Pat Bertram's Blog, page 91

Snug as a Bug in a . . .

Snug as a bug in a rug, you might be thinking, but no. Today the saying is: snug as a bug in a . . . garage!!!!

Look at that happy little car.

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The opener hasn’t been installed yet so the door has to be opened manually, and the gravel hasn’t been laid in front of the apron so there was a bit of an impediment getting the car into the garage, and there are a few other minor things that need to be done, but the garage is otherwise finished. I’ll have to move the car when the builders come back so they can put on the finishing touches, but meantime, I’m delighted to have the poor thing out of the brutal sun. And wow, it’s been brutal. I had to turn on the air conditioner at 9:00am this morning just to be able to breathe. Luckily I have an air conditioner. (And grateful am I for that comfort!)

Even though the contractor volunteered to move my storage into the garage, I’ve been feeling guilty about lolling around while other people do the work, so I got started on the task this morning. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that I overdid it a bit, but I’ll be taking it easy the rest of the day. I might be able to finish tomorrow if I haven’t redamaged my knee. Except for sorting through the conglomeration of things, it should be easy — I did all the heavy lifting today.

So, not only do I have my car in the garage, I also have all the boxes of storage items out of my house. The boxes that aren’t in the garage are in the enclosed porch, which is part of the house, but not. For as much work that has been done back there, and for as functional and attractive as the area is, it still has a porchy feel. But soon I’ll be able to reclaim even that room. Then, finally, I will be completely moved in.

And I’ll be as snug as my bug.

***

[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

 

Big Excitement for the Day

I’m reading a book about a consortium that is about to release a virus that kills with acute respiratory distress. The victims gush blood and die. I was thinking about this book in relation to what is going on today, but it sounds a lot like my own novel, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, which was published the year before this one.

In my book, the disease is full-blown, and Colorado — where the disease originated — is quarantined to keep the pandemic in check. In the book I’m reading, there have only been a few test cases, and the consortium has yet to unleash the virus on the world. They’ve been working for the past ten years on a cure, and after releasing the virus into the general population, they are planning on holding the cure hostage until their demands are met. Or maybe they’ll just spring into action with a cure, which would then afford them millions in sales and stock. Either way, it’s a planned pandemic for money.

A couple things about the book interest me more than the possibility of that scenario being played out in the world today. One, the book is a Robert Ludlum book, which is why I started reading it. Not that I like his books. The truth is, I’ve never been able to get past the first chapter or two of any of his books, but I figured this was a good time to struggle through one of his books since I have nothing better to read. Only it’s not a Robert Ludlum book. Oh, it has his name on the cover, but it was written eight or nine years after his death. A true ghost writer!

The other thing that interests me is the hero took a transport from Andrews Air Force Base that landed in the Southern California Logistical Airport near Victorville before taking a helicopter to Ft. Irwin.

So many books, movies, television shows take place in Southern California or touch on the area in some way, and now, having lived there for so many years, I know what these places are. I remember watching a CSI show many years ago, and somehow the Las Vegas crew ended up in Victorville. I’d never heard of the town, hadn’t a clue where it was, and then, in a strange twist of fate, there I was. Well, not Victorville itself, but the Victor Valley area.

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And several times I happened to drive the Air Expressway that took me past the turn-off to the Southern California Logistical Airport.

Not that it matters — I have read thousands upon thousands of novels where I couldn’t correctly place the story (and didn’t care) but still, it’s fun to know where places are. And for some reason, Victorville shows up a lot in stories — perhaps because of the nearness to the desert wilderness where bodies can disappear forever. But then, how to explain Bear Lake? That’s another place that often shows up in books. In fact, it was mentioned in the book I just finished, whatever that was. (Obviously, the story was utterly unmemorable. See why I was willing to take a chance on a Ludlum book?)

So, that’s the big excitement for the day — coming across “Southern California Logistical Airport” in a terrible book by a writer who is published under the name of a dead author I never liked.

