Without children living at home, the new title of empty nester still quite new, my thoughts swoop to places uncharted. Only fifteen days without R. in the nest and fifteen days of being a "just the two of us" with five of those at a family wedding. Stop counting Ellen. That is me, the one who logs down emotions and thoughts, calculations of living. I can't help it.
So what one may ask, is transpiring in those thoughts? A lot. Given that it has been a year of extreme lows and extreme highs I can't help but think these thoughts belong on a trapeze. Swinging back and forth, being caught (God I love my husband for holding me tight), swinging out freely on my own (God I'm grateful for my self-stability and trust in myself), then from lofty heights I fall into a soft net of my loving family.
After watching my mom lose herself from Alzheimer's, with urgency I wish to live more fully. I want to do it all. I want to go everywhere, NOW. Not later, now. I want to smell every flower, touch the softness of every petal and hold it's delicate blossom knowing soon it will fade. It's not that I am thinking of my own demise, though those thoughts certainly have come up when you lose your parents and wonder "what now?". Rather than take that step to that door, I choose life and that other door called living.
Sometimes my thoughts travel back to when Papa died and that turning point where I knew my mom was dying, figuratively, because she gave up on ever being truly happy again. Fourteen years of living but not wanting to be living. Then the last three + years where her brain became emptied unvoluntarily. I've wondered if her ability to love was only for him. What might cause one to abandon the essence of loving? One can give and give your love to someone who has given up on love and in doing so you can become weakened and can find yourself hurt, angry, and in the end with my mom I became empathetic. Deep inside I knew there was nothing left that I could do to help her.
I'm blessed to be married to this man, my Love. He has loved me through every stage of my life and I to him. We both yearn to see the world and to be with our family whenever we can. I'm ready to allow myself to be silly, something that has been lost to me for quite some time. Laugh at myself, love myself, discover who I am and whom I shall continue to learn about.
Time is precious. Neither of us want to waste a moment to live in happiness. We can't avoid the days that surely will come of grief or sadness. Slump days will happen, illness will happen, days of utter delight will happen. Balance. Karma. Yin-Yang.
What I'm observing in myself since R. has left is the renewal of the amazing relationship I have with my Love. It's sort of like dating all over again. And that is pretty darn fun. I'm learning to listen with intent and not with "uh-huh" half heartedly. When you are in a relationship that spans as long as we have you can sometimes not listen with both ears. I've done this and he has too. I'm ready to woo and be wooed. So what that we have been married for 37 years? Let's begin again and again.....
I choose Love.
