Different missions, and an unknown rendezvous
My massage therapist is Mormon, and was explaining to me the details involved in mission trips this morning as I was on the table. She told me that when the kids are dropped off at the training center, they send the missionaries one direction and the families in another, and they will basically only have mail contact for the next two years.
It immediately struck me as analogous to my own situation. Two years ago, A was sent one direction and I another. Only I will not get him back now that my 2-year mission into the land of grief has passed, and while I believe I am skirting the border of this strange land, I don’t know that I have my ticket home yet. It seems I will have to walk, and that will take some time. In some ways, I’m sure it will take all the time I’ve left to me.
These separations must be temporary, but of course some are more temporary than others. I know what it is to miss a person you love for 2 years, but I have no way of knowing when my reunion will be, when my mission will be over. It could be 3:14 this afternoon, or it could be 50 years from now. If it were the former, I could stay positive and look forward to that reunion with a smile on my face, but it’s hard to look forward to something for 50 years and keep the same level of enthusiasm, untainted by sadness and longing. Plus, there’s the fact that I’m not particularly interested in dying at 3:14 this afternoon. It’s a weird place to be. And yet it is the place that every one of us is, all the time. Leave it to me to find what is baseline human existence "weird." Where else would I be but between birth and death?
I’ve been reading everyone’s "bucket list" posts, and thinking about what, if anything, I had left on mine. I wrote one, maybe 4 years ago, before the movie was out. It was a short list even then, and at this point, everything on it has either been accomplished or become irrelevant as my greater understanding of myself over time made it clear that I didn’t actually want those things. Like being a published author. A dozen people read my words every day; that, it turns out, is enough for me. Or being in a rock band—that was also on the list. However, I find that my independent streak makes staying solo seem the most sensible course of action, (barring an ideal situation which I haven’t managed to find yet). There was a time I wanted to travel the world, but like Dorothy Gale, I’ve realized that everything I could find anywhere else, I could find in my own backyard, or in my own heart. Plus, traveling these days is as onerous in its way as it was a hundred years ago; I’d rather watch a travelogue video.
I never had ambitious plans for myself like a lot of people do. I imagined myself employed, middle-class, and married. Beyond that, I had no specific vision. I know a lot of folks who find their suburban family-centered existence stifling, and far afield from the life they’d envisioned for themselves. I hoped to fall in love, have a decent job, own a home, and have a few kids and dogs. I fell in love twice and skipped the kids, but otherwise, everything else has come to pass. For the most part, it seems like my dreams came true, and I don’t really have a list anymore. I want to get better at the things I’m already doing. I’ll try new things as they strike my fancy; but if I go home after work today, eat dinner, reinstall the toilet, talk to E, play with my dogs, and strum my guitar, and don’t wake up tomorrow morning, I’m okay with that. That’s how I like to spend my days, and in truth, my life has been somewhat more adventurous than I would’ve imagined before. I think I’ve had my share of adventure. But while I have passing fancies of fame and fortune and fabulousness, at the end of the day, I don’t need to be somebody. I just need to be.
Sometimes when I think about what my mission may be, and come up empty, I think "being" may well be it. And if it isn’t, I’d like to request the universe give me a big damn hint. Because right now, the one thing I really and truly want is impossibly out of reach.
You write beautifully. This is the post I wanted to write on the topic, as I, too, find myself to have different aspirations than I used to have, and there is little that remains outstanding to”do”. Like you, I seem to need to”be”, at least for now.
Thank you, Sally.
I have always been a doer, but I think in grieving, that served me poorly, because there was nothing I could do to change the facts of my life. I have learned to just be out of necessity, but it’s a useful thing, knowing I don’t have to be useful all the time.
This is a beautiful exploratory post. I think just to “Be” is just fine. I spent many years of my life being someone elses version of myself - a daughter, a wife, an x-wife, a lover and it took me until I was almost 40 years old to become my own true self, my own version of me - before I could be authentic. It was such an important journey that I wrote a novel of fiction based on many of the life experiences I had either experienced or witnessed in others.
I’m sorry you lost your beloved - grief is indeed a lonely and painful journey - that constantly changes are rarely ends. We never get over it, we just learn to accept it.
I am new to your blog - so will endeavour to read it as I get time.
Best wishes.
Wonderful post, again and as always. I like the parallel to the mission.
I, too, have had to relearn (or maybe it’s just learn it for the first time, period) to just be. I always was a planner and a doer and an overachiever (and often a perfectionist) before Charley died, and I tried to be that for a long time after he died. And it didn’t work at all. So now I’ve had to change my expectations, standards, hopes, and dreams. It’s such an odd, difficult thing to try to explain to people who’ve never experienced grief like this, so thank you for explaining it so clearly and eloquently.
Bucket list posts? I haven’t read the ywbb widows’ blogs very much lately–I’ve been too busy–and I’m guessing they’re the ones doing the bucket lists (maybe?). I’ll have to go and catch back up on their blogs. But I was thinking and I don’t know what’s on my bucket list at all anymore. I don’t know what was specifically ever on it (although there certainly were items on it), but now? Not too many. I’d like to go to Europe and get to watch my child grow up. I’d like to find another love and marriage like I had with Charley at some point before I die, but if I never get it, at least I had it–even if it was only for 19 months. Other than that? Hmmm…not sure what else might be on it….
Is the movie any good? Just curious (if you even saw it, that is)….
Why thank you. Yeah, it was going around as a meme. I read one at Alicia’s, Annie’s, and Marsha’s, (all on my links list to the left.)
I haven’t seen the movie. I tend to be careful about movies where death is the main topic, even 2 years later, but I’ll probably add it to my Netflix queue. I really like Morgan Freeman, though not really a Jack Nicholson fan.