after consultation with G's children, it was decided that we would reschedule for next summer.  And yet I continued driving north, knowing full well it was a trip I needed to make, a trip better not postponed. Besides, G's ashes were with me in the car and I had promsied to take him back to the Hudson Valley; it was time.

 

The trip was good for me.  I spent three days with old friends, friends who knew me before G developed dementia, friends who knew the person G had become.  For the first time since I moved to Knoxille, I spoke with people who remembered the man I married, the man I wished his children would have gotten to know, the man I fell in love with and loved until the very end. More importantly, I spent time with people who knew sides of myself that had been hidden to me recently, people who had seen other reflections of me, in different lights, people who helped me open doors to aspects of myself that had to be put aside due to necessity and emotions which were clamboring to be set free.  

 

When you are young and promise "til death do us part" you have no idea what that means.  Often we don't take it seriously enough. Sometimes one partner or the other, perhaps both, are not up to the demand and we fail.  All we can do is give it our best and often that is not enough, often it is more than we bargained for.  What we don't realize when we are young, or at least what I did not realize, is that although love often requires to be selfless, even the act of putting aside the self  to help the other is in fact a full realization of self.  Somewhere along the path I learned, not willingly I assure you, that every moment, every thought, every thing we do is an expression of our true selves.  Too often we spend our lives in waiting, dreaming of a time when our true "life" will begin, wasting life, never realizing that every action, every thought, every moment of every day is our true life, is the truest expression of our true selves.  It is what we do or don't do that marks us, that we are remembered by, and it is when we can align our every action with our thoughts and our heart that we are most truly human. And yet, we are complicated creatures, we can not be all things at once, in any given moment, but over the course of time, of a life well lived, we can be everything that we hope to be.  

image courtesy of Heather Conrad, here.  Truthfully, I found this image at least 5 different places on the web, none specifically claimed ownership or had an attribution, one location was a site I wouldn't use as a reference if it were the last website on earth, so there you have it.  This was an arbitrary choice.  I hope it was a good one.