Category: Writing A Book-ish

Dr. Doolittle, You Say?

WordPress offered this writing prompt this morning.

“List three jobs you would consider doing if money didn’t matter.”

I’d be a zookeeper. Or work in an elephant sanctuary. Or any type of animal rescue really.

All of them are selfish choices.

As a former dog owner, I have learned a few thing about animals that often makes their company preferable to the company of humans.

For one thing, they are unfailingly authentic. If they feel good, they show it. They feel bad and their discomfort is hard to miss. As companions, they are the best.

People love dogs because dogs love people. It is a mysterious bond. I read many dog obituaries on Facebook and elsewhere. I can feel and relate to the deep distress of the bereaved owner who tries to explain why Bailey, or Duke or Charlie was the best friend they have ever had.

I sometimes detect a faint undertone of embarrassment in the depth of pain and loss they express. Dogs aren’t people, after all. Or are they? In many ways, they are much better and more loyal friends than people. There are no machinations in a dog’s affections for its’ master or masters. They are pure, unadulterated, love machines.

By their breed, a dog makes its needs known and those needs are unequivocal. All of them need exercise. Some breeds more than others. Some breeds love water. Other breeds see water’s value exclusively for drinking. Some are sweet and fussy. Others are earthy and extremely low maintenance.

A dog’s love and temperament can be twisted by abuse or neglect. In this way, they are more like humans than humans. But unlike abused humans, abused dogs who receive warm and consistent loving care often bounce back to being loyal and loving companions. Humans can get there but the process is usually more complicated and takers longer.

Let’s not be naive. Dogs are also a lot of work. They require a level of care similar to that of a small child. You can leave a cat alone for a day or two with a fresh bowl of food and water. You can’t do that with a dog.

I’ve resisted getting another dog (except for a short failed stint with a rescue last spring) since we lost our Bailey in 2011. He had to be euthanized and it was possibly the worst day ever. I made both of my children come to the vet with me to say goodbye.

Holding Bailey in my arms, I was deeply upset. He was licking my face and all I could think was that moments away, that sweet and loving little spirit would be taken from us forever. Yet it was the humane thing to do. He had lost his hearing, his eyesight was dimming, he had advanced kidney disease and his heart was failing. It was a kindness to let him go I was assured.

When I told the face-licking story to my daughter Katie later, she softly said: “Mom, he was licking away your tears.” My tears for Bailey started afresh.

Since then, we’ve not had another dog. I often say cavalierly that I will get a puppy when I am 92. I will not deliberately go through the anguish of lost love again over a dog when I can elect not to.

Now that is naive. There are people who are going to leave my life in years to come and I will be devastated. I am working to – as advised in the poem Desiderata – “Nurture strength of spirit to shield yourself in times of sudden misfortune.”

We now have a cat. Sweet and affectionate. She has also inveigled her way into our hearts. But our relationship is different. She is more standoffish. She is infinitely more self-contained. That is what cats are. Not trivializing their loss when it comes, but it is different somehow. For me anyway.

I cannot begin to fully understand the bond and complexity that exists between humans and animals except to acknowledge that it is real and deeply meaningful to millions. And I am just like all of them. A cat mom. A grateful former dog owner. An animal lover. A wannabe zookeeper.

And who knows? Life ain’t over yet. One day up the road, maybe I could happily spend a chunk of my time bottle feeding orphaned baby elephants or tossing heads of lettuce to manatees. Animals are a vital part of the phantasmagoria that is life.

If you don’t know that intimately, you are poorer for the absence of that knowledge.

Found Them

I am beyond relieved to have found the forty or so old journals that I feared were gone forever.

Decades worth of pages and pages worth of writing. Those journals were my ballast and my mast. I clung to them for the life-sustaining exercise they rendered. They have my deepest gratitude.

They weren’t stored in the “usual places.” Given their importance to me, I was pretty sure I’d tucked them comfortably away in a nice dry spot where I could put my finger on them any time I wanted. Wrong.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit I found them in the back of the shipping container I just recently offloaded. I have no idea how that happened. It was a very careless way to handle something so important. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Trauma dulls discernment. I used to write about the aftereffects of trauma as having “broken antennae.” All of the natural instincts about sensing evil and avoiding danger get crushed and messed up in the aftermath of trauma.

