march 4, 2011

March 4, 2011

 

Hello all,

 

Each day, the sun shines just a little bit more.  We still have snow, and cold, and wind chills- but the sun’s rays are just a little stronger, and last longer. 

 

Spring has to be coming.  It’s not here yet, and will probably take a while, but it has to be coming. 

 

I read a novel about a teenager in the 40s who had tuberculosis and had to stay in a sanatorium for months.  The cure started with absolute rest, and included sleeping in the winter night air- bundled in blankets, sometimes the ‘cure’ included deliberately collapsing a lung.  The cure- and the rest were long, seemingly endless and bleak but she- and others would slowly recover. Not everyone.  Some succumbed to the disease.

But for many, the awful cure was time and rest and sometimes pain.

 

Not unlike what it’s been like to lose Loren- my other half and my girls’ dad.

 

Technically- you can become a widow in an instant.  But becoming a widow in your being isn’t technical.  At first, even in the loss, I felt like much the same person.  Sad, but still much like the me I knew myself to be.

As the months went on, slowly, I became aware of not  how life was different- but how I am different.  Months and months ago, I wrote about being unravelled- like knitting.  That hurts, but for a while- you can still recognize what the garment – or what I- was.   After a while- it doesn’t look at all like a garment.  That’s kind of what it is like to go from being a wife to a widow.  After a while you can tell you are definitely not a wife- but you don’t know what you will be yet. 

 

And that’s the widow piece.  Then there’s the mom, or mom-in-law, or empty nester, or student, nurse, working, not –working, or renter, home owner….

A life sifted- or sedimented.

 

Winter snows will melt.  What will be left on the ground come the spring?

 

"For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, they are plans for good, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11 (nlt)

 

Love

felicia