Because it's time...

If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that happiness is fragile.  It seems to me like a tiny bird cupped in my hands, almost weightless like cotton, yet so vitally and excitingly alive.  It feels like, with the slightest movement or misstep, I could crush it or damage it.  It’s so amazing to have it for just this one minute, I don’t want to breathe for fear of missing it. 

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the past week or two, or maybe month or two, a sort of healing came over me.   A lifting of an affliction.  As if a falling away of some sort of spiritual weight had happened, but I had gotten so used to it that I no longer even noticed it was there to notice it had gone.    These sorts of experiences have happened to me before, but I can usually pinpoint the moment.  In this case, I knew something was different but didn’t realize it until I tried to explain that experience to someone else.  In that moment, I realized it had happened again, but this time I had failed to notice somehow, in the din of all the noise that is my life. 

I’ve also learned that in the midst of happiness, I don’t feel as if I am taking that moment for granted, yet so many times through my mind’s rear-view mirror, I gotta wonder if I didn’t miss it.

Perhaps it was what was going on in my mind that makes me feel that way.  Certainly, I do remember great moments that I’m certain that I did entirely embrace.  Still, mingled into the sadness and sweetness and just really great days are the moments where I feel like maybe the essence of it slipped away from me.  Maybe I just wonder if I could have lived that moment with a more determined sense of goodness.   I hope I’ve learned to close my eyes and breathe in the smells and relax against the moment and just be there, right there in that one perfect moment. I don't want to miss it.  

So that’s what I’m going to do with this little bird of mine, I think; hold on.  Perhaps I will eventually crush it.  I tend to be clumsy, with my words and with my person, so it’s not only possible, but it’s so very likely.   I will try very hard to walk softly and be kind.

Just lately, the burdens feel less like great burdens, and more like just the daily living of life.  The troubles aren’t the focus; the relationships are.  The hardships don’t make me cry as much, and I truly have every confidence that I can handle whatever happens without a public mental breakdown.  I’m feeling blessed every day that I can be in a position to bless others.  I can’t promise I’ll still have any of this together tomorrow, but I go to bed most days feeling like I did ok.

Sometimes our Father feels very near to me, and sometimes very far.   Just lately I feel his presence very close to me, guiding me in ways I never could have guessed. 

That having been said, I’m not sure how much further I can take this blog.  Unhappiness will always be part of my life, of course.  It makes the sweet parts sweeter.  But it doesn’t have to be a full-time job.  This here bit of writing was intended to help me and it certainly has served that purpose. 

So if you’ve read all this misery, my misery this far, I thank you, and I’m sorry.  I thank you because writing things, and knowing people read them, somehow helps me.  But I’m also sorry. It really was only ever intended to be therapy for me, and that’s what it has been, but it’s probably not my best writing, and it’s probably not fun to read.           

I don’t take back the words I said, though I’m probably not going to re-read them.  The view through our rear-view mirror can only give us glimpses.  The real action is going on outside the windshield. 

I am working on a new blog, I’m calling it the “Weird Widow,” which will, I hope, be more about the overall experience of being a widow and a granny and a slightly crazy cat lady, maybe a little more about life, a little less about gloom.  It will probably still be therapy for me, because that’s the point of writing, after all.   But maybe it doesn’t have to hurt so much all the time.

I’ll link it to here when I get it finished.   

May YHVH bless you and keep you, may he make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, may he lift up his countenance upon you and give you shalom.  I pray you be blessed for blessing this widow. 

Rose

 

Water in my Hands

When I was a child, I used to spend hours in the tub.  I remember cupping my hands and trying to hold on to water.  I was fairly convinced that it could be accomplished, yet no matter how hard I clenched my fingers together, the water would eventually drip out of them, and my little puckered hands would be empty.

One of the things that has most characterized my experience since being thrust into widowhood is the need to let go of things.  I’m pretty sure the very first day I said I needed to move, and that was repeated over and over.  At that point I began giving things away, selling things, and making it so that I wasn’t moving all of accumulative bits of life hoarding.  