I think that is some type of exaggerated survival instinct. Even when you are undergoing the worst trauma imaginable, there is a part of you – a very large part – that wants to survive. And is usually determined to survive. Sometimes that survival instinct is all that is left after serious insult or injury.

Trauma survivors become like something similar to a vase with a beautiful external presentation, but its’ insides are empty and hollow. I lived like that for most of my adult life.

Writing was my salvation. I felt almost nothing but fear for many years but I wrote up a storm. I was a casual and frequent observer of the turmoil I was going through externally and internally.

Writing was a lifeline. I couldn’t control anything or anyone around me but I could control my thoughts and put them down in nice, neat lines. I am grateful for that.

Now will I ever read said journals? Heaven only knows. I fear them a bit if I’m honest. There are bits of me and my fragmented life in there that I’m not crazy about revisiting. So I’ll pick my way through them and ingest them bit by bit. On an as-needed basis.

This house purge is the bigger healing focus in my life at the minute. I am beginning to feel what every single person who has ever gone through downsizing says: “I feel so much lighter.”

If, as some authors claim, I will let go of unwanted pounds along with letting go of unwanted clutter, I am going to be rail thin by them time this purging exercise is over.

That’s not a terrible prospect to look forward to.

Never Forever

It was Winston Churchill who famously said: “When you are going through hell, keep going.” Hell is not usually a nurturing environment so there is a human tendency – forgive my obviousity – to get the hell out of there.

But that’s not an obvious choice for everyone. If indeed we are in hell trying to realize a goal, going through the hell of reaching it is an accepted part of the game. Give up the game and you give up the goal.

Many accept a life of hell as “normal.” They don’t see a way out of their present circumstances or the way out is too hard. So they live in hell until they die. I often think of junkies and alcoholics who can’t or won’t get sober as living in that terrible place.

When I was drinking, I remember I couldn’t imagine socializing without a drink. Part of that belief was cultural. There were people who didn’t trust anyone who wouldn’t take a drink. I also imagine others’ sobriety made problem drinkers highly uncomfortable.

In that weird projection thing that people do, sober people – alcoholics or simply the unafflicted – were deemed suspicious. They were often treated as having or being the problem. The problem was not the thirteenth glass of beer you’d had since arriving at the pub a couple of hours ago. That was “normal.”

I am in the belly of the beast in the house sort, purge and trash exercise. I am beyond tempted to quit. I can’t, of course. Part of going through all this is because I need to meet obligations to others and to myself. But it is decidedly unfun.

Human beings acclimate quickly. Whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, we can adapt. It is part of our strength as a species.

Think of those “reality” TV shows about surviving in the wilderness alone. Participants are dropped in the middle of God knows where and their goal is to survive in order to make a lot of money. Their circumstances often overwhelm and defeat them.

But even in the face of medical advice and direction, many participants howl and protest about being taken out of that environment and losing the dream of “easy money.” Or can’t bear seeing themselves as failures or quitters.

So I am up and at ‘em again this morning. Bins to go through and contents to sort. Ancient bills and papers to let go of. Every day a little more is accomplished. Yesterday the full dumpster was taken away and replaced with an empty one. I hope to fill it before this is all over.

I’ve also learned that neither good times nor bad last forever. That is a simple truism that I’ve lived, so I’m electing to believe in that now.

This is hell for me. I will get through it. I don’t exactly know how yet but I realize the only choice is putting one foot in front of the other until I arrive at a better place. Hopefully much less cluttered and more organized.

Those may seem like simplistic goals. But offloading the accumulated detritus of a lifetime is as hard emotionally as it is physically. By organizing my insides, I am driven to get my outsides in order, too.

That reminds me of the insight and wisdom of a little boy trying to get his Dad’s attention.

