What Lies Ahead

I’ve had quite a few days of thinking about lies ahead for me. This is the first time in my life I have ever been totally alone. I lived my parents until I married the first time and when I divorced after 18 years, I still had my daughter with me. Of course she is married and has children of her own, and now that Charles has died, I am alone.

It has been six months and still seems like yesterday he was here and and then again sometimes I think the past 30 years have been a dream and he was never here. Of course I can look around and see him everywhere in the clocks and bowls and the things he has made over the years, even the house I’m living in.

I attended a meeting with my daughter, Christi, on Sunday afternoon and the speaker, Jennifer, talked about “Dreams.” At first I thought she was going to discuss the meaning of dreams and of course I have some of the craziest dreams on record—well besides my friend, Irma, whom I think we compete with each other on having the craziest. Well, she began to talk about when she was a little girl and the dreams she had and that she could do anything. Dreams of singing with her brothers and maybe they could form a band, or her fairytale wedding, and then—she grew up and life began.

I began to think of what my dreams used to be. But, I can truthfully say Charles taught me to dream again and he always told me how smart I was. I always said back, but I’m fat and ugly. He always responded, “you’re not ugly.” Lol My new dream is that I will become thin again and I am working on it. You may say, why didn’t you work on that before? Food was my only comfort. And even at that, I couldn’t do my comforting in front of Charles because he lived on Ensure for over 3 years and I even felt guilty that I could eat anything that I wanted.

I don’t know what lies ahead of me, am I always going to live alone, what do I do with myself, can I ever be truly happy again? Well, I working on the happiness part. Charles was happy before he died and he told me the key to everything is forgiveness. Oh, I don’t know about that one. I’m working on that too. I’m also working on being around people who are positive and have goals in mind. I want to go places further than 30 miles from my house. I’m making my “bucket” list. If you don’t have one, you need to make one. It’s kind of like a “dream” list, anyway in my opinion it is.

Well, I’m finally beginning to enjoy being alone. At least when I have a bad day, I can cry and no one knows except my new puppy who licks my tears and then I have to laugh. When I come home, she is so happy to see me. It’s not quite like Charles greeting me, but it’s better than coming to an empty house. I try to take her with me as much as I can because she really enjoys going with me.

Well, enough for today. Just start those “dreams” again!

DR
9/15/10