I attended a lovely Independence Day gathering earlier this week five houses down the street. While all of the guests were from our neighborhood, there were several people there I've not had a conversation with lately. It was a lovely to catch up.

​More than one person asked me how I'm faring. I expected that. It wasn't a case of nosiness. There was no judgement intended. I don't think so, anyway. I answered, talking about a weekend away in early June, plans to attend a family baby shower later this month. And, I learned about vacations, adventures with grandchildren, book recommendations. Plus, the food was outstanding! I'm so glad I went.

​Since then, the oft-repeated question has come back to mind, though. How am I faring?

​I'm OK. This bereavement isn't for the faint of heart, that's for certain. I'm realizing that the sadness I am feeling is always going to be with me. Life with Tal was finer than either of us realized, and I miss the way things used to be.

​In some ways the sadness is stronger than it was right after Tal's death. What has changed is the acute nature of the pain. It no longer has that exquisite, piercing, breath-taking quality it did early on. Now, it's a steady presence, heavier at times than others.

​I am also realizing that I have choices -- of all sorts. What, and when, to eat, whether to keep the house, if to push for gainful employment, where I might like to travel, how to observe the next round of holidays. It makes my head spin.

Other choices are more subtle. And, likely more important. I can pick up the camera. I can get up early -- write, walk, weed. I can schedule outings. I can be the initiator of conversations with friends rather than waiting to be called.

I can choose whether to let the sadness dictate how I feel and what I do. In fact, that might be my most important conclusion so far. With a deliberate and deep breath I can choose to lay it aside, if for only an hour or just a few minutes, whatever I can manage. The sadness doesn't have to be all there is.

​So, now what?

Who am I going to be? How am I going to act? What am I doing to do?

I get to choose.

It has been so long since I have contributed anything to this page.  I cannot come up with an easy reason for my inactivity.  It has not been merely a blog  that has suffered neglect of late.  A multitude of normal activities have fallen by the wayside this summer -- using the camera every day, keeping up with email, note writing.  It feels as though every aspect of my life is in limbo or has been/is on hiatus. 

Maybe that's neither a bad thing or totally unexpected.  We all need a change of pace.  And, summer is a wonderful time to mix things up.  I have to admit, though, that whatever it is that's happened to my schedule hasn't been planned.  The crumpling of my daily structure simply happened about half way through July.  I'm in something of a fog. 

As I consider my state here at the beginning of a new month, I can acknowledge that Tal and I have been up against pressures we've not faced before.  Tal is involved in three times a week physical and occupational therapy (which, while not magic, is making a difference).  I have been involved in three funerals over the course of five weeks (two of them tragic).  I am not keeping up with the housework.  Meals are in the category of the best I can do.  The outside mowing, blowing, sweeping, edging, trimming stays just ahead of me.

Yesterday we traveled to rural Lee County to visit Tal's sister who is selling the "old home place" and moving to Nevada to live with her son and his family.  We came home with cuttings from mature camellias she had nurtured from cuttings Tal gave her some 25 years ago.  A returning.  The cycle of life.  Isn't it wonderful? 

The photograph here is of those cuttings on our kitchen counter.  I made newspaper pots this afternoon.  Tal mixed up a fragrant soil concoction.  A Corning ware casserole and a lovely glass salad bowl we don't use for salads much have been turned into a kitchen counter greenhouse .  It's already begun to fog up a bit.

There's going to be quite a lot going on under the surface ...  And, so it goes.  Life under the surface.  I have to trust that to be true for me as well.  While I might not get it together in some orderly way or return to life as it was at the beginning of summer, there is something happening under my surface that will enrich the coming days, weeks and months.  What it will be remains a mystery.

The sequence hymn at Trinity Cathedral yesterday morning has continued to draw my attention, the words above being the first stanza (1).  Although I consider myself a student of the Episcopal hymnal, I cannot say I have ever even noticed this hymn.  It certainly takes a confident music program to include a piece so unfamiliar in the congregational singing on a Sunday morning.  It's an example to my mind of a just-right combination of words and music, each one improving the other and producing something very special in the process.  The singing of that hymn both takes me back and urges me forward.

I go back, in this instance, a single day -- to the early morning walk Belle and I enjoyed on Saturday after Tal left for fishing with his son.  The air was damp and  slightly cool.  There was a drifting fog that made the little part of the world in which she and walked dreamy and soft.  In this photograph which I made during that hour I can see, I think, what the poet, F Pratt Green, was striving to express.  I cannot get out of my mind the line: "future needs in earth's safe keeping."  What a beautiful safe-keeping box this scene is.  Serene, but alive.  

So much goes on out of our sight.  I never ceased to be surprised, for example, with the emerging crocus in the dead of winter.  When everything is silent, brown, still, the earth is pushing to the surface those wondrous first flowers, long before spring.  What we need is being prepared.  Indeed.

I am also urged into the future, wondering about more than what is forming up, rallying for its moment to break forth from the earth, as rich as it is.  There is activity going on in me and in Tal and in us all, as well.  What was born with us that we've not yet discovered?  What is being nurtured that I don't yet perceive?  What might those hidden stores actually be capable of producing?  Will I be brave enough to let something new and different break the surface and come to light? 

I'm extending an invitation to myself to find out. What about you?

(1) "For the fruit of all creation," Hymn #424, The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated)