Under the covers I opened my mini iPad to check my email for the day. Nothing too interesting so I moved on to check Facebook where I stopped to read an essay about "the right to die." A woman wrote very beautifully and compellingly about her decision to end her own life when her body is seriously breaking down or has broken down. That she will know when it is the right time to flip the switch on her life. Personally I am not sure of any answers for those questions but she started me thinking.Since she is a writer of beautiful prose it was fairly comfortable to read on such a tough topic and end-of-life is creeping into my thinking more often. Not to worry. I am not thinking of ending my life - it is the furtherest thought from my mind - but I am thinking about time running down on its own. When the sand in the hour glass is dribbling toward an ending you have to acknowledge your mortality.
Its funny how your perspective on that can change. Between the ages of 20 - 50 I shuddered and was fearful at the idea of death. Gradually I have settled into a sort of acceptance that it will happen. Especially since Jim's illness and death three years ago when the reality of the inevitability of death settled on us.
Now that I am emerging from the heaviest fogs of grief that over-took me following Jim's death I have to look at myself and the new life I wake up to every day. Alone, without Jim and hey - oops - I am getting older. Once I laughed and made bucket lists to ward off the reality of ending. Now I am sure that things end - but I no longer think a bucket list is the best way to start summing up.
First, I know I have to clear out and clean up the "messiness" and collecting Jim and I did in 57 years. It would have been better if we had done that together but instead Jim helped me focus on my storytelling business so that I would have a job when he was gone. Focusing on that created a safe screen for what was really happening to him and I am eternally grateful to him for both that and making sure I had "something" to hang onto later. Now I have storytelling true - and I also have 57 years of "stuff" to get rid of.
So that's the first item on my list. Now just to get that done and be free of the weight of it!!!
I am lucky that I am in pretty good health for someone marching toward her 79th birthday - so- check- taking care of that with a new doctor and firm resolve to do what she tells me to.
Storytelling of course - on several fronts. I have stories I want to keep telling and there are new stories I have in mind to write and work on. Creating art work has been my salvation since my daughter died in 1964 - now is not the time to slack off on the most life-giving medicine I know.
There are a lot of other things I thought would be on my list - but they don't seem to make it anymore. I am reminding myself of mentors I have known who turned down enticing projects because they no longer fit into their scheme and were not worth any of their grains of sand. There were times when I thought one or more were being selfish. Now I understand. Nothing I like better than an exciting project, especially one that has a deeper benefit - and I hope I will find one that is worth the gift of time.
That's where I am - taking a breath before I commit to something enticing that sparkles at first glance.
Does
it really
fit my plan?
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