Confession #2

OK! I can’t do it! I thought I could, but I can’t. It’s too soon. I’ve not unraveled myself enough from my 33 year marriage to step out with another man.

I thought I could translate my yearning for comfort and companionship to an attitude of adventure and searching. The reality is I yearn for Y‘s arms, his lips, his crazy sense of humor, his world view. He was my anchor in the everyday world of living.

I could count on him to be hungry for lunch at 12 noon sharp and dinner at 6 PM. I could depend on his ability to sort through my moments of confusion about a priority, friendships, food preparations, broken equipment and come up with just the right question or observation or capable hands to settle me back into place. Who else could do that? Who knows me that well? No one! And, I have to face the fact that I don’t have another 33 years to break someone into that role.

So here it is again, that grief of having lost my buddy, of wanting my life back the way it was. I’ve allowed this dating service idea to screw with my head, to be the making or breaking of my self worth, and I’m not going to do it anymore. My value is not out there, it’s inside me and here I am learning that lesson again. Maybe it’s one I never quite understood fully until now. Maybe it’s an age old problem we all face again and again.

So I’m sweeping the pieces of myself that splintered onto the floor when I waited for some kind of reply or acceptance from complete strangers on the internet. I’m putting these pieces into a little paper bag and I will reconstruct the Earlene I wish to be. I have a better idea of whom I have been and what I’m about than anyone else. This way if a piece of the puzzle doesn’t fit in one place, I can put it somewhere else and honor the developing picture of me as I go.

Thank goodness I haven’t made too much of a flirty fool of myself. Thank God I looked up the last fellow who gave me his name. Turns out he’s going to trial in January for sexual battery and assault. Somehow the Universe and Great Spirit have a better plan for me or I wouldn’t have gotten that information before meeting him.

There I feel better. I guess confession is good for the soul

I Must Confess

I didn’t realize it, but I inadvertently joined the 39%. That’s the percentage increase of men and women over the age of 50 who are now participants in On-Line dating sites. (I didn’t make that number up. I saw it on the news!)

Being on the leading edge of the baby boomer generation, I’m a little flummoxed by this experience. I don’t feel like a pioneer of the movement or even that I know any of the rules. There are so many decisions to make; I’ve had to take over a month to design my greeting which involves describing who I am. It’s taken even longer for me to figure out what I’m looking for.

I started this experience in June and got so anxious when I received flirts and winks and 24 hits in less than five days, I disconnected from the site.

Now in November, I decided to check out the process again. I’m thinking many men have embellished their descriptions of themselves. I guess women do the same thing. This reminds me of high school where competition for approval and dating social strata was more than I could deal with. When I read these men’s descriptions with such adjectives as kind, sincere, trustworthy, likeable, friendly, with a good sense of humor, and I see they are also divorced, I wonder what kind of woman walked out on that? What are all these men not saying? My cynicism tells me there is a disconnect between their views of themselves and the reality of another person’s observations.

I’m more than a little anxious about one of the characteristics of this site. If I click to learn more about a man, my actions get noted on their personal profile. So since I haven’t been able to keep profiles and pictures straight, I’ve been clicking on ones I thought I remembered to see if I have the correct details. On their end, they must think I’m stalking them. When I save their profile to a favorite list, they know about that too.

I have the same deal, and it has had the effect of making me check the site every hour to see if anyone has looked at my profile. I’m appalled at myself. I’m a grown woman glued to a dating site to make me feel like I’m some kind of attractive. It has done nothing for me but screw with my head. I even squealed when some guy 'faved' me and, so far only one man has. We met for coffee and you’d have thought I was no more that 15 years old. When I’m looking at it logically, I tell myself I’m just trying to understand what the dating scene is out in the world now. When I look at it with a little more honesty, I have to admit living in the mountains in the middle of all this lovely wild life and mountains is a bit lonesome. But what am I looking for? I’m beginning to suspect the experience of being on the site is the end of the process because, after the one and only uninspiring coffee date, I’m not really ready to jump into the next phase of meeting men. That experience took the wind out of my sails. Maybe that’s why I’m keeping the areas of my profile searches limited to New Jersey, Maine, and Florida. I won’t be embarrassed by someone at the grocery store asking, “Didn’t I see you on Senior People Meet.com? Gosh your picture made you look ________!” (Choose your own embarrassing adjective: thinner, younger, more rested, or sexy.)

A Helpful Memory

One of my all-time favorite, comfy, cozy drinks is a combination of coffee, hot chocolate, creamer, and sweetener. I remember in nurses’ training, I was able to concoct this drink in the distinctive St. Luke’s mug I received from my Big Sister (someone whose name I just can’t remember). We weren’t allowed to have hot plates in our rooms but I’d found an electric heating coil I could plug in then immerse the metal into the mug of cold water. In less than five minutes, I had bubbling water. Instant coffee, instant cocoa, powdered creamer, and a package of sugar did the trick.

My stash of instant products was kept in a metal tin next to the kitty cat light my Dad had donated to my room from his sojourn in the Philippines just before he retired from the Marines. The lamp itself stood 16 inches high on a black plastic base large enough to also hold an opaque glass figurine of a kitten with its tail curled around its feet.

The bulb inside the cat acted as a night light so my Dad or I always had some kind of warm, glowy greeting when we returned from dinner. His evening meal was shared in a mess hall with hundreds of other Marines. My last meal of the day was in St. Luke’s Hospital's cafeteria which served patients’ families, staff, doctors, interns, residents, and lowly student nurses.

Sometimes I’d make my special drink first thing in the morning as I dressed before attending the required chapel service instead of eating a healthy breakfast or during a weekend afternoon of studying as a treat. Remembering my ritual now and digging through the cupboards to find the powered hot chocolate, which must be at least ten years old, I wondered why I never made my special drink for my first or second husbands or even my kids.

Maybe it was because my first husband was addicted to Pepsi for his caffeine fix. My second husband was a purist and liked his coffer black. I think I didn’t want to introduce caffeine when my two were young and now my daughter likes some kind of Star Buck mixture and my son takes his as strong as possible.

Maybe it’s because I wanted to keep a little something just for me without exposing it to criticism or opinions or possible rejection. It’s just mine and no one else has to like it.

The kitty-cat light is long gone, and the mixture now has decaf coffee and no added sugar instant cocoa with non-dairy creamer and stevia. Oh well.

Interesting how I pulled the memory forward to this time while I’m learning the ropes at living alone and did it on a gray day with wild winds battering the trees. Another sign I’m learning to care for myself again.

