Anyone who is still paying attention knows that I have not written in a while, which may or may not be a good thing. I just have not had much to say and certainly not much that was interesting or worth writing about.
It seems that Covid-19 fatigue has settled in on me and I’m finding it hard to shake. Summer has turned to fall and soon I fear as Charles Dickins penned, it will be “the winter of despair”. Sadly, there was no “spring of hope” before it and maybe not next year either.
I know that some of my outlook is colored by the death of my father. We spread his ashes south of here along the shore of Lake Whitney, a place that for whatever reasons, is special to all of us. Before the brief ceremony, I walked along the shore with my grandson’s, watching them play and throw rocks into the choppy waters, much as my father did with me almost 60 years ago. His ashes are spread near where my mother’s parents’ ashes are spread.
My mother asked if we (my siblings and I) wanted some ashes to spread privately, my sister said yes, my bother no and I told my mom I’d find a rock to take with me on my return to the Camino, that would be my private moment.
Lot’s of things have come to an end this year; general happiness seems to be a victim of CV-19. There is a song, I can’t remember the name, but a verse goes something like this; Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. It didn’t say that the new beginning would be happy, I guess when I heard that song, I assumed that it would be happy but, as I write this, I realize that it may be a sad new beginning. The danger with assuming…
Lot’s of things to be unhappy about this year. I am an optimist; I do see the glass as half full. I try to see the positive whenever possible. But I must be honest, 2020 is making that very difficult, it is trying my soul.
So, the positive for me today is that I found a rock for my father at a place that he enjoyed and one which spoke to me. I have time now to think and dream about where I will place it on my next trip to the Camino, maybe in the Pyrenees looking down into Spain. Or, along the solitary way which is the Meseta. Possibly where the Atlantic crashes against the shore at the end of the World. I don’t know where but, I’m feeling a bit of joy just thinking about it.
We have very little control in the events of our lives. Making new friends, losing old friends, life, or death, the weather. We usually can’t control events like these. I, we, can control how we respond to them, do we accept them or resist these changes. So, I regain control by acknowledging that I’m not really in control and like everyone else, I’ll do the best I can with the cards I’m dealt.