On the coffee table, Dad saw a magazine with a picture of planet earth on the front cover. He said to his son, Do you see this picture of world, tearing the cover off the magazine? The little boy replied “yes”, thinking he finally had won, his Dad was going to now play with him!

Taking the little boy to the kitchen table and ripping the picture of the world into little pieces, mixing them up on the table and giving his son some “scotch tape” he said, “When you put the picture back together then we’ll play OK?”

The son said, “OK Daddy” and started to work on the puzzle. Dad went back to the living-room, sat on the couch getting comfortable and turning the “Big Game” back on, thinking to himself, it will take him all afternoon for him to figure that puzzle out.

Dad had no sooner started watching the game when his son came running into the living-room, shouting with glee, “I did it, I did it, look Daddy I did it, I taped the picture back together!” His Dad couldn’t believe his eyes saying, “How, how did you do it so fast?”

This little boy looked up at his daddy and said, “When you tore the cover off the magazine, I noticed a picture of a little boy on the back of it. I just knew if I pasted that little boy back together, the world would come together too.”

The full story is here.

The Little Boy who put the world back together: A story by Jim Quinn, Founder of the Lifestream Basic Seminar

Twelve to Thrive

I fell in love with American-Italian educator Leo Buscaglia in the 80s. And not specifically because he was known as the “Dr. Love” professor.

Felice Leonardo Buscaglia (March 31, 1924 – June 12, 1998) was a professor of special education at the University of Southern California. When one of his students committed suicide, he was moved to investigate the meaning of life and the causes of human disconnection.

For Buscaglia, love and learning were the keys to a meaningful life. He was a gifted public speaker and often appeared on PBS giving his lectures on our vital need for interconnection with fellow human beings. He also deeply believed in education and exploring the many wonders of human life here on this planet.

I remember one of the funnier anecdotes from his lectures about growing up with a “demanding” father. With warmth and humor, Buscaglia recalled how every night at the dinner table, he, and then his siblings, were asked in turn, “What did you learn today?” Woe betide the sibling who had nothing to share. The shame must have been withering!

Buscaglia eventually taught a course at the University of Southern California called Love 1A. They were always filled to capacity and often oversubscribed. He was the first to state and promote the concept of humanity’s need for hugs: 5 to survive, 8 to maintain, and 12 to thrive.[4]

He wrote a bunch of books. Fittingly, his greatest bestseller was simply called Love. At one point, three of Buscaglia’s books were on the New York Times’ best sellers list at the same time.

Buscaglia explored and promoted the importance of love and loving relationships to human beings. His lectures may be deemed a little over the top in a culture where the almighty dollar is touted to be the primary source of all happiness and pleasure.

I miss him and his voice. I miss his message.

In our troubled era of mass murders, and suicide and online bullying, I miss the presence of Leo Buscaglia more than ever.

Report Card

This pitching and packing up party is just about over. I promised I would check in on the results of my big purge and moving exercise.

And I am doing this update on a Monday, instead of the Saturday when I thought I would. The truth is, I wasn’t far enough along.

This has turned into a two-phase project. Part now and the rest next Spring or Summer or sometime in the as-yet-undefined future.

Two shipping containers were emptied during this process as was a storage barn in my backyard. Boxes and boxes and boxes of paper are tucked away in a tidy storage unit. For future reference. And review. How often have I said that over the years?

Clearing out the back shed meant effects only made it as far as the back deck. I learned my stuff was sharing house with a dazzling assortment of critters. Raccoons mostly I determined upon checking the stool samples they left behind.

Sometimes I think I am just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

But maybe not. The 23 yard dumpster sitting in my driveway is full to the brim and will be hauled away tomorrow to make way for a smaller dumpster. For those things I have yet to toss.

There were some sad discoveries. Beautiful Italian leather shoes ruined by dampness. I would never have worn them again anyway. Random papers and receipts congealed and stuck together. At least it was an easy decision to throw those out.

Tomorrow the “deep” cleaners arrive. I can hardly wait. These are cleaners of the “I do windows and baseboards” variety. They are a dying breed and I’m lucky to have found them.