Teacher Relearns a Lesson

When I was teaching “Choosing to Change”, a course for Tobacco Cessation, I used several experiential techniques to help smokers handle cravings so they could become non-smokers. I never promised them their cravings would go away, but I did promise they could survive them. I ran across these exercises again today when I was cleaning my office. I needed the lesson, not because I want to stop smoking, but because I just want to stop feeling sad.

Our minds are so strong. Mental images dash about from one picture to another and can leave us confused or out of sorts. Other images can fire off all manner of hormonal releases in our bodies. Just remember a romantic encounter and feel your sexual organs perk-up. Focus on every strange sound around you while walking down a street at night and feel adrenalin rush in as your heart beats faster and your breathing shallows.

When we’ve experienced any kind of trauma or ecstasy, imprints remain. All our experiences involve not just a brain memory but a physical, emotional, and spiritual memory of that experience as well. The next time a similar situation of greater or lesser degree occurs, we can have a similar response either appropriate or inappropriate to the degree of that trigger.

One of the techniques I employed required that a clothes pin be attached to a finger. It was meant to cause a bit of discomfort. Each class participant was told to concentrate on the pinching sensation and report the degree of pain. The longer they concentrated on it, the more intense the pinch became. Then I had them slap their other hand against their leg and asked again for a report on their degree of pain. They admitted there was less sense of pinching but they really felt the slapping. When they focused entirely on the slapping, they had no feeling of pinching. I had them switch their attention between the pinch and the slapping several times until they finally got the point. They could choose which sensation on which to focus.

All this now helps me realize again I am responsible for what my mind can do. I can rerun my current situation which involves a high degree of loss and see all the details of my last two years of experiences, or I can look outside myself and see what there is next to do: turn oak leaves into the garden, change the generator oil, finish sewing a birthday present. I can choose to focus on my pain of aloness, or I can call someone to share a dinner or an outing. Even with regards to the events in the world, I have a choice: I can watch every news program and worry about the bombings in Israel, the loss of life in Afganistan, the value of the dollar and the state of the economy, or I can cook soup and take it to someone alone and on chemotherapy. I have any number of other things I can do to help myself or others within the framework of my life.

I can choose to change the focus of my mind. My situation and that of the world may not change, but I will survive and move through it all.

Another Beginning

Since a journey begins with a single step, then perhaps a blog can start with one word. That, at least, was my thought as I stared at this blank page.

My inclination to write my thoughts has been tempered by my hesitancy to share the repetition of my emotions which have ridden higher than the summer sun as it crosses the sky and lower than the deepest rift in the ocean. I fell into this inability to write by getting caught in the admonition that what if no one wants to read about this emotional rollercoaster ride of mine. Everyone is having their own problems these days. Everyone has lost, is losing, or is about to lose someone or something dear to them. It might be a loved one, and it could be their home. I am not the only one, and with this I became self-conscious about my runaway emotions, not wanting to admit that I might be having trouble with my ‘insights’ by not being inspired by my own revelations. They weren’t sticking to me.

I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t stable, that I couldn’t be an example of how to be in control of my situation, let alone myself.

A friend reminded me I wasn’t supposed to be. My focus was my process, sharing the difficulties of widowhood with all its stumbling moments, sharing the fact that somehow I was getting through it, and sharing the glimmers of hope I saw periodically.

I pondered this. There have been times when I was in fetal position and didn’t know what to hope for except that the pain in my belly might go away.

It, I am glad to report, is lessening. My mind has alternately moved from numbness to one with an occasional idea that has led to an action but then back to a period of paralysis until I can get up again.

I don’t know what I would be doing without the women friends who take turns calling and checking up on me. I couldn’t get through many of my days without my growing relationship with flower essences and my personal processing supported by several techniques I’ve been learning, such as process coaching, EFT, and of course Reiki and praying with my chanupa.

After a sauna session last week, I looked out the glass door at the decking. To the right I saw a fuzzy caterpillar purposely scuttling across the slatted deck. He/she followed some unseen path, once getting sidetracked by a scratch in the weathered wood. He/she returned to is chilling path next to an abyss much larger than its own width between the wooden planks. He/she would veer toward the dark pit then save itself. Finally it stopped, seemed to assess its position. Aiming directly at the far plank of wood, he/she pitched itself across what must’ve seemed like a ravine then pulled its many legs onto a new 'terra firma'. Head down, he/she continued to the left of me on the new board, its many feet following each other.

How could I deny the lesson? ‘Keep going forward, Earlene, and, when it’s time to make the leap to another plank on the path, just do it. Just take the next first step; just write the next first word.’

More Than I Thought

When I received the call from Harry Charger last November that he wanted to honor Y at “Healing the Earth” Sundance, I didn’t give a second thought to saying, “OK, I’ll be there.”

From there, I figured blithely, in my head, “Why not head up to the Manitoba Sundance too?”

And so a plan was formed, a focus created, and I worked toward the goal of making things for two giveaways, plus gathering what I might need for a road trip and two sessions of camping. I don’t know what I was thinking!!!

In fact, I might not have been thinking at all, especially when the invitation came in the mail for the wedding of Shamla, Y’s niece. That was scheduled for the weekend between the two Sundances, and of course, I again, without batting an eyelash, sent in my RSVP. I called my sister-in-law to see if I could stay with them for the weekend and drive the two hours to and from the wedding. I was even more pleased to learn Kate was having a small family reunion to introduce her daughter Sara’s new husband and his daughter to everyone. “Wonderful,” I thought. “What a perfect way to connect with friends and family.”

It wasn’t until the hour before I got in the car and left on this trip that I realized how massive a challenge I had set before me. “Who in the world thought this was a good idea?” I asked as I stomped around the stuffed car the morning I had to leave. I couldn’t get into the car. I hadn’t been on a road trip by myself since 1968 when I drove from California to Colorado to meet my first husband at his new duty station. That time I’d been snowed in for three days at Rawlins, Wyoming. What was going to happen this time?

After crying, hollering, and calling a long time friend, I finally managed to get myself into the car and pull out of the driveway. My only recourse was to keep the overview in mind and make a decision as each was needed.

The first day saw me dealing with a flat tire. That’s another story.

The second day had me driving over part of a truck tire which dislodged something under my car.

The third day I got my first ticket ever. I was only going 52 mph in a 40 mph construction zone, but it was Wyoming. I had to pull off the freeway to sob and stomp around the car again.

