Cocooning
To envelop or surround in a protective or comforting way.
Who wouldn't though?
For the next few days, my life as it was is on hold, because I need to let the nerves in my leg heal. I know that after I heal, I will be better, but scarred. I am glad though, and it will be "good enough."
I know you all can relate; we all have faced illness, setbacks, and loss.
Loss...
Loss of a loved one.
Would it be wonderful if we never had to?
But we do.
My sister is going through a time of grieving the loss of her husband. Yes, I lost the best brother-in-law, but she lost the love of her life, the boy that grew to be a man in the sixty years they shared.
As a Life Enrichment Co-ordinator I grew close to my clients, many of whom had also suffered the same loss.
One client, I'll call Jeff, always shared with me the most amazing stories about his life as a boy growing up in Texas.
Every day after lunch, he would ask me to wrap him up in an old brown blanket his wife had crocheted for him years before. He still, years after her death, needed that hug, the memory of her love for him.
As he slipped into a peaceful sleep, I thought that this was his "good enough" for now time. But thanked God he had more before and would have more later.
I am not fond of the "good enough" part because I do not understand it, but I have a deep respect for it.
I think about Charlie, who around the same time every day would come up, take my hand and off we would go for a walk around the halls or out in the courtyard. He always intertwined our fingers together with just the slightest swing. At some point he would stop, look at me, and in a voice, worn out a long time ago, he would say, "I love you." I knew he was not telling me he loved me. He had looked past me to another time, at another face, the face of the woman he loved, and remembered. I believe that somewhere, somehow, she heard him.
Oh, then there is Jack, Jack, and his wife, both lived in the home I worked in. He loved an old picture that hung in one of our halls. It was of Navy men who had returned from the war. The subject of the picture was the young man and woman in a most loving embrace, kissing out their joy of a war ended and a love reunited. Jack would walk his wife over to the art and announce, "Us". Jack had Alzheimer's, but he remembered love and who he had loved. Although his wife had lost Jack long ago to a terrible disease, she knew she had not lost his love.
Sweet Ruby sometimes thought I was her mother, she would ask me if I was, and I would tell her I was her friend. She would then say, "Well, you would sure be a wonderful mother."
Ruby needed me every day at 3:20 pm. She would take me to the window and have me help her watch for the big red truck. She said the dust flew as it rambled up the old dirt road that led up to her home. By 4:00 pm she would realize he was not coming and, even worse, why he couldn't come. The reason? "He's gone, isn't he?" Her eyes, deep with mourning, still hurt my heart. But she needed the reason, it explained his absence was not by his choice.
Love does not die, but it can sure hurt.
I said all this to say: it is okay to need help; to need to heal; and it is okay to co-coon. Find a blanket, a hand, a picture, or a reason for your "good enough" place.
You will heal, and there will be a scar...
where the love is.
Comments
Post a Comment