Fall is a time of housekeeping on every level. This morning I found myself making lists of problems needing to be solved. Mostly they are about the yard. Trees needing to be trimmed and the lawn over-seeded. Things like that make me anxious since I don’t seem to ever make good choices in this area.

I solved the anxiety by eating way too much chocolate. This 3-day holiday weekend has left me too much time to fret, that’s for sure.

I am looking over my life these days and I see that surely most of the worst parts are behind me. Those are the death of my daughter and of my husband. I can take other things in stride.

My gift this life has been essay-writing. It is like spinning straw into gold for me. I can take the pains and make essays out of them that hopefully help my readers. For we are all alike when it comes to love and loss.

The words I have written may be forgotten but at the moment they are written they contain meaning for me and so I put them down in cyberspace.

I remember being a young mother with a dying daughter. I remember being a wife with a dying husband. Now I don’t so much remember as reflect on how my life has gone. I am someone that has found meaning in spiritual teachings. They are hidden everywhere and usually they are just hints and possibilities.

My son and I seldom talk about our losses; instead we live in the present moment, which is filled with its own dilemmas. Nothing in life is without meaning if you are eager to grow, even the difficulties.

The hardest lessons have the hardest solutions, naturally. That is why Vernon Howard appealed to me; he always made me pay attention when I read or listened to him. I had no idea that I would become a writer that would pass on some of the gold that he gave me.

Vicki Woodyard