MEANWHILE …

“There’s a new world somewhere, they call the promised land …”

Meanwhile –

Life goes on.

And we do what we have to do to make it the best we can.

For me, making my life “the best I can” involves busy work. I get antsy, and morose, if I’m idle too long. I’ve been stuck in-house since Sunday with household chores, and the 4 walls are starting to crowd me; so today between tasks, I made time to finish the painted driftwood garden art I started a few days ago – the painted piece of driftwood will sit atop one of the garden boxes’ lip, like the river rocks I hauled home from Toutle’s Tower Road, where Bob used to high dive off the old bridge (https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2019/09/sunday-funday-2.html
& https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2020/04/caribbean-blue_5.html):

Caribbean Blue painted driftwood w-tiny footprints. Painted freestyle with a paint pen.

Caribbean Blue finished: a reminder to myself of Elohim’s faithfulness; I sprayed the finished piece with a clear paint sealer to help protect from the outdoor elements.

While the paint dried, I got some more paper pots made up and started some more transplant seedlings – and noticed as I was setting the trays on window sills that the parrot tulips on the front porch had fully opened up
(https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2020/04/in-hopes-of-garden.html). In all the houses we’ve owned, windows and window sills are what I look for when house hunting (are there enough windows – how much sunlight will I get in the house; and are the window sills deep enough to hold my seedling trays?)

This house fits that bill. Bob always did good by me in making sure I had windows and window sills to tickle my fancy ;-)

The parrot tulips I bought last March: they caught my eye as I was walking into Safeway. Bob liked Parrot tulips, and he liked the color yellow because it’s a warm color and reminded him of summer sunshine. I bought the tulips because they’ll come back every year if I take care of them properly.

The color yellow in the language of flowers, represents joy and lightheartedness. It also symbolizes friendship, new beginnings, and happiness. When our daughter was born 9 months following our marriage, Bob brought to me a bouquet of flowers in the hospital – the arrangement was 1 red rose, 1 salmon rose, I pink rose, and 1 yellow rose: red for passion and a declaration of love – salmon for desire and excitement – pink for happiness and a show of appreciation, yellow for new happiness and new beginnings; the card read, in his own handwriting, “Your love shines so bright. Thank you. I love you – Bob”. Bob had been married before: our marriage, and the birth of our daughter, was a new beginning for him & he wanted me to know how much he loved me. Neither of us had ever truly been loved before: that bouquet spoke a lot to both of us …

Packets selected, and paper pots/labels made up for each seedling transplant to sown according to my Garden Plan notations.

Seedlings sown & placed in sunny windows – both sides of the livingroom. There are 109 sown seedlings total; also overwintered potted Coleus, & Geranium slips waiting to be transplanted.

I broke these tulips down into smaller clumps for repotting in the Summer, after they had finished blooming.

Opened Parrot Tulips, 2020.

I have to keep busy too, because of this virus upheaval. I refuse to let the {what if’s} rattle my cage and upset me. That upsets some people in my life, and I can’t help that – I am not responsible for their peace of mind; they have to do that themselves. I am only responsible for me. That may sound selfish, and perhaps it is to a degree; I understand that my lack of drama and tears could be seen as a total disregard for others, and I can’t help that either. People will think what they will think.

I’m not completely apathetic to the plight of the people of Longview, or even the entire world for that matter; but since becoming a widow, I’ve come to a place in my life where hysterical drama seems to me to be a frivolous luxury of emotion I choose not to indulge in. I’ve never lived my life in terms of ‘could’ve’, ‘should’ve’, or ‘what if’ – that line of thinking never leads anywhere positive or productive.

Secondly, I have bigger fish to fry. I can’t afford to go flying off into a million pieces, worrying about everyone else’s lives when I have my own life to hold together and shape into some sort of normalcy in my own space. And I really resent everyone else infringing on my space and trying to tell me how to live, what to do, and how to feel. During this crucial time of personal healing I can’t … and won’t … allow myself to be dragged into dramatic hysterics people seem to love taunting themselves with before a true tragedy occurs. I have realities I am dealing with. I know first-hand, and fairly recently, how quickly lives come to unexpected ends, and how tilted a personal world can get following the unexpected, and unimaginable. I don’t need to be giving an ear to projected unexpected tragedies put forward by drama queens with nothing better to do than dramatize situations and circumstances.

I just don’t have as much silly, frothy emotion to whip up anymore. I’m too busy trying to maintain – to keep my emotions on an even keel, so I can get through each day without dissolving into painful crying jags, or surges of overwhelming missingness of my husband that jolts me to the quick. It has taken me a year to steady my new life; I will not allow others to rock it again.

I have chosen not to waste whatever time I have left to live this life I now have – and I don’t sit around bemoaning what I’ve lost. Instead, I prefer to look around at what remains, and rebuild my life as best I can with what is left. Otherwise, there is no point at all in carrying out small pivotal moments that comprise an unfolding life of living.

During this time of pandemic, many people have come face-to-face with the Grim Reaper, leaving their surviving spouse to learn how to live with that unpredictable imp, Grief. And many more will intimately become familiar with both if this thing goes into 2021 as some doctors are telling us it will (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/08/coronavirus-when-normal-expert-health-care-172005). This thing is not behaving as doctors, governors, and world leaders expect it to behave. They all want to control it and bring it into submission, but it will not submit -
(https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/mask-respirators/surgical-cotton-masks-equally-ineffective-blocking-covid-19-spread-say-investigators).

So, I don’t get freaked out. I don’t get angry. I don’t get bitchy with others who are freaked out and get angry at me. There is no point to waste my emotions in such an aimless and frivolous manner.

This coronavirus will play itself out as long as it takes. And people will have to come to terms with that. Because no matter how much people think they can control what happens in their lives, they can’t: and we are all, eventually, humbled in an instant. And then we are sorting through our altered lives and realizing that the small things don’t matter one iota. Time is short. Life should be lived while you have it to live, not wasted on fears that steal wonder and cripple lives.

Tonight, when I took the garbage out, I happened to catch a glimpse of the moon coming up in the twilight hour:

Moon coming up.

When my eyes are drawn to the sky now, I often wonder how it must seem to Bob looking down on earth from the other side of our parallel habitations.

This is where my thoughts go now.

I don’t have time to waste on {what if} fears of coronavirus.

I already know what it is like to live without the one person who made my life worth living. And I know I’ll never find another Bob. He was my ‘someone forever and a day’ …

I love you, Babe.

Always ~ OX