Pat Bertram's Blog, page 86

Outside the Pale

I’ve opened my computer several times previously today so that I could write a blog post, but each time, I’ve played a few games of solitaire and then closed the computer.

Almost anything I want to say about the situation in the world today would put me even further beyond the pale than I already am. Many of my blog readers seem to appreciate my struggles to understand the truth in light of two very different narratives being told today, but other people . . . not so much. They believe what they want to believe, and call everything that doesn’t fit in that belief system lies. Or fake news. Or however else the current lexicon defines an opposing viewpoint they consider invalid.

I did find it interesting that the tarot card I picked today said I was an intelligent and complex woman, a truthseeker, open to hearing the thoughts and opinions of others but able to filter through all the rhetoric to see what is true. It’s how I like to see myself; how I hope I really am.

Which brings me to another point — a pointed stick, in fact.

I looked up the origin of “beyond the pale,” and the “pale” (aka “pole”) was a pointed stick (or a lot of pointed sticks) indicating a boundary. This phrase has been around since the twelfth century. Apparently, when the Normans invaded Ireland, they built a palisade around Dublin to protect themselves from the barbarians who lived beyond that pale.

Considering that I have built my own “pales,” both the fence around my house and the small area I have staked for my own on the internet (this blog, of course), perhaps it is others who are beyond the pale — my pale, anyway — while I am solidly within my own pale.

We all create our pales, I suppose, beyond which lie dragons (and barbarians). The problems come not when people stray further beyond some ideolgical pale, but when they physically force themselves into someone else’s pale.

Ah, see what I did? In a roundabout way, I ended up talking about that which I didn’t want to talk about, but it really is hard not to stray into that particular pale when it is so much on my mind.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

The Long View

I’m reading a sort of romance written a hundred years ago. I say “sort of” because I don’t think there was a romance genre back then, at least not the way we know the genre. But it’s irritating me in the same way that modern romances irritate me. So much of the story is based on non-communication. If the people involved simply talked to each other, there wouldn’t be a problem (or a story). I suppose it makes sense for such an old book to be based on communication problems because that era was the beginning of it being acceptable for women to speak their minds, especially around men. But for modern stories to be based on the same stupid theme? Not acceptable.

That’s not the only thing impinging on my life right now that I find unacceptable. Rich, successful black politicians, politician’s wives, celebrities, sports figures who are feted and adored by blacks and white alike are telling their story with the same old racist rhetoric. “White people don’t see me.” “White people hate me.” Um . . . did it ever occur to these folks that maybe it is not their racial heritage that some people might object to, but them specifically? Not everyone likes everyone. Not everyone sees everyone. Not everyone cares about everyone. (Though we often pretend to.)

This reminds me of what Jack Nicholson said to Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie Wolf. “You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful, but you want them to be interested in you because you’re you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn. I know you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath but the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautiful. Ironic, isn’t it? In an odd way you’re your own problem.”

Other than that, I find nothing objectionable about my day. Well, I do find it objectionable that a couple of my Kentucky coffeetrees seem to be fading away. But if they all die, I’ll wait until fall or next spring, and beg my neighbor for another of the tree’s “volunteers” that will be growing in her yard. (There is one thing about the beans that bothers me. They are poisonous if eaten raw, but when roasted, they once served as a coffee substitute for prairie folk. My question is how did they discover that? If you eat the seeds, you get sick and maybe die. So why would you roast the seeds and try again? And how would you know they would make a coffee substitute if they made you sick before you could learn that?)

Although it’s uncomfortably humid today, it’s also cloudy and cool enough that I was able to plant my new plants. Perhaps they will do okay, but I won’t really know until next spring. Gardening is a hard occupation for a person who likes to see quick results, but then, it’s probably a good occupation for such a person — it teaches one to look at the long view.

Unfortunately, a long view isn’t necessarily different from a short view— look at the 100-year-old romance: the same today as it was then.

I suppose it’s possible that the folks who learned to roast the coffeetree beans took the long view, thinking that some illness and a few deaths were worth the long-term gain, in which case the long view paid off.

In other cases, such as the ongoing violence, burning, and looting that’s been going on for months now, the long view isn’t worth contemplating because what’s going on now can’t portend anything good for the future.