Finally on my way, I asked the powers that be, “What am I suppose to be learning here? What are you trying to tell me?”

A sign passed me on the right. “Pay Attention or Pay the Price”

That’s when I realized there was more to this trip than my going where Y was to be honored. It was more than my ‘bringing’ giveaway items to say thank you to everyone who had prayed for us and been a part of our lives for all our years on the Sundance trail.

I was on a quest of my own. It hadn’t occurred to me!!! I had to make this trip to touch more of those who had been so much a part of our lives and in some cases, say goodbye. I needed to be with people who had their own memories of him and us and the way we had lived. I needed to pray in ceremony and ask for help. And I definitely needed the reminder to pay attention to all the thoughts in my head, the offerings from nature, as well as the short, personal contacts I would make on the road. Everything that had happened, was happening, and was going to happen was to give me messages and ideas of what I am to do next.

I’m on my way home now. Shared tears and laughter have helped to mend this woman’s broken heart. I’ve found strengths I didn’t know I had. I’ve been lectured and pampered. I’ve been hugged and pinched. It’s been a trip I thought was going to bring closure and instead has helped me make a new beginning.

Today's Life Metaphor

OK, more lessons. Walking behind a three-wheeled cart this morning with laundry from the kitchen and the nurses’ dome, plus facing piles of sleeping bags in which a few campers had accidents during the night, I wondered what my metaphor of learning for the day was.

“Keep it clean!”

“Air my darkest secrets in the sun.” (There is no dryer so I hang everything out.)

Nothing seemed to fit til I realized every step I took with this make-shift cart required I tilt it onto its back tires and shift the direction of the front one so I can keep heading in the direction of the wash house.

A teen staff member passed me and asked, “How're you doing?” My flip answer was “I’m constantly making adjustments.”

He had no idea what I meant. I could tell by the nod of his head and the fact he kept walking.

And that’s my truth today.

I was living in a bubble before Y died. We had a predicable routine because we lived for ourselves, his need and mine. Family was non-demanding and actually lived in other towns. Like most of the snow birds parked in RVs on the desert in winter, we had separated ourselves from hometown life and built a unique community where planning games and songs and barbecues were the biggest challenges.

That’s not what my life is about anymore. I’ve thrown myself into quilting, pillow cases for Hospice, volunteering at the library and local little theater and other self-assignments. These activities have filled a few hours and helped me meet people.

Underneath it all are the demands of keeping my home intact, cooking for one, paying bills, and developing a routine for one where once there were two.

Each day, I have to make another adjustment in my attitude about life or what works or doesn’t work as a problem solving technique.

Just like the way we move into a relationship with another person with communication and compromise, now I’m making a relationship with myself, finding out what I like and don’t , where I want to go, what I want to do, and making this life work again for me. If I make a change, and don’t like it, I get to adjust it again, and again. I guess we all do. It just happened to come up as my understanding for this day.

One Giant Step for Earlene

As anyone can tell who’s has been waiting for me to add to my blog, writing has become a secondary activity recently. I needed something else to get me up in the morning and through my day. My interest in flower essences has not waned. Yet, worry about my situation and of course my future was overwhelming me. So when the opportunity came to work as the Laundry Lady at Camp WinnaRainbow, I took the job voluntarily.

Not only did I get up in the morning, I started walking and using muscles which didn’t remember the last time they’d been used.

To me the main benefit has been I’ve gotten out of my rut. Set-up for camp was hard but the main reward was being served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Especially so since I hadn’t eaten three meals a day in over nine months. My body packed it in til I realized my size 14 clothes were too tight and wouldn’t stretch another millimeter. I was able to participate in some of the classes during Experimental Adult Camp and thoroughly enjoyed the production numbers in the evenings.

Life got full, too full, if that’s possible. Along the way I found someone willing to weed-eat my yard for $10/hour, and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders to have the house more fire defensible.

Now ‘we’ (I feel like staff although just as an ancillary one) we have 150 campers and 80 staff members with seven administrators. Seems like a lot but it keeps the ratio of two campers to one teen staff or adult staff. The organization and caring at this camp is astounding. I'm not seeing any camper fall through the cracks, whether he or she is homesick, befuddled, excited about stilt walking, or tired.

So now I’m looking forward to my first day off. I’m ready to start putting my camping gear together for my treck this summer. Best thing I ever did was volunteer to step out of my routine and step in to a different life. I recommend the action wholeheartedly.

A Tangent

Twenty five years ago, my family would be rolling their eyes and saying, “There goes Mom again. Off on another one of her tangents.”

And, Yes,I am. Now it’s only my friends who are rolling their eyes and sighing while I go on and on about flower essences. One would think I’d discovered them for the first time in the history of man or woman kind by the degree of my enthusiasm.

The fact is I’ve been toying around with their magic since the mid eighties. I just hadn’t truly understood them before because I categorized them under the heading of magic. I thought these little bottle of tinctures were there as helpers from beyond me, my self hood, my world. The fact of the matter is that they are co-creators with me.

It seems that the unifying concept I’ve been espousing all these years of ‘We are all one.” Is more than what I conceptualized after reading the book by the same name. The scientific, metaphoric, and spiritual truths I tripped over while reading that book (and yes the family rolled their eyes for months as I ranted over these concepts) made such sense and has influenced how I live my life every day.

Now through the writings of Machaella Wright, (Behaving as if the God in all Life Mattered) I’ve gotten a step closer to living in even closer relationship to this oneness. She describes her growing a veggie and flower garden in such balance that insects are helpers rather than destroyers. Our bodies have the same relationship with viruses, bacteria, and fungi. These can be helpers not destroyers. When we (or they) become imbalanced, disease and illness can occur. When we (and they) are in balance we help each other. We don’t have to fight a cold. We come into balance with ourselves and all that lives within us. Pretty cool!

The other wondrous thing is that when I test for an essence that I might need to help me through times when I’m not feeling well, the description of what that particular essence assists with on an energetic level fits my emotional imbalance as well.

So I’m just riding the wave of this particular insightfulness while treating my educational process to the books, essences ,and workbooks it needs to learn all it can. It’s given me a new focus and another tool to help me meet the challenges of my present situation. It’s also helping me with my concerns about the future downturn of the economy I sense coming.

I had to smile when I read Michaella’s paragraph detailing her enthusiasm for her work. She admits to having “…this overwhelming urge to grab them (people) by the neck, shake them silly, and shout ‘Don’t you understand that these things could be one of the most important things you’ll ever incorporate in your life?’”

