Planting Seeds

I need to begin by saying I have never been a New Year reveller. For more  years than I can count on my fingers I have been tucked up in bed well before the New Year begins. I have not been one to see the fireworks or even to make resolutions. I am a match for Grinch when it comes to such things, cynically pointing out that it is all a lot of fuss about nothing.  Last year was a sort of a dry run for my conversion. Last year I rang a fellow warrior whose partner died just a few months before Darryl (in Jan 07)and lobbed into her place. I bought plenty of food and then we went for a walk. She confessed she had taken up smoking in order to feel closer to her partner. She liked the smell of tobacco around her. I, who have never smoked, agreed to try. We sat in a park near her place, giggling like silly teenagers as I had my first smoke. I even went into a petrol station with her and bought myself my own packet. The almost full packet is still sitting in the glove box of my car, a reminder of being silly and doing something I had never done.   Now this year I am not planning to go to a swinging party, smoke cigarettes or be anywhere where they have New Year fireworks, but I have to tell you all, I am counting down to 2010.  The last twenty years have been spectacular for me. There have been so many things go belly up that I have frequently identified with Calamity Jane. And judging from a recent passport photograph I had taken I look in a similar state to the Calamity Jane of Deadwood fame. My goodness those photographs are dreadful. They insist upon making us look like we are on Death Row in some horror prison. No! No! No! This is officially ending now. I am calling a halt to all this melodrama stuff. I am giving up the role of drama Queen, diva, or whatever and I am looking forward to new and fresh times. Sure! Darryl will not be here to see all of this but if he is looking through the veil, watching, he will not only be most impressed with my resolve! He will be egging me on, whispering all sorts of naughty suggestions in my ear. He was a right villy with a deliciously wicked sense of humor, who had everyone rolling about in gales of laughter. Poor love, he made a friend laugh in the last week of his life. Besides, he did not find me attractive when I had my 'eyebrows knitted' with anxiety and would be very pissed off if I squandered the life, I got to have, looking glum, doing nothing.  After a series of conversations with a fellow DS member I have decided to go on the tour bus of life and let the guides take charge. Instead of me trying to work out what I am going to do I am going to let they, who seem to be so good at making decisions for everyone, come up with some happy ever after activities, things that will go down in the family annals and that people will talk about when I am gone through that veil to wherever it is you go. I can almost hear it now. They will be saying things like: "Remember that crazy Catkin! She let someone talk her into belly dancing at sixty and boy, did she have some belly to show :-) Or, remember when Catkin agreed to manage that hotel in Outback Australia so that the owners could have a break and she gowned up and did an impromptu dance on the bartops."  Okay! Maybe the fates will not think that belly dancing or imprompu dancing on bartops is really my scene. Maybe they will protect those audiences out there. But I am not going under without a fight. I am made of warrior stuff after twenty years of dealing with melanomas, heart attacks, job loss, managing high maintainence individuals, (not my dear soul mate) bowel cancer, issues surrounding aging parents, teacher excess in schools, etc etc etc. I have fought depression and post traumatic stress from childhood 'episodes'. I have carried burdens for others and shouldered responsibilty as heavy as anything Atlas had to hold up. Fun time for Catkin now!  What would you like them to be remembering about you? Like me I doubt you want them to only remember that you never did get over it all.