The shutter failed on the camera this afternoon, so for now the flowers I bought today are for my personal edification only.  I found some real beauties this week – new shapes to wonder at and get to know.  Pink-shelled calla lilies, thistles topped with puffs of golden orange needles, and olive twigs still bending to the wind they grew in, all plunked together with twists of alstroemeria and the dark-eyed punch of sunflowers.  The tea pot and white pitcher are full, and the tarnished Hilton coffee pot found its place, too.

I treated myself to Monday off, and I’m just starting to feel like myself again.  Most days, I’m just enduring what needs to be handled, accommodated or ignored.  Deep concerns are pressed to the edges, holding on Until.  Until there’s a little more quiet, and the patient time to listen.  And the expectation of forgiveness.  This all requires a certain ration of nothing to do.

The stakes have been so high for so many months – and no way to calculate the phantom losses that loom over the days and years to come.  I was thinking I had a choice to make – to let go and move forward, or be anchored to a truth I can’t look away from.  But I remember now.  That’s not the way this goes.  Grief is the companion, and you can’t sneak away from it while its back is turned.  Grief holds the compass to its own mysterious, shifting terrain.  The only way through that I know, to find a truth I can live with from what’s happened – and to let the truth change with time.