You Have To Look

 I woke up this morning filled with a vague sort of existential dread.  I can't tie it to anything specific other than just life at the moment.  I'm not functioning at the level I'd like to be, but I'm trying to sort it out.  The older I get, the less I believe in coincidences.  So, it's means something that a good friend just recommended a book on minimalism.  I am reading and enjoying it despite a lifelong commitment to defending my clutter.  

Frequent readers of the blog will know that my husband has been diagnosed with frontal temporal dementia and that his neurologist suspects ALS now as well.  So, okay, maybe the existential dread isn't really that vague after all.  There's a lot going on and the transition from partner to caregiver has been challenging for me.  I think a lot about what a weird in between space I'm in; my old life done, my new life not yet begun.  I know that I just need to be in the present and I frequently remind myself to return there.  However, I will fully confess that I don't have a handle on that yet.

Recently, we went away for the weekend with friends.  We took a cruise on a lake and the cruise company took pictures, which of course, they pushily tried to sell to us just before disembarking from the boat.  Usually, I avoid this kind of nonsense like the plague, but this time, I bought them.  The recent weekend destination was the same one my husband and I spent our honeymoon at almost exactly 27 years before to the day.  I've been obsessively digging through my photos from home to find a picture from that newly married/honeymoon era.  I wanted to compare.  It was as if I could look at pictures and understand how we got from point A to point B.  

My husband had an appointment last week to see a GI specialist.  This is for a problem independent of dementia or ALS.  The man is falling apart.  Anyway, the nurse complimented me on my tattoo as she guided my husband to the scale.  I helped him step off and she asked, "And you are...his daughter?"  He didn't even notice. How did we come to a place where we seem like we're 50 years apart?   When did his brain start to unravel?  Could I have been paying better attention and would that have even mattered if I had?

Back to this morning.  I intended to be super productive for Poshmark. I was not feeling motivated.    Instead, I sat on the floor of the porch, sifting through all kinds of junk, I felt I had to keep.  I have useful stuff in un-useful places.  It's hard to wear socks that are in the bottom of a box.  Allen wrenches probably aren't all that helpful stuffed in a random grocery bag with a banana clip and an empty mint container.  Then, I have a whole lot of totally useless stuff. I've been fighting this battle my whole life.  

But it occurred to me finally that if I intend to move forward (and I do), I need to be willing look at every single thing in my life - material possessions, relationships, activities, attitudes- everything.  Not only do I need to be willing to look, I also need to be willing to let it go, if it's no longer serving me.  Burn everything to the ground.  See what remains.  There's no way to move forward into a new life if I cling to the old one.  Change is inevitable.  If we resist it, we are unhappy.  If we flow with it, we can find peace.  I would not complain about the latter at all.