Solo Road Trip

So here I am in Nashville, Music City.  Sitting in in my hotel room, settled in for any evening of "Chopped" marathon on the Food channel.  Trying not to feel sorry for myself.  This will be an interesting weekend, challenging for me.  Gar and I have come to these meetings together for years.  Usually we go to the meetings and then either sit around the hotel or do some sightseeing.  No sense in going to the bar, as I don't drink and don't really like hanging around in bars.  The people at the meetings all know Gar, but there's not too many of them that we used to hang around with, so here I am.  I thought about going to downtown Nashville, but didn't really want to do that all alone, maybe during the day, but not at night.  It is something that I am going to need to get used to, and I will, just not ready to tackle it tonight.  Luckily for me, I've never had a problem in going into a restaurant alone.  Thank goodness for my Kindle.

The drive down was uneventful.  I have decided that music is salvation.  I love music, love the textures, shadings, melodies and harmonies that all go into any piece of music.  I actually have a sore throat from singing along.  Shed a few tears, prayed, talked to myself and did a lot of driving.  Thank goodness I am used to driving for long stretches at a time, just missed my travelling partner.  Usually after a day like this, Gar and I would have the problems of the world solved, we loved to sit and talk while I was driving.  But it was okay yesterday and today.  It really didn't bother me that much.  Lots of memories to keep me company.  Gar and I have driven this route together a few times, so there were memories there.  I don't think that I'll ever be totally alone while I'm driving, as memories are really good company, and Gar and I created many of them together.

So, the tough part is being here alone, learning what to do.  The tournament this summer will be different, I should be surround by friends and family.  But there will always be weekends like this one.  I will persevere, and hopefully will even gracefully conquer.  I have never been a chicken, and I have never backed down, so I can do this.  Hopefully I will even have some fun along the way.  I will also need to learn to ask people if I want to be included.  What I do know is that I am really never alone, God is with me and Gar is with me.  So I stop, thank God for thirty wonderful years with Gar, then I move on.

This n that

I must officially be a widow, I will start receiving Gar's Social Security benefits soon.  It was one of those appointments that I was dreading, but it was relatively painless.  I am thankful for my friend Janet who came with me.  She is a retired Social Security employee, so she made sure I asked all of the right questions.  It wasn't that hard, but I was very grateful for company.  My appointment was about an hour late, so we had lots of time to sit and chat.

I have been noticing that lately it has been really hard for me to focus.  Paying attention to any type of talk just seems so hard to do.  I was supposed to attend a workshop on Saturday that I have been planning on for a long time.  I had to send my regrets to the women planning it and the group presenting it.  I am afraid that I probably would have had a full blown panic attack if I had tried to concentrate for more than thirty minutes.  It made me sad, but I do think that it was for the best.  I hope that this passes soon, it's not my style at all.

I'm really tired of spending all of my blogs having to wa-was, so now I am going to focus on a positive note of my day.  It was Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, and I was able to get my gifts in before the website crashed.  It makes me feel good that the website crashed because there were too many people giving.  I hope that everyone who planned on giving was able to find a way to give.  I also sent in a Thankoffering to Women of the ELCA.  Giving always make me feel better, so that's my positive note for today.

For everyone who reads my blog, thank you so much for the likes and the words of encouragement.  They all help so much.  God is so good, and I am blessed, even if I don't always feel that way.

Sigh

I had hoped that the next time that I blogged, it would be positive and upbeat.  Actually, last week was a pretty good week, and I was starting to feel hopeful that a degree of normalcy would return, but it wasn't meant to be.  The grief and the pain never seem to fully go away.  I guess that the best way to explain it is to use an analogy of a wolf stalking prey.  The wolf is always lurking, waiting to attack.  You can scare it away, yet it remains lurking in the shadows, and the minute you let down your guard, it will pounce and knock you down again.  I have grieved often in my life, the death of both parents, deaths of uncles and an aunt, deaths of animals.  Heck, I have even grieved alcohol and cigarettes, but I have never dealt with emotion like I have dealt with in the last three and one half months.  It's so pervasive.  Of course, that could be because every aspect of my life has changed because of Gar's death.  Another thing about the grief is that it cuts so deep at my soul.  While the very essence of me hasn't changed, it has been drastically altered.  I am hoping that I will be able to keep the hope and joy that I have always lived with.  I refuse to be defined by my grief.

