Here I am Again

August 1, 2023 at 2:39 pm (Uncategorized)
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Whenever I log on to WordPress with a blog post in mind, I wonder why I don’t come here more often. And yet today, I am here with nothing particularly in mind that I want to say. While looking for a blank notebook in order to start a story, I ran across some early notes I wrote early on in my career as a widow. I did a lot of journaling right after TT died. So much so, that I am building it into a book that I may or may not publish. It’s likely that I will jump into the deep end once I have it all into a formatted manuscript. Something tells me that it might help another widow along her journey. Other’s may run away from me, clutching a bulb of garlic to their chest. Who knows?

Anyway, there were some interesting little notes in the notebook I decided to pillage. Not many pages were used, so I tore them out. Some of the notes are here. They came to me from who knows where. If anyone is offended by any of these aphorisms, I am afraid I will not apologize, except to say these were my truths. You are welcome to your own.

Comparison is the thief of joy. – Mark Twain

The grief journey is not a competition. Stop comparing your grief to another’s.

Disappointment is the offspring of expectation.

Just breathe. Sometimes it is the only thing to do. Sometimes it’s the only thing we CAN do.

Stop blaming others for your pain.

You’re grieving, so everything is going to hurt. There is no need to be angry at everyone’s attempt to comfort you or help you. Forgive them. They don’t understand the depth of your pain. How could they? Have they experienced your loss?

Your family and friends have lost someone they love, too. Talk about your beloved. It helps everyone.

You do not have dibs on tears or heartache.

Being a widow (or widower) is not permission to be mean or rude.

Let your tears flow without shame.

Eat vegetables, fruit, and good quality protein.

Cheese is comfort.

Don’t make any big decisions for a year.

If you need to sleep, then sleep. Make this a practice for the rest of your life.

We are not a special as we think we are.

If you can’t adopt a pet, try a houseplant. The point is to care for another living thing.

Join a grief support group or two.

Forget the dogma.

Wasted days are not really wasted, so ditch the guilt.

Who am I without TT?

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I Should Do This More Often

February 19, 2022 at 10:49 am (Gratitude, grief, Journaling, Writing)
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Maybe even weekly. Write in this blog, that is. Not sure why it’s so hard to build a practice, but from what I have learned in my x-number of years riding around the sun, the problem is real, and I am not unique. Building a practice takes time, effort, no regard for failure, patience, and perseverance. Probably some other characteristics as well, but you get my point. The road to hell, and all of that. Here I am. Back on Intention Road.

A friend started a blog (with encouragement from me, I might add) and he writes, not like clockwork, but far more often than me. His thing is theology, and his approach leans toward the academic. Whenever I get one of his posts in my email, I read it with interest, and then remind myself I should get up off my butt and fire up WordPress as well.

I also encouraged him to write the novel he’d been pondering for nearly a decade, but he hasn’t done that yet. I, on the other hand, have published my first novel! The title is Sawdust and Dreams, and I published it just before Christmas. It is the sequel to Christmas at the Inn, which I originally published in 2015, with Annie Acorn Publishing LLC, but she retired at the end of 2019 and returned the rights to me, so I re-published it in January of 2020. Christmas at the Inn sold very well – over 40,000 copies, and when I first published it, readers were clamoring for more of the story, and I started the second story, but life and death happened, so it was several years before I got to finish editing and finally publish Sawdust and Dreams. Here’s the Amazon link for Sawdust and Dreams, in case you want to read it.

https://amzn.to/3sAypdT

Damn, I hate cancer! It’s been almost two and a half years since TT died, and it has only been in the last few months that words have begun to flow again. Trauma and loss will do that to a person. A friend told me she couldn’t write for four years after her husband died.

Anyway, I’m not here to lament. I’m here to say hello.

I think another book might be underway, but what has finally taken hold is a need and desire to keep a journal. I really enjoy the freedom of it, and sometimes what comes through gives me pause. Perhaps you keep a journal as well and have experienced the same. Where do those profound thoughts come from, anyway? I don’t know, but I sure like exploring it. My higher self tells me repeatedly that I should write for myself and not worry about anything else. If I do that, everything else will fall into place. That is what I have chosen to believe and am following suit.

From a page a few weeks ago:

Thank you for words, but where does my eloquence go when I pick up my pen? It flies away, to a tree top, perhaps, from where it taunts me about my inability to reach it. This morning I will turn my back on Miss Fickle Eloquent and write gratitude with simplicity, but no less from my heart.

Thank you for reading this. I’ll be back.

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Once Upon a Time in College

October 25, 2020 at 10:30 am (Uncategorized)
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It’s been a while, and lot has happened.

Some of you know I went back to college a few years ago to finish my degree as an adult. I’d put it off for thirty years, mainly because I would need to take a math class. Don’t get me wrong, I love Mathematics, and I respect the elegance of it, I love the fact that there is a solution somewhere, always. But when I look at a word problem, all I see is spaghetti that moves around on its own, and my brain gets tangled around the fork in numbing confusion. Nevertheless, two tutors later, and having taken advantage of every incentive, I passed Algebra (this is so humiliating) with an A.

Please feel free to ignore the above paragraph, because this blog post has nothing to do with Mathematics.

