Changes

I still feel you all around me; counseling, loving, sharing sage wisdom learned in the World to Come.  I am in increased pain and my left ear has started to bother me relentlessly.  Before, it would come and go.  Now it has planted roots, like the rest of the tumors.  I feel helpless to the invasion and when I let it, I worry about that which is not in my control. But what I seldom feel anymore is fear.  I am taken at how much at peace I feel through the pain.  Am I truly surrendering?  And is surrendering the same as giving up?  Throwing in the towel, as it were?

More and more: memories are starting to surface.  Things done several years ago; like being able to go out for a bite to eat with family, or memories from many years ago, with friend whom I don’t even know are a live anymore.  They come in flashes with a sign that reads “don’t forget this or that”   I won’t. I promise.  I miss it.  I miss it all.  I still wonder where old loves turned up.  Like Michael Neal, whom I never managed to find.  But his name is common.  And I doubt I ever crossed his mind in the 30 (gasp) years since I saw him leave town with a pregnant girlfriend he neglected to tell he had.  We were young.  He was truly confused.  And much to my chagrin, I actually liked Joy.   He knew I was sick and he was perhaps the ONLY man I had met where it didn’t seem to matter to him.  And poof, he was gone.

What would I have done differently if I could have a do over?  I’d be braver. I’d push through the learning disabilities, the physical challenges and romantic shutdown.  I do believe I reincarnated too damn soon after the Holocaust; and yes, I’ve had a spontaneous past life experience of dying the gas chamber.  Completely spontaneous; no recent thoughts of the Holocaust.  And two other past life experiences not related to it.   But those were much earlier. This was the forties, early fifties.  That world always had a draw on me.

Oh, and I’m working hard on appreciation.   I’m keeping a list of things that I’m grateful for.  It’s long, and continuing to grow.  I seem to be able to tolerate the pain better when doing this.  Huh.