Done for the Week: Into the Breach

This past week, I struggled.  Part of it was probably reentry, since I had been away the previous week.  Part of it, I imagine, was the emotional aftermath of visiting my mother in the home she shared with my father, whose death I am only now beginning to deal with.  And a significant part of it is living with three males who are themselves floundering in various masculine versions of angst.  

Whatever the cause, it was a keep-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of week.  But not without its blessings.

Done List--Week of Apr. 12-Apr. 18

1. Completed 9th and final week of Couch Potato to 5K training 
2. Finished  The Day My Father Died:  Women Share Their Stories of Love, Loss, and Life, ed. by Diana Ajjan; Swann, by Carol Shields; A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny 
3. Took my blood pressure daily
4. Attended three meetings; scheduled none
5. Reconnected with four friends
6. Published 5 blog posts
7. Meditated 5 times
8. Spent two afternoons relaxing in sunshine with a book
9. Called my mother
10. Walked my dog daily
11. Made coffee for church services and meeting
12. Nursed sick pre-launch teenager, with a light hand
13. Put in extra hours at two part-time jobs
14. Began to recover my house from the chaos of several weeks of being sick and overcommitted

Last week's focus goal was to meditate 5 times.  Item 7 on my Done List, highlighted in green, shows that I met this goal, for the second week.  At the risk of boring myself and readers following this saga, I have decided to repeat this focus goal for at least one more week.  The stress in my life at present requires all the equanimity I can muster, and I believe that meditation can help.  And I have observed that I have difficulty giving it the priority it needs.  For whatever reason, I am motivated to achieve my focus goal.  So meditating 5 times this week it is.

I have identified in red text above what seems to me to be the most important thing I did last week--finishing The Day My Father Died.  I have been looking at the book for the several weeks that I have had it out of the library, through two renewals and into the grace period.  Planning to read it, but never making the time.  Retrieving it from under the chair I most often sit in to write these blog posts.  Replacing it in my current stack.  On Friday, it was time.

Since completing the book Saturday afternoon, I have felt particularly wretched.  Sad, and drained, and edgy.  In grief circles, this kind of bad is good--the "going through it" which will, theoretically, get me to the other side.  All I can do right now is trust.  And keep on going.