#44, August 3, 2015, What Would Happen?

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during that last, sad, wonderful year of Dave's life.

Thinking this morning about how desperately I’ve been trying to control what is happening around me, and how miserably I fail. 

Yesterday’s lesson in church was about how God is the Bread of Life. He provides constantly for me in real, palpable ways. He feeds me. He keeps me safe. He goes before me in trouble. But I don’t let Him.

What would happen if I finally yielded to God? I can hardly imagine.

I would say:

I am not responsible for Dave—his happiness, his health.

I cannot plan either for the rest of his life or my own after he goes.

I cannot rely on our savings for my financial well being.

I must spend more energy on responding to what is happening than planning for what may never happen.

I must be content with not knowing and learn to trust.

I don’t know any of these things.

I do not serve either God or Dave by doing. I serve them by believing and trusting.

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#43, August 2, 2015, The Problem of Unlearning

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the wonderful sad last year of Dave's life.

Sometimes I just want to be done with this, but even as I think that, am not reconciled with what that means. 

Dave is not done, is not ready, and I can’t imagine what it must be like to be him. His life has wrung itself out more than mine, that’s true, but I don’t think he loves his life any less than I do.

Yesterday, he wanted to invite his cousin to come stay here overnight. I have never met this cousin and suddenly he feels this new attachment to him and a list of other cousins he’s never met. I told him that I didn’t feel up to it when in truth I just tired of all the fuss around entertaining strangers. Maybe I should be willing to give it a try, but I just don’t want to.

I can’t imagine a world, my world, without Dave in it. In fact, I can’t have one. Dave and I have been together 37 years and I think of how each thing I do every day will affect him. Everything. Every day. I will never shed that habit. Never. 

A widow, then, must be alone only in the physical sense—the old practical concerns no longer apply. But the thought processes—I will never have enough time to unlearn those.

#42, July 31, 2015, Alive

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the wonderful sad last year of Dave's life.

Woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. 

I feel all my bones and the muscles attached to them, my flesh working still, almost strong. I feel all the hungers still and the pleasure of their satisfaction. 

A time will come when there’s no more room for hungers—I know that from being sick even that short time—when pain and trouble of body take up all the room living gives them. But that time is not now. Not for me. Not yet.

Dave is well on his way there—he’s good at not pining over what he does not have, but I remember what he has done for me.

I remember with gratitude that he has let me use him for more than 30 years as a substitute for loving. He let me stir up his intensity and use it as a launching pad for my own until now even the memory---the senses of it, all its touch and smell and taste—is enough to touch off my own.

I am still living even as he is learning how to die.

A breeze stirs the curtains this early morning. I hear a dove. The air brings a slight chill.

I feel alive.

 
Image: theimpactnews.com