So maybe taking the long view isn’t necessarily a good thing to learn. Maybe I don’t need to learn anything when it comes to gardening — just do what I can, and see what happens.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

The Glad Game

[image error]When I was a girl, I often got hand-me-downs from a much older and thinner cousin, which gave me a bad body image way too young and many years before it became a “thing.” My books, most of which had been published in the early part of the twentieth century, were also hand-me-downs from her. Looking back, some of the books themselves seemed old even then, so they might have been handed down to her first — odd to think I never thought to ask where the books originated.

I read as much then as I do now, so whenever I got sick and had finished reading all my library books as well as those of my siblings, I’d reread these novels. I had a few Nancy Drew, a lot of Judy Bolton, some miscellaneous stories, and a boxed set of five Pollyanna books that chronicled her life way past childhood. One year I was absent from school so often that I must have read these books three or four times. (I remember thinking I was pretending to be sick so I didn’t have to go to school, but once when I told my mother this, she said, “You really were sick.” But silly me, I never asked what my illness was.)

Way into my late teens, whenever I wasn’t feeling well, I’d reread these books. I don’t know what happened to the mysteries, but a friend wanted the Pollyanna books, and so I gave them to her. (She doesn’t remember this, but it was a long time ago, and I’m sure her receiving the books wasn’t as emotionally charged as my giving them.)

I was particularly enthralled with Pollyanna and her glad game, and I even tried playing it myself, but being the pragmatist and realist that I am, I couldn’t always see “gladness” even in the things she found to be glad about. The game began when her missionary parents received a “missionary barrel” of donated items, and the only thing for a little girl was a pair of crutches. Her father told her, and she believed, that she could be glad she didn’t need them.

To my way of thinking, she could have been just as glad not to need them if she had also received the doll she wanted, and the doll would have lasted a lot longer than the gladness for not needing the crutches. But then, of course, if it had worked out my way, there wouldn’t have been a story.

What made me think of all this is that my co-worker is a real-life Pollyanna, though her key words are not gladness but “this is a good thing because. . .” I’d seen her in action before, trying to keep our charge from descending into a funk, but her skill really struck home yesterday.

The client (for lack of a better word) and I had spent our time together grumping about the things going on in the world today. Being a grump has its place, I think. Facing the reality of widowhood and age certainly has its place. Mostly we just acknowledged the various situations we talked about, and then went on to something else without dwelling on the issues.

When our friend and coworker came home with her gladness, it struck me how very different two valid points of view can be. I’m ashamed to admit that I burst out with, “You’re a real Pollyanna!” Not only is it rude to make personal remarks like that, but the word “Pollyanna” is also sort of trite and meaningless nowadays, devoid of any literary context, especially since others have used the word to describe her. I tend to think it’s different for me, steeped as I have been in the whole Pollyanna literary mystique for so much of my life, not an offhand comment so much as a reflection of the hundreds of times I’d read the Pollyanna books. I could actually see my co-worker in that dauntless girl, changing the world around her with her attitude.

For a few minutes, I considered emulating her, but then I remembered my previously failed Pollyanna-isn-ness. And I remembered how much good I’ve done by dealing with certain realities — such as grief — in all their stark horror, bleakness, and pain by saying, “yes, this is hard, and it will always be hard.”

One thing that I can be glad about — because of this episode, I downloaded the first two Pollyanna books (the two written by the original author) as well as a couple of others she’d written with that same “life is beautiful” attitude.

And the author is right — life is beautiful.

Even when it’s not.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Outrageous

There are so many things I just don’t want in my life any more, such as outraged celebrities and millionaire sports figures telling me how put-upon they are and how evil the rest of us are because we don’t see that we are privileged and they are not.

Um. No. Just . . . no.

As much as I struggle learning to garden and take care of a yard, it’s so much . . . cleaner . . . than what’s out there in the rest of the world. No one has ever become so outraged they burned down a city because someone killed a plant. No plant association has ever intimidated people to join political organizations with public agendas that are actually different than the ones they privately espouse. (Well, that’s not exactly true. Although many supposedly earth friendly organizations don’t come after potential members with firepower, they do tend to blackmail folks, telling them if they don’t join, the world’s trees will all die, the bees will all die, and ultimately, we will all die. But at least they do this via mail rather than sticking a fist in our faces or burning down our neighborhoods.)