I’m sure she’s met her own share of eye rollers. I feel I am in good company.

Not a Good Day

I wasn’t having a very good day today. It’s not like there was anything life-threatening that happened. Just a lot of little things started overwhelming me.

There is no doubt in my mind that many things went wrong at once or over a period of time when my husband was alive. Machines stopped working, orders got mixed up in the mail, and plans went awry. However, I don’t remember them being as traumatic as they are now.

I only remember the two of us working through each catastrophe or upset. If he had the better expertise to deal with the situation, I would step back and watch him take care of it. If I had the better handle on the problem, he’d stand beside me as I took up the responsibility to make the situation better. We were a team.

Now, it’s like I’ve got no right arm.

In the beginning, I must’ve been in some kind of bubble. I really thought that I was going to be able to handle this new life. Today, I’m not so sure.
The weeds are over knee high, and I can’t seem to get up enough nerve to try to start the very tricky weed eater. At least I found the two cycle oil and know the proportion to put into its gas tank. My salvation is that it’s going to rain tomorrow so I might as well wait until after this next batch of rain and try the weed eater later. I can pull the weeds into the veggie garden by hand if need be and wear high boots so I don’t step on a snake.

I only want to grow three tomato plants, some broccoli, some chard, and some green beans and cucumbers. I need to turn over the soil in the blue barrels we set up to prevent the moles from eating the bugs around any plants’ roots and making them topple over. However, the ground has gotten hard. Maybe if I wait until the rain comes through, the ground will be softer and I can handle the turning fork in the clay. I’ve got a chance to dredge some mushroom compost from the remnants of a pile my neighbor got. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to cart it up from down the hill. I don’t have the strength to wheelbarrow it up. Maybe I can put boxes in the back of the Tracker and shovel some into them then drive them up and put them in the wheelbarrow and get it to the garden. It seems like such a little thing for me to do, but it’s overwhelming without the man strength I depended on for so long.

And then there’s the motor home I’ve been trying to keep running for the past eight months in the hope I can sell it. Now there’s a little red light on the screen that won’t go off that looks like it means I need to put water in the radiator. I can’t figure out which tube goes to the radiator and what to do about it anyway. Fortunately I met the Diesel Repairman at the post office who has promised to come out to see what I’m talking about.

That’s the other thing. I’ve contacted a solar expert who was going to help me figure out the solar and battery system who has never returned. I had someone who was going to weed eat, but they got poison oak and haven’t been able to work in the sun. Two people have said they would come out and help me chain saw the oversized oak wood into smaller pieces so I can use them in the wood stove. Another one has said he would come and cut the downed wood into smaller pieces from the fire break I hired done. And another person said they’d come and help me clear out the second room in the shed so I can convert it into a work space. No one’s showed up. I’m living on ‘promises’ and I’m frustrated.

The last thing that went wrong today was the computer wouldn’t boot up. I sat and prayed and cursed and prayed some more. I turned it off and on several times and still it wouldn’t boot. I finally hollered and screamed and turned it off and left to go into town where I promptly lost it and cried like a baby in someone’s arms (I don’t remember her name, but she knew me.) I asked a few people for help, and we’ll see. The hardest thing in the world for me is to ask for help. When it doesn’t ever come, I feel like maybe I wasn’t supposed to ask or that somehow I don’t deserve it. I can do a great number on my own head where this topic is concerned.

But I did ask, and now when I got home, for some unknowable, but magical, reason, the computer decided to work. Gratitude showers through my body and clears my mind with thanksgiving for any small bit of grace the universe would like to provide me. Hopefully the rest of the mundane problems with the physicality of life will begin to be answered as well. (Maybe even magically!!) I can only hope!

A Mourning Insight

Flames flared as I sparked the lighter under grasses I’d collected and dried last year during weed-whacking season. One small flame traveled the length of one dried stick and lit at least 20 other thin reeds. Nothing stopped its travel in all directions, not even the damp kindling I’d propped on top. The billows of smoke told me something was perking underneath and sure enough, after what seemed like an inward gasp for air, fire whooshed through the pile.

I hadn’t intended to set off another burn pile this morning. I’d only intended to clean around the sweat lodge and fire pit after our women’s circle last evening. But when I saw the dew was still on the meadow grasses, I knew I needed to take advantage of the night’s moisture. “Neatening things up,” my dad would say. “Getting things done,” my mother would say. “Good job,” Y would’ve said. “Procrastinating,” I told myself.

My original plan for the morning was to clear the area, reposition the tarps to deter weeds, then work on the next quilted wall hanging. It’s not that I didn’t want to pursue a creative project. So maybe I wasn’t putting anything off.

Feeling the sun across my shoulders and smelling the freshness of the spring day, I had moved from one focus to the next. That’s how I’d ended up watching and tending the fire. From two other piles needing to be burned, I hauled branches and limbs, building this bonfire higher and larger. Suddenly I stopped and realized the more I piled on, the hotter the fire became, like when I set a direction to my thoughts.

My body became warm from the inside as an understanding brightened my awareness.

If I snag a thought that causes my reactive self to anger, I can pull in one thing after another to feed that anger until I’m ranting and raving in my mind and slamming around the house. If I start a thread of memory around my loss of Y, I unravel every memory of every moment in the hospital or here at home loosening my heart to a point where I cave into a puddle.

I stopped feeding the fire and just tended to it as it was. I saw it begin to burn itself out. With no fuel, the original flame consumed what was present. If I stop feeding innocent enough beginnings of fierce emotions, perhaps I won’t be over-ridden for days with rage or weeks with sorrow. I can choose when to stop feeding my consciousness with inflammatory details, and I can choose what to feed into my awareness.

Today it’s purple and yellow wildflowers cuddling the curves of a green, rolling landscape and the smell of burning wood.

I’ve Learned One More Important Lesson

Now I feel like I’ve been a pompous ass whenever I’ve walked beside my friends with cancer. Somehow I thought I could see the karma and dharma of their lives and know the reasons for this wild-growing, crazy disease taking over their bodies.

One friend long ago, I was sure, had brought back her rapid-growing, metastatic breast cancer after beating it for four years because she couldn’t figure any other way to get out of a marriage with a domineering husband. What did I know? I certainly have had no right to second guess another friend’s ovarian cancer as being the result of her holding her emotions in check or another’s for feeling powerless. Who have I thought I was?

Now I realize I’ve been nothing but a mis-informed, mis-quided, well-meaning ego trying to assert some kind of control over my own fear regarding the big “C”.

