For the past few months I have been in the depths of despair. I think of
despair as a very deep, dark, and cold lake. It really is thus. Too many
bad, sad, things have happened to me in the last year. I can't cope or at
least I think I can not cope.
I think my biggest problem is that I have always thought that every problem
could be solved. Big news flash at sixty-four! Every problem can not be
solved! Some problems have to be gone around just like a river flows around
a large bolder in its path. Funny! several years ago I wrote a poem,
"Boulders in My Stream", that says exactly that. I must not really believe
the things I write, do I?
I am mourning for the departure of my children and my grandchildren. My
oldest daughter and her family have moved to the East Coast and my youngest
and her family to Texas. Here we are in the middle all by ourselves. I hate
life! How sad!
Yet the lake becomes deeper and colder. I have been forced to leave my
country home where I have lived for twenty years and where my grandchildren
grew up playing. Their tree houses I left in the trees they built them in.
My home where every year trees were planted, many in memory of a departed
friend or relative and new flowerbeds were created. My home where my garden
grew in size and beauty every year. I must leave my garden where I laid
paths in the old English style and scattered statues of Saint Frances and
other notable people. How I loved my garden that I created over twenty
years. I had to leave the stone benches where I had planned to rest and
admire my hard work in my old age. I will never see my bed of crimson
poppies bloom ever again. My bed of mixed Phlox planted last year will come
up and flower without my care. I will never walk between my tomato plants,
caged in a bower above my head, again. There are too many things that I will
never do again. I hope whoever tends my garden will grow to love it as I
have.
For several months now I have been very sure that this dark lake, Despair,
was going to be my end, that I would drown in its black depths and be no
more. Friends tell me, "cheer up, don't be sad", easily said not so easy to
do. Who can pull me out of these sad waters? Another new revaluation, only
me, only me.
Self-talk can do wonders! I tell myself that I have had these beautiful
children and my daughters and their spouses around most of their lives. I
have been able to watch most of my grandchildren grow up. I have had them
sleeping in my home nearly every weekend since they were born. They have
been the biggest joy of my adult life.
I have not yet had to send a child or grandchild off to a horrible war. I
have not had to lay flowers on a young grave. I am still fairly young and
able to travel. I can talk to them every day on the phone if I so desire.
They all have Internet access and can send me mail instantly. This is very
true self-talk but for all of it, it will not solve all my problems.
I think of an old neighbor, who left her native Norway at the tender age of
sixteen and never saw any of her immediate family again, not ever in her
long life. Emma never forgot her family and wrote to them weekly and they
her. Her parents never saw her married and only in photographs did they see
Emma's children or their grandchildren. Emma was widowed young and after
her children were gone lived many long years alone. Yet in spite of her
lonesome life she created true artwork in her crocheting which much still
survives now forty years after her death. Out of darkness came great
beauty.
A dear friend of mine, knowing of my dog paddling in Lake Despair told me to
write about it. She didn't say it would solve the problem. It didn't! But
I have struggled and paddled and have made my way to shore. Its not a sandy
beach I have arrived at but jagged rocks and sharp pebbles, but I am not
going to drown after all. I will survive; I must for in spite of all my
sadness, I am loved.
BOULDERS IN OUR STREAM
Life is like a flowing, meandering, river we've been told.
Sometimes smooth and warm, sometimes churning and cold
Sometimes clear and crystal as like bubbling from an artesian well
Other times dark, muddy and dank like springing from the depths of hell
Sometimes life is straight as a shot arrow without a bend,
Other times life is twisting and wandering to its end
But always there are large gray boulders where ever we go,
Stopping, slowing, and changing life's smooth flow
Until at last flowing, softly, silently into the shining sea,
Lifting upward, upward, into that golden rest for you and me
So if life is like a flowing, meandering, river as I so deem
We must learn to navigate around those boulders in our stream
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