***

[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

Getting Closer!

The garage is mostly painted, and the shelves built. I might have had to wait for the shelves a bit longer, but the poor worker got tired of moving the heavy shipping boxes around, and since he found out he was the one who would have to build the shelves, he went ahead and put them together.

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It’s amazing to me the things that people who know how to do things can do. A connecting part was missing, and he managed to find a way to bolt the two parts of the standards together. A new part has been ordered, but there’s a chance it will never be used because if there is one thing I have learned in life it’s that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution.

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I’ve tried not to get too excited about the garage since it’s been taking so long, but now that it’s nearing completion and the time for moving my car in is getting closer, I find myself getting excited. Who knew I’d ever want a “dream garage”? But that’s what I’m getting.

It will be good to have a home for my stuff, too. Maybe when I see the totality of it, I’ll find a way to whittle it down. On the other hand, I have shelves! I might as well fill them. I know the current philosophy is that if you haven’t used anything in a year, it should be gotten rid of, but some things make me smile even if I don’t use them, and other things are left over from a previous life (lifestyle?) and someday I might find myself back in that same mindset. I figure that even though I’m getting closer to elderlihoodness, I don’t really have to downsize for old age’s sake for several more years. I can wait until I’m a middling elderly rather than a young elderly. By the time I’m an old elderly, I should be down to just what I can use. Or not. After all, I’m not the one who has to get rid of everything when I’m gone because I’ll be . . . gone.

Odd how sometimes practicality has a rather morbid quality, and today is not a day for planning the end, but planning a new beginning. And I am getting closer to my first garage. My own garage. Surely something to celebrate!

I celebrated with a delicious meal of home-grown bacon and fresh farm eggs, a gift from my contractor. I have a hunch he’s getting excited about the project being finished, too. But, there will be other projects . . .

***

[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

Pretty White Walls

The insulation and the walls of the garage are in, and now the painting begins! The walls are white (not blue as they appear in the photo), to make sure the garage is nice and bright.

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I’m still a way from being able to use the garage. Once the walls and ceiling are painted, the opener will be installed, and then gravel will need to be brought in to fill in the space between the driveway and the alley. I think the contractor wants the ramp/sidewalk from the house to the garage done before some of the rest of the work to make sure I have a safe way to get from one building to the next, but I’m not sure if the sequence matters as long as the sidewalk is done.

From the beginning, the contractor has understood that I’m fixing the place up now to prepare for my old age so I can be self-sufficient as long as possible, and he’s been very good about pointing out things I should be done, even things I wouldn’t have thought about. But he’s used to elder-proofing houses and yards, and I’m not used to being an elder. Though I’m getting there. Things I didn’t think I’d have to worry about for a few more years, such as going down the steps to the basement, are definitely things I need to worry about now. My bum knee, though it is healing and isn’t preventing me from doing things I need to do, doesn’t like stairs. (It’s a good thing we decided to make the garage big enough for storage because my original idea of storing things in the basement has become defunct.)

It’s nice having someone look at the place from a different point of view than mine. From his standpoint, I’m sure I already seem old-lady-ish, so it’s not much of a stretch for him to consider my safety, especially when I stumble because of a depression in the yard. Such unevenness will be taken care of with loads of dirt — they have to bring in dirt anyway to fill in where the old garage used to be, and to fill in around the garage — so it will be easy enough to expand the fill site. Besides, he’s going to be putting in pathways for me. (Made from something called breeze?)

It will be fun to gradually fill in the corners of the yard and the various secret spaces created by the walkways with interesting plants and artifacts, so that if I can’t go far, I can still have a micro adventure in my micro park. Such an undertaking will take years, of course — not just because I can only do so much at a time but because things take a long time to grow.

The contractor also seems to understand that I like the work he does, but that I also like the companionship. Knowing that congenial people are here, working for my welfare adds an additional dimension to the experience of owning a house and adds to the richness of the experience. Their presence has certainly helped to keep me from feeling completely isolated during these Bob times.

