February, 2021
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Day 38
Today was a beautiful day.
We had very different plans for this weekend. We’d booked a cabin months ago to visit Mansfield but decided after our last visit that we needed to figure out a new way to approach our trips to John’s hometown. Then we planned to spend the weekend with friends in the Poconos. Weather tripped us up on that one.
Instead, we spent yesterday with my Dad and aunt. We brought them pastries and we all went out to dinner after watching Jordan Spieth play some great golf.
And we woke up at home this morning, the snow falling thickly and quietly. It was stunning.
Sometimes — often, actually — plans change. And sometimes, there is beauty in the chaos, the disappointment. Yesterday was a good day and today (even though I fell and hurt my knees yet again) was a good day. Can’t ask for more than that.
Xox, g
Day 37
Some days just call for gratitude. For grounding. For perspective.
I am grateful for Dora, who comes and cleans our house. She is one of the best humans I know and I’m so glad she’s in our lives.
I am grateful for Starbucks Soy Chai Lattes. They are happiness in a cup.
I am grateful for my Dad. He is the best Dad and I couldn’t be luckier that he’s mine.
And as always, every day, I am grateful for John and Lucy. They are my family. They make our house a home. They are love personified.
Xox, g
Day 36
I’m struggling these days to find much to be joyous about — partly me, partly Covid, partly winter blues. But snow always makes my heart smile. It’s beautiful.
This was a midday walk with Lucy, bright blue skies, icy snow kinda day. And that’s okay.
Xox, g
Day 35
Lemme be real for a minute.
Life for me is like an amusement park ride. There’s a lot of waiting, anticipation, anxiety and then there are highs and lows and everything happening in a rush … and then waiting again.
I don’t know if it’s the snow, or COVID, or just February. But lines are blurred and up feels down and down feels sideways and I’m just bouncing from wall to wall to ceiling to wall and then floating out the window.
I’m sad and I’m angry and I’m resigned and I feel trapped and overwhelmed by the vastness of it. I’m searching for comfort and finding none. I’m yearning for contentment but everything feels off its axis. I am drowning, I am floating … I am above and below and somewhere in between. I am lost.
That’s my brain, that’s my stream of conscious thought.
I keep grasping for an anchor and coming up empty-handed.
Listen to Miley Cyrus’ Plastic Hearts. It is my soul right now.
Xox, g
Day 34
Today was the day the music died in 1959 (I believe I have the correct year).
I learned that today listening to the radio. I don’t normally listen to the radio but I had to go to the chiropractor this afternoon. And I listen to SiriusXM in the Jeep.
It seems strange that a year ago, we lost Alan. So much has changed. Everything feels different; in so many ways, everything is different than just a year ago. Time is fickle like that. Global pandemics will do that, I guess.
Life goes on, but when you lose someone who is part of you, the way Alan was part of John, that emptiness is never fully healed. You just learn to exist with it.
Sometimes I feel the loss of my mother so acutely it takes the breath right out of my lungs. I wonder how I have managed to go on without her for over two years. I wonder how I can still be me … without her.
The truth? I am not still me — not the one who existed up until December 30, 2018. Just like John is not the same John who existed until February 3, 2020. That’s the way of things. That’s life and time and grief and loss.
xox, g
Day 33
I get daily Stoic philosophy emails. I was inspired to sign up by one of my yoga teachers, who was studying Stoicism (or just reading a book, I can’t remember) back when I still went to the studio three or four times a week for class.
Now I go zero times a week and I think my brain has begun to atrophy (evidence: my complete mental breakdown moments ago when John asked what I wanted for dinner and I didn’t know). I *really* miss social interaction and my yoga community. A lot.
I find the Stoic emails comforting and oftentimes enlightening (if only to give me a new perspective in which to frame life, thoughts and motivation). They are very matter-of-fact in their logic and their structure which I find comforting in a world that requires more and more interpretation.
Recently, one of the emails pointed out that Stoics believe that people cannot *make* us angry; rather we *choose to become angry. Which sort of dovetails with what I’ve been reading in my Buddhism book about self and not-self (and a whole manner of other, somewhat illusive concepts).
This logic, this proposition about our feelings actually made me angry. Mostly at myself for my inability to detach from my own emotions (that run rampant). It’s very frustrating to be sad and feel helpless and then be reminded that all the feelings I feel I am *choosing* to acknowledge and give power to. My Buddhism book distinguishes feelings from emotions — one being transient, the other more ingrained. I use the terms interchangeably , which just goes to illustrate how very far I have to go before reaching a state of enlightened bliss (or any enlightenment at all, for that matter).
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my brother-in-laws death. I keep shying away from it, like avoiding looking at a cut that I sustained — using the logic that if I don’t look then it can’t that bad, it won’t hurt that much.
But pain doesn’t work like that. Pain is insidious, pain is subconscious and invasive and all consuming. It manifests in such a myriad of ways that its not always easy to identify. (Watch WandaVision for an excellent meditation on grief and pain).
Anyway. I’m a mess today. I’d like to go to sleep and try again tomorrow, but I don’t have much hope that tomorrow will be better. It will be the same as today … just Wednesday instead of Tuesday.
Xox, g
Day 32
Sometimes, it’s stark the clear difference between what is imagined and what is reality.
I dreamed of sitting curled up in my new reading chair (aka, Lucy’s chair), sipping a hot beverage, reading my book as the snow gently fell all afternoon. I thought maybe I would write a little because the mood just seemed as though it would be conducive.
I *am* curled up on my reading chair, I *have* read some of my book. But it’s been another strange day — even the snow has been strange. Sometimes clattering against the windows, sometimes so fine it’s barely visible. Sometimes swirling and dipping as if a squall has taken hold. I haven’t been able to settle my mind, my thoughts, my self. I’ve been intermittently hungry, thirsty, cold, uncomfortable and needing the use the bathroom. There has been no rhythm.
I feel beaten up with no discernible reason to feel so; raw and skittish and afraid.
Once, a long time ago, I sat on a park bench on a cool summer evening. The trees were green and the sky was clear, the stars twinkling. My friend and I had gone to dinner and were just sitting there for more time to talk before the evening eventually ended. He and I had recently graduated from high school and I thought we’d be friends forever.
We talked about many things that night, but there are two that still linger in my brain, twenty odd years later. He said character was who we are in the dark. And then he said, the only that that is constant is change.
We aren’t still friends, which makes me feel a touch sad at times. He went on to become a professor of philosophy and has published several books. He seems happy — what I can tell from the distance with which I now see his life.
But he profoundly changed how my mind worked that night.
And as I sit here today, the weather unpredictable, John’s schedule unpredictable, my legs … unpredictable. I think about those two things … character is who I am in the dark. Or perhaps, just alone, without any witness. And even though I cling to routine with an iron grip, the truth is that life will keep changing and morphing. And what is up will one day be down. John will change and evolve and I will change and evolve and we will grow and change together.
The more I fight the change, the harder I make it for myself. I need to just breath deep, and enjoy the ride.
Xox, g
D5 Creation