Loose ends feel like tangles waiting to happen. It’s too quiet while waiting…I could start more things to work on but I’m lacking incentive, or a cohesive vision!
Loose ends are the fragmented thoughts on lists I’ve lost, tasks and ideas waiting for more energy and better timing.
I don’t have to push so hard: completion police will not be issuing citations, scoldings from “higher ups” will not be given – unless they arise in my own mind!
Loose ends are the lack of entanglements. I should see them as opportunities, scheduling freedoms! Yay!
Loose ends are not my undoing. Loose ends are an invitation to make a new pattern, weave or sew or braid or twist or just let them hang!
“Remember this!“ I say, and then I start another list with colored ink and squiggles, and smile!
When life is strange, I am out of sorts, off-balance. When life is strange, things look different.
When life is strange, it’s hard to know why. Or what to do to get back to even ground emotionally. Things just seem weird. And feelings are easily hurt, words and meanings misconstrued. These times, I wish I could go to bed and sleep off the erratic thoughts.
What really would help is time away to wild places.
Wild places beat their own time in wind and pushing up and weathering down
Wild places
Let wild places blow away whatever is strange
bring color back to favor
Let wonder make a shift in you
Let nature ease out darkness and show it’s special light
Let your heart be eased from distress to thankfulness
Losing anyone, any time, is hard. This year, as the losses mount for so many, I feel especially grateful for those who have been loved and those who are still here.
I’ve always had a hard time with goodbyes. And partings. Whatever I might say seems so small in comparison to what I feel.
When I was a kid, there were many losses: friends moving out of the neighborhood, relatives passing, pets meeting a sudden or surprising death. And I guess I grieved. Though mostly, I think, I just lived on. I’m resilient. Or maybe I’m in denial about how much it hurts to be left to carry on.
If only we could just keep communicating, even if not physically being together. If I could just hear from them, know they’re okay, know they’re remembering what we shared. And I guess that’s the thing I want most, to keep sharing, to keep caring, to keep mattering.
Losing anyone is hard. But right now, don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel grim weight of grief hanging over all of us? Who will be next in the line up of worry? Who will face or fall to some calamity? How will we pick up and rearrange the pieces left to us?
My mom loved Christmas and labored to make it special every year. By New Years, many times, she’d have worked herself into exhaustion and, a few times, nearly death. But her joy of giving was real: she wanted everyone to be happy. But that’s the stickler isn’t it? You can’t make others happy. But you can try!
Losing anyone is hard. And so we should try to keep in contact. We should say the things we feel to those we hold dear every chance we get. Ive felt bad about the parting words with my mom nineteen years ago, and my dad the following year. We only said I love you. And we didn’t talk of parting. Or dying. Or even living on without them. Maybe that’s what they wanted. We thought so at the time. But later, those I love yous didn’t feel like enough. But, I guess now, what really wasn’t enough was the time: it ran out. And no words could fill the voids of presence.
And now, as many of us are feeling the lack of presence with friends and family, we need to remember the spirit of love and how it lives on in us and our hearts are not separated, though our bodies are.
May love multiply in the world today, tonight, tomorrow. May goodness be magnified. May spirit hold us safe under it’s wing.
mending stone sharon duerst author 