My property feels like a haven from the insanities of the world, and maybe someday it will even look that way. I’d ordered some live plants that came in today, hoping I will have better luck with them than I did with bulbs and such. These plants are vines that will, ideally, twine up my as yet unfinished gazebo. Unlike with bare root plants, I don’t have to scurry to plant these poor wilted things. It’s okay to leave them in the shade for a few days to let them get acclimated to the area and to recover from their traumatic trip. (The box they came in was smashed up, so much so that I’m surprised it got here at all.)

I have the plants sitting next to my seedling forest for the next few days, hoping all the plants will enjoy one another’s company. (A couple of the Kentucky coffeetree seedlings are having second thoughts about the move and seem to want to fade away.)

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My luck with live plants is so-so. Some die, like almost all those I bought last year. Some live, but don’t grow. (Although they were bare root plants rather than in pots, four of the five lilacs I planted are alive but haven’t grown even a fraction of an inch all summer.) Some do well, such as the hen and chick succulents I ordered a couple of months ago.

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(Oddly, the free one they sent in case one of those I paid for didn’t do well, is thriving. The others are doing okay so far.)

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I still haven’t ordered any Greengage plum trees, but there’s no hurry since they wouldn’t be sent for another few months. (The house where Jeff and I lived had a grove of Greengages, and oh, they were the absolutely best-tasting fruit ever, the sort of things the gods would save for themselves.)

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I’m never sure how many of any plant to order. If I order two trees, and one doesn’t grow, then I’m out of luck for another year. If I get three and all three grow, then I would have to remove one, which wouldn’t please me at all. (I should be so lucky to have that problem!)

Problems such as these seem so innocent, considering what is going on in other parts of the country. Although I might not be able to fix gardening problems, at least I can understand them, which is more than I can say for the problems that light up the news. Though even those are understandable to a certain extent. People seem to be addicted to outrage, and the more outrage there is, the more outrage there will be since outrage seems to feed upon itself.

It’s . . . outrageous.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Letter From a Griever

I received this email yesterday from a blog reader:

Dear Pat. Would you allow me a guest slot on your blog to talk about the book, and your grief writing in general?  I quite understand if you’d rather not needless to say, but I’d quite like to enthuse about your work if I may. — Treve

Of course, I said yes, not just because I was flattered but because what Treve has to say about me, my grief writing, and Grief: The Inside Story — A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One is important to both grievers and those who know grievers.

I first came across Pat’s blog in about 2015, about eighteen months after my wife died of cancer.  During that first year and a half, like most grievers I had experienced extraordinary emotional turbulence, the like of which I have never had before nor since.  It seemed to me that nobody ever tells you about what grief is really like, you just guess that it’s not nice and assume that it probably gets better after a while.  If only it were so simple!  I would occasionally browse the internet to see if there was some help or advice that would make sense to me, but it usually seemed to be written as if it were generic lifestyle advice, rather than designed for people experiencing profound turmoil. 

Be kind to yourself.  Everyone grieves differently.  Go out with friends and try to enjoy yourself.  Try to move on.  

It seemed to me that whoever wrote these sort of things had never actually experienced the kind of grief I was going through.  Perhaps it was just me, maybe this sort of advice would make sense to most people?

After 18 months, I chanced across Pat’s blog.  I can’t remember with absolute certainty, but I think the first of her posts I read was “The Five Major Challenges We Face During the Second Year of Grief” —  [https://bertramsblog.com/2012/01/08/the-five-major-challenges-we-face-during-the-second-year-of-grief].  I think I spent a whole evening reading through Pat’s writings about grief, and I was amazed.  For the very first time I was reading something that actually reflected what I was going through.  And the really weird thing was that Pat was an American lady some years older than myself (a British man in his early forties at the time), and yet she was the first – and only person – who was writing about grief in a way that made sense to me.  And I began to realise that a lot of the received ‘wisdom’ about grieving seemed to be based on various absurd notions, such as the so-called ‘five stages of grief’, that had no real basis in reality.  I was captivated, because for the first time it seemed to me that there might be some common pattern to grief, despite the profoundly different backgrounds of the grievers.  Seven years on I still occasionally read material about grief, often written by highly-trained ‘experts’, that bears no relation to what I went through (and I suspect what most grievers go through).

