Category: family

Thinking About Friends

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We are in the last third of our lives. That sounds a little scary, a little limiting, slightly stressful. But not really.

Retirement is allowing us to do exactly what we want. Whether it’s traveling with friends or spending time walking the beach in Rhode Island, David and I find these slower moments help us know how we want to spend this time.

Soon we will head to France, meeting friends from North Carolina that we happened to meet on our first trip three years ago. What a joy to travel with them, sharing our experiences, and making memories.

Mom is in a good place, truly living in the moment, not worrying about the past or the future. Alzheimer’s does that. But we could all learn from this. All we really have is the present.

Enough by David Whyte

 Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now

Another Summer

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Austin Kleon shared this video today that made me take a deep breath and appreciate my summer. Play through….

I’m taking Maurice Sendak’s words to heart today:

I wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live your life.

 

As Time Goes By

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This scene never changes.
I am spending time in Rhode Island as I have done my entire life– a summer of rest, of memories, of gratitude.

It’s a little more difficult as I can’t bring Mom. So we don’t tell her we are coming– it would be too difficult for her to understand why she can’t be here. But she is doing well, and I needed some time off.

So we sleep, read, take walks, and enjoy family and friends.

Not Giving Up Yet

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Whew, a long few months.  It’s amazing how mom’s dementia (plus her stress fracture and UTI) and my own bout with some stomach/digestive issues have twisted my thinking and weighed me down. But I do believe that warmer weather and signs of spring are lifting me out of the darkness.

I am learning how to balance it all. John O’Donohue helps, too:

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.