evening

Sitting outside on the back patio with a glass of Pinot Noir. It's a warm evening but not burning hot like the mid-summer nights were.  It is the end of the season and there is a definite change in the air. A month ago I wouldn't enjoy this. Tonight it brings delight. I feel cooler undertones.

I sit here with a little dog resting at my feet. Loyal. Sweet. Pandora radio is playing some hauntingly beautiful piano music, and as it stirs my soul I think about how life moves along with the ebbs and flows designed to expand our soul and its capacity to feel pain and empathy, joy and love. I feel carried along by some unseen Force I have little control over.

I am growing in my understanding and have discovered there is no end to what we can learn about ourselves in this life if we have the desire and will, interest and curiosity. Equally there are things we just cannot know. I am growing in the ability to be true to myself. Kind... but still faithful in making choices based on what I know.

Sometimes I wish I could fashion the very life that I think would be ideal. But then I also find a strange peace in knowing I am not in control of everything.  I am learning to do my best and leave the results to that Force that seems to have its way no matter what I do sometimes. It will have to be okay.

So I will curl up with this sense of Presence and Care and relish it. Wait and be still and act and move when it's time to do so....

Tomorrow is the first official day of autumn.

I lost him in the springtime. I carry him with me every day. It is real and powerful. That will never change. I am learning I won't get over this loss but will absorb it into my life. The sorrow takes up permanent residence in my soul ... and enlarges it. It becomes who I am. The loss is a painful part of a (hopefully) healthy whole.

moving through it

Met with my therapist again today.  Yes, I have one.  Here's the thing.  Everyone needs to grieve.  It's not an option.  I don't need anyone to tell me that.  I'm naturally reflective.  No surprise there I know. It comes pretty natural to me.  It's exhausting though to sit and cry in front of a stranger.  And I have no ability to hold it back right now.   Sometimes I feel like, "why am I doing this?", but in reality, it is what I need.  It validates my feelings.  It allows me to express myself in a safe place.  It helps to let someone else hear my heart and tell me things in a different way that I am already experiencing. 

Just as I was feeling a little too vulnerable and as though maybe this wasn't where I needed to be, I began talking about how I've always believed one of the greatest things we can do in life is to help take the sting out of it for someone who is experiencing something hard or painful.  It occurred to me that I DO take on other's pain in a real and raw way.  People I intensely love.  Like Edd.  He often said, "I think this is harder on you than it is on me"... Could that have been true?   I didn't think so at the time.  He may have felt some of my hurt too.   But today I realized that I had double the pain.  Not only did I feel acutely my own, but I felt (or imagined) his as well. 

When I was watching Edd's suffering, helping him through it and being a support or caregiver and all that goes with it, I thought, "when all this is over I am going to need some serious grief counseling" because I didn't have time to think about it at the time.   I just did what needed to be done and tried as hard as I could to be strong... for him.  It was what needed to be done, but now I am left with all of it still...  the memories.  Feeling it, remembering it all. Processing it.  Feeling it all over again.  I didn't have time then to grieve or cry or sort it out.  I watched his emotional and physical pain and felt it and mine in all its enormity.

So... I understood today that it's not just the pain of loss... of separation... of not wanting to let him go... that I feel, as if that isn't painful enough... It's also the accumulation of pain and grief from seeing him suffer and how I internalized all of that for oh so long.... I wanted sooo much to ease his suffering, somehow take it away from him, that I took it on myself.  I felt it all...his and mine.   And that is what I am dealing with now. 

So... again... we are all changed by one another, aren't we?  To a certain degree.  I have this love that is no longer in my life with a deep desire to channel it somewhere.  A desire for expression that has no where to go.  Wanting to keep that sense of connection with him somehow.   To honor him with some kind of perfect expression. 

How to do that?  I don't know.  It is still to be discovered.

Path