Living With Grief

Yesterday was the one month anniversary of the death of my best friend.  I miss him very much.  I still expect to see his name on my caller ID but the phone is not ringing.  In a world that has given us Facebook, where people have hundreds and thousands of “friends”, the reality is that if you have a handful of real friends, you are a very fortunate person.  I know lots of people and lots of people know me.  However, there are only a few people who are truly part of my inner circle.  My friend, Dennis, was one of these people.  Some people think of me as their guru and advisor.  Some people hang on every word I write.  I generally try to write in a positive way that encourages other people.  The reality is that some of my writing comes from my own pain.  Occasionally I need a guru and advisor.  Dennis was this person for me and now that space is empty.  I was thinking about Dennis last night as I tried to fall asleep.  It occurred to me that part of my difficulty dealing with his death is perhaps a lack of traditional closure.  One day Dennis was alive and well.  The next thing I know I am at his funeral.  There was no funeral home visitation and I never saw his body again because he was cremated.  The whole funeral home process now makes a little more sense to me as a ritual that has meaning and is part of the grieving process.  I am a long way from being over this event in my life.  I still can’t think about it too much without upsetting myself.  It gives me much to ponder.  It makes me more grateful for the deeper friendships I have.  It reminds me to never take anyone or anything for granted.  It’s a painful lesson but, perhaps, a necessary one

Open Your Eyes!

When I left home this morning there was a magnificent sunrise.  It was truly breathtaking.  It has been a while since I noticed such beauty.  Even though I regularly encourage others to practice mindfulness and to be in the moment, I don’t always do it myself.  Sometimes I get so caught up in the routines and demands of life that I forget to pay attention and notice things.  Today’s sunrise reminded me that despite whatever struggles one might be experiencing, life goes on and there is beauty all around us.  It was a wakeup call for me to not let the demands of the moments overshadow the wonder of the eternal now.  The world is full of beautiful art, most of which I cannot afford.  Today’s sunrise was a work of art that was totally free and given to everyone to enjoy.  I wonder how many of you did?  It is so easy to go through life asleep or with your eyes closed.  We all need to wake up and pay attention.  Life is continually giving us gifts but too often we don’t notice them.  Today I encourage you to wake up and be alive.  Open your eyes!  Notice the goodness and beauty around you.  Whenever possible, stop what you are doing and drink it all in.  Don’t be overwhelmed with the demands of your life or its busyness.  Once in a while just stop, breathe, and enjoy it.  Today’s sunrise was a gift I would not have received if I hadn’t left my home at the time I did.  Sometimes being in the moment is all about timing and the time is now.

The Yin and Yang

Last night I slept in my bed for the first time in over a week.  It was wonderful.  I have a whole new appreciation for it.  I am sure most of you have been sick or injured or have taken care of a sick or injured person.  The nights are always the worst.  For the last week or so my wife and I have been living on the first floor of our home and sleeping in our chairs.  Occasionally I moved over to the couch.  Life being what it is I am taller than the couch is long.  The nights have seemed eternal and I feel like I’ve been living a Twilight Zone existence.  The one part of this that I have enjoyed is when morning finally arrived.  As soon as daylight appeared I headed to the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast for my wife and me.  She loved being served although I didn’t get any tips.  I loved the simplicity of sitting in my chair sipping my coffee, enjoying the silence for a while, and then watching the morning news.  After a while I would clean up the kitchen and any other messes, maybe do some laundry, give my wife her daily medicine, and read the morning newspaper before cleaning myself up a bit.  As with most situations that are done long enough, one tends to establish a routine.  I can’t help myself in that regard as I am a creature of habit and routine.  This experience also gives me a sneak preview of what the future may hold as my wife and I continue to age.  It has been a little challenging for me and it certainly has been for my wife who is generally a mover and a shaker.  It is also a reminder to enjoy the moments of life when all is good.  Sooner or later life will throw you a curve ball and provide you with a challenge.  It’s the yin and yang of life.    

