Wide Open Spaces

This past Thanksgiving was my first off my prescription pain medications for almost two decades.  As I have reflected upon my gratitudes, I realized that sitting at that table this year, I wasn't just changed in terms of my chemistry, but the inside of me is a new version of what's been there in the past.  My shell may look the same, but my inner spirit is a little bit of the old, a little bit of the present, and a little bit someone who is still unfolding. Life is suddenly a wide open space of potential and possibility.  While that is wonderful and exciting, it is also scary and uncertain.  Our circumstances can change in an instant, and life truly is a moment to moment adventure of good and bad.

I haven't paid much attention to my blog the past few months, as I've been working on an independent writing project for a close friend. I was hired to write the biography of a spirited 89-year old woman who I quickly fell in love with over the course of our meetings.  She lived an extraordinary life, took chances, seized every moment, and she never took a moment to feel sorry for herself when faced with adversity.  It was a pleasure getting to know her, and writing her story was a privilege.

At the onset of the project, I was intended to write the biography to get her life story on paper for her family to have.  It wasn't supposed to be a finale.  However, several weeks ago she had an accident, broke her hip, and due to complications, she ended up choosing hospice care and passed peacefully surrounded by her three loving children.  I was fortunately able to finish writing her story in time to read it to her days before she passed, and I had the honor of reading part of it at her memorial service last week.   

She wasn't family, but I had grown to love her like another grandmother.  I poured my heart into writing her biography, and I was so focused on remaining composed enough to speak at her memorial that I hadn't really processed the grief of losing this amazing gift I was so blessed to know.  Mock, her nickname, was a role model for the frightened, but strong spirit inside me who is at the doorway of a whole new life.  She made me want to take risks, live moment to moment with joyous reverence for the opportunities that present themselves, and most of all, to love it, from the pain to the prosperity.  I miss her.

Our culture tends to put our seniors away, out of sight and out of mind, without realizing that they are a wealth of amazing knowledge and incredible stories.  They have seen history evolve, witnessed things many of us cannot even imagine, and have overcome and achieved in ways we can only hope to realize.  Each person has her own unique recipe, a compilation of experience, emotions, hopes and desires that makes them who they are, and writing Mock's recipe was one of the great honors of my life.

So going back to Thanksgiving, sitting at that table with the people I loved, breathing air without a machine, functioning without pain medicine, and being at the doorway of a life I can create with the courage, love, intention and bravery I've learned from the example of great individuals I've had the honor of knowing, I'm grateful to be alive.  Simple and to the point.  I'm grateful for each day I have to add to my recipe.  The future is wide open, and I step into it with trepidation, reverence and joy.  I don't need a holiday to remind myself of theses blessings.  They envelope me each and every day.

In Honor of Mary Jean Evans

aka Mock

I'm so grateful your shooting star crossed paths with my sky