I’m choosing not to focus on being offended. Well-meaning people make assumptions about each other’s lives. So in some ways my current fears are nothing compared to the one that just happened…out of the blue, suddenly, and shockingly. Richard’s death was literally my worst nightmare. Acquiescing to obstacles/resistance feels like defeat. Movement always feels like choosing life. Each of the obstacles have given me a choice…either move through it or acquiesce. I’m choosing to live life instead of living a small life. Now my journey includes widening my circle of trust. Each choice that I made to move through an obstacle, or my own resistance, I heard Richard’s voice beside me encouraging me, like he did back in Chicago when I achieved my second masters degree in 2005 to become a psychotherapist. With Richard’s guidance, I believe, I chose measures to help myself to continue with some of the goals that he and I shared, like becoming part of the community, getting involved and trying to make a contribution. I wouldn’t have survived without them, close friends and wonderful neighbors where we lived three blocks from each other here on Balboa Island. Our family is spread out but mostly located in the Chicagoland area. Our lives had not been easy when he was young. Lots of talk of boats, excursions and opportunities to share life and celebrate the life of his baby girl. Those activities were just the “normal” weekend fare. Lots of outdoor activities, cookouts, hanging out, bike rides, hikes, paddle boarding and the gym. These were to be the good years in my life and in his. I moved to Southern California from New York to live close to him. I continued this way for a year, several times a day.Įverything in my world had changed. While my belief about the non physical was open, my heart was so badly wounded by his sudden death that all I could do was to call out his name and plead, “Richard, Richard, Richard, how could this happen to you?” I begged for an answer, “Richard, how am I going to survive this?” These phrases poured out from the longing in my heart. He was upbeat and deeply calm at the same time.
When he walked into a room, people noticed. I believed early on that if it took any focus or intention for a spirit to make contact, Richard would at least try to make himself be known. This belief helped me to try to be open to connecting with him or open to the possibility that he might be able to give me a sign or some indication that he was nearby. I lost my belief in God but I still held a belief that we are more than our physical bodies. The word so accurately expressed my flattened energy.įortunately for me, I hadn’t completely lost my spirituality. In the months after his death, feelings of failure, vulnerability, depression, remorse, profound grief, guilt on top of a first hand experience of the meaning of the word bereft.
How can this happen? Where did he go? Where did I go? What were his last moments like? Did he feel pain? Did he suffer? Was my mom who passed a year prior there to greet him? How could I have prevented this? What should we have known?
#Is it ok to crack open a cold one with out the boys series
Past, present and future collapsed into a series of nows.
It didn’t matter that he was an adult, twice the size of me. Everything in my being was geared to hold on, to protect and to be aware of his life. When that someone is our child…we are changed forever, deeply, no matter how old they were. When someone we love dies…we are changed.
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