Workshop Moment

I've been avoiding my garage workshop for ages. For too long, each time I have pulled my car in, I have glanced over at the increasingly unkempt space to my left, and promised myself, "Soon."

A couple of weeks ago, I decided it was high time to change "Soon" into "Now".

When I built my closet shelving several years ago, there were some doors and drawers in the design. However, once the basic boxes were built and the space was usable, the finishing touches fell into the dreaded 'later' category on my to-do list. 

This year, I have been trying to work on that part of my list. I want to either work on the things or take them off the list. For me, when the list is static, it becomes a visual symbol of all the things in life I wanted to do but will now never accomplish. I don't need that sort of symbol in my life. It was time to either tackle those doors, or to decide I want to live with the closet the way it is.

The project has been quite the exercise in patience, letting go of ideas of perfection, and self-forgiveness. Turns out, if you lay a skill down for a decade or so, it's a bit rusty and needs some tuning up when you pick it back up. I probably knew that.

Slowly, but surely, the work has been progressing. I'm almost done gluing the doors together, the next step will be to disguise all the mistakes I've made. Thanks to my self-taught, google-boosted training, I've learned lots of ways to both make and cover up errors, and I'll be putting that knowledge to good use. (Thank goodness the doors will be painted - a good coat of paint covers a multitude of sins...)

To my not-at-all surprise, I've been uncovering a lot of uncomfortable emotions as I worked. (I KNEW there was a good reason I'd been avoiding the garage.) For a long time, I didn't work on stuff because Joe was using a lot of the space for storage. (That part didn't bither me a bot.) 

But then, last year, we cleaned his stuff out and moved Bob's stuff in, so Bob would have a workshop available after he moved to the city. He was able to get out here just three times before getting locked down first in one memory care unit and then the other. 

*sigh* My heart.

But my leaving the space untouched as some sort of dusty memorial isn't helping either of us. Getting out there, making mistakes, and moving on is helping me on more than a get-a-project-done level. 

I've been listening to my grief. I grieve because I deeply care and goodbyes are hard and long goodbyes are hard for a long time. And somehow, in the work, both in the parts I've done well, and in the imperfections, I've found glimpses of acceptance and healing. 

Stop. Breathe. (I'm not quite able to Relax, but I'm working on it.)

It's good advice.

Summer Solstice

One of the goals (such as they were) of my camper van trip was to be able to slow down enough to be able to experience the seasons as they turned a full cycle; to reconnect my soul to the rhythms of nature. While on the road, I was able to watch summer turn to fall turn to winter. I started to reground myself. But then, yeah, no. 

In the intervening years, I've tried to take time to observe the cycle turning, but was never able to catch the rhythm of life. Even after I retired, and was often out walking, there was something missing. I'd catch fragments of phrases, but the pulse of the music eluded me. Turns out, all I needed to do was to get a dog.

Sylvester needs to walk twice a day, which means, first thing each morning, before breakfast and coffee, whatever the weather, I'm out on the streets for a twenty to thirty minute stroll. And by stroll, I mean we suddenly jerk to a halt every so often so he can smell the smells.

I have to admit it's taken me some time to appreciate this approach to movement; at first it just annoyed me. When I go out by myself, I tend to keep a steady pace. My body goes into autopilot mode, my mind wanders far afield. I get a lot of thinking done, but don't necessarily pay a lot of attention to my physical surroundings. However, with the dog, the abrupt changes of pace yank my mind back out of itself and into awareness of the present moment. 

I feel the touch and the temperature of the air on my skin. I see the other dogs out walking with their people, notice the squirrels, the landscaping, the flowers, the trees. I hear the wind blowing, and the birds singing. I note when the quiet of the morning is disturbed by the noise of someone in their car, headed off to start their day. I smell the flowers, the morning damp; I catch an occasional whiff of sewer gas. 

Over the last six months, I have slowly become a bit more grounded; back in touch with the elusive pulse of the seasons. For a change, this year's summer solstice didn't take me by surprise; I didn't need the calendar to tell me it had arrived. This year, I watched it approach.

Thank you, Sylvester. Turns out, I needed you to come stay for a while just as badly as you needed a place to live while your other people find some balance in life.

