When I don’t write out my thoughts and ideas, they live in my head and sometimes grow to scarily gargantuan bubbles of nonsense which pop! when I eventually sit at the keyboard.
The concept of ideas coming to me, like invisible atoms, all joining up for a transient, coalescent moment is both comforting and frustrating. My subconscious is telling me to make time. I need to pay more attention.
I’ve been lost in the land of doing for the past 3 months. In just over a week, we board a plane to start our 4 year Caribbean adventure and I’ve been head buried; organising, sorting and packing up our UK life and preparing everyone for the sunshine and showers of the next chapter. Time, which seemed so plentiful when we first heard this news, is now travelling at warp speed. People I wanted to see, places I wanted to go, things I wanted to do, well it just won’t happen, not for now anyway.
On the bright side, I’m not gone too long as I need to return to the UK on a regular basis to see the Maxillofacial consultant. My two-year cancer anniversary looms in December and statistically, if you chose to believe such numbers, the chance of a recurrence drops dramatically after this point. I’m quietly, mentally counting down to my visit on December 6 and trying to manage my cortisol levels as I singularly manage our move.
Everything in our home requires a decision. It goes to Barbados. It goes into store. It goes out. I have removed a decision point by the packers being in so many items have already gone. I’m struck at how much stuff and how still attached to stuff I am. This move is teaching me to really begin to practice letting go. I’m hoping in 4 years time I’ll be kicking myself for still hoarding all the bits and pieces that have already gone into store and to enjoy the process of throwing most of it away.
The far-too-early snuffed life force of Charlie Rees gives me daily perspective when all of my plans, preparations and activities seem out of control. I’m grateful to be here each day, to be stressing about the nonsense of items which provide rich memories of people and places, of life and love. I’m blessed to enjoy paintings and music, to warble-sing to good-time tunes, to walk uninterrupted across miles of verdant countryside with the dog pulling at my company, to uproariously laugh with my increasingly smart and funny Roscoe, to spend time with my fabulous girlfriends. I don’t take any of this for granted. Not any more.
Charlie gave me this gift and I remember and thank her daily for it.
The gift of knowing the difference between the stuff of life and a life of stuff.
