Hoping

In my grief class Thursday night, the facilitator asked me a question. She began it by saying, "Since you've become a widow blah blah blah..." My mind couldn't take in the rest of the sentence, because I had not had the "w" word applied to me before, and I was momentarily stunned. One of those little out of body experiences where you think, "She cannot possibly be talking to me." But: she was. And I am. That "w" word. 

I think that "w" should stand for "without".  One of the main areas I find myself "without" is boundaries. I realize just how much discipline D brought into our day-to-day lives. He was the most careful and disciplined eater I had ever met. I realized I had hit the bottom of the culinary food chain when I was eating a hot dog at Target the other night because I was late to class and in a hurry. A HOT DOG AT TARGET. There are so many things wrong with that sentence I will not even attempt to try and make an excuse for it.

I have gotten better at making the bed and hanging the clothes up. Young son came to town and cut the grass so young children no longer run past my house because it looks like the Town Crazy Lady lives here. Those rooms with all the half-completed projects and piles? I've found closing the doors makes them look much more tidy from the outside. 

 I am so hoping that order will be restored to my life soon.  It's just that when no one is there to add accountability, it is so easy to drop things and let them lie in piles. Because who will see it? 

 Are you a fan of the late poet Shel Silverstein? Then perhaps you know of the poem I read regularly to my students about a girl named "Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout, would not take the garbage out" (I pause to add: I do take mine out. The garbage, that is. It's just the rest of life that piles up.) The poem goes on to end, "Sarah met a terrible fate, in that garbage she did hate..." Well. Admitting that there is a problem is half of the solution, right?

I confess: I still hunt and gather my food and do not buy groceries regularly, because take-out is much easier. I cannot even think of cleaning out the garage that is so full of tools and unfinished wood projects that I can barely walk though it. I cannot make myself go back to church yet and I can't even explain why that is. I have quit watering the plants in the backyard and only the succulents look like they will survive. (Maybe I should turn to cactus gardens.) And bedtimes? Friends  who remember the days when they could not call after 9 pm would be shocked to know that bedtime keeps getting pushed farther and farther out. I admit there is a problem.

But the one thing I appreciate is that somewhere in the deepest, darkest corner of my heart and mind I KNOW that this, too, will pass. I don't know how I know and believe this, but I do.  There are three things that remain, according to Corinthians: faith, hope and love. And that hope? It lives somewhere in my being and continues to encourage me along.

I do know that things will get better.

 And that I shouldn't eat hot dogs at Target anymore.