The Celtic Tree of Life
This is the Celtic Tree of Life. I have always loved these kinds of pictures, and especially love the fact that I can now fritter away half my life on Google researching things like kitchen altars and Brighid, goddess of the hearth and home. It was a lovely way to spend about 2 hours...I'm having a time of getting this page to lay out the way I want it to. The type keeps moving to the top of the page, above the picture. Arrggghhhh...AND--it's all in blue, and underlined. Who knows. I'll just finish out this post and then edit it all, I guess. Well-that was weird. The link button was pushed. Never mind...it still is moving the type. sigh..
I have been having a strange 24 hours...alternately melancholy and sad and then okay. Last night I was sitting here and my knee was hurting so bad I was crying. I am so tired of the chronic pain in my life that I could scream. This stupid knee is just the last straw. I never thought my life would be like this...I have always been so active--camping and hiking and doing crazy fun things all the time. Now I am middle aged and in such bad shape I can barely recognize myself. Who is this old woman...hair all grey and skin so wrinkled? The one who groans when she gets up or sits down? The one who always has to sit on the sidelines, watching everyone else do all the things I love? The one who is so overweight that her clothes don't fit and her breathing is affected and her knees and ankles can barely do their job? And I search for solutions and know that there isn't much that's in my power to change. I will never be the same as I was. I cannot undo that fateful afternoon , when I was knocked off my bearings and tilted all topsy turvey into a completely different dimension than I was used to. I didn't guess, that day, as they wheeled me into the ambulance, that my life would be forever and irrevocably changed.
I try to live in the present. I try to be grateful for my life every day for whatever small thing I can think of, whatever big thing there is. I have routines instituted in my life that keep me upright, save me from being housebound, and generally help me find the joy in living. But every now and then,. I go through the stages of grief, mourning the life I used to have, before an 80,000 pound side lift fork machine caused the Ubiquitous Event that crippled me. I guess that's all this is...I feel worn down and worn out and I want to stomp my feet and cry and scream out that it's not fair. That this shouldn't have happened to me.
I know there are millions of people out there who have it a lot worse than I do. I am not terminally ill, looking at the short life left for me. I am in possession of all 4 limbs. I can walk, even if it is with a lopsided gait and very slow. I am sober today, no matter what. But I am just in one of those little funks. It shifted today when I made a bowl of popcorn and took my book and sat out on the chaise lounge in the sunshine. It was warm and the sun felt good on my face. The birds were singing and it lifted my spirits. And then it took everything I could muster to get back up and out of that damn chair, and I nearly lost it.
Forgive me this bout of self pity. This whining diary of a day in the life of Queen baby. I hurt and I'm angry and I mostly am incredibly sad at the way my life has turned out after all.
And tomorrow will be a new day. I have plans to meet a newcomer in the morning and talk about the solution to a "seemingly hopeless state of mind and body". And there is a solution, and I know there is, just like I know there is light at the end of the tunnel and a silver lining behind every cloud. Just like I know that there is a grand cosmic plan to all my life, and that some things had to happen for other things to happen, and to be able to see all the dominoes fall perfectly into place. In the end, the good still outweighs the bad, and I am no longer ruled by feelings of uselessness and self pity.
At least, not for very long....
Time for bed. I will surely feel better in the morning, when I awaken to the songs of the wildbirds that are all coming back, heralding the advent of spring. I will leave you with a poem by John O'Donohue:
Beannacht
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors
indigo, red,green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the curach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
Namaste.
.
