This Week

Written by RJ on January 27, 2014. Posted in Discovery, Healing

Things started with a road trip to NYC to see Patrick and meet my new daughter-in-law. Then I attended a wellness seminar and listened to a brilliant man say stupid things. Two days after that, I was a guest in a Catholic church for a memorial service in Coleen’s honor and I heard a woman who I didn’t know talk about the departed and say Coleen’s name. I heard the same thing the next day at my church when our priest listed the names of people who had died last year. Not only did she say “Coleen M. Jones” but she also said my mom’s name. At both services I heard several references to “the light” which was always Coleen’s driving force and at my church, there was much mention of change, which I have been doing a lot of. I had dinner with family and friends where Coleen was remembered and toasted and I talked about her and some of my memories. There was even an episode on a show I am watching where a man loses his girlfriend to an overdose and keeps dialing her number so he can hear her voice mail recording. I’ve never done that but I still have Coleen in my phone.

So it was a weird week in that I kept coming in contact with Coleen. Driving to NYC, I was on the same road we traveled many times and was reminded of conversations and eating apples and just being with her. We made many road trips over the years and Coleen’s conversations and observations made them all more fun. Last week on the way to NYC I kept looking over at the empty seat next to me. She never rode in my car, never met her daughter-in-law. Everything now is new.

At the wellness seminar, the main speaker was a guy from the Hippocrates Health Institute which is where Coleen went for alternative healing last year. She was there for two weeks and was very dedicated to their program although she hated the raw food diet and got sick from the wheat-grass juice. Many people have better results there than Coleen did but she brought home a lot of good habits and enjoyed her time there. She did not however, experience the same success as others and I left the seminar that night saddened by that fact. Why not her? Why not us, our family? Call me naive, but I didn’t see that sadness coming. I was annoyed with the speaker who spent most of his time pontificating about the merits of his logic and that we have control of our own health. At first I was annoyed, then I was mad.

Hearing Coleen’s name spoken with reference to death like I did in those church services is unsettling to me. I know she died but I guess I don’t want to hear about it or acknowledge it. Or admit it? I don’t know, it is pretty silly. Maybe that’s why I haven’t selected a gravestone yet. Truth is, I just now paused before typing “gravestone” wondering if that was the right thing to call it and summoning the nerve to type it. To admit that we need to buy that thing, whatever it’s called. To need a gravestone, there has to be a grave. To need a grave, someone had to die. Did that really happen? Sometimes, even now, it’s hard to face that reality.

When talking to friends after dinner two nights ago, we spoke of how our memories are not as clear as they once were. We all agreed that something has happened to us that has diminished our ability to remember as well as we once did. Some blamed it on age and some of us thought it had to do with medications. One guy once told me he thought it was the vodka. The whole conversation reminded me of one my greatest fears and that is me forgetting some of the memories Coleen and I made together. Without her around to remember things I had forgotten, it’s all on me to preserve them. She was much better at remembering than I was.

Not everything that happened last week made me think of Coleen, it just seemed that way to me. This week is already starting better. I decided to learn a lesson from that speaker at the wellness seminar. He said that most of our ailments are self-controllable and can be managed or reversed by our eating and health habits. I don’t believe all of his theory but I’m man enough to meet him halfway on some of it. I decided that maybe I can control some of my emotions about Coleen if I better prepare myself spiritually. In other words, if I work harder on things like yoga, meditation and self-healing, I can put myself in a better place to accept some of the surprise reminders that I am bound to encounter. I can’t just count on reiki and massage for my healing, I have to contribute on my own, too. I am going to jump-start myself with daily yoga and meditation activities. I have been doing them sporadically but need to get more consistent. I did them today along with a gym workout and feel pretty great right now. And tomorrow morning there is yoga class I will be attending. There is no reason I can’t make myself healthier in body and spirit. There’s no reason for bad weeks.

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