One thing that I have learned about myself is how I have always viewed life with hope and joy.  I don't know if it has always showed, but since I quit drinking, it has come back to my life.  Right now it's not my primary view of life, but it keeps breaking through.  I remember in those first few really dark days after Gar died, it was buried pretty deep, but it still made an appearance.  Not for long, but smiles usually crept through.  Now it really does come around again.  That's good, I need hope and joy in my life.  Those two emotions are truly gifts from God, and they are the gift that got me sober.  I want to be happy, I like being happy.  As I start looking for that happiness, I need to remember two things.  First of all, it's okay to be happy, it's what Gar would want.  I shouldn't feel guilty because I feel happy.  The other thing that I need to remember is that the quality of my happiness has changed.  There will always be a hole in my soul that's Gar shaped (I found that in a Pinterest quote tonight) and I need to remember that and work around it.  I just need to remember all of the blessings that I have had in my life and all of the blessing that are in my life now.  I am truly a luck woman.  Most of all, God has never stopped loving me during the lowest and darkest times of my life, or during the highest and happiest times of my life.  God is the source of my blessings and the source of my happiness, and I thank God for God's amazing love.  What is so amazing is that we are all loved like that.  I just pray that all people, especially those who don't always love themselves, may know and remember this.  That's one thing that I love about blogging, I usually remember this, and it gets me through the the tough moments.  I also like going back and re-reading what I've written.  I am coming along.

I did want to share one thought I had last week, that brought me peace.  I was at the Y and sitting in the hot tub.  I have finally gotten back to going to the Y.  At first it was very hard to go alone, Gar and I always did this together.  Anyhow, I was sitting in the hot tub thinking about Gar and how Gar loved being in the water.  He loved swimming, being in the hot tub and taking baths.  Then I realized that when God came and met Gar, it was where Gar was the most comfortable.  Isn't that cool?  It showed me again, how much God loved Gar, and how much God loves all of us.  Knowing that helps with the pain too.  Thank you God for meeting us where we are the most comfortable.  God is good, all the time.

All Saints Day

So, today is All Saints Day, and my husband has joined the Communion of Saints in the past year.  This is something that I could not have imagined, even six months ago.  There have been times in the last three months where that thought has still been inconceivable, yet it is still my reality.  I still question God, but I am learning, somewhat, to accept it.  I can't do anything else.

I have given myself permission to ramble today.  Usually when I sit down to blog, I have try to stay with one thought and develop it.  Well, it has been one of those days where I start one thing, move on to another thing, and then another thing.  Kind of an ADD day, so why should my writing be any different.  One of the things that I have done today is to start sorting pictures.  I did a small fraction of them, and one thing keeps coming to mind.  We were so blessed and we had so many good times together.  Thank you God.

For some reason today, don't know if it was the date, the pictures or the weather, probably a combination of all three, I have been thinking about our trip to Australia.  It was a wonderful trip for both of us, a once in a lifetime event.  If I were in Australia right now, where it's tomorrow, it would have been six years since we landed in Australia.  Hi to any of my Aussie friends who may be reading this, love you all.  Love all of the friends I made over there, and I have heard from most of them since Gar passed away.  For some reason, the recurring thought of today had to do with my thoughts when we returned home.  I remember walking across my yard and wondering why I did not hang upside down when I was in Australia.  Made me think about God and how fearfully and wonderfully everything in this world is made.  I remember laughing with Gar about that as we were walking our dogs around the yard.  Quite often, and rightfully so, Gar thought that I was crazy, yet he still loved me :)

I did accomplish one thing today, I finished re-reading the Harry Potter series that I started two weeks ago.  I love those books.  All Saints day is kind of an interesting day to be reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  One of those lovely timing coincidences that I did not anticipate when I started re-reading them this time around.  Anyhow, it was good, and Harry lives.

So on Sunday I will go to church, and it will be All Saints Sunday.  A time when we stop and remember the saints that have gone before us.  Not only will my prayers be for myself and my family, but for the many families that have lost loved ones this past year.  Thanks be to God for all of those saints, and may God hold their families in God's loving hand.

Well, I'm done rambling for now.  If anyone is reading this and you have made it this far, thanks for hanging in there with me.  It means that you care and that means so much to me.  It's kind of fun to ramble and mean nothing once in a while.  God is good, all the time, and God loves us even when we ramble.