ON GRIEVING II...Two Months On

FORGIVE ME IF I SEEM TO BE GOING ON WITH THIS A BIT MUCH...
On the other hand, this blog did start because some of you wanted to follow my adventures.

I am discovering that 'getting on with it' is not so easy as one might think, nor do previous grievings assist one through the next.  Each, it seems, is its own beast; all the more so should the experience of the one now missed have been intense and intimate.  On some days a small event can precipitate, without warning, a vague sense of something missing, a loss of direction, an extended difficulty of finding and maintaining focus, when there seems to be too much to do, when one feels as if wading through thick mud.  And so one falls, not into despair, but into a determination to get just some things done, and it does not matter which.

How good it is to get out of the house, to go downtown to the familiar coffee house to meet one's friends, or to go to the 'Y' to work out and catch up with other friends.  Or just to take a walk.

If you have to do this grieving business, I suggest you try a different season than one might term 'WinterBecomingSpring' (Germans must have a special compound word for that), particularly if the  Spring bit is delayed, hesitant, or just not straight forward.  It really helps if the lengthening days are filled with sunshine, and not at all if there are days of rain followed by (oh no) more days of rain.  On the other hand, just trudging along, getting more done each day, may well be the thing to do.

Actually, this is how grief happens to be, so I have decided to get with the program and see how it turns out.  Not even psychologists can 'push the business on', it would appear!  This seems to be working.  Apart from the constant support of friends, and the happenstance of good wishes from acquaintances met accidentally, some really good things have helped me along.

For instance, I have had three 'Couch Surfer' guests, each of whom has been very interesting. One from Northern Quebec Province, a glass blower doing a week's training at the Museum of Glass (hereafter 'MOG'), for a week.  Another was a Conservator from the Hermitage Museum St Petersburg Russia, consulting with MOG staff about her professional interests. And last weekend, someone from Philadelphia on a road trip and wanting to revisit the MOG.  All three most interesting women.

Being a Couch Surfer Host is a great boon and it may be that I am the only one in or near to Corning.  I suggest you 'google' Corning Museum of Glass.  It is internationally famous and  folk from many nations visit, as well of folk from all over North America.  Lucky me!

Oh...last week, I graduated from the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.  It is amazing how I have come back from that rather unremarkable cardiac event at the beginning of Thanksgiving Week.  One relevant fact: following the insertion of the stent, my resting pulse rate was 75 bpm; now it is in the low 50's.

And that is not all.  Next weekend I begin my trip back to Oz, via Colorado, where I will visit with my daughter and granddaughter, and attend the graduation of Suju (Uma's younger daughter) with Tara, her older sister, and her Uncle Ravi.  By the end of June, I will have visited my three children, seen each of my six grandchildren, and caught up with my sister, brother, and other members of my family, plus several friends of yore.

While I am away, Daniel, my friend and contractor, will have completed converting the lower level of my house into a separate apartment so that I can have more visitors from afar.  So the future continues to unravel!  By then the weather should be perfect for lots of cycling and the next Decade will begin.

As I began...WATCH THIS SPACE!