Surviving Life After Death #cancer #grief #livingagain

It has been a year since Dennis died. I wasn't sure I would make it through all the emotion that threatened to eat me alive but I did. Grief has to be the most challenging emotion to conquer if that is even an appropriate word. Perhaps to assimilate is better. 

One thing I know, is that I do not want my children to feel responsible for my journey. My kids deserve to have their own lives without me in constant attendance. I decided I needed to do something so I reached out to a few old friends, but they were busy with their lives and there wasn't any room for me in theirs especially with COVID. Once I accepted that I realized that I needed to make new friends. That sent me into a panic where the words how fucking hard is that became my mantra.

Not as hard as I thought come to find out. 

I joined a kayaking club. Well, actually I showed up with my blow up canoe which I thought was a kayak three times before I actually got out of the car. Thank you Barbara and both Julies for welcoming me into your warm embrace and for teaching me that a canoe is not a kayak.

It turns out there are lots of widows and other alone people up here and they, like me, can't stand to be in the house every single day. I have fallen, slipped, and wrenched my back, messed up my hands and shoulders all the while learning how to get the kayak down cement steps and into the water.

Then I learned how to get myself into the kayak, kayaking, then finishing which forced me to learn how to get out of the kayak and how to get the kayak onto the cement steps to drag the kayak up the steps and onto the lawn where I learned how to tug the kayak onto a set of wheels that have to be just right under the seat and then have to bungee it all together and walk it across another street.  

Now that is a run on sentence. 

While that sounds like a lot of work and it is, that is nothing compared to watching a full moon rise with new friends. There is so much to talk about because they are new. I don't know them well, but for whatever reason they trust me and I trust them. In today's world that type of trust is rare. So we share our lives and that is beautiful. 

​Thank you.

Credit for pictures goes to Julie number one.