yearning for what is gone
Entry posted by swilkinson
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I've been on this site going on for four years now. In those years I have of course grown four years older, I'm now past sixty, Ray and I had our fortieth wedding anniversary, he is now sixty six. We are not the young folk we used to be, nothing like we were in 1990 when he had his first stroke at aged forty eight. And yet, in a way, a huge part of our lives got left back there. We are part of the lost generation, those who for one reason or another were unable to fulfill their dreams, who had their hopes dashed, who never did all the things on the wish list. It was not our fault, not something we deliberately did, it was a cardio vascular accident, we call it "stroke".
I hope now at sixty one I am older and wiser but I very much doubt it. Today I read a few posts with that plaintive echo: "why me? it isn't fair, I want my old life back." and so do I, so indeed do I. But what would that life be like now? Better than this one or just different from it? It is too far back to know. Of course I can go back to the major strokes in 1999, that is less than ten years ago. But to the 1990 stroke, the beginning of all that trouble? No I don't think so.
So how do we deal with all that wishful thinking, all that wondering about what might have been if the stroke didn't happen? How do we cope with the disappointments, the lost dreams...maybe even that sense of failure? Because I know that is one of my feelings some days, a sense of failure. Like the failure to thrive in babies it somehow stunts my growth. I need to get rid of that feeling. I really do. And become the kind of person who lives in the present, deals with life as it comes and enjoys her life. What is the use of moping around, it doesn't achieve anything.
There are people here who do make the most of every day, I am thinking here of Asha (achandra) and hostallan. They personify for me the power of going with the flow, of getting on with life just the way it is. I admire their fortitude and their attitude. I try to be more like that day by day. Not just stoic but cheerfully doing the best I can with each day, and doing a good deed if I can.
It is not always easy to find a good deed to do but it might be as simple as calling out a cheery greeting to my neighbour, telling a shop assistant "thank you, and you have a nice day yourself too" or just giving way to someone else, on a street corner, in a shopping centre car park, wherever I can. To try to be a blessing to someone rather than just another person who obstructs them in some way. We all know what we like in others so that is the way we need to be ourselves.
I am feeding my neighbour's cat again. My neighbour is away on another trip, partly business, partly pleasure he says. He often goes away for a few days, a couple of weeks, sometimes more. His daughter has gone back to her mother, she is a teen and there was some problems so that was decided on as the best solution. He had always been the one who stayed at home and now he doesn't have to so he is enjoying his freedom. The cat and I don't get on but he needs his food so he has to tolerate me. And I've notched up another good deed.
The sun is back so my "rain depression" has lifted again and I feel like doing some things around the place. Today Trev and I pulled out some ivy that was choking some shrubs and gave them a cut back. It was quite warm as there is now a lot of moisture in the air and the humidity is back. The floods are now in northern New South Wales as well as Queensland but nowhere near here thank goodness. The Victorian bushfires are now mostly under control. Life is coming back to near normal again.
But our lives will never be normal will they? There will always be the extra work caused by the strokes Ray had and all the restrictions that go with poor mobility and poor swallowing and all the other deficits he has. It makes a lot of work for me and because of that I feel it so much harder to achieve anything. But maybe the actual achievements are not that important you know. We really do need to set our own goals and make them realistic ones. There is no use us thinking that if we worked, if we earned more, had more, achieved more, we would be happy. I guess we could simply decide to be happy with what we have, doing what we can, achieving what? a life well lived perhaps?
So tomorrow is another day to practice loving my neighbour as myself. It is another day of going through life as cheerfully as I can. If it has some surprises I will work on dealing with them without building up a head of steam and getting flustered if I can. Flow, here I come.
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