And it gives me something to look forward to on the days I know someone will be here.

Luckily, from a companionship standpoint, things are far from finished. Even though the garage is nearing completion, there is a whole list of other things that need to be done, such as the water lines replaced, the foundation maintained, the gutters fixed. Etc. Etc. Etc.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Today, I am focusing on the garage and the pretty white wall.

***

[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

Pat’s Big Adventure

For the past few months, I haven’t been more than a few miles from home. I probably wouldn’t even have gone that far except that I needed to drive my car to keep it working. It’s actually been nice, staying close to home, though I probably wouldn’t have gone so long without a visit to a larger town with larger stores despite The Bob if it hadn’t been for my knee. I wasn’t sure I could drive the fifty-mile round trip, but I was sure I wouldn’t be able to walk across the expanse of the parking lot and then maneuver my way around the store and then stand in the check-out line.

I’ve done well staying on top of the things I need, but the list of items I couldn’t get locally has been growing. Even more than that, I’m getting a feel for the areas in the yard that will need some kind of bush or shrub, and I wanted to see if there was anything I could pick up locally before I threw money down the black hole of mail order plants.

So today, after the workers finished up a stint on the garage, I took off. It kind of surprised me — I would have thought this first excursion in a long time would have taken more planning, but then, it’s something I’d often done, so it’s not like I was stepping off into the unknown.

Still, it was fun, just taking off like that. I thought the drive would feel interminably long, but it was over almost before I settled into trip mode.

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The shopping itself was disappointing in a way — although I know this is long past planting time, I expected to find something to interest me, but I didn’t know what any of the plants were and didn’t want to grab indiscriminately. The more prosaic part of the trip — picking up such things as allergy medicines and ointments and cleaning products, as well as some food — was easy, and the drive home was nice. Hot but nice.

As soon as I got in the house, though, we were deluged. Not just with huge sheets of rain, but hail. Mothball size hail. Big enough to sound like rocks being flung against the house, but not big enough to do damage. I am looking forward to being able to put my car in the garage. Hail damage can be severe around here, and some insurance companies won’t insure against hail damage, and the ones that do insure demand a huge deductible. But that’s a worry for another time.

Today, the hail passed quickly. My garage is a bit nearer to completion.

And I went on an adventure.

***

[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

Mélange

Yesterday I mentioned I hadn’t lived anyplace where fireworks were legal, and it shocked me to hear and see the neighbors’ almost incessant firework displays, especially the huge falls of sparks over my house and garage. I found out today that I still haven’t lived anyplace where fireworks are legal — all fireworks that leave the ground are illegal everywhere in Colorado. Surprisingly, no one issued citations for the firework setter-offers — it’s not as if they were hiding their crime.

But then, the one thing that I don’t like about living here is that the code enforcer only works during the day on weekdays, so the rest of the time, too many people feel free to break the laws they find inconvenient, such as leash laws and firework laws and trespassing laws.

I lucked out on the fourth because there was rain that night, so any sparks that landed would have immediately fizzled out, but I doubt the thought of rain being a safety measure played any part in the wrongdoers’ decisions to shoot off the fireworks because they would have had to stock up long before any rain was in sight. And until the rain, this whole area was so dry and desiccated that any spark could have set the whole town on fire.

[image error]People are still setting off fireworks — it’s been a nightly thing since the end of June — but eventually, they will have to run out of the blasted things, so I won’t have to worry until next year. I have no idea what I will do. Even if I spent the night in the yard, looking for fires, chances are any fire that was sparked would be slow to start and I’d miss it until the damage was done.

It makes me wonder — don’t other people think of these things? I’d blame my concern on my growing curmudgeonliness, but the truth is, fireworks are dangerous in ultra-dry climates. That’s why there are laws against them.

