There are no souls of importance left in my life to make what I see ahead anything but uncertain and unfamiliar. A successful life by any measure other than relationships with people will produce a flawed and inaccurate result. I learned this by measuring happiness by the number of jobs in a week, month, year, and bank balances. But those measures had cruel ironies attached and ones I had to go through and experience to realize.
The older and wiser adage is a real thing where I've gained greater focus on all the mistakes I made over the years like valuing the wrong things while just being and experiencing life with others took a back seat or had no seat at all. I thought it would be much easier to eventually shift from that accumulating lifestyle to one more related to inner peace but I'm finding that not to be the case. Being one of the crowd was never a fit for me and I actually did suffer because of it, but the suffering then pales in comparison to the anguish now since reaching my fourth quarter of life.
As a kid, all I ever wanted was to have money to buy stuff and now that I can afford whatever I want, I just want what I used to have, that dream.. I was already rich long before I had a dime in that I was experiencing love without condition from a mother who could have fallen from the weight of husbands and fathers of her kids who didn't support her or us. Not knowing how well off you are until later in life is one of the cruelest of all ironies. I've often wondered if those who graced my younger life and have now left this world, did they know at the time the value of their impact on our lives and did they die knowing how rich they made everyone around them just by living a good and decent life throughout all the hardships they had to endure?
Whether real or imagined my soul today is heavily burdened with things you want less of like regret and sadness. Regret that I pushed aside some of those who are gone now and sadness that I wasted so much time focused on the less important things. Often in prayer, I ask God to forgive me for those things which I regret and although I know that he does, I am suffering unimaginable grief that while my loved ones were here, I didn't show them often enough how meaningful they were to me.
I woke at about 9 this morning, did the morning routine, and sat down to watch the markets. For hours I watched and did nothing else till I fell asleep in the chair and woke up about 6:30 having never set foot outside. I doubt my grandmother, Gran, ever had a single day or minute in her life to waste like that. That lady had too much to do, too many kids to care for, feed, sew clothes for, and work because her husband, my grandfather whom I never got to meet, died at an early age leaving them and her to fend for themselves.
The memories so long ago of the family getting together at Gran's and the telephone party line we kids played with and the spearmint lifesavers she would give us just one because the roll was another nickel she didn't have. Kenneth's odd laugh and Peggy's beautiful smile and big hair. The cousins are all playing outside and how uncomplicated and uneventful those times were before we all grew up and time stepped in and took it all away from us. Nothing could have prepared me for the loss of those times and nothing now can replace it (for me) or ease the sadness of not being able to talk about those times with some of those who were there and now passed away..
Faith is all that I have now to help get me through this final chapter. While it should be enough, all too often I worry it may not. I am using prayer to touch base with all those whom I miss who have passed before me and for all who remain and are in need. Often I have to remind myself to add my name to that list.
Guidance and a path well lit is what I seek these days and it seems so elusive. What will I do with what little time I have left I ask myself daily with no definitive answer. The days and nights are too quiet and my mind keeps moving back to that place in my life when I had everything I ever needed and didn't realize it-
