The big journey is from birth to death. This journey is from death, my spouse’s, to living, from desolation and despair to appreciation and awareness.
The journey of one’s life is filled with events, days of discovery, and for some, a lot of anticipation. The journey consists of seemingly boring moments all the way to occurrences of such magnitude they are in the forefront of every waking moment.
Along the way are times of newness, consisting of a lot of unknowns that have to be mastered. Unknowns take effort and courage to learn how to deal with an all-new reality.
Along the way are times of emotional turmoil. The positive emotions are buoyant and elevate. These include happiness, joy, pleasure and pride. The negative emotions are not fun and include pain, anger, emptiness, sorrow and longing.
The negatives are a baseline to gauge the positives against. A deep crevasse of pain indicates a positive has to have occurred. This positive has to have like measures in order to create a situation where loss has resulted in this magnitude of negative. The negatives also measure the positives.
My story essentially starts with my spouse's death. I share the trauma, the upheaval that occurred in my life. I share how I have had to adapt. I share the lessons I have had to learn and how I’ve had to relearn how to live in a world that changed invisibly throughout the progression of illness to death.
Living and relearning entails a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, and sometimes minute-by-minute dose of reality. What can be a happy time one minute can devolve into grief, sorrow and hopelessness the next.
I share glimpses of my reality day-by-day The seamless humdrum of everyday living, and how these moments occur and steer my path into the immediate and long-term future.
Choices have to be made. Are my choices healthy? There are a wide variety of temptations to ensure avoidance of the reality of hurt and loss and it takes courage to slam the door shut on them. It takes courage to open new doors and brave the unknown that lies beyond.
I share the days and the choices, as well as the grief that sometimes engulfs me and oscillates from bad to worse as the days and hours progress.
Many of the events are so insignificant I wonder how they entered my brain. One of my spouse’s guidelines was “take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” My pennies are the insignificant boring, routine parts of living. I have to tend to them, not ignore them. Avoidance or tending to them sets the pattern for events and days that follow. It creates the basis of establishing new habits that can be healthy or disintegrating.
As day-to-day work can oftentimes be tedious and boring, so it is with the journey. A lot of boring sameness has to be performed to perfection (or near perfection), or the positive outcome collapses. The body becomes physically or mentally ill. Our charges, which may be our pets and children, do not flourish. Our homes and possessions deteriorate. Our day-to-day actions keep them alive and healthy, but all of this is now in a new world. All of which is since our loss, our being thrust, or born into, a new reality following my spouse’s death.
I share this journey with you. It is a timeline of my progress, of my re-emergence into everyday living. It is not yours. Your journey is unique. Mine is a pattern to which you can compare yours. I want you to share my success, how my pennies emerge into dollars and how my Pots of Promise take root and grow.
I want to see my Pots of Promise bloom, as I want yours to bloom.
Please join me. Let me know how yours are doing. I care.
Contemplation: Do you feel your journey remains static?
Sincerely,
Lynn Brooke
© 2023 Our New Chances
Photo Credit: © 2023 Rachel Gareau
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