Discovering
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m not going to let that keep me from doing it.”I said that to some friends I was talking to after church yesterday. I had just handed them one of my new cards as I explained why I thought I should be a guy walking around with business cards in his pocket. The couple I was speaking with, Paul and Tish, knew Coleen rather well. We had dinner at their house on two occasions and they dined at our house once. Tish and Coleen were both involved in non-profit organizations and Paul was a social worker, like Coleen. The four of us seemed to get along quite well and we had many things in common. We were friends through church but could just as easily just been friends. I don’t know why, we just never got around to it I guess. Different schedules, distance maybe. For whatever reason, we never got to be as close as we could have.
After the service yesterday, I approached them as I have not seen them in some time. I had not seen Tish at all since Coleen’s passing and wasn’t even certain that they knew about her. Our conversation was very warm and friendly but Coleen didn’t come up until I mentioned her. We were only a few minutes in to the conversation but it was as if Paul and Tish didn’t want to mention her for fear of how I would react. They were protecting me. Once I acknowledged Coleen and my life after her, they seemed a little bit relieved and were quick to join in talking about her. It could have been my imagination, but I got the sense that Paul and Tish became more comfortable once I spoke of Coleen and talked about how I was coping with her loss. It seemed that what I had to say was also making it easier for them to think about her. As I said before, we were never best friends but we all knew each other well enough to share some fun evenings and Coleen’s death was a loss for anyone who knew her. Nobody wants to say goodbye to a peer. I got the feeling that by talking about Coleen, I was helping them as well as helping myself. I have been getting that feeling more and more recently.
The day before, I was again at church helping with the Christmas decorations. One of the other volunteers was a woman named Mary who had lost her husband of 47 years, Joseph, over the summer. Mary had sent me a beautiful sympathy card for Coleen and wrote a very heartfelt note in it. She had also knitted a prayer shawl for Coleen back in 2007 when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Coleen loved that blanket and took it to all of her chemotherapy treatments and it became a constant healing companion. It covered her the night of her passing. I had an opportunity to talk to Mary in church that day and started the conversation by thanking her for her card. I also told Mary about the prayer shawl she had knitted for Coleen and how she had it on at the end. Mary was touched by that. Then I started talking to her about her loss, about how hard it must be for her without Joseph. I shared some of my feelings and pain and that’s exactly what our conversation developed into. It was a sharing. We both suffered catastrophic loss and were both trying to find ways to cope and heal. We were both discovering our new-selves and talked about that. I think Mary had a sense of that happening with her but when I mentioned it by name, when I said that I was developing a newness to myself, she seemed to light up and recognize that same thing was developing with her.
Once more, after talking with Mary, I felt a degree of satisfaction that I might have been of value to her. That my thoughts, words and experiences might have brought her a little more comfort than she expected to get that morning while helping make the church beautiful. It feels like I’m entering another stage in my process. I have already felt the love, had the loss, and continue to learn about the healing. But there’s a fourth element for me now. I’m calling it Discovery. I think that’s the last door to open. Now that I’m at that one, I am ready to take some of my lessons learned and teach them to others. I am discovering my new self and how vital I can become or have already become. I recognize how I am different and how everything looks and feels differently to me now. I am discovering what to do about it.
I will always be who I am and some of that will always be who I have been. But more of that will be in my discoveries of who I can be and who I have become. Maybe I can make a difference. Sometimes I hear a whisper.
Only good lies ahead and I am safe.
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