Gratitude

Tis the season for an attitude of gratitude. I'm more familiar with grumpy than gratitude but....

• I'm glad I survived the wreck. If you had asked me before the wreck if I wanted to die at the same time as Ron, I would have said, "yes." But that was because I was so afraid of losing him. When I woke up in the hospital, I immediately knew that it was his time but not mine and I wasn't afraid. Just terribly sad. I believe I'm here for a reason. I can think of several possibilities but I don't really know. For right now, I'm just focusing on healing and awaiting instructions from a higher power. I miss Ron like hell, like I knew I would, but I'm not afraid to live without him.

• I am most grateful of all for family and friends. I am still amazed by all the energy and love that has held me up for the past two years. It's never even begun to slack up. I wish I could think of a way to write a story about it. I'm trying but haven't figured out how I want it yet. In this day and age of incredible busy-ness when everyone is overloaded with way, way too much to do, people carved huge chunks out of their lives to be there for me in every conceivable way. They fed me, clothed me, sat with me, cried with me, slept at my house to oversee my middle of the night fears and bathroom visits, cared for my cat, helped me pay my bills and take care of the massive amount of paper work involved after an accident and a death, helped me take a bath, did my laundry, cleaned my house, brought me 12 Step meetings in the hospital and at home, helped me do Ron's memorial (mostly they did it. I didn't do much), gave money to help with extra expenses, took me to the doctor, picked up prescriptions, went to the grocery store, mowed the grass, fixed my house so that I could manage in a wheelchair, took me to meetings, took me out to eat, took me to the movies and just sat around and loved me. Utterly amazing. I'm particularly grateful for my daughters who both had major changes going on in their lives at the time of the wreck - one moved from Virginia to Texas and the other had a brand new baby. They really had their lives disrupted one more time but stood up under it like the tough, loving women they are. I've heard it said that sometimes there's nothing you can do to repay what's given to you except to pass it on. This is certainly one of those times.

More on gratitude later.

Dreams

I've been having some dandy dreams. They are very entertaining to me. It occurred to me that writing them down might be useful, so...

I dreamed I was having sex with conjoined twins. It went rather well.

I dreamed I was a man who was going for a job interview. When I looked in the mirror, I thought I looked anxious. So I decided to lower my eyebrows because I thought I would look calm. The whole dream was about plucking my eyebrows just the right amount at the top and brushing them down with a brush and then putting gel on them so they would stay down. When I finished, I left the mirror and the dream was over.

Back Again

I see I've been absent a long time again. That's mostly because I've been up to my ears in change. It took awhile to recover from surgery. Plus right before surgery I made the decision to step down from my job in order to have more time to do the things I need to do to heal, and to allow them to find someone to do the important work that I cannot do due to my recovery issues. It was a very good decision. I felt stress leave as soon as I made it. I had thought my recovery would be in a fairly straight line upward. I was wrong - it's been up and down and a lot of down. So, I spent the time before surgery rushing around to set up a new business through which I will contract to do a small amount of work. After surgery, as soon as I was able, I prepared for the CRUISE that my oldest daughter and I have been planning for a long time. We booked it to celebrate my being able to walk with a cane. But as it happened, I went in my wheelchair because it turned out that the femur in my right leg was not healed, and that's why I needed the surgery. So, we celebrated surviving adversity in pretty good shape instead.

The cruise was a great experience - just rest and kindness and good food and beautiful music. It was lovely to spend the time with Liz. She's been with me through this extremely tough experience and has managed to be positive through it all. And this is in spite of a difficult two years of her own. The highlight next to the beauty of it all, was the crew of the ship - representing more than 100 different countries. They were friendly and kind and fascinating people.

Now I'm back to reality - going through mail, paperwork from surgery (a full time job), and just trying to see what I need to be doing to play my part in healing. I've decided to put myself on a very high nutrition diet, increase my exercise, and do all I can to develop spiritually. That way I will know I've done my part to heal. The rest will be up to a higher power, of course