Why my husband contracted this disease sits on my chest and makes me scream. I can come up with my theories but it serves no purpose now. Even the oncologist said he didn’t think it was because of his 22 years of accumulated smoking. The cell structure was too rounded and contained. He ‘guessed’ it was more a matter of Y having inhaled some piece of something forming an irritated space in his right lung. The irritation allowed a weakness where the mutating organism could begin. What made it begin? No one knows that for sure either. Yes, it could have been because of a depressed immune system, or a lot of stress that reduces the body desire on a cellular level to fight back. There could have been an emotional component. There also could have been a cancer gene in his DNA pool. And it could have been all of the above.

All I can say is that I’m shutting up with my theories. There is no room for them in my heart-felt wish to just be available to someone who’s going through their process of believing they’ll beat back this destroyer of lives.

After having watched Y move through his own stages of denial, negotiation, anger, acceptance and release, I can only hope others will find their peace with this challenge. I hope I can be there and offer support as they make up their minds about what they want to do. I can cry with them if it helps them. I can offer an opinion regarding the long term effects of chemo and radiation and holistic treatments, if they want to ask me. Maybe I can even suggest they make peace with whatever they have become afraid of or wish they could have changed about their lives.

I know for certain I will respect their path with better care and refrain from putting them in some kind of box that serves only one purpose: of making me more comfortable rather than assessing and assisting them with their needs.

A Little Bit on Aging

After so many years of traveling through the various stages of being a kid, a teenager, a young adult, an adult, a middle-ager, I have been inclined to look at an older person and think, “There but for the grace of God…” I don’t see my gray hair or the wrinkled edges to my eyes until I look in the mirror. That’s when I have to wonder who the old woman is. Or, why is that old woman following me around?

Now I’m realizing the ‘age-challenged woman’ isn’t out ‘there’. She’s in ‘here’!

I have the tendency when I set myself to a task like: “Age Well, Earlene,” to jam through the assignment! The fact is: I’ve decided this time that I’d rather not push myself too soon into the next phase beyond this reality, thank you. I decided to take an assessment of what my body, emotions, mind, and spirit might be feeling about this current process, like a personal CAT scan or MRI.

Physically, this process has been on-going due to my 66 years of non-stop use and gravity. I’m short by a little, wider by a lot. I have bald spots, and my hair is not the luxurious mane it once was. The ringing in my ears stops me from hearing certain sound vibrations and soft voices. I have a cataract growing which will require surgery in five years, or so the doctor says. I can still exercise with five pound weights, but I have to be creative in lifting over 20 pounds. Veins are beginning to bulge in my calves instead of muscles. My arms are showing signs that what once was on top is now flapping at the bottom.

Everything is wrinkled: brow, lips, cheeks, chin, neck, arms, and hands. What isn’t wrinkled, sags. Those youthful, perky breasts are flatter with wall-eyed nipples, and I have a little pot belly. I leak urine and fart. Aches and pains let me know which joints I’m using, and my hands fall asleep at the darndest times. So do my feet

Emotionally, I switch between sad and mad, but mostly I’m scared because I’m alone and on my own. Some days I can get out of bed and look forward to the day of possibilities. Others I pull the covers over my head and try to hide.

Mentally, I need much more self-talk to keep me on task, and I need lists to remind me of commitments and what I’ve used up in the refrigerator or shelves. I can figure things out over time, and I continue to have interest in life around me. I can still do basic arithmetic and figure angles when I’m laying the new cedar floor in the closets. I’m getting better at Sudoku, and I thoroughly enjoy many creative interests.

Spiritually, I find I’m talking to them more, the spirits that is. I believe they reside within the living things on the Earth as well as in the ethers. Or at least I think that’s who I’m talking to. I know I’m part of something greater than myself and that the essence of who I am is not my body or mind or emotions. These things are pieces of the expression of me in the world

So the only thing this aging phenomenon doesn’t seem to be hindering is my spirit. It seems to be taking the edge off my mental processes, confusing the heck out of my emotions at times, and majorly affecting my physical presence on this Earth plane. Maybe that’s the best answer, that aging is the dissolving of my human trappings so my Spirit can shine through. To do that well might be a matter of attitude and acceptance.

(Taken from an essay for a recent class on aging.)

A Step in My Shoes

The frost covers more of the meadow this morning than I’ve seen before, clear to the top of the hill instead of cuddled in the lower southeastern half always in winter shadow. I love this place where I’ve been living for 25 years. Rocks and trees, manzanitas and creosote bushes are my friends as well as the quail, wild turkeys, and ravens. Raccoon prints in the snow and bear prints in the spring mud tell me there are as many unseen friends who live here as there are seen. A skunk will make itself known with is passing odor as well as a coyote with its distinctive call. Red fox and hawks also trot and swoop near me.

My family and I weren’t the first to live here. Because of the many unfinished arrow heads discovered near the base of the large rock beside the meadow, history buffs concluded our property was a summer campground for indigenous peoples. South of here is the trail between Covelo (Round Valley) and the ocean where inlanders made their annual trecks for fishing and the gathering of kelp and sea weed. Perhaps ours was an encampment for overnighters. At one time, the underground spring might have sparkled along the surface of the Earth, following a gravity-dictated path toward the valley. Now it’s only a winter creek, swollen and babbling after a heavy rainstorm.

I’ve never lived this long in one place in all my 66 years. So to contemplate moving tightens my chest and leaves a hole in my belly.

Where would I go? What could be more beautiful than here? How could I survive in a ticky-tacky, postage stamp house in suburbia after living in an octagon-shaped house in the middle of 40 acres of forest land? How could I squish myself into a one bedroom apartment after spreading my wings in 1200 square feet of space?

How would I find peaceful quiet in the rush of traffic at all hours of the day or night?

But how can I stay here on my own with all the challenges of wood heat, solar powered electricity, a well, and on and on?

I’m at a total loss to picture an alternative given the state of the current economy. I’m just making it! And should I move I’d have to work to pay the bills. I have to bring in extra money as it is so I don’t dip into savings each month.

I want to stop vacillating every day between staying or going and make some kind of commitment so I can think of other things, and there is no easy answer. In fact, right now there is no answer at all. All I can do is keep my heart open with my head clear so I can form any kind of question about my situation. I want to believe I will be turned in the direction toward my future by paying attention to the steps I take each moment. My best hope is to make my footprints my own.

A New Normal

What’s clear about my focus is that I don’t have one save getting through this first year of widowhood. I seem to be flailing around between all the old possibilities of how to take up my time as a single person and leaving openings in my life for something new to walk in.