I often verbally put the blame on Storm for the hoarding, but the truth is, I tolerated it, and even somewhat participated, since it seemed to be what he needed or wanted to do, and I always wanted to give him what he wanted.  It didn’t get too extreme, and usually when his interest swung to some other thing, it was time to get rid of the old stuff.  Usually.

Even so, after almost a decade of co-habitation, there was a lot of stuff to sift through, and I moved a lot of Storm across town with me.  Over time, those things have diminished and widdled down until it’s more of my life and less of ours.    I’ve repurposed and repainted and re-gifted and sold some things I thought I would use, but I do not. 

The things I give away or sell, those things have memories and stories attached to them.  They seem like junk, or maybe usable but neglected items, but they are really totems of a past life I can never have back.  My life with Storm is slipping through my fingers, and I am totally unable to stop the dripping, and now I’m pretty sure it’s a useless and futile gesture to try. 

The fridge and freezer in my back yard were no exception.  I intended for them to be something else; something more.  They were neither one of them worth a penny.  But both of them were stories and memories of our life together.  I wanted to use the fridge to store drinks in the summer in the hangout spot, and convert the giant heavy freezer to a smoker.  Neither of those is practical or even makes sense.  But it was probably more about not letting go.    

They were not valuable in any sense.  They probably still functional.  The fridge he got for $20 from a neighbor who was evicted.  The stove, which is long gone, had a nickel to replace the timer knob and was also $20 at the Teen Challenge store; for some reason his favorite place to buy castoffs.  He brought home plenty of old, beat-up things without consulting me.   The freezer we got for free.  Sort of.  It took the labor of four grown men and one supervising woman to get it out of the strangest basement I’ve ever seen.  While we were there, we also scored the lovely shelves which have been repainted and mounted above my bed and the table I haven’t decided what to do with.  I admired her art; she was a welder, and enjoyed their tiny little multi-story home.  

This past week, my daughter got her tiny home trailer, and she and her fiancé are going to start building in my backyard soon.  They needed to put the trailer in there, and so they asked if we could get rid of the appliances.  I agreed.  A man came to take them to the dump; making money for his family.  I also sold the hitch-rack, which carried memories home to Oregon from Illinois when we threw it all away to come home.  I no longer have the van, and it didn’t make sense to keep something that has no use.  I hope the man who bought it gets years of use out of it.  

It’s not that I care about the things.  They are just things.  But it used to be I could look around any space I was in, and everything I owned came from my prior house.  Now, I see fewer and fewer things that remind me of him and carry the memories of us being us.  The empty spot where the big white appliances stood looks like a missing tooth.

I keep trying to clench those fingers together.  The memories keep slipping through.  

What I can hold on to is that the future is coming.  The things we do will build our memories for tomorrow.  Over the next months, literally a house will emerge from the backyard, and there will be a new union, and maybe more grandbabies.  I will wish Storm was here, helping them build it, pushing the project with his endless energy.  I will miss him at the wedding surrounded by married couples and my +1 as my last single daughter.  I will cry for him in the weeks that come, but each new thing that is mine; each new memory is a life still being lived.  

I’ve become accustomed to being a widow.  I have never in my life been single as long as this, but it seems to be less strange every day.  I’ve become accustomed to talking to myself or my pets, I’m coming to enjoy having things my way, and I feel less like Mrs. Treasure and more like Widow Treasure with every new morning.  I miss so many things that filled my life with a richness and a beauty that I can never replace, but I also have found a new peace in those absences; a place to grow as the individual that I probably always intended to become.  

I learned an expression: living forward.  That is all that any of us can do.  We can keep walking forward down this path.  I don’t anticipate great joy or great triumphs or even a sense of completion.  I’ll settle for a well-planted garden, happy spoiled grandchildren, and a contented soft cat to pet.  

Thanks for reading.