Accepting what is

Today, for the first time in a few days, I am feeling light-hearted.  I don't want to use the word "happy" because what I feel is more like relief, gratitude, acceptance. And that has lifted the heavy weight from my heart and my head.

Not long after I posted yesterday morning, I learned that my father-in-law was back in the hospital and in an unresponsive state.  My wife and I spent the day yesterday by his side.  He is sleeping. All vitals are good, nothing on CT scans, but an infection is suspected, so he is being given some potent antibiotics.  He does move his legs a bit and his hands some, but mostly he is just sleeping.

C. insisted on staying with her dad last night.  I came home to take care of the animals.  We have talked a lot about death, spirituality, and grieving over the past couple of days.  We are both at peace with what is going on.  If he recovers, that will be good.  If he doesn't, then he has lived a full life, and we will say good bye.

I have felt closed in with self-imposed isolation over the past few days.  I shared about our beautiful old dog with a few close friends.  But I didn't want to talk about it to many.  The comfort that I got here felt like it was enough.  Funny that I don't know you in person, but you have enveloped me as a friend would.  That really means so much.

Sometime late last night, I felt a great peacefulness.  I realized that all of this has meaning, is part of something so much greater than me.  Again, it is a feeling of connectedness to the living and to the dead.  And that connectedness is so precious, so loving that words can't really capture it.  I feel as if I am back from a few days of being lost.

Celebrate endings - for they precede new beginnings.- Jonathan Lockwood Huie