Vicki, when we talked yesterday, you challenged me with your comment that ceremony has to have a purpose. It took me until later to realize that when I talked about what to do for a ceremony for this time, I was also talking about my life’s ceremony.
We talk about our being “two old women”. We can choose to look at this as living the ceremony of old age. The endings we talked during our phone visit, with the accompanying loss and grief is ~ they will be ~ part of this period of our life.
It's now Fall ~ with all her cycles of dormancy, of (ready or not, I’m finding) endings. I remember your words in your first blog, writing about living a long life, where you said:
“What could be the purpose for outliving my old life? What gifts do I have to offer? We’ve listed Ilchi Lee’s book, I’ve decided to live 120 Years among our favorites. If I’m planning to fill the rest of my days with purpose, that means I have 40 more years to work on it! Seems like a lifetime! What a different perspective this lends on those years looming ahead!"
"On the other hand, though defining my purpose seems a daunting task, I must admit that I am enjoying a sense of freedom that’s a new experience for me. I have more time for reflection on where my life is going, could go, and the significant changes I should be preparing to meet. And how exciting to think of the books I haven’t read, the thoughts I haven’t thought and planning for a new adventure. (You know I love to plan). Ironically, I have more time to invest more quality into fewer years ahead. This time is a gift.”
So, with this time being a gift, how do I live it? How do I deal with, what do I do, to live with these struggles and events in a positive way?? The past almost three months of needing a walker, I came to a point where I wondered if it was to be a permanent condition. As when Don was on Hospice those four years, to look on this time as another time of ceremony, helps me, helps me be conscious, helps me open to learning more about myself.
Just as my wise indigenous friends taught me about welcoming
a new born, of the ceremonies of identity giving, through events like the
formal ceremony of my baptism and Grandpa’s telling me that all the people in
church that 1942 Sunday morning were “all my relatives”, the ceremonies
I’m looking at now are often ones of endings, of letting go, and, hopefully ,
of accepting and being blessed in what comes to take their place.
Earlier this week, in rush hour traffic, I waited for an opening to make a left-hand turn onto a highway filled with zooming cars going toward or coming from the freeway. As I waited, the “knowing” I am no longer able to safely drive a motor home, leaped into my mind.
Today as I write that “knowing” is still with me! It’s difficult for there was joy and challenge in my thirty-three-year RVing adventures.
It’s now a time for me to “make a ceremony”, to acknowledge the new phase of life I am in; for me to accept it, to allow my family and friends to support me and welcome me into this new place I have come to, blessing the person I have become.
Today is a beautiful Fall day filled with wonder, filled with blessings! In this time of change and chaos all around us I write for myself and, I write for all my relations.