I was delighted when Pat published her book Grief: The Inside Story — A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.  It was fascinating to be able to read her considered reflections about grief, not least because she had obviously had years of contact with fellow grievers who had shared their feelings with her.  Two chapters in particular are of great importance to me.  ‘Why Can’t Other People Understand My Grief?’, which discusses why so many folks seem to be embarrassed or uneasy when they around those who express their grief.  Likewise the chapter entitled ‘Metamorphosis’, on how grief changes us irrevocably.  This has shaped my thinking about grief, and continues to help me even today in trying to make sense of all that has happened to me in the last seven years.

I would sincerely urge any grievers reading this blog to buy Pat’s book, and keep it close to hand.  It covers the first few years of grief, and how its nature and impact change over time, written with great clarity by someone who has experienced it all first hand.   Nobody can take away the intense sting experienced at losing a loved one, but having a wise guide who can point out the emotional and practical road ahead (and also hazards along the way) is a huge help in dealing with grief.  I will always be grateful for the help Pat has given me through her writing.

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The Redundancy of the Horror Genre

[image error]I’m in the middle of reading a horror story, and it struck me that the whole horror genre has been made redundant by the insanity of this year. The Bob, dehumanizing masks, the reorganization of businesses and schools, double hurricanes, riots, wildfires, defunding the police. How insane would an author have to be to come up with such a mélange? But there was no author writing the story of the past few months.

A quote from Dean Koontz, who is talking about fairy tales: “Instead of stealing the queen’s newborn daughter, Rumpelstiltskin was foiled, and in his rage, tore himself apart. In real life during the last decade of the twentieth century, Rumpelstiltskin would probably get the queen’s daughter. He would no doubt addict her to heroin, turn her out as a prostitute, confiscate her earnings, beat her for pleasure, hack her to pieces, and escape justice by claiming that society’s intolerance for bad-tempered, evil-minded trolls had driven him temporarily insane.”

Now we come to the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, and the difference is that people want to defund the police so that . . . what? Rumpelstiltskin won’t even be arrested? They’ll send a social worker to talk to him to see if he’ll release the poor girl? Maybe try to educate him away from his vileness? Let the poor girl continue to suffer while they pamper the co-called victim of intolerance?

Of all the insanities of this year, the vast criminality that is going along with the defund the police movement seems to show that we are in no shape to ease up on restrictions. (And yes, when there are billions of dollars of damage done plus many millions of dollars of merchandise looted plus lives lost plus untold injuries, the perpetrators have gone way beyond protesting to committing crimes.) Although there might need to be some sort of change (if nothing else, to take the cops with a bias off the streets) it seems that the defund the police movement favors the wrongdoers more than the victims.

If they don’t disband the police departments entirely, but instead divide the funds among various quality-of-life programs, how is that going to work? The various groups fight among themselves in a sort of bureaucratic triage to see who answers the call while the poor victim is left helpless? If someone is being mugged by a person high on drugs, do they send a cop for the victim or a counselor for the perpetrator?

It seems that defunding the police should come in a time of self-discipline and responsibility rather than a period of license and licentiousness.

But I could be wrong.

I live in a town that is trying to reestablish their police force, which could be a good thing since the local cops would ideally be more cognizant of the problems in town than the county sheriffs would be. Still, from what little contact I’ve had with the sheriff’s department, they seem to know the usual suspects quite well.

All I know is that I don’t commit crimes. I don’t disrespect the police even if they don’t respect me. (Which has happened.) Unfortunately, not everyone is like me or the people I know. If they were, then there wouldn’t be any issue of defunding the police because there wouldn’t be any police because there wouldn’t be any crime or drugs or abuse. There wouldn’t be any talk of man-made viruses escaping from laboratories because people like us don’t create such monsters. Nor would there be riots or burning or looting or killing or maiming.

And the horror genre could go back to being horrific in comparison.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Seedling Forest

We’ve talked before on this blog about the changes that are happening or might be happening because of having to wear masks. Without being able to see smiles, we don’t connect as well with others. Without being able to see mouths forming words, we don’t hear as well. (Which is a serious problem for the hard of hearing.) Without the humanization of faces, we are in danger of becoming dehumanized. And, as I’ve been discovering, they make us cranky, especially me.

