For most of my growing up years… right through to high school and then on in to my twenties… I didn’t think of life as a whole picture. I was part of some puzzle. Each moment, each event, each person that walked through my life was another piece added to that puzzle. I didn’t have a box that the pieces came in. I didn’t have a picture with which to figure out where the pieces fit. All I had was pieces and the surface of my life in which to lay them on.
I get asked at the grocery lineup if I’m a senior now. I tell them I’m a dyslexic senior (56). Now, I am seeing the picture of my life a lot more filled in. There are still empty pieces, but even at 56, there's not that many left to fill in. On my next birthday, I will be the same age that my sister was when she was finished filling in her pieces. I am going to guess that she didn’t see her puzzle as compete at 57.
Where does motivation and inspiration come from now that I am on the upward trajectory toward sixty… and then to seventy… and then to eighty… if I can afford to or find a reason to live that long. Life to me now is survival for my close loved ones. I need to keep breathing for them. As long as my mother and my husband breathe, then I need to breathe. But breathing is harder to do now. Life isn’t the empty unassembled puzzle I had in grade school or high school.
I just want to point out that this isn’t depression. I understand depression well… and this isn’t it. Maybe, I’m not seeing the planet, right now, as a place that wants me around for a long time. It’s given my mother 87 years and for that I am thankful, because she still lives on the farm where the loves to be. She still gets to drive to the places she wants to go to. She still gets to be with people that give her joy. But there is a big difference between her and I.
This planet is just a passing through place for her. For me, the planet is my only home. Everything we’ve made this floating rock in the cosmos to be, is all that I have to work with. No dreams of heaven, or colonizing on Mars. Earth is it. So if Earth’s resources are aren’t enough to see me to 87 like my mother, then that is when my breath ends and I turn into a memory for a while.
I spend a lot of time working on puzzles and in the summer… weeding and watering my flower garden. I am working on pictures every day. Trying to make something beautiful while I’m still here. My mind doesn’t wander far into the future, because that place isn’t safe for me. It wanders more to the past where I still had lots of pieces to assemble.
I find myself wanting less and less to mingle with people who have thrown out their puzzles. Some look at their life and see only disappointment in the pieces they have laid out. So instead of valuing them for where and when they were laid, they throw out the puzzle and buy a new one. I still struggle with who I was, but have no need to deny that I was someone of value, even when I was misguided and misinformed.
Thank you for reading this far. Today is an unknown. I just wanted to voice my thoughts not knowing how the day will end. I hope I will find more pieces of the puzzle and more ambition or inspiration to place them for a while longer.
(written June 25, 2024)
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