What I still know to be true

Just the other day during a quiet moment on the drive home from a wonderful day of snowshoeing, my good friend gently said to me,  “and you have an anniversary coming up?”

I turned my head in his direction with a curious stare of pause.

“An anniversary? No. No anniversary,” I replied, returning to look upon the road to home.

My intuitive friend is a gem, and he knows what is coming. Alas, so do I.

Yet, I was trying to convince myself that two years post would allow the day to pass without feeling it so much. 

Who was I kidding? I’m certainly not kidding my friend, and if he’s clued in, then I’m certainly unable to kid myself either.

As much as I would like to believe there is no anniversary, no annual observation of a past event, I would be in denial or naïve, or both, if I awoke January 19^th and didn’t face what that day means in the journal of my life.

“Courtney,” who writes ‘athoughfulplaceblog.com’ penned exactly what I am feeling now, and I applaud her insightful words.

“I am not one to sugar coat and I am not one to avoid that which is so clearly in my face. Since the very day [two years ago] I have chosen to walk, crawl, wade, and trudge through the grief. I have to own it and build my life within the context of it. I will not let it consume me but rather shape me into the best person I can be.”

All that I am is measured by the year, this being the second one.

I still believe that making it to the anniversary date of any major traumatic event in life is a milestone of legendary proportions and each of us comes to it in different ways.

I also believe it is a sacred journey. No one but me can decide how to take each step towards healing.

January 19^th, a part of me wants to walk out into the yard at 4:30 p.m. to the spot where life changed in an instant and where I can stand and try to make sense of things.

My good and caring friend thinks it might be a day to instead do good things for myself—take a warm foot bath, a good book in hand, and enjoy some chocolate.

He would, of course, be correct.  

Once again, I am going to get up at sunrise and live the day as fully as I can. I am alive. I am here. I am full of possibility.

I continue to read “The Language of Letting Go,” by Melody Beattie, my nightingale of freedom.

There’s not a morning that goes by where Ms. Beattie doesn’t impress upon me a valuable lesson about giving up control. I let life in and it unfolds before me.

“Sometimes, it takes more courage to do the ordinary things in life than it does to walk to the door of the airplane and jump.”

Bad things happen in life—now there’s a no brainer.

“What matters is not what happens to us, but how we react to it. You can sit around and complain to your friends about how unfair life is, or you can get up, put the empty bowl in the dishwasher, and go fill up your life.”

I have the courage to live my life, to walk my path every day, right where I am. And if I don’t, I will try again tomorrow.

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