Oh, well, I’d be better off turning my thoughts to more important issues, such as what sort of climbing vine to plant along a portion of my fence. Climbing roses don’t do well here because of the frequent hot/cold temperature changes. (They do well as low bushes, not as climbing plants.)  I’d love some wisteria, but it needs to be pruned every year, and in more feeble times, I won’t want to deal with that. Though I might not have to — apparently, wisteria grows slowly in Colorado. And anyway, so far I haven’t done well with purchased plants, so perhaps I should try to transplant a trumpet vine or two. One of the vines I would transplant is riddled with ants, so I wonder if the ants would come with it, or if they would stay in the original area. I guess I’ll find out.

Meantime, the work on the garage is progressing — today they insulated and walled one side of the inside of the building. Yay!

As for Dune — I spent several hours online yesterday looking at books that were published around the same time trying to find one that I might have confused with Dune, but I didn’t have any luck. The lists did remind me of some I liked, such as Malevil by Robert Merle, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, and Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. I thought of rereading these books, but decided, after the Dune fiasco, that I better not.

I read a mystery yesterday that takes place in a not-so-distant future, and the book itself mystified me. The future as the author had envisioned played absolutely no part in the story. The story could have been set in any age, any place, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It seems to me that if one is making a big deal about the time frame in a story, that time frame needs to play a part. Like a gun showing up in the first chapter of a book and then never mentioned again.

I’ve been picking a tarot card every day, asking the cards what I need to know that day, and so far, all the cards are telling me is that I need to learn what the day’s card means. It doesn’t seem to have any correlation to my life. I am keeping a sort of diary about my excursions into the tarot because I’m interested in knowing if they will show a pattern for the month. I did say I wanted to learn the tarot by osmosis rather than an in-depth study, and that seems to be the case. I am learning some cards — though mostly what I’m learning is that while some decks are based on a certain tradition, others eschew that tradition and make up their own meanings. I wonder if I were to create my own deck of cards, using whatever symbols I want, and giving those symbols any meaning I want, if it would work like a tarot deck.

I think that brings me up to date. If not, I’ll be here again tomorrow with another mélange of ideas and events.

***

[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

Nature’s Fireworks

Last night I went outside for a bit to watch nature’s fireworks — the immense show of lightning that so often shows up on July fourth in Colorado. Standing there in the unearthly light, I was reminded of another time I watched the show. It was decades ago. I stood on the roof of the apartment building in Denver where I lived, and watched the far-off jagged lines of light.

It seems odd to think of that young woman and all she hadn’t yet experienced. All that she couldn’t even have imagined that would eventually happen to her. I think it was right before I met Jeff, so he wasn’t even in the picture. Our life together, our great cosmic connection, was on the horizon, but she hadn’t an inkling.

In fact, she didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. When she was young, she could project herself into the future, but that future always ended when she was twenty-five. No matter how she tried, she could never imagine her life after that. She thought it meant she would die that year, but instead, it meant she would come alive because that was the year she met Jeff. It makes sense to me now, that lack of any sense of the future, because how could she have projected herself into a future she couldn’t ever have imagined?

She couldn’t have imagined any of her life with Jeff. She couldn’t have imagined — though she dreamed — that she would learn to write and would become a published author. She couldn’t imagine how much something called a blog would mean to her (back then, there wasn’t even a hint of such a personal use for the computers that were just coming into renown).

She couldn’t have imagined Jeff’s death and the grief that would all but destroy her before it rebuilt her. She couldn’t have imagined that anything would ever get her to take care of her father when he got old — it was the one thing she was determined she would never do. (Even at a young age, I knew I was the “designated daughter,” and Jeff saved me from that. For a while, anyway. But fate came calling.) She couldn’t have imagined living in California and especially not in the desert — she never liked California, and she hated the heat. And she could never have imagined finding peace and hope in the desert, or taking dance classes, or making so many friends. She never imagined that two of her brothers and both parents would die. (Though logically, she knew her parents would die at some point, but they were still in their middle years and a long way from the end, so she never thought about it.)

