February 11

HOPE MONTH: DAY 11: “So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

I’ve read this passage many times over the last 12 years. I did not know I could care about another human being like I did my husband, who died 12 years ago today. This year has been the hardest, because there is rain like we had 12 years ago…all winter. It was a terrible winter. We were housebound for several months at the end, because he could not tolerate the cold. My sadness was so great.

And it enriched me and informed me and my broken heart stayed broken open to love even more than I could before I was with him.

I have celebrated his life in many ways. This year, I am honoring a promise I made to him before he died. I have honored it once before, but was scared off by an immovable wall that I did not know how to climb or knock down.

I went to college for 6 years, doing classes at almost twice the pace recommended, because I was in such a hurry to “get on with life” as a widow. I am grateful for the distraction it provided for a time. Then, one day I had to sit still with the grief and it taught me all its many lessons. I am never done with this, although our culture has a specified time frame and rules about how it “should be”.

Good for me I have NEVER conformed to “how it should be” … I am not doing that here either. I walk my road and let others know they can walk theirs. I do not know your road, find it for yourself. It took me a while to find mine. You will find yours also.

We will always have sadness and sorrow and grief, just as we can always find happiness and gratitude and joy. There is a wide spectrum of emotions and feelings and experiences around here. I call it life…it is moving past so many people. Don’t let it happen for you.

Fear keeps me frozen in the very immature idea that nothing will ever be good again when I am sad. Ego wants me to stay there, frozen. Because then I am listening and living the way it wants me to. First, it lies to me. Then it teaches me how to make its dire predictions come true. This is a stage of development that we pass through at ages 12-15.

And most of us are MUCH older than that and still stuck there. Get on with it! Let go, dive in, dare to feel and live and love and dance and sing and all of that! Life is just a giant dare! Go do it! Whatever comes into your face, whatever you wake up wishing for…go get it! Go do it! Life is daring you!

I did the scariest thing of all and let my heart open to love and found that it will not close again, no matter what the outcome. The story was that if I loved someone they might leave me…it happened, he did! And what we had was an amazing love story that so many people got to see and be a part of…it taught us and them and we are all better people because it happened. I know I am. And the hope is that I will keep on going to love, over and over and over. What a blessing! I am no longer afraid!