I’m not looking for a new partner, a man to save me. I have my doubts there is someone out there in the world who would want to take on the job. That’s not the point.

What I’d like to find is some ease with myself, some semblance of the old reality where I thrilled to wake up in the morning, and I felt a passion for such things as writing, gardening, putting pieces of material together in a planned fashion to form a pattern and eventually a quilt. I want to lose myself in the glory of a morning watching the sun chase the frost across the winter meadow.

Words. I want to enjoy words again. I want to piece them together and watch how they can play against each other and layer themselves against a backdrop to create a precious moment or some kind of tension.

I want to be able to describe a scene again with a new combination of words to inspire a thought or a feeling. Like: frosted silhouettes of oak and pine huddle against a sky webbed with filaments of white and gray clouds in front of a paling blue sky.

Or

The broken nose of the clay face re-hung on the tree trunk closest to the kitchen window smiled its familiar tooth-studded smile as if promising this morning was just like any morning before its mishap with the winter wind.

Richness . . . Beauty . . . Depth. I want it back in all the places of my life. Not this numbness creeping from outside toward my gut or invading my limbs from inside my heart like warriors wiggling out of their Trojan horse.

Yet, every time I turn around, my life’s rhythm is shattered, yet again with another memory another thing to do, or another mishap. I’m frozen in some kind of limbo and, try as I might to create a new norm, I fall back onto old habits and customs of behavior that used to bring me joy but help me dig a deeper hole into myself.

I’m discovering that eating doesn’t bring the same comfort. Pop corn is meant to be shared, tossed at another person, its smell to be enjoyed by two.

Dinners are meant to be prepared in concert with two pairs of hands.

Cookies and cakes are baked to please two sets of palates.

Beds are meant to be slept in and made together.

Sundays are best enjoyed with football and chilly walks holding hands along the frosty driveway to the freeway.

Everything else is second best. And I guess, that’s the new norm.

Showers are now personal rituals of cleansing my chakras rather than a prelude to an afternoon on the bed under the sun’s warmth next to a familiar body.
Meals are creative stir fries for one or small casseroles baked for four dinners.

Writing can be done anytime of the day or night with no one to stop the project in midstream and draw me onto another strand of thought.

Plans can be made on the spur of the moment. The house can be left however it is and returned to when its time.

Every silly little thing I set down stays where I leave it, and I can only blame my memory rather than my favorite, loving scapegoat if I can’t find something.

Silence can reign until I desire the company of music or radio or TV chatter.

I can’t say I’m busily successful with this new norm. I can’t say I like it very much. All I can admit to is that once in a while it’s OK. If I don’t think too hard and get smacked with a memory, I can put one foot in front of the other and walk through each moment, praying the numbness will thaw, and, when it does, my skin and heart will not hurt too much.

Memory Lane

I took a trip down memory lane last week by driving over Hecker Pass from Highway 101 into Watsonville, CA. This town is where my parents first retired after my dad’s time in the military. He went on to work at various jobs until he landed at Cabrillo College in the Community Services Department for the remainder of his working years. I attended my last three years of high school and all of junior college there. I also returned after nursing school in San Francisco for a few months until I got married and moved to Denver. I came home pregnant with my first child and waved goodbye to her father as he headed for Germany then I traveled there with a 10 month old baby. After five years of marriage, I returned a divorcee with two children for four years until I married again.

I’m not sure why I wanted to see all the different houses I’d lived in. Perhaps because there’s this big change in my life, and I wanted to return to a point in my past when I’d been in a similar precarious situation. Watsonville has been my touchstone, my grounding cord. It’s been the place where I’ve gathered myself together and shoved off again in another direction. I’ve been able to re-meet myself and my beginnings, see old friends and familiar places, reorient myself to who I am and where I might want to go for a next try at my life
But, I can’t return after 33 years; there’s nothing left there for me. I barely recognized the streets and the shopping centers. I did find the house I’d purchased on my own which reminded me of a kind of strength and decisiveness I’d forgotten I had at the age of 32. I sat in front of the dream house my mother had built on Pinto Lake, one which she can’t remember now because of her all-consuming dementia. I also found my dad’s grave and stood for a moment asking him to give me some kind of guidance.

What I’ve realized from my side trip is I wasn’t looking for a place all those years ago. I was looking for my roots, and the town wasn’t what I found each time I went back. My parents were what had given me the stability to find myself.
So I let the memory of my first driving expeditions with my mother fill my vision. She’d belt herself in and tell me where we were going and hope I made it. I remember her hands were gripped in her lap, and she’d hiss when I got too close to her side of the road. I can only imagine that sometimes she’d close her eyes to save her nerves.

She actually took me up the windy, switch-backed road of Hecker Pass as one of my driving assignments. Trucks routinely used it, and we faced many of them that first drive. I was moaning and groaning that I couldn’t do it. She must’ve summoned some super-mom strength and wouldn’t let me back down. “Just watch the center line of the road. Mark an imaginary point on the dash board so you can aim the car at that line and stay there. That’s the way you know you’re inside the line. Keep to it. Don’t let those trucks throw you off your aim.”

I remember aiming the first notch of the windshield wiper base at the center line, and I’d stay there. I didn’t have to keep gauging my distance from each of the trucks barreling toward me. I might have held my breath as each one blew past, but I held on, rather like holding to the middle of the road of life, I think.

As I stood by my father’s grave, knowing I haven’t finished grieving my loss of him for so many distorted reasons, I did remember one of his nightly remarks when I’d head for bed. Through the chirping, spring happy birds, I heard him say, “We made good memories today. More chances coming tomorrow.”

So many challenges seem to be heading straight at me. I can get so thrown off balance by bills I wasn’t expecting, downed trees in the driveway, roofing blown off the generator box and battery containers, frozen solar panels, and many more. Too many decisions line up in front of me: Do I move? Do I stay? What to sell? What to save? How do I make money to flesh out the minimal social security? And on and on. Some days, all I want to do is crawl back to bed and pull the covers over my head. I don’t want to think about anything.

I’ve tried screaming and shouting and whining and crying, but nothing changes my situation. Knowing where the center line is seems a better solution to stomping my feet and getting all bent out of shape because life isn't going exactly the way I’d planned. Remembering to make at least one good memory a day seems a bit easier than trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. I did get a bit of the comfort I was seeking,and these memories are things I can carry forward as my life line into my future.

