Epilogue

Epilogue

July 12, 2019

It’s been a long, lonely year of my life. Carolyn has been gone for just a year today. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced the loss of a spouse just how empty you feel sometimes. 

No matter what I’m doing, the little thoughts keep cropping up—“Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?” “Is this what you are supposed to be doing?” “I better check in on her and make sure she’s OK?”

My mind may never quite get used to being alone again. I remember, before we fell in love, not liking at all being single. Having no one to share one’s life with is the definition of lonely.  I still don’t like being single.

When Carolyn left, she took a little bit of the light with her. There is a small patch of darkness that follows me around. Sometimes it is very dark, like looking into an abyss. But most of the time it