Amazing how things work sometimes. I mean, I don't know if I believe in the Universe caring enough about the mental health of me and of the dog to nudge us together, but I can't not believe it either. 

Good Is. 

Memory Care Musings

Brains are weird.

In one of my dreams last week, I was with a group of people who were singing a song, and I wanted to sing along with them, but I wasn't familiar with the tune.

Happens, right? Except. 

Since I was dreaming, the only place that song existed was in my head. And, so, I MUST know the tune because I was hearing the words and the melody in the dream. Or maybe, it's a song I knew once, so part of my consciousness knows it, but my current memory has forgotten it? 

Sadly, I'll never know. As usually happens with dream recollections, the tune and the words have evaporated along with the context of the rest of the dream.

The more time I spend visiting Bob in his locked dementia ward, the more I am in awe of the complexity of our mind-body connections.

I have, for so long, taken so much for granted. My body, except for that cancer thing, usually just works. I give it food and water, exercise and sleep, and in return, it chugs along without too much complaint. My mind goes along its merry way, thinking and writing, worrying and planning, largely unaware of all the work the body does to keep it functioning. 

There is one man, there in the memory unit, whose blank face haunts my dreams; whose mind-body connection is almost completely severed. In Bob's time at Brookdale, I have had just one meal in their dining room with him, and at that meal, this man shared our table. The aide walked him on in, told him to sit, and he sat. They put a plate of mush in front of him, put a spoon in his hand, told him to eat, and he mechanically, neatly, lifted the food to his mouth. I tried to smile and greet him, but when I looked in his eyes, I saw only emptiness. There was no one looking back at me. 

As he was being seated, the aide called him by the title he'd clearly borne for much of his adult life - Doctor.

In my world, to become Doctor, one has to have intelligence, determination, drive. For Doctor X, all of these things have been erased. All that is left is the shell, the body. If, indeed, our spirits live on after us, where has his spirit gone? What is life all about, if this is where our bodies end up? 

I'm still trying to make sense of the rush of feelings that surface every time I think of this incident. Top of the pile is overwhelming sadness for this man, and for those who love him. Right beneath that is the driving need to figure out ways to make sure I will never sit in his chair myself.

My usual prayers and mantras of comfort fail me here. 

All I have is the wordless plea of the tears currently spilling from my eyes.

Amen?

Number 600

This is my 600th entry in this blog. I can't really wrap my mind around the hours of writing, the years of experiences, underlying these 600 vignettes. 

I've traveled so far since I wrote that first entry, back in August of 2011. I was brimming with hope, excitement, and no small amount of trepidation (though I kept that last part largely to myself). I was leaving behind all that was familiar and taking a chance on adventure. I'd quit the job I'd held for 27 years, sold my house, put all my stuff in storage, and set out to see what I could see.

I saw so much of the beauty I'd hoped to find in this country before my trip was derailed by my bout with cancer. I was so disappointed, so angry at the Universe, when my adventure on the road was assigned a permanent detour before I'd had a chance to unearth the elusive insights I'd hoped to find on my journey. *sigh*

It's a good thing I'd learned how to see beauty in every day while I was on my trip; I needed that skill during the next decade, which brought with it challenge after challenge to my body, heart and soul. Beauty carried me through those dark days while I was learning to live with the effects on my body of my cancer treatments. Kate's cancer, Maria's death, Libby's death, Tony's cancer in the midst of Libby's struggle - I still found, each day I remembered to look for it, Beauty. During the long and lonely days of COVID, and more recently, learning to walk with Bob in his dementia journey, Beauty still pops up its head, reminding me to live today; it's the only day I have.

Yeah... it's been quite the journey. I have learned so much along the way, and writing about the good and the bad has been one of the touchstones of my life; a way to know I am still connected to people who care about me and about my story.

600 pages. There's a book in there, at least one. I started, several months ago, to pull out just a fragment of the story - the part about helping to find Kevin a home.  Cleaning up and refining even that short piece was a lesson for me. Turns out, writing a story is a LOT of work. I know now why more people never finish writing the Next Great American Novel.

But, I do plan to give it a shot. I want to start with my blog entries, then pull together a cohesive tale of my Camper Van saga. It's such a good tale, if I do say so myself, and the notion keeps tugging at me; the tale wants to be told. 

Wish me luck!