Whimsical

Yesterday was her birthday, the fifth one since her time in this world ended. She would've been 50. Like many other events over the last couple years, I found myself at a loss for just what I should be doing for it. After all, the general assumption would be something somber and serious and tinged with sadness over her no longer being here. And that felt...wrong. I know it's what might be expected, walking through the dark alone, lost in thoughts of what no longer was and could never be again. And, like I said, that just seemed...wrong. What was difficult was that I didn't know what might feel right. Which is more than a little bit frustrating. Those cultural conventions are supposed to give us the ideas of what we should be doing, the “right” steps to be taking. And they yet again seemed to be failing.

So I had to fall back on something I've learned to do in the last few years: be open to inspiration. Let me be clear on this. Just because I've learned to do it doesn't mean it's the first thing to come to mind or that I'm comfortable doing so. But it's served pretty well thus far, and was pretty much all I had left, short of doing nothing and then likely afterward feeling like I'd somehow fallen short. So I just tried to leave myself open to whatever idea might come and then not to think too much about it (which always gets in the way of inspiration coming along, at least for me). Running some errands seemed like a good way to provide a distraction for my conscious mind, to get it out of the way. Kinda like giving a little kid a toy to play with outside when you're trying to cook or clean up in the house.

And it hit me while I was driving around. She'd had a whimsical side to her. I still have some cartoon sketches she'd done a couple times. One was from when we'd gone out for karaoke. She wasn't one for singing, but she liked hearing me sing, and I always saw her face light up when I'd sing one of a couple specific songs directly to her. This sketch was of our pets forming a band: cat and rat and ferret and snake. There was definitely that innocent, playful side to her, that showed up in a lot of ways. I think it was a good counterbalance to some of my darkness, and I think it was one reason why I sometimes felt so protective of her. That included a couple times of putting myself in harm's way to protect her, but those are stories for another time. The recollection of that aspect of her felt right. So I hit a local crafts store and picked some things up. I got a tube of some plastic animal figurines. I'd thought of just finding a cat and rat, as those would likely be common. I thought a ferret would be good, too, but also exotic enough of a pet to likely not be there. Much to my surprise, one “tube” of animals had all three of those, plus a lizard, a bird and a fish. That rounded out all the animals she'd kept as pets over the years. And then I'd also picked up a coloring book and some colored pencils.

On her birthday, by the candle I lit, the plastic animals were arranged. And I spent about an hour sitting on the couch watching a movie she'd liked that'd made her laugh and coloring in the book. It felt like the right thing to do...and it was. If nothing else, if she'd been here, I think those were things she would have loved getting as presents, and that works.

More's been coming up for me since. See, I hadn't thought of that aspect of her personality in years. I don't think I'd forgotten it. I just think it was something I wasn't ready to remember. Because it opens up my own enjoyment of whimsical things like that...and the vulnerability that comes with that kind of innocent enjoyment. I don't think I was ready to deal with that before. I think things had been too raw, too scary. And now they're not, or at least not so much. I spent some time sitting with that tonight, and was good with it for maybe half an hour before I found myself closing up again. I guess that's OK for now. Being able to connect with that part of myself again, and to remember that part of her, is the important step at this point. I guess it just goes to show that healing does happen, even if we don't see it going on. Sometimes it will just surprise us from out of nowhere. And maybe it says something for me that, even though this felt somewhat strange, I was able to sit with and appreciate what it means.

In Inferno and Escape from Hell, there are references to the attributes of saints developed by those who have gotten free and wandered through Hell to try to help others through. In the second book, the main character at one point is surprised to find he has one of those gifts, the gift of tongues. There's never any mention of what he specifically did to earn it or how it came to him. He was just doing what he felt was right, trying to get free and to free others. And it just came. Much like the gift of the whimsical came to me on her birthday.