With all this detritus leaving my life, I am both relieved and a little scared of what will replace it. Naturally we all hope there will only be good things ahead which is unrealistic and unwarranted optimism.

But among the lessons I am taking forward from this hideous sorting, tossing and packing up exercise is that I will not have to face at least half of this ever again.

It was too much to hope that I could clear out every corner of my boxed up life in one go. But I got this far and I made real progress.

Maybe real progress is enough.

Fleet Footed Fame

I often wonder how a publicist would portray me if I ever became even a little bit famous.

They would dredge through my past accomplishments and elevate them as bona fides to justify my by then elevated station – me being famous and all.

I am curious about the fiction of it. I have done some pretty cool things in my life. I have a curriculum vitae of degrees and scholarships that I earned back in the day. But I have also done many bone stupid and horrible things which I pray never come to light. They diminish me and the person I feel I am and wish to keep striving toward.

I look at my life after it evolved from an ill-considered and ill-fated marriage. Interwoven with alcoholism and riddled with fear and anxiety, so many of my choices and actions in my life after that union evaporated was simply show. Most of the world simply doesn’t care.

Like an empty Waterford crystal vase, as long as I looked professional and presentable on the outside, the world need never know I was emotional hamburger inside.

There are many chapters in each of our lives. They often have dramatically different qualities to them. Those chapters are shaped by your particular pursuits of the time, the people you hang with and where you live. Each of these influences shapes your character. Each character handles life’s up and downs according to who they are and what they learned along the way.

Today is novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday. Famous, of course, for The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, The Last Tycoon and others. He didn’t live long. Dead at 44 from a heart attack exacerbated by the ravages of alcoholism, he became another of history’s legacy of troubled artists who died young.

So I am moved to ask what keeps us upright and moving forward when we are in agony inside? When life has let us down badly and we are a million miles from any of our goals. Depends on who you are and how those influences have shaped you.

It can be argued that “creative” types are more susceptible to life’s insults and can more easily be undone by them. They feel more and more deeply, it might be argued, so they have more difficulty keeping pain at bay.

Oddly, I harbor an unreasonable anger at Philip Seymour Hoffman for the heroin addiction that took him out. He seemed smart enough to “know better.” Yes, I know that is a ridiculous statement in the face of fighting an intransigent addiction. But I feel robbed that Hoffman checked out so early. He was brilliant and had so much more to offer. I needed him.

Then there is the infamous “27Club” which started with Jim Morrison’s death at the age of 27. Several prominent 27 year old rock stars died between 1969-71, solidifying the myth. Morrison was soon joined by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Brian Jones. Later, music legends Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse followed.

It is hard to pin down what this death predilection is. The pressures and expectations of fame foisted upon vulnerable and sensitive artistic personalities may be a partial explanation. Life is difficult enough. The emotional self-regulation that may have saved them from suicidally driven forces might be the very element that allows superstars to perform at the level they do.

Fitzgerald wasn’t alone in the realm of doomed literary luminaries. Ernest Hemingway took his own life at 61. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in a gas oven to check out. Virginia Woolf put rocks in her pocket to weigh her down as she elected death by drowning. For all of their creative output and fame, it didn’t mitigate whatever internal pain and emptiness they were dealing with.

For me managing emotional pain and mitigating emptiness has been a key marker of how well I am managing life. I keep pain at bay these days largely by not engaging in painful activities. Or actions that will invite negative consequences at any rate. Seems simple enough. But it wasn’t always that straightforward and some days, it still isn’t. It has been a tough learning and a discipline and a decision of the “don’t go there” variety.

In about two weeks, I will celebrate my 24th anniversary of sobriety. In its place, I engage in all of the “healthy” coping mechanisms that life offers: yoga, meditation, exercise, reading, writing, time in nature, “talk therapy” and if I’m completely honest, “retail therapy.” Except for the last one which causes its own distress, these modalities are pretty effective most of the time.

So I renew my commitment to writing for me, myself and I alone. I like putting my thoughts and feelings and opinions out there for no one but myself. If I attract and find fellow travelers to walk on this path with me for a while, that’s a bonus.