To Dump or not to Dump

Alright, I admit it. After 33 years of marriage, you’d think I’d have realized it was me not him who had the most piles of inconsequential papers. Now my piles are having babies, and all are spilling out of the roll-top desk, covering most of my horizontal surfaces.

How I got to be a scrap saver has to be my next project toward enlightenment so I can stop my piles from growing so tall I‘ll shut out the darn light. And of course I’ll have to make an apology for all the huffy retorts to Y when he’d chide me for buying another file cabinet rather than cleaning out the ones that were overflowing.

Maybe my saving was because I was raised by depression era parents. After all, my father, for a time, was homeless with holes in his shoes and no coat in winter. My mom learned thriftiness to the point of fanaticism. The only influence keeping our home from resembling a hoarders retreat was that my mother actually used every scrap she saved. Between her follow-through and the military (we moved every 18 months to three years and were allowed only 3000 lb of household weight a move) we had a tidy house.

Before one such move, my 1st- Sgt, Marine Corps father took me through my top dresser drawers where I’d squirreled away all my precious bits of childhood paraphernalia. If I hadn’t used it or worn it in six months, out it went: broken necklaces, rocks, unfinished projects, one favorite sock. All had to go into the trash until I could reduce my favorite things into a shoe box.

Now I’ve got a three bedroom house chuck full of his and hers collections from the past with matching unfinished projects and things we might need for the future. I’m overwhelmed and can only console myself with reassurances that it’s not all mine. But I don't know what to do with his without going through it, unlike his promise that if anything ever happened to me he would cheerfully haul the contents of my office to the dump without looking at it. When he told me this, I was crushed, but I can see his point now. Fifty years of writing grows like Alice in Wonderland after biting a ‘grow’ cookie. In comparison, I do have more ‘stuff’ than he does. I’ll have to decide what to do with all the wonderful ideas I’ve saved for future reference, and before I eliminate any of his collections, I’m deciding to practice on my own. Thank goodness for Good Will and local thrift shops. Sending my prizes back into the world for someone else to collect eases the pain, a bit. Now all I have to do, after depositing my treasures at the back door, is stop myself from going in the front door to find other goodies.

Suggestion and Direction

“Take a risk” my horoscope says for today. My heart chatters in my chest like false teeth in a cartoon. “What kind of risk?” I ask myself. What more of a risk is there than me deciding to stay in my mountain home and learn how to survive alone.

“Ooops, reframe, Earlene,” I tell myself. I think: learn how to survive on my own.

I thought I had survived enough risks what with Momma Bear and her two cubs trying to climb onto the deck. Luckily the new railing installed the weekend before Y passed by two of his brothers was strong enough to deter the invasion.

Reglueing the gasket on the refrigerator door after four weeks of waiting for help was daunting. Yet, I managed to keep the gorilla snot recommended to me by a helpful advisor off the floor and myself and to spread it along the gaskets lengths around the door so that sucker would know I meant it to stick.

Going to a community dance and working in the kitchen was risky for me, as was helping out at the community Christmas dinner. I was afraid I would appear disloyal to Y. My attending a wedding reception at a country club was also a step outside my self image of a newly widowed woman.

And then there has been climbing on the roof to clean the stove pipe, driving in Monterey and Bay Area traffic, and bringing out my first novel, The Marriage Bundle.

What other possible risk could the stars be suggesting?

I read the rest of the email that’s arrived this morning and find a forward from a friend. There’s a poetry reading scheduled at the Muse in Willits this Sunday. A local author is being honored and, afterward, anyone else is invited to read some of their work. My body shivers and my heart repeats its chattering in my chest. I have a chap book of poems called, My Family Album.

Interesting how a suggestion and a direction arrived on the same day.

A Little Trouble with Inhouse Communications

Yesterday was a tough one for me. I had to face a next challenge: the one of realizing my body wasn’t dead, only my relationship as a wife. My mind, it seems, had conveniently forgotten to inform my rebel body about its current state of strict celibacy. Yesterday, it wasn’t taking any orders to be dead, and I experienced intense yearnings to be touched and stroked and kissed.

Sensitive parts gasped at any contact, thrilling me into bloody horniness; hence, my mind crashed because there is no one I want to touch me. There may never be again!!!! That was a totally unexpected, uncalled for, and overwhelming thought.

Besides, if the time comes when I’m no longer standing as a widow but as a single woman, I have to go through the demonizing process of picking and choosing again. The thought of dating, well, that puts me in a state of paralysis. I remember multitudes of evenings spent with a book, very few dinner dates and never a dancing one. Perhaps I was taken to a movie or two, a few parties, and once I went on a gambling trip to Las Vegas which ended in disaster. I have no idea how to do this courting ritual anymore, and I’m scared silly at the prospect. As for choosing, well, I floundered like a fish out of water with that hurdle, finally letting the universe do it for me while I went along for the ride. I met my first husband in the waiting room after his father had a heart attack. I met my second husband through mutual friends.

Hence the slump yesterday, leading to this morning’s vow of not selling myself off to the first man who knocks on the door. I can see why many widows and widowers get married again in the first year of this aloneness. It would be easy to do, given the huge amount of work needed to maintain my mountain home and the various implements needing fixing, as well as the empty space in the house where a real live person used to be. I don’t have someone with whom to fight or to bat around a problem.

I’m better off talking to an imaginary friend, batting a pillow, as well as taking myself in hand or getting massages. My need for intimacy will have to be softened by hugging family and girl friends as well as standing in the sunlight near the post office for comforting conversations. I’ll just have to keep my trouble-making body in tow with yoga and hard work, plus splashes of cold water once in a while. "Sigh" I never thought I'd have the problem of my brain knowing one thing and my body having other ideas.

Claiming my Own

A year ago, when I began blogging, I had no idea I’d be sharing emotions I’d never felt in my life.

But, here I am, tripping and stumbling my way through widowhood and using this space as a way to make real to myself all that’s happening. I can’t lie to myself when I’m sharing because it wouldn’t help anyone. I have to be true to myself, while I seek my future after the loss of a husband who guided me for over half my life. I say “guided”. That’s not quite true.

What I realize now is he held a vision created after great thought, lots of reading, and a kind of meditation while he walked on this Earth. He was drawn to Native American philosophy. Our home has over 100 books on the subject as well as writings by Herman Hesse, Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Norman Cousins, Kahil Gibran, John Bradshaw, Jane Roberts, and more. Where he traveled, I followed. Not just in our vans or RVs, but in philosophy. What fired the understanding we shared initially was our love of this creation we call Earth. Every creek we followed, every hill we climbed, and every desert we cross was adventures in seeing and connecting with this entity we live on. Every morning to his dying day, he watched her come alive, and he thrilled to the spectacle, no matter what the weather or where we were or what we had to do.

