It has turned into a bit of a mammoth task that I am being very slow about. Not helped by having one of my offspring at home and we keep going off to do things together. They are about to leave this country for a long time and I’m finding it hard to get my head / heart around it. Abandonment issues anyone? Hello!
So far I’ve dealt with it by feeling very sad and hopeless on waking, being grumpy and stressed at various points during the day, and trying to block their departure from my mind as much as possible. Today I tried to engage more and ask about flights and airlines etc but in such a way that my offspring just found my enquiries irritating. So handling it well I don’t think!
Last night I dug out one of my Pema Chodron books. I find her work very readable and comforting in a funny, reverse way. I read about fear and the horrible recognition of life being unsteady and chaotic. That we long to run away from that and hold onto comforting, illusory certainties. Her take on it is that yes, it feels terrible, but one has to carry on in the face of those difficult feelings and they help us to live in the present. She is the absolute opposite of the comforting friend who tells you not to be silly, everything will be alright, just keep busy and take your mind off it. She says, no, it IS awful, face it, sit with it. And yes, that is somehow comforting!
Moving on, back to the job in hand.
I went through some of my life drawings that I had stashed away under my plan chest. Am I really hanging on to these? In the end I took a couple to a picture framers for framing, I will try and force them on one of my other offspring to hang in their house. Another couple the framers will scan and then I might reproduce them in a smaller format. As life drawings they are on A2 paper so if framed up will be huge.
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