But I abhor the notion of fame for fame’s sake. I know marketing is essential in today’s brand-soaked social environment, but hey. There are thousands and thousands, maybe millions out there, who are happily seeking out and eating up the fame bandwidth. I hope they all know how fleeting and fickle fame will be to them when it matters. If they don’t know now, one day they will.

Fame doesn’t need me, nor I it. I plan (with God’s complicity) to live to a ripe and healthy and sober old age. I have made headlines and bylines in my short turn on this planet. That’s been plenty. It is important to know when is enough.

Holding the Line

Soldiers likely understand this concept inherently better than many civilians do, I figure. When it is your job to work with your mates to hold the one spot that keeps the enemy at bay, they will (and many have) lay down their lives to “hold” it.

To push back hostile forces. To protect their homeland. To keep their loved ones and themselves out of harm’s way.

Single parents often know this dynamic intimately. They keep the proverbial wolf from the door every day. They protect their children while caring and nurturing them. All under the sometimes withering gaze of society who doesn’t get that keeping your family safe meant getting out.

Parents, generally, are like the plate spinners at the circus. Job, daycare, car, house, health all up in the air and kept up there by the skillful ministrations of the acrobats below. It ain’t work for sissies.

As a traumatized child, frequently abused in various ways, holding the line became a revelation in adulthood at various points in my healing. “I have the right to say no? Really?” “Other people protest or refuse when they are asked to do this?” “I am not a bad person for standing up for myself?”

These were real questions that I frequently asked. When I recently made a return visit to property I had entrusted to someone else, I felt the old familiar stirrings of: “Am I okay with this?” “If not, why not?” “Do I have the right to express my distress and concern?”

The answer in my rational mind is yes. Someone entrusted to take care of something for you who lets you down does not deserve praise and accolades. They deserve a strong talking to.

“What were you thinking?” (I learned she was thinking only of herself and her own needs.) “Why did you make those choices?” (Because I needed the space/comfort/independence to do things my own way.) “Do you have any idea how much you have cost me in time, wasted effort, upheaval and money?” (No idea whatsoever. She’s never owned a house or been there so it is a blank slate to her. And it shows.)

I quickly started making decisions to shut down her purview and influence in my private sphere. I started hearing every possible excuse from her for why what was done was done the way it was – all gauzy and whiny and self-interested.

I am all about celebrating the independence of the individual. But here is what I’ve learned that means. Being an adult and acting accordingly means recognition that you are part of a larger whole – a relationship, a family, a religious tradition, a community, a country and so on.

All of those social constructs have their own inherent contracts. You accept and act in mutually beneficial and cooperative ways if you wish to keep moving forward.

Break the rules and pay the price. Cheat and you threaten a marriage. Treat parents with neglect and disdain and you may find yourself disinherited. Break society’s biggest rule by murdering someone, the price you pay may be your own life.

To move forward individually, we need to cooperate with and acknowledge the wider forces and context in which we operate.

“No man is an island,” said John Donne. Not in a functioning society at any rate. I observe huge slippage in the rules of the social contract these days. Teenagers are alienated and confused.

The YM/YWCA, and similar institutions, has gone the way of the Dodo bird as a meeting place for young people to physically develop and learn healthy ways of working and competing with each other.

Individuals such as celebrities are elevated to such dizzying heights that the ground they sprung from – just like all the rest of us – is disregarded. Until they hit a brick wall, of course.

But no worries, life’ll learn ya. It always does. If there is one consistent rule in life, it is inevitable ups and downs and reversals of fortune, whether health, wealth or love, that rise up and often define us.

When the chips are down along with your luck, hope to be in the company of good others who will walk the steep and rocky parts of the path with you and not just the open grasslands.

A person requires the company and support of others and society as a whole in order to thrive. The line is from John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624. “Look, I know you’re very proud man, but you need to let other people help you if you’re in trouble. No man is an island, Dan. It’s when our communities rally around us in times of tragedy that we truly appreciate that no man is an island, entire of itself.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/no+man+is+an+island

Good Fences

A daily blog I subscribe to posted this timely reminder about keeping healthy boundaries in relationship to one another. I was so bad at this for such a long time.

