Rob is over covid except for a nasty cough. His appetite is normal and he took a walk today. I told him that it made me appreciate him unloading the dishwasher, taking out the garbage, wheeling the can to the curb and that made him smile.

I didn’t sleep last night and I am writing this before sunrise. I muse on my life, the one that is in my rearview mirror now. I was never interested in the world, so I took to spiritual studies easily. I read hundreds of books on the subject of awakening and the Book of John remains a favorite of mine.

All of these books were mental exercises that were futile to me on the emotional level, for I had been traumatized by the illness and death of my daughter.

When my husband got cancer, too, decades later, I walked in numbness and exhaustion again for years on end. No one could relate to my life experience of losing both child and mate; I felt like a social pariah. I had been writing humor before my little girl was diagnosed, but I tossed it aside for my spiritual studies. Today I still inject a bit of humor into my essays and always a bit of truth that is uncomfortable. For life is uncomfortable and becoming more so. Climate change is real and hurtling towards us.

The actual floodwaters portend the great flood that led to Noah building the ark. Esoteric Christianity says that the teachings are put into the ark and will be reseeded when the waters recede once again. This sounds like a fable, but now we realize the the planet undergoes these cataclysms every so often.

Losing a child to cancer is a cataclysm of sorts, this I know. My writing turned serious when she was diagnosed. She became a patient at St. Jude’s before she turned four and died right after she turned seven. After the death of my husband, I went deeper into self-realization. Outwardly I joined a women’s spiritual group, then a cancer survivor’s group and finally, I began going to kirtan. But these were all given up at some point.

During this time I built a fabulous website, as most of you know. I carelessly let it go and began my WordPress site, which has less than a hundred subscribers. All of this is fated and I am now letting go of my old life.

Those who read me know me and newcomers to my writing learn to know me as well. I am a seeker of truth and find my own solitude to be enough and plenty for me as I grow older. Gone are the days when I sought enlightenment; that is for beginners. The thing we seek is unknowable. The soul is our home and it has nothing to do but be.

Love is the answer to every question, but it must begin within. It heals the wounds it did not make, or so it seems to me. What is left now but watching the show?

Vicki Woodyard