I’ve been shopping at the local market partly as a rebellion against the closures — it seems so wrong to keep Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and other corporate businesses open, but forcing smaller businesses to close their doors. You’d think the local grocer would be pleased to have such a loyal customer, but what was once a pleasant experience has become decidedly less so. Out of the last three visits, twice I was overcharged, twice the clerk was rude, twice I ended up fuming and thinking that maybe shopping at Walmart isn’t so horrible after all.

(This rudeness is something I’ve often wondered about when it comes to small independent stores. They don’t offer the discounts that the major stores do, they don’t offer service, they don’t smile or make the visit anything more than a ho-hum shopping trip. They act as if they’re that pretty girl who knows she’s pretty and so has to do nothing to foster a relationship but accept one’s homage.)

Today the shopping experience was especially unpleasant, and I know it was the crank factor.

The skies are cloudy, though there are no clouds — that cloudiness is the smoke drifting here from the fires in Colorado and California. Because the air is still, the smoke just hangs around. (Such irony! There have been strong winds most of the summer, and now that we need to move out the smoke, the winds have disappeared.) Although I can see (and taste) the smoke, I can’t smell the air — I am allergic to smoke, so my poor aching sinuses have closed off my smeller. It’s hard enough to breathe without the mask, but once that’s added, oh, my. So not fun! (Hence the tendency toward crankiness.) I should, of course, have thought of this before I went to the store, but I needed to drive my car and I wanted to get various healthy snacks to take to work tomorrow. (We always have an afternoon snack, so I’ve been eating things that are in her house but aren’t on my diet, such as cookies. I don’t have to have them, but the sharing of a meal is even more important than the snack itself.)

So what does all this have to do with my seedling forest? Not a whole lot, really, except that it pleases me to be growing trees at a time so many trees are being destroyed. Admittedly, these seedlings will not in any way offset the millions of trees being burned, but then, there’s not much any one person can do about any of the horrors that are defining our world today — the fires, the riots, The Bob, wearing masks. Still, it’s something.

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Most of the seedlings are locusts that planted themselves in my yard, though one was grown from a seed in the pot itself. Previously, I’ve tried transplanting the seedlings into the ground directly, and they just died. (I have a hunch it has to do with the harsh sun burning their tender shoots before they got over their transplant shock). Oddly, the seedlings seem to like the pots. A couple of the seedlings are Kentucky coffeetrees, new additions from my next-door neighbor. Apparently, these trees are rare in this area, and her next-door neighbor ending up cutting down his coffeetree (to the horror and sorrow of the tree cutter) as well as a couple of my neighbor’s trees (a property line dispute, which makes me even happier that I had my property surveyed), so she and I are trying to repopulate the area with these gems.

Planting trees seems such a hopeful, non-cranky thing to do, and best of all, I don’t need to wear a mask to tend to my seedling forest.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

The Shadow of Family Trees

[image error]I live in a small town where people tend to stay when they’re grown, or if they leave, they come back to retire. I thought there would be a problem, since the residents of many such towns tend to stick together and not welcome newcomers, but not here. Everyone (well, almost everyone — there’s always that one person who aggravates) has been kind and welcoming. Now that I’m sorting out the family trees just a bit, this welcome amazes me even more. It seems as if almost everyone is related within one or two degrees of separation.

For example, I met the grandson of the woman I am working for (with?) and today, talking to another friend, she mentioned her grandson of the same name. Turns out, it’s not a coincidence of names — the same boy is the grandson of both women. In another case, one friend’s grandfather is another friend’s uncle. I can’t even wrap my mind around that!

I may never get all these relationships straight, but it doesn’t matter. The shadow of their family trees doesn’t fall on me like it does with those who grew up here. I can take people are they are, rather than what limb they came from.

Another thing I discovered (that has nothing to do with family trees, though it does have to do with plants) is that at one time, 92% of all zinnia seeds came from this area. It must have been beautiful, driving down a highway lined with jewel-toned fields, all the colors mixed together in a riot of joy. It certainly explains why zinnias seem to like me — it’s not me so much as that they feel at home.

It would be nice to think that the zinnias I found growing in my yard were descendants of the original flowers, but I doubt it. Although I was surprised to find the zinnias, it’s only because I forgot that I planted them. Well, in a way, I planted them. I had some old seeds that I threw out into the yard instead of tossing the unopened packet in the trash. Most of the seeds did nothing, but the zinnias decided to grow. So nice of them!