As an unformed person with a weak to nonexistent ego – a child say – then boundaries are pretty meaningless. And while we are called to dissolve our own ego in spiritual traditions,
the teachings never say to let go of the space you hold for yourself or the space you allow others.

As we mature and get older, part of “growing up” is recognizing healthy boundaries and learning to respect them – in others and your own.

Maintaining healthy boundaries is about recognizing the point at which our principles, and those of our loved ones, no longer overlap.

As relationships evolve, lives gradually become entwined. We tend to have a great deal in common with the people who attract us, and our regard for them compels us to trust their judgment. While our lives may seem to run together so smoothly that the line dividing them cannot be seen, we remain separate beings. To disregard these barriers is to sacrifice independence. It is our respect for the fact that our lives exist independently of the lives of others that allows us to set emotional and physical boundaries, to explore our interests and capabilities even when people close to us do not understand our partialities, and to agree to disagree. Maintaining healthy barriers is a matter of recognizing the point at which our principles and those of our loved ones and peers no longer overlap.

Human beings must relentlessly fight the temptation to follow the crowd. Naturally, we want to be liked, accepted, and admired, and it often seems that the easiest way to win approval is to ally ourselves with others. When we assume that our standards are the same as those of the people close to us without first examining our own intentions, we do ourselves a disservice. The barriers that exist between us are a reminder that our paths in life will be unique, and we must each accept that “I” and “we” can coexist peacefully. Our reactions, our likes and dislikes, our loves, our goals, and our dreams may or may not align with those of others, but we should neither ask others to embrace what we hold dear nor feel compelled to embrace what they hold dear.

As you learn to define yourself as an emotionally and intellectually distinct individual, you will grow to appreciate your autonomy. However much you enjoy the associations that bind you to others and provide you with a sense of identity, your concept of self will ultimately originate in your own soul. The healthy barriers that tell you where you end and the people around you begin will give you the freedom to pursue your development apart from those whose approval you might otherwise be tempted to seek out. Others will continue to play a role in your existence, but their values will not direct its course, and the relationships you share will remain marvelously balanced and harmonious as a result.

Necessary Losses

Necessary Losses is the title of a 1986 book by Judith Viorst. The title intrigued me but the sub-title even more: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow. 

(Grown up children (like mine) will recognize Viorst’s most famous children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. We loved that book when they were little people.)

When I first encountered Necessary Losses, I was in a period of deep mourning for my life. I’d lost nearly everything. My family of origin. My marriage. My job. My self-confidence and my center. My “promise of youth.”

What Viorst’s book taught me was that we all go through inevitable losses in life. They are unavoidable. We will lose “our childhood.” We will lose our youth. We will lose our parents. And, eventually, extended family. Then friends.

It is how we grow and change through these losses that we are brought to a deeper perspective, true maturity and fuller wisdom about life.

Oddly, it was this book I was thinking about when I was clearing out a storage locker yesterday. The contents of many boxes reflected my life back to me. An agenda for a planning meeting. Articles I’d published. School reports for one or the other of my children. Random recipes and receipts from everywhere.

It was both freeing and unsettling. Clearly, I had hung on too long to too much stuff. As my energy level dropped in proportion to the amount of stuff I had to go through, I understood why. It is emotional and daunting to revisit the past. My past in any case. It is also exhausting.

I saw my survival through line in the detritus. The contracts I pursued to keep body and soul together. The self-help books that acted as guides and friends when I felt bereft of both. The children’s art that I kept to remind them one day of their younger selves. (I honestly don’t think they care all that much. A mother’s predilection, not a child’s.)

Growing older, I can feel myself bracing for the upcoming wave of losses over the next ten years.

When you are younger, the death of a friend or acquaintance is shocking and seemingly random. We celebrate together as a community and memorializing that death is a noteworthy event. We go to the funeral as a community. We share remembrances of the departed and swap jokes they used to laugh at. It is a bonding experience.