She could never have imagined traveling by herself, camping by herself, hiking and backpacking by herself. She could never even imagine having the self-confidence and courage and boldness such adventures would demand.

And especially, she could never have imagined owning a house.

All that was in her future, and it seems so strange that the young woman standing on the roof watching the lightning storm hadn’t even a glimmer that any of those momentous things would occur.

And yet, there I was last night, on the other end of that life, looking at what seemed the same storm, and knowing all that the young woman would experience.

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Suddenly, the sounds of a war zone brought that reverie to an end. I had never lived anyplace where fireworks were legal, and oh, my — hours and hours of the sound of gunfire all around me. At one point, I looked out the back door because it seemed to me as if the sounds were coming from my yard, and I was shocked to see huge falls of sparks landing on my garage and house from the fireworks nearby neighbors had set off. Luckily, the long dry months had come to an end a couple of hours earlier, so there was no danger, but it still made me nervous.

Today, although all is sodden, it’s quiet. The war is over. The lightning that brought the flash of memory has receded into the past.

Or into the future.

Next year, or the year after, or ten years from now, perhaps I will again watch nature’s fireworks on the fourth, and I will be marveling at happenings I can’t imagine today.

***

[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

Maybe Rereading “Dune”

I’m rereading Dune. At least, I think I’m rereading it. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever read it at all until now.

I remember thinking I liking the book when I was young, and several times over the intervening years I’d end up with a copy and try to reread it, but I could never get into the story again. Admittedly, when I was young, I had a lot more patience for books that were mostly descriptions of day-to-day living, whether on this planet or another (the first 150 pages of Dune seem more like setting the scene than the beginning of a book) and I lost that patience in later years. It’s also harder to keep whole books in my head now, so that adds to my impatience with dragginess.

It’s possible the book gets better (I’m not even halfway through), and it’s possible it has a great ending that would make me feel good about the book. And it’s possible that something in the latter half will strike a chord of memory, but so far, there isn’t so much as a ding. Even if I can’t remember books I read decades ago, if they impressed me in some way, I have some sort of lingering impression of them. Most books, of course, leave no impression — there is simply no “there” there. I’m not sure where Dune would fit in the book spectrum because it is different enough that I should remember something or hear a faint echo of recognition in the back of my mind. But nope. Nothing. I can’t even figure out why I would have read it. I have never liked authors who have to create incomprehensible names for people, things, and places. The strange spellings seem to take up space in my brain that would normally be used for following the story.

Even more confusing, I see the cover in my mind’s eye — a reddish cover with a fellow trudging across a wide expanse of dunes. I spent some time looking at Dune covers today, and there is not a single one of them that looks familiar. (Except for the one I bought at a library book sale a while back and redonated unread.)

It makes me wonder what book I did read. It’s possible I read some other book and misremembered it as Dune. It’s possible I misremembered the cover. (If there even was a cover image. It could have been a rebound book from the library.) And I could have found the book completely unmemorable.

Too bad there’s no way to rewind a memory to see the truth of it.

What I am seeing is a lot of similarity to The Wheel of Time series, at least in small things — the witches, the truthsayers, the uncanny powers, the manipulation of people and events. Of course, these are all fairly common archetypes and scenarios for the hero/savior story, but people often compare The Wheel of Time world to The Lord of the Rings, and I don’t see it at all. (But then, that’s another iconic series I haven’t been able to slog through, so I could have missed any similarity.)

One thing that amused me — in a book that uses so many strange-sounding names and words, at one point, Frank Herbert describes someone as having olive skin. Couldn’t he have come up with a more interesting word? I have always hated “olive” applied to skin because it takes me out of the story and makes me wonder what color the character is. I still remember the first time I came across that descriptive word. I couldn’t figure out if the character had green skin or black. It took years before I realized the word referred to the color of the inside of a black olive.

