Yesterday was an odd day. The air was cool, the skies were blue and clear. You’d never know the previous week we were living in Dante’s Inferno.
Nancy left early for a flight to Massachusetts, a long-planned trip for her father’s 90th birthday. My son Elijah has been on a Walk-About for the past week. After his mother’s death, and our total loss due to the southern Oregon fires, he just needed to get away from the smoke and process his own grief. He’s been driving east for over a week now. And our temporary hosts, the Millers, left yesterday as well for a planned silent retreat in Washington. So I was home alone with Shanti the wonder dog.
Now normally, I love being alone. All my life I have sought out silence and solitude. As a Five on the enneagram, and an off-the-chart introvert, silence has always been one of my dearest friends. Until yesterday.
After more than ten frantic days occupied by evacuations, the search for temporary housing, and initiating the mountain of minutia with insurance and what-not that a disaster of biblical proportions requires, I was left home alone with really nothing to do. And it as disquieting.
With no immediate crises demanding my attention, the repressed emotions of the past two weeks were free to reach up from my bowels and grab my heart. In the long hours of quiet, images flooded my mind and remembrances of what we have lost overwhelmed me. It was unusually difficult. Even my dear friend, Silence, had turned on me as well. Nowhere to hide.
I experienced in a very real way what I have shared with countless survivors of a loved one on hospice care over the years: after spending so much time care giving for your loved one, lots of free time will not be easy. A truth I really didn’t grasp until yesterday.
Yesterday, silence was not my friend.