Time Goes By

In June I ran over my cat and made it through Father's Day and my father's birthday without him. June 10 made twenty-eight of my mom's birthdays since she died. Today is my friend Catherine's birthday, and her family is celebrating without her too.


My youngest daughter and I shopped for wedding dresses and talked venues and caterers and guest lists.

My middle daughter's cat got run over and died.

My oldest daughter is working things through.

I attended a week-long workshop with the inimitable Zelda Lockhart where I explored some of the family lore in fiction. I visited my friends in Oriental and made a sale of some of my prints and cards to one of the local galleries. I submitted more of my stories and went to my writing groups. I hurt someone.

I went to my boat one weekend, relaxed and did some summer cleaning, had dinner with friends. They'd missed me and I was so happy to be with them.

On July 1, I had a photography exhibit entitled, "The American Experience" with four other people. I took down a photograph of my deceased cat and replaced it with a photograph of a boat in Oriental Harbor. I dedicated my photographs to my dad. Some of his last words were, "I love this country so much."

I'm putting together some amazing writing workshops and already have people signing up for October and February of 2012. The one with Jan Phillips is full and people are still calling.

I've seen some things that appeared to be signs, like this cloud (what was the earth thinking?):



and this word on my floor (which a friend said is the Sanskrit word for "fear"):



I've spent too much time on Facebook and reality TV shows and not enough time on the stacks of books and movies that stare at me every time I walk by.

I've been to my home town and put flowers on my parents' graves, met with the accountant, visited with my brother.

A red-headed woodpecker eats sunflower seeds and finches of every color fight for perch at the thistle seed. In about a week I'll have a jillion tomatoes.

Live goes on.

Happy?

Some people might see the flower above and think, "Dying flower." I saw a star for a friend who loves stars. I've been thinking about our ability to create happiness in our lives, and how we view our world seems to have a lot to do with it.

Once I started the thought process, I talked to my friend, Nancy. Do some people just have all the bad luck, I asked, or is it all about perception? I have a couple of friends who can't ever seem to get a break. Are they inviting this into their lives or is it out of their control?

As often happens, when we open the door to an idea, the universe responds. In the past week, these are the things that showed up for me:

1. Daily Peace quote: "Enjoying life - it's a choice and a practice." - June Shiver

2. Daily Peace quote: "In difficult times, you should always carry something beautiful in your mind." - Blaise Pascal

3. Email from a Methodist church in Durham: "...as Christians, we must not let something as fickle and vacillating as our moods and emotions dictate how we live our lives. Scripture speaks of a deep, abiding joy that can sustain us at all times -through tragedy and triumph, success and failure. So no matter what may come our way...Paul exhorts us to 'rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice.'"

4. A friend on Facebook: "I decided to be happy. Forgot how powerful that is."

5. An interview with Barbara Fredrickson in the May 2009 issue of The Sun Magazine entitled, "The Science of Happiness": "There are some bedrock conditions that need to be met. Once they are met, though, even at a very low level, everyone has the same opportunities to experience positive emotions." (Let me note here that, yes, I was reading the issue for the first time. Sometimes I get behind on my magazine reading. Interesting that this was the week I chose to read it.)

Here is what it takes for me to establish and maintain a positive emotional state:

1. A sense of gratitude. Right now, that means that although I have dealt with some pretty significant things in the past six months, I am grateful for where I stand with them at this moment.

2. A sense that everything is temporary. On one of my tomorrows, my sorrow over my dad's death will become manageable. And yesterday, I was dealing with cancer; not today.

3. Something to look forward to. This may be as simple as a story I'm brewing or as large as a trip. It can be an immediate anticipation (my day off) or one that will take a little longer such as retirement.

4. Doing things for other people who are going through difficult times.

5. Creating. Cards, photographs, stories. Relationships, good habits.

6. An ability to be flexible and patient. These are toughies for me, but lack of them contributes to unhappiness in my life.

One of the readings (I couldn't locate it by the time I finally got around to writing this post) suggests that we get up every morning and decide that we are going to embrace the day with the expectation that our day will go well. The holidays will certainly be a good time to put this suggestion to the test. Let me know if you try it and how it works out.

Death

I always leave a visitation or funeral hoping I haven't said anything inappropriate, something that would increase the sorrow of the family member to whom it was said. And I realized this morning that we are all inept, bumbling fools in the face of death.

We ask, "How are you?" and the person thinks, Not well, not well at all, thank you.

We say, "I'm sorry" and the person thinks, So am I.

We don't know what to say. That's the bottom line. We don't know how the person feels, even if we've lost our parent, spouse, sibling, child just as they have. We don't know if things will get better. We don't know if they can be happy the person lived a good life or doesn't have to suffer anymore. We don't know if they can find comfort in knowing they were a good parent, spouse, sibling, child. We just do not know.

If I could sit with the person and take the time to compose my words, I would say this (and I use "she" and "her" in the interest of brevity):

"I acknowledge that someone very dear to you has died. Today, I feel such sadness for that loss, partly for my loss, but mostly because of the sorrow I see in your eyes. If the person was old, I acknowledge that you loved her a very long time, that she has been part of your life forever. If the person was young, I acknowledge the tragedy of a life lost too soon. If the person was sick and you took care of her, I know that you have spent a lot of time caring for her, thinking about her, dealing with doctors and hospitals and medicine, hoping for a miracle. If you were estranged from the person, I recognize that you may be living with regrets.

"I admit that today, I'm with you in your sorrow. I cry too. But I also admit that in a few weeks, the loss won't be so acute for me, the elements of my life will conspire to crowd out my feelings of loss. I do recognize, though, that your loss is a permanent part of your life, that every day will bring reminders of the person you loved, that you will still be dealing with the seemingly endless legal and financial details of death long after we all walk away from the funeral. I know that you will always miss your loved one, see the empty chair at the table, smell her unique smell in random places, wish to hear her voice one more time, cry when you hear a song or poem or walk on the beach alone. I promise to try to remember that you're still grieving and call or write every now and then to let you know that I'm aware of that."

Death leaves us speechless, really, because in the end it is the great unifier. We all lose loved ones to death, and each death forces us to face our own mortality. We can only offer our sympathy and honesty, and hope that we have been a small comfort.

I've gotten news of death a few times this week: a college friend's elderly father, another friend whose mother and father-in-law died within days of each other, a young family member. Some very difficult decisions had to made in a couple of the deaths.

From my limited experience with loss of a loved one, I know that for quite a while you cry in the shower, in the car, at work--it seems that you cannot be consoled. Your sadness can be triggered by a smell, a song, something you see in another person's face.

In the car this morning, it dawned on me that in the face of death, we are all just children masquerading as adults, needing someone else to take away the pain, hold us comfortingly, bring hope that tomorrow everything will be just fine.