Good grief...it is good, isn't it?

Sitting in church last Sunday I looked around and thought about how much this BAUUC community has come to mean to me and my husband.  I thought of all the years we wandered through different faiths looking for our spiritual home and then finally, wah-lah, there it was...right there under our noses.  I thought about how comfortable we find ourselves Sunday after Sunday.  And then it hit me...what will all this change  mean or could mean about this experience, what it will mean for my spouse to feel comfortable in a new congregation, what it will take for me to feel supported?  Will we find a way to contribute even with our limitations?  If we make the move out of the area perhaps to San Antonio, will there be a welcoming church community? Will it even matter? Oh my goodness, at this point I had to laugh at myself.  It occurred to me that if we died in SA, there would be no one to come to a memorial service and damn, I have a folder in the file cabinet with instructions for the party complete with music and pictures.  Okay, am I a control freak or what!  How silly! I put a file for each of us together after having my own experience at deaths of family members of trying to put it all together with no direction or little information.

We are both still going through files of papers from our various careers.  As I throw out files of workshop outlines, course syllabuses, ideas for new workshops, I accept that I am letting go of an identity...that all of this is who I was and won't be again. There is still probably a box of client files in our attic.  Since I saw a lot of children, the law says I have to keep records seven years past their age of majority.  I think it is time for those to hit the shredder.  The journals and art work are going slower...I guess my identity as a writer and artist are closer to my chest and I am still hopeful that it will continue.

 And I watch my husband going through piles of paper and realize that he is doing the same, admittedly at a much slower pace than me but I get it.  I do get it and understand at a deep sense that this is his life in front of him in those stacks, all that he got his doctorate for, his whole life focused on the space program and with each email he shreds, he is grieving and letting go.  And I have to laugh again and think at this rate we may still be here next year.

And I take comfort in knowing that he is still able to do this.  I take joy in his "Good morning!" whether it comes at 9:00 am or noon.  I take joy that each day he says "I slept so good last night."  I take joy in that he can't wait to go to the Great Decisions group at our church, that he has decided to back Hillary Clinton for presidency.  Awwh right, awwh right...to quote Matthew McConnaughey.  But arrrggghh! Change is hard.