Frames of Reference

When you embark on some part of your life experience (marriage, moving, new job, illness, vacation) you have expectations from past frames of reference but really who knows what is coming? This year we tried to snap back from a time when my dad needed me very badly and tried to be those happy retirees in comfortable shoes who can drive long distances and fly off on weekdays. But illness and death had other things in mind. I can't find the words to describe my year and its ups and downs, trips and towns, exhilaration and gut-wrenching anguish (sometimes on the same day). So it won't be a year that I describe in a family newsletter or represent with a happy picture of our downtown abode. Which is why I'm not sending a holiday card. The collage above only partially represents my attempt to make sense of it. Maybe when Holidailies is done I'll have the ability to represent myself to the 200+ people I usually send a missive to on the holidays.

[I threw this together for testing Holidailies. So expect more coherency when that actually begins next week!]

Lost Me

Normally I have a real good idea who I am and how I am feeding my own selfish desires. The last three months have been trying in this regard however.

My dad died. My husband needed medical care. My dad's affairs needed to be concluded. I began to worry about my in-laws more because, after all, they are 90 and 100.

So lately I keep asking myself: Where am I? What am I supposed to be doing? Why didn't I get to do the things I dreamed about when I managed to retire early and not completely broke?

I am selfish. I know I am very, very lucky. I have resources both physical and monetary against the onslaught. My husband is going to be fine. For now. One day we will all not be fine. The problem is that that day seems all too imminent of late.

And so....while others are shopping, decorating and celebrating...I'll be helping FFP through a surgery and recuperation and perhaps reading and blogging and pondering the rest of my life. I have made one or two momentous decisions: I won't do a holiday card for the first time in a very long time and I will blog in this space every day until the new year. I will write complete sentences. I will punctuate as well as I know how. I will complete thoughts and write my demons off in pixels.