I’ve never really had any special feeling for zinnias, but after this summer, seeing the cheerful blooms and knowing they belong in the area, might even belong to the same family tree as those original zinnia fields, I’m considering planting a yardful of them next year.

One of my new friends (one of the grandmothers) told me about a seed store in a town up the road a piece. They might even have seeds grown around here, which would be nice.

What is also nice is being able to plan for next year, knowing that unless something traumatic happens, I’ll still be here in this small town. And probably still trying to sort out the shadows of all those family trees.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Dilemmas

The women I work with and for invited me on a drive this afternoon. We went out in the country and saw where the one woman grew up, where their relatives once lived, where various other people I don’t know once lived, as well as a lesson on the water dynamics of the area. Some of the big farmers and ranchers saved their water rights, but people with smaller acreages and adult children who didn’t want to farm, sold their rights to be able to stay in their houses.

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I understand this was a tough decision for people, but not being a rancher/farmer, all I can do is shake my head and wonder if they’d ever seen a western movie. It seems that a huge number of westerns revolve around water rights, generally, with the evil banker trying to corner the valuable water market, and so the idea that anyone would sell their water rights seems self-defeating. Money now, of course, but not later when/if it comes time to sell the property. Still, not my dilemma.

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My dilemma is a different one, though still in the financial realm. A relative had some very bad luck, and my first inclination was to send her a check to help her out. Then I got to thinking about it, and realized that I accepted a job to help my own financial situation, and if I sent her anything, in essence, then, I would be working for her benefit, not mine, that all the money for the work I will be doing for the next several months would be going in her pocket.

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Oddly, the tarot card I picked today — The King of Pentacles — reminded me to stay in control of my energies and resources in pursuit of a larger goal (such as a solution to my own precarious financial situation). Although this is also a card of generosity, I am tending toward the less generous outcome, more because of the job than anything. Still, I feel bad for her, so who knows.

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Since these dilemmas are not pleasant to contemplate (if they were pleasant, they wouldn’t be dilemmas, I’m sure), I’m adding photos my zinnias. They might not have anything to do with anything I’m writing about today — they pose no dilemmas — but they do make me smile, and I can use a few smiles right about now.

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Grist for My Mill

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When I accepted the job of part-time caregiver, I thought both women — the fulltime caregiver who interviewed me and the woman I would be caring for — were total strangers.

As we learned a couple of days ago, all three of us had attended the same function last year — Thanksgiving dinner at the senior center. I didn’t talk to either of these women at the time, though in retrospect, I remember the director of the center pointing them out and telling me who they were.

It seems odd that the two people I see most in my life now, who in some ways are the most significant, were so insignificant to my life back then, that I didn’t even remember the encounter. Admittedly, this is a small town, so such coincidences would not be uncommon, and yet, I do sometimes wonder how often two lives cross before the two people finally connect.

A lot of times when people meet, not just friends, but soon-to-be marriage partners, they trace their lives and find many points of intersection, and yet, they didn’t make the all-important connection during those earlier near-encounters.

Jeff and I didn’t find many such points of intersection, though we spent our lives within a couple miles of each other. We did find that we had been in many of the same places, though not necessarily at the same time.

Not that it matters. Or maybe it does. Maybe it’s not the crossing lines themselves that matter but the time of the actual connection. If we had met before we met, would we have connected? Would we have even liked each other? So many things happened in the years immediately preceding our connection that primed us for that ultimate encounter, a previous meeting might have passed unnoticed.

It’s sort of the same thing with these women. If we had talked at Thanksgiving, would things have been different? Would they not have wanted me to work with them? Would the job be working out as well as it is? One of the things that helps all of us, I think, is the novelty. Those two spend so much time together, that a third person adds a bit of spice (or at least a bit of a change), especially now, when the vulnerable are still mostly isolated. If we’d met before, perhaps we would have lost the novelty factor.

Obviously, despite my new job, I am still spending too much time alone, too much time in my head thinking thoughts that have no value other than to keep my mental mill working.

Luckily, I am meeting some friends for a picnic in a little while, which will give me more — and different — grist for my mill. All social distancing and mask wearing guidelines are supposed to be followed, of course, though how one eats wearing a mask, I don’t know. See? Already something new to think about!

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[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator