I often times as regular as 99.99 % of the time feel that my glass is always half full even if it appears to have a crack in the glass and some of the positivity begins to slowly leak out, almost without my even noticing.
I worked for the Canadian Red Cross helping the elderly families out with housekeeping or just being there as someone they could chat with on a weekly basis. In the beginning I wondered why the grown children of the elderly families didn’t come for a visit very often outside of the given yearly holidays.
I knew most if not all were married with children and led busy lives. But, didn’t they see the sadness in Mom or Dads eyes ? I wondered since I could see it when the elderly would speak of them and how proud they were of their sons and daughters.
I suppose I was born to do this work, since my own elderly grandparents raised me from two years old and I was able to witness this part of the end years of life first hand. I offered to do the evening dishes before I was tall enough to reach the sink and do the laundry with a step ladder to reach the washing machine to plunge into it trying like it was a game to grab the wet clothes that had finished the spin cycle. Indeed, I was born for this job working for the Canadian Red Cross and I adored every moment spent with the elderly families more that mere words can ever describe. They made me a much better person in the end.
I also since my scheduling book for clients was never that full on any given week because I was newly hire to the organization and they didn’t spread out the clients evenly even when I asked them to a number of times. So, what does a widow of two children do? One child in college and the other in high school, she gets more work to total up 10 – 12 hour days ~ 7 days a week.
I divided my time up and scheduled accordingly between school pick up and making the dinner meals and checking homework before heading back out to work, often times after the sun had set. I was riding high on feeling that I was doing the best that I could do and gave to my children what they needed.
I was a stay at home mother after my husband suddenly passed away one Good Friday Morning, 11:11 to be exact. The children were barely 10 and 7 at the time, so this was what needed to be done. I remained positive after a month or two scared out of my wits about how I was going to survive up here in the frozen north of Ontario Canada. For 6 months out of the year. The challenges were real, and you just never knew what storm or blizzard was just around the corner from week to week. You will quickly figure out just what you are made of in a blink of an eye.
After a plan was erected in my mind about how I was going to live I found the positively returning on a more regular basis. I learned not to doubt myself and move forward one day at a time ~ One shovel full of snow at a time. Until…..
Until, I didn’t. Seven years of pushing my body to the brink of collapse and never giving in to the pain the joints were feeling after a 12 hour day of hard labor working cleaning other peoples homes and going above and beyond my limits of common sense about lifting items that were better left for a strong armed man or men.
I would return home and sit in my easy chair that is now ratty and not so easy on the body since it lost all of its comfort from the fluffy cushions and is now a flat pancake of a cushion to sit upon.
After, about ten minutes of resting I’d try and stand up but the legs had another agenda for me, by way of locking up and refusing to move. Yet, I continued working since by the next morning I was not hurting and ready to begin another day of work. Until….
One morning I raised my head to swing out of bed, but the body refused to remember it belonged to me and my head that was lifted off the pillow. Did I panic ? No, I knew in my heart of hearts that my body was at this very point in time showing me who was actually boss and doing its best to protect me from future devastating harm I was hell bent on doing to my own body. I finally noticed that crack in the glass that I assumed was half full and would always remain that way as long as I didn’t doubt myself and my own capabilities.
The moment I began to doubt positivity is the moment I began to realize that it is and always has been an illusion. My illusion of how I saw things ~ How I wanted to see things~ If I see that the sky is meant to be blue with fluffy white, dreamy clouds then that must be true and not an illusion. But, those fluffy white clouds contain moisture that often times will turn dark and rain is imminent for any given day if mother nature calls for it.
I dearly wish that my late husband could be by my side and we follow through with our own dreamy dreams of growing old together on a covered front porch rocking in wooden chairs that are both antiques, yet fit our aged bodies like a glove and feel like there is no longer gravity to hurt our aging joints. But, that is a lovely dream of wishes and an illusion to what my own path in life is and was suppose to be.
He would often ask me a very odd question which I shall share with you here. “Why do you love me?” I supposed he considered himself not lovable or not handsome enough since he had the sexiest bald spot developing on the very top of his head. Which before going out he’d adorn a ball cap if not in his Military Dress Uniform.
My answer was always the same, “Because I see you for you.” Our hearts danced even when there were days he or I were mad at each other for what ever silly reason. Because let’s face it you can’t totally live and share with another person without those days littered into them like pepper to our sugar.
My eyes were the last thing my husband saw when he left this plane of existence, and I know at that very moment my love for him all those years was no illusion and he took that knowing with him until such time we meet again. Rocking and sipping strong coffee at the little yellow cottage by a babbling brook in Nova Scotia, which we owned together for some time and spent a lot of enjoyable moments together looking up at the darken night sky deep in the forest where all of the earths stars are totally visible and you are aware of just how short a time we have here on this plane.
The eyes of my grandparents told me.
The eyes of the elderly families I took care of told me, and…
The night-time stars showed me that positivity is not an illusion after all.
Dream like there are never too many dreams to dream no matter what age you are.
Live like tomorrow you will close your eyes and see those dreamy stars from the other side.
Love like it’s sugar that you can not do without, yet never harms you in any way.
Be brave , yet see that glass for what it is. Because what you might see is indeed just an illusion you are telling yourself.
bluebird4udaily 