It seems as if I’ve been doing a lot of blogging lately about my ideal life, though sometimes it was only because those blog prompts came up and I felt as if I had something to say. Other times it was because that particular day did feel ideal. It’s made me wonder, though, if I sounded smug with all that “ideal life” talk. For those of you who have been with me all through my years of grief over Jeff, over the loss of my father and my older brother, the loss of whatever stability I’d found, you know that my current ideal life has been hard won. The posts are more about gratitude for finding a safe haven than about congratulating myself on winning the “life” lottery.
I also know, as do you, how quickly life can change. One day one is the midst of the most terrible angst imaginable, and the next day one is okay. Well, not the next day, though from my perspective today, it can feel like it. But I have thousands of blog posts archived under the heading “grief posts” to show the truth of how many days separated the days of angst from these days of peace.
These “ideal life” posts are strictly about today. I hope no matter what traumas descend on me in the future, these days of gratitude and peace will help give me the courage to face what might come. I can hope, of course, for many years of this “ideal life,” but life tends not to take our hopes into consideration. Though who knows — some people believe we create our own reality, so perhaps these “ideal life” posts are helping create a future that is as easy as my life is today.
It is funny, though, that I am going through a time of relative freedom from body malfunctions and pain. There have been episodes over the past few years of knee problems, piriformis muscle and tendon issues, and various other trivialities (considering the life/death spectrum). I’ve managed to find a way to handle whatever has come my way, and currently there is a weird bout of catarrh that comes and goes, probably due to allergies, but for the most part, there are no malfunctions for me to deal with. That will change, too, but again, I am grateful for these days of ease (as opposed to dis-ease). And in fact, they should be celebrated despite any hint of what could be conceived as smugness.
Do I “deserve” these days? Who knows. Does anyone “deserve” anything that happens to them? Life is just . . . life. We deal with the good as well as the bad, though to be honest, the good is a whole heck of a lot easier to deal with!
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One
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