|
|
||||
|
Nockamixon Notes |
||||
|
I hope readers will indulge me in a more personal column than usual this month. I apologize for the lack of a Nockamixon Notes column for November. The day I was going to write it, I learned of my mother’s sudden and unexpected death, and from there on, nearly all else is a blur. I want to thank those friends, neighbors and readers who were so kind during this most difficult time of my life. Your prayers, flowers, fruit baskets and a flood of good wishes in cards and emails truly did comfort me. That's what I want to write about this time. So seldom in any of our lives are we called to take a serious, deliberate accounting of what we have done with our time so far. Those planned-for events include birthdays and graduations, but are usually mixed with more celebration than reflection. But those unplanned-for events — the divorces, serious accidents, surgeries, hospitalizations and deaths — are the ones that kind of snap us back into Realityland. The shock of these kinds of events leaves us reeling. We find ourselves grabbing for the nearest and most reliable solid things we can reach, to help us keep our bearings in a suddenly shifting and uncertain world. In my world, those solid things are my family and my friends.
|
I tend to be kind of a loner in most of my pursuits. As someone who has trouble with authority and rules, I tend not to be a joiner unless I have no other options. But this whole situation has shown me how important my friends are to me, and what good ones I have. The same with my family members: I discovered — or maybe remembered — how close our ties have really always been, and was blown away by the importance and meaning of that. It has been a tremendously humbling experience. That's what I thought of this past weekend, when Thanksgiving put a point on losing my mom. It would have been so easy to allow myself to be swallowed by the relentless grief, and to throw myself a pity party. But that would have been such a dishonor to my mom’s memory. She didn’t raise me to shrink back from difficulty, including this one. She taught me to reach deep down inside myself to find the strength that will gird me against the onslaught of whatever comes my way. Or, in this case, against what is leaving me. So, during this holiday season in Nockamixon and everywhere else, I wish for all of us the grace to honestly appraise the REAL gifts of this life, and to be truly, deeply grateful for those we cannot buy. To sit back for a bit and consider the warmth of a friend’s hug, the meeting of the eye of a loved one in which you recognize real compassion, the undeniable comfort of the wet nose or purr of a furry critter. As the sun sets gently in the late autumn sky, the geese wing their way over leafless trees, and the year wanes, the cycle of life makes itself quietly known, and it is good. Happy Holidays.
|
|
||
