Antony: I am dying, Egypt, dying. Give me some wine and let me speak a while.
Cleopatra: No, let me speak!
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To say that life after Dallas has been an adjustment would be an understatement. The grief is profound, and can't be looked at directly. When I'm home alone with it, I am easily overtaken.
With the perspective of some months, I can say that the process of grieving her decline, and now the thinking back to those last weeks and agonizing days, is harder to take than simply missing her. I also know now that we let her go at the right time. Some day I will turn this corner and be able to remember the good times ahead of the final, spirit-tearing days as we edged closer to goodbye.
In the meantime, life has gone on as it must do. At work we are now 7, depending on how you count, and we are just at the edge of busier than we can handle. The busy-ness has probably saved me from wreck, and I am grateful for it.
We are learning too- we're going through a business-planning exercise with a leadership group as a first step to maturing our business model and our understanding of our own lines of business. Our financial planning is improving, and we are attuned to cash-flow and sales pipe issues. So far, so good.
I saw a friend from public school last week. I guess we were only 6yrs old when we met, and we went through public, senior and most of high school together. She was one of the lovely people, whose spirit you knew was good, whose manner was gentle, and whose laugh was frequent. When I saw her last Sunday, she threw her head back and laughed in exactly the old way, and I was filled with wonder at how little changes in the core of a person, though time and circumstance lead us to believe otherwise. We had the old smiles for each other, but seasoned now by wisdom and gratitude.
The occasion for the visit was inauspicious. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and this party was just one day before the first of her surgeries. Another classmate from those Ponsonby Public years was the doctor who took care of her. Amidst the family, co-workers and friends, sat we four from Ponsonby- myself, Sarah and another Ponsonby alumni, Sandra, and our Grade 6 teacher. I was offered a view into where their lives had taken them, some of the bridges they'd crossed, and I found myself profoundly grateful at the chance to revisit that part of my life's tapestry and to knit an extra stitch here and there where images of these people reside. Life can be such a beautiful thing. Reconnections are easily the best thing about being home again.
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To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified
Isaiah 61:3