Where I Have Been

Life is fragile and can change in the blink of an eye.  One minute you are having dinner in a restaurant and the next minute you are on your way to the emergency room.  This past Friday my wife and I had dinner with our youngest son.  Afterwards he came to our house to pick up a piece of furniture.  I was helping him put it in his car and my wife was watching us.  Suddenly, with no warning, she lost her balance and went down like a bag of rocks.  Fortunately my son was there to help me get her up and into the house.  At first we thought it was a bad fall but nothing too serious.  I thought her pride was injured more than anything.  Thinking everything was fine my son left.  My wife and I sat at home for a little while before deciding a trip to the ER was in order.  We were in the ER for six hours and the diagnoses was a shattered elbow and three broken bones.  We left the ER at 1:00 AM and headed to Kroger for a prescription.  Kroger is a much different place at 1:00 AM, especially since my wife and I rarely go out after dark.  It was a long and difficult night and we had to be back at the hospital at 7:00 AM for her surgery.  The surgery was estimated to take an hour and ended up taking nearly three hours because the bone damage was worse than originally thought.  On the way home, after the surgery, and while my wife was very high on good drugs, she asked me three questions, i.e., 1) Was it raining in the car?  2)  Were we in Mexico? 3) Did she have another baby?  I started to answer yes to all the questions but I told her the truth.  The last few days I have a been a full time nurse and caregiver.  This is not my true calling and I have a new respect for anyone who does this full time.  We have both been sleeping in our Lazy Boy chairs because my wife can’t sleep in our bed with any degree of comfort.  We are both a little sleep deprived.  I would have worked from home today but I discovered last night that my home PC has a virus so I couldn’t log on to work systems.  At the moment the patient is doing fine until the drugs start to wear off.  However, I think it is just wrong that the caregivers aren’t given drugs too!       

 

Leaving The Temple

Every workday, after we get ready for work, my wife and I come downstairs for our morning coffee and toast.  The coffee maker is on a timer so it finishes brewing at the exact moment we walk into the kitchen.  When out toast is ready we both walk into the living room and sit in silence.  After I eat my toast I usually read a thought from whatever book I am reading.  Currently I am reading Into The Silent Land by Martin Laird.  When I am done I sit in silence and meditate.  When it is time to leave for work a Zen bell on my phone rings.  It has a temple gong kind of sound.  When I hear the sound I look at my wife and say, “It’s time to leave the temple”.  She usually responds, “But I don’t want to leave the temple”!  Admittedly, most days I do not want to leave the temple either.  On the rare occasion when I am on a spiritual mountaintop I don’t want to leave there either.  However, the reality is that we all have to leave temple or walk back down the mountain.  Someday I hope to retire to the temple with the occasionally outing to the mountaintop but that day is not here.  Life happens in the marketplace.  Most of us spend a great deal of our lives outside the temple and at the foot of the mountain.  There is where we are shaped, formed, and molded into the people we are.  However, we all need some respite from the demands of daily life so we also need to occasionally sit in the temple or on the mountaintop.  Sometimes we need to sit in silence and solitude and be one with God and the universe.  If I do get to retire someday, I think I am going to fire that bell ringer.  

Getting Older

Thursday is the workday when I start to run out of gas.  When I come into the office on Friday I am running on fumes.  When I get home on Friday night my mind is thinking “Let’s party”!  Then my body responds, “Are you out of your mind”!  Most young people think it must be terrible to get old.  That’s not really true.  I like being the age I am.  When one acquires some age you tend to mellow out, be more laid back, things don’t upset you as much as they did in the past, and you are more relaxed in your living.  My chief complaints about aging are a diminishment of energy, strength, and endurance.  In other words, I can’t do all the things I used to do.  I get tired more easily, manual labor is more challenging, and I can’t run all day and night.  When I was young I had lots of energy, weekends were spent running the streets and howling at the moon, and I was physically strong.  Now I am happy just to be home.  I prefer a simple life with little activity.  My mantra is “Isn’t it great to do nothing all day and then to rest afterwards”.  Even though life slows down, it doesn’t lose its appeal.  If anything one begins to live more intentionally because life becomes more precious.  One begins to look more for depth in life.  You have less time and patience for non-essentials.  You realize the time is a gift that should not be wasted.  We should all remember this regardless of our age.         

Life Is Not Always Fair

Life is not fair and the way it plays out can rarely be explained with logic.  Some people seem to have a charmed life while others seem to have a disproportionate amount of suffering and struggle.  Some people seem to have all the good looks and brains while the rest of us are average.  Some people seem to have all the talent while many of us struggle to find our gift.  Some people seem to meet the challenges of life with relative ease while most of us must struggle and crawl our way to meet life’s minimum requirements.  I generally believe in karma but sometimes bad things happen to good people while other people who are less than good seem to fall into good things.  I cannot explain life.  All I can do is try to live my own life with meaning and gratefulness and try my best to support and encourage others to do the same.  Despite the unfairness of life, I tend to think life happens as it should.  I have been very blessed in life but I have also had my share of pain and heartache.  It is easy to be grateful for the blessings but sometimes difficult to see the value of the pain and heartache.  However, my pain and disappointments have often been good teachers and in the long run may have been blessings in disguise.  You can’t give up just because life is unfair.  Life with purpose.  Live intentionally.  Strive to be good and to do good.  Life has meaning even if it may be unclear to us in the moment what its meaning is.