Then I remember my mother once went to the funeral of three friends in one day. We are still in the time of “one-offs” when among the condolences, we dutifully deploy “s/he died too young.”

We see ourselves in the remembrances in the obituary. We remember rocking out to Tom Petty in the basement together. Furtively getting high on illicit weed from questionable sources.

We meet their adult children and marvel at how much they look like the parent – our friend – that they just lost. The culling has begun.

It is for the best that the wisdom we gain about death as we get older does not preoccupy us when we are young. Persistent thoughts of death and dying are deemed pathological in our youth. In youth, those thoughts are often treated as symptoms of a mental condition, like depression or suicidal ideation.

In old age, those thoughts can become constant companions. After attending so many funerals and reading so many obituaries, we aren’t surprised by death anymore. If we are wise, we prepare for it every day we are living.

We all know there are “no guarantees” in life. An infant can expire as well as the octogenarian.

I decided some time ago to walk with death. Aware it is there and standing by. But not yet invited to the party. I have too much living and exploration still ahead of me. I think.

This attitude has been both life-affirming and life-changing. I am philosophical about death compared to what I was in my youth. Then the thought of death or a terminal illness could make me white with terror. Looking back, I think my greatest fear was dying before I had actually lived.

No one knows the internal crater of pain and emptiness as well as the recently bereft. It is not a universal reaction, of course. Some deaths bring more relief than sadness. That is a loss for all involved in that particular passing.

I accept death’s inevitability now. I know it will take precious loved ones from me. That constant, hovering possibility focusses me more on living life now. I make the apple galette when asked. I watch a movie I’m not crazy about because he enjoys it.

This is not about suppressing or ignoring my own needs or sense of self. Because what I need most now is for my dearest to live happy and healthy for as long as possible. As that is my ultimate goal, the details of how I get there aren’t as important.

On with the day and dealing with the next batch of boxes. Sifting through memories. Even expressing gratitude for the hideousness of the task.

At least, I am still here and able to go through them – a privilege denied to many.

Pressure Cooking

Officially day one of sorting and tossing and packing up the big hoard.

What miserable work! Not a blessed good thing to say about it except that pinhole of light I currently see at the end of the tunnel.

Or that may be a floater in my eye. I’m not sure. Google it.

It is astonishing to me how in one life you can be the very soul of dithering and indecisiveness at one time.

At another time, you’d swear I’d eaten a full bowl of Wheaties. Today I was an offloading and “get that sorry stuff out of here” machine.

I am already breathing deeper. How about that?

In another glaring confession, I currently own two shipping containers. You know the kind I mean. Long, big ugly boxy things that transport all of the cool merch from China to here in North America for all of us happy consumers to enjoy.

Ugly, yes but boy are they spacious. And dry. And weathertight.

So these two butt ugly shipping containers have served me lo, these past four or five years at a lonely storage spot in the wilds of rural Ontario.

Tomorrow they will be emptied. And moved. And hopefully, some – no make that lots – of the contents will be diverted to a charity or a landfill. That is where the contents of the dumpster will eventually end up.

This is a “check in, along the way” post. I am aiming for Saturday evening reflections when containers will have been offloaded, house scoured and downsized.

My remaining effects will have been tidily arranged and the new locker moved into. Contents of the current locker (did I mention that one?) will be transferred and all tucked away.

This business of your expectations diminishing as you get older is so true. Wheee. A single, tidy, well-organized storage locker.

This hasn’t precisely been Swedish death cleaning but it has come close. The concept of Swedish death cleaning became popular after a 2017 book was published by Margareta Magnussen. It is meant to take the burden of “going through stuff” off of your loved ones after you die.

In practical terms, this means organizing and decluttering your home to reduce the burden of sifting through dozens of objects and trying to decide what’s significant. With Swedish death cleaning, you’ll have already done that for them by only holding onto items you’ve determined to be essential. 

We’ll see if that’s how far I get this week.

Maybe. Maybe not. I’m working on it.