Now, I find my day doesn’t truly begin until I take the spirit bowl outside like he did every morning. This bowl contains a bite of every food I’ve eaten the day before and prayers of thank you to the beings who gave up their forms so mine might be maintained. I place it for the sprirts of the land to consume. Usually the ravens and the blue jays are the first to arrive after I turn my back.

I’m realizing this morning ceremony is as necessary for me as a first cup of coffee is for many others. This time of prayer is my opening to say thank you again to all the spirits around me and my home for standing through the night.

One morning a few months’ ago, I cried with aloneness. Friends had gotten busy. Family was even busier. I was facing the end of 2010 on my own, and I was scared and grieving. After I was done with my request help and personal strength, I heard the quiet.

Ever so gently, the trees around me swayed while I heard the words, “Never fear. We are your family.”

I’ve begun to find peace more frequently now and can turn off the voices of the TV. I’m much less anxious about living here alone, listening to the patter of rain on the roof, the bump of animals under the house, or the thump of a stray limb falling in the forest or driveway.

I’m finding my strength in talking to the fruit trees as I prune them and turning manure into the garden. I’m feeling the blessing of the rain pelting on my head as I haul the wood inside and the caress of the heat from the fire in the wood stove. The guidance I followed when he was alive wasn’t just his. Many of the thought patterns and habits of my husband of 33 years I’m claiming as my own.

A Tirade

Alright you all-powerfulness-who-is-all-around-me-and-within-me-and-all-things! What’s with this grief thing?

I can’t get around it or over it or under it, and I don’t want to stand facing it for the rest of my life. If it’s true the only way is through it, OK, I did that! After five months of it, I should be done! Right?

What’s with this new set of tears? What’s with my becoming a puddle over the broken vacuum cleaner? I’m so touchy these days. My moods shift faster than a prairie fire.

Sometimes, I feel like my upper body is disconnected from my lower body. They even seem to go in different directions at the same time. When one has pain and the other doesn’t, that’s when I feel all mixed up inside. When they both have pain together, I get overwhelmed.

I’m an intelligent woman. I should be able to control myself. Right? Wrong! No control over anything, not even my own reactions. My life is without direction except for what’s right in front of me and, sometimes, I don’t even see what that is. “Seek the balance” is good advice to myself. I’m going to watch movies now and stop pretending I have any idea what that phrase means nor how to survive this mess.

Writer's Block

For weeks now, I’ve been struggling to write, not even something profound, but anything that made sense. I’ve just not had the mind for it. Even now, after writing that sentence, I’ve stopped and stared for several minutes out the darkened kitchen window. No thought entered my mind.

It’s like I’m disconnected from myself and from the source of thoughts and ideas I had earlier last year. Somehow the confidence anyone was interested in my musings has gone, or is at least hidden.

I’ve been trying to figure if this is ‘just’ writer’s block or a symptom of something else. Given my previous cases of blockages, this one isn’t acting normally. I can often trip myself into writing a note or a letter. That action greases the mental wheels. I can’t seem to get energy to do that, or to write a general email to friends as to how I’m faring. I can’t write the many thank yous in answer to a basketful of well wishers. I can barely write my checks and stuff them into envelopes, let alone think up an ad campaign for my novel.

“Stuck” is the best word I can use to describe my state of mind, and yet I have great joy in talking on the phone, hiking around the property with the men I have clearing defensible space around the house. I’m enjoying TV and movies, cooking classes. I’m sewing, baking, hammering away at house projects.

I’ve decided this period of time must be ‘me’ trying to get my house in order so I can feel free to open the door for my muse to enter. She doesn’t feel comfortable trancing with her stories and characters unless our external world is in some kind of order. She must’ve wanted me to have a break from her demands so she’s kept quiet while I’ve been reorienting myself to my new life and being pampered over my birthday weekend. It could be she wanted me to have these new experiences to add depth to our work together. After all, our third novel to construct is the “Women’s Bundle” while we edit number two, "The Spirit Bundle".

So I’ve decided to accept her judgment, to give myself a break and not judge ‘me’ too harshly and therefore not judge her. Besides, what’s not to like about a little time off?

A New Secret

I’ve discovered a secret: how to save one-half of an avocado.

There is no fancy way to wrap it, although I’ve tried excluding all air contact by wrapping with saran wrap, sealing it in a sandwich bag, and popping it into the fridge. I’ve slathered lime or lemon juice all over it and put it in an airtight container. I’ve also been known to eat the whole avocado and relieve myself of the problem in the first place.

The easiest solution, however, is to leave it alone. The silly thing grows a scab all of its own by letting the open edge of the avocado meat dehydrate. Whala! It’s sealed, and, if one doesn’t leave it for a month, nothing rots. In fact, the thickened covering doesn’t age either and the inside gets even riper.

Reminds me of a scab.

Reminds me of my moving through grief.

Every time I try to wrap my sorrow in a covering to isolate it from the rest of my life, it gets pushed to the back of my proverbial shelf of ‘stuff’. Then everything in front of it takes on more emotional responses. I can rant about the government, the wars, health insurance, DMV, and on and on. I take one topic onto my soapbox until I’ve exhausted it and can tell by listener’s rolling eyes, I’ve battered their ear drums past listening.

Then I take out another one until I grab, without looking, to find myself staring at the main irritant that’s turning black. Those are the moments when I realize I’m damn mad at Y for dying and leaving me with piles and piles of collected building parts and photos and etceteras to deal with. Ironically, like the rotting avocado, I’ll probably throw away all the preciously amassed bits and pieces he always thought might some day become useful.

If I don’t want to isolate my grief, I can keep picking at it every moment of every day, like pouring salt on a wound, and I make myself miserable. I might be going through a necessary process but bringing up the fact I’m only one half of a whole, doesn’t let me find my own unique flavor. It leaves me wanting. “What?” I wonder.

I wish somehow I could take on the whole grieving process and get it over in one ‘fell swoop’. I know, it would be too much. I can get overwhelmed as it is with the smaller sections of sorrow as they drop in my lap, so why choke on the whole thing?

So, like the half of an avocado, if I just let myself be, I experience a short-term, thickened skin of protection which lets the inside of myself begin to heal and ripen. The crust will come off eventually.

Isn’t that a great secret?