Okay. I have to admit that I have been shirking my “duty” lately. I promised, long ago, to write something each day, hopefully, something from my heart. There have been times, God knows, that I have done that: the loss of parents, my cardiac trials, my hip replacements, my hernia surgery, and the like. There have been other times that I was just feeling goofy and posted inane links.
Lately, I have had a different feeling. I am going through a lot right now and was finding it difficult to put a finger on it. I have someone I love who is in the process of dying. Like so many others, I am torn between wishing she had more days and wishing that she went soon because more days would just bring more pain and suffering, both emotional and physical. Yet, to hope for a quicker death seems so against nature.
Add that to other items loosely under the title “letting go” and I find that it has been a bit too much for me to handle. Many of my parishioners are going on to college, some for the first time. After fifteen years at the parish, it’s like my children are leaving. And then there are my younger “children” daring to leave our grade school and moving on to high school. How dare they get older? That means . . . God forbid . . . that I am getting older as well. One of my servers was joking with me about age this morning. I told him I was an old man and he said that I’m not even thirty-five yet. I told him I was going to be sixty-two in October and his eyes got real big and he said, “Boy. You’re old!” We all started laughing.
This afternoon, after watering the new trees in my backyard (something that I do every other day), I sat on the deck since the breeze was so nice and enjoyed the remainder of the afternoon. I know that I will pay for it later sucking up all those allergens but, at the time, it felt good. I had my laptop in front of me and was watching cruise ships leaving port to begin their weekly cruises. I so wished that I could have been on any one of the ships I watched sail away. Anywhere but here.
I posted, the other day, a bit more about what I was feeling. However, after the night, I took the post down and replaced it with something a bit more inane just because I felt like I didn’t really want to share. I was feeling a bit out of the norm but, again, couldn’t really express it.
This afternoon, I began to surf the web to find something about the way I was feeling. I wouldn’t say that I was depressed, that’s too strong and too negative a word. I wouldn’t say I was “down in the dumps” either. Again, too negative. I felt plain ol’ melancholy. What do you know? I found a blurb about melancholy on the web. I share it with you now as I close out this blog post.