A Thoughtful Sunday

Dearest,
            I’m sorry that I’ve been away so long, things have been quite chaotic without you. I so desperately need you. I have no one to tell of my everyday adventures and mishaps, no one to share with, no one to clown with, no one to love. Yesterday I spent a few hours with the grandsons, I am amazed at how much they can learn and how quickly.
            Today I was doing some light gardening, weeding and cleaning, when it began to rain. I sat on the edge of the planter watching the raindrops bounce off of the leaves. I began thinking about how I was feeling. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t sad, nor happy. I was grateful and accepting and appalled and a thousand other emotions all at once. What is the name for this feeling? Perhaps it’s called healing, we don’t want to believe that. We want healing to be pure and new and transformative. As if we would suddenly become better people, instantaneously, as if we could. As if we have to.
            Thinking about my grandsons I realized that I probably won’t be around when I would be of the most use. What advice could I leave them to help them after I make my inevitable exit? I thought of a few.
            Do the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do. You’ll know what the right thing to do is. It is the last thing in the world that you want to do. The hardest, most humiliating, most honest thing is always the right thing to do.
            Never listen to the crowd. The majority is always wrong
            You cannot convince someone to love you. No one will ever love you just because you want them to. Real love is reciprocal; don’t waste your time on anything less.
            Don’t worry about whether taking that job or not taking it would be good for your career. You don’t have a career, you have a life, go live it.
            You’ll never understand everything. The more you understand the more you will realize there is to learn. Some things can be understood only with the wisdom of age and the grace of years, most of these have to do with forgiveness.
            Forgive yourself first.
            That girl that you meet in the restaurant who stops you from kissing her because she’s “not ready for a relationship”? Kiss her anyway. Your daughter will have her smile, your son will have her eyes.
            When your mom gives you that sweater that she’s saved months to buy, don’t look so skeptical, don’t question the colors or the bulkiness of it. Mom will be dead by summer. Say Thank You, say I Love You!
 
            Well it’s a start.
Till the wind stops blowing, I will be Your Ken