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So, I can remember being puzzled by olive skin, but I can’t remember anything about a book I thought I read and thought I liked.

The life of a reader does get bizarre at times.

***

[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 Joy of Fences

I don’t like being fenced in by ideas, by people, by expectations, but I love being fenced in by . . . fences.

I had my whole property fenced in before we realized that the old garage was not much good for anything, not even a shed, and that it would have to come down.

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Then, when the shock wore off, I reluctantly let go of my travel funds because I decided that a garage was more important than that one last epic road trip. So most of the fence along the alley had to be ripped out. Not that the fence did anything to keep out trespassers — one snowy morning I woke up to find shoe prints all over my yard. A lock on the gate took care of that problem, but then, so did the fence being gone. If there was no gate, of course there would be no gate for people to open. (A joke of sorts.)

For all these months of construction (or rather, non-construction), I used blue plastic fencing, similar to the blaze orange fencing used at some construction sites, to block off access. It was more of a psychological barrier (at least, I hoped so) rather than a physical barrier because the stuff is rather flimsy. Luckily, there have been no snow storms, so I didn’t have to be frantic about trespassers since I could see no sign of them, though dogs did worry me. Too many the people in the vicinity don’t walk their dogs — they just turn them loose to do their business. It’s bad enough when the dogs are ankle biters, but pit bulls? Yikes.

But yay! Today, the fence was reinstalled. Instead of the fence going straight across the alley as it once did, it now jogs in toward the garage, giving me a huge area to pull into my garage or even a parking space if necessary.

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But sigh. I’m still not able to use the garage. It’s getting there, though. The attic insulation is in, the ceiling is up. Wall insulation and OSB boards have been delivered, as well as the garage door opener but have not yet been installed. (One guy has been doing most of the finishing work by himself, and there is no way he can install the opener without a helper.)

Meantime, I am grateful for the gift of this day and will enjoy being fenced in.

***

[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

Justice

[image error]The tarot card I picked today was “Justice.” According to various sources, it mostly refers to legal actions, such as contracts, will, settlements, but some sources also say “Justice” includes the outcome of quarrels and disagreements, the judgement of the dead, consequences of wrong actions, atonement and redress.

I kept digging and found that it is also the card of duality. Internal and outer. Conscious and subconscious. Creation and destruction. Gain and loss. Beginning and endings. Light and dark. Self and other. In other words, balance. To a certain extent, opposing forces are the same thing, or at least different facets of the same thing. Neither force can exist without the other. Each causes the other. Everything has consequences, and the consequence of having one side means there will be another side of equal force.

True justice is about putting things back in balance.

Although this card doesn’t seem to pertain to anything in my life today, it is an interesting starting point for a discussion. There is such a demand nowadays for everyone to accept a single side, the side of politicized justness. It seems as if the current attempt to balance out old injustices pretty much creates injustices for a different group of people. In addition, if you don’t think a certain way, you are considered flat-out wrong, but that is not possible. There are two sides to everything, and each side creates its opposite side. So if there is too great a disparity favoring one side, it would create a greater pendulum swing to the other side.

The world of The Wheel of Time was a world of balance. One character was so strong that his presence bent chance and altered what was probable, so all sorts of inexplicable events, both good and bad happened in equal proportion. When the Dark One’s hand started to be felt in the world, this character’s actions almost always had positive outcomes to balance out the evil. Which led to one character asking a wise woman that if good and evil are always balanced, then is there really any such thing as good. The wise woman had no answer. But it left me wondering.

As does this card denoting justice. And balance.

Of course, on a cosmic scale, I doubt there is good and bad because those are human value judgements. But even on a cosmic scale there is always the push and pull of opposites. (Except when it comes to matter and anti-matter — there seems to be an imbalance there, though the imbalance might come from an inability to see where the balance is.)

On a human level, then, even if good and evil are equally balanced, I would still always try to do the right thing for no other reason than that it is the right thing, whether anyone agreed with me or not.

***

[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