TT died. He did battle with pancreatic cancer, an assault from the blindside, and after fifteen grueling months, he surrendered his beleaguered body and transitioned to the other side of the veil. I’m still reeling with grief, although most of my friends and family might not know it. I can put on a good show when I need to. And besides, no one needs to hear me screaming into a pillow or watch as I curl into a fetal position with a teddy bear to sob myself to sleep.

Nope.

All this leads me to this morning’s venture into Cleaning Things Out. Not just TT’s things, which I can work on for about fifteen minutes before collapsing in a heap on the floor, but the whole messy collection of things that will need to go if I ever decide to sell my house.

Today it was notebooks and binders from college, which have been cluttering up a perfectly good bookshelf since 2014. The only time I’ve looked at them was to consider tossing them. Somehow they are always returned to the shelf, because “I might need it” someday.

Today proved my point, sort of. While searching for a blank notebook I found one with only a few pages used up, marked “Fairy Tales”. Good, I can start a story with this one, as soon as I rip out these pages, which led me to read the pages, which led me to a classroom assignment. I think we were given fifteen minutes to come up with something, and then we read our words to the class.

Maybe it’s the magic of fairy tales, or maybe I was supposed to read this today. Either way, this post is getting to be long, so here’s my contribution to that class. WARNING: It’s rough.

I may have been unexpected, but she didn’t seem to mind. She wasn’t as I expected her to be, but that was okay too. It had been a long walk from the castle, two dawns with a descent of pitch darkness in between. Somehow, I needed no sleep, even as my body protested with weariness and my eyes grew gravelly and dry.

Persist. Step by Step. Keep going.

“You must go,” he had said. “Find the Collector, find your Magic. It won’t be on her shelf, but you will find it there. She will show you what it isn’t.” My father’s last words were spent on this sighed instruction to me, a priceless gift. “Do not take your horse. The horse will find you when you need him,” he had said.

So, I wrapped the borrowed heavy cloak around my shoulders, pulled the hood over my head for added security, and set out along the path away from the castle.

The guards will be in a frenzy by now, looking for the fair Princess, who keeps her pace along the river, in search of a cottage made of blue stone, just across the hidden bridge. The Queen will be pacing in her chamber, anxious for news of the Princess, a step-daughter beyond reprove, but despised nevertheless.

“One foot and then the other,” I told myself.

Finally, just as the sun reached its peak for the day, and my stomach moaned its hungry lament once again, the bridge appeared, and across the river at a wide turn just beyond a foggy mist, sat a cottage built of blue stone.

The woman by the front door wore purple with golden brocade edging. A woman wearing purple stirring a pot of soup – an oddity.

She looked up, unsurprised. “I’ve been waiting for you,” was her greeting. “Have some soup and bread, and we will begin.”

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Lighting a Fire for Heat Means Losing the Tree

March 14, 2010 at 8:53 am (grief, Uncategorized)
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I’ve been thinking a lot about losses lately.

Not because of a melancholy mood, but because of a class I am taking this semester:  The Philosophy of Death and Dying.   Focusing on death is not the crux of this class.  On the contrary, our professor wants us to see this as a life course and an opportunity for us to learn how to live our lives honestly, lovingly, with open communication, and in such a way that when we do depart, the wake of regret and sorrow might be lessened.  When she told us on the first night of class that she had designed the class to not be academically challenging, I should have seen it coming.

Something about the timing of this class doesn’t sit right with me.  It is the spring semester, and instinctively I think of spring as a time of re-birth and renewal as opposed to fading and dying.  The garden starts to awaken with chives and Egyptian onions.  The crocuses seem to forget, one more time, that if they show themselves too early, they will be snowed upon, but for a few days my gardens show bright with these spunky purple bulbs, the blossoms of which remind me of a cordial glass, waiting to be filled with gentle spring showers.

This spring, however, it seems that I have been asked to return to the dark corners of my life and examine loss, how I have wasted precious time by indulging in anger, moodiness, selfishness, procrastination, and self-pity.  It feels like a patch of rough burlap has been stitched to the inside of my shirt.  It chafes, and it hurts, and the only way to rid myself of these discomforts is to find it and carefully remove it without ruining the fabric by trying to tear it out too quickly.

Our text for this course is “On Death and Dying”, by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and it has been an enlightening read, but years and years ago, TT introduced me to “How to Survive the Loss of  Love”, and I have sobbed my way through that book more than once.  At one time we bought all the copies we could find to share with friends who were in the middle of loss and its ensuing befuddlement.  Seems to me we went through them rather quickly.

Losses can be cleverly disguised.  I think about the surprises people face when they retire from a long career, or the empty feeling that might surface once a project is completed, especially if it was a difficult one, or one that required a lot of time.  What about weight loss, even?  Even though it is a positive loss if carefully crafted and not due to illness, it is a loss.  Where’d that former person go – poof!  They are no longer with us, and a new, unfamiliar form has taken their place and assumed their name.  Buyer’s remorse?  Is that a form of grief?  Lighting a fire for heat means losing the tree.  The last bite of a delicious meal means there is no more, and the loss of that fleeting delight.  Can we talk about this?

I’d love to know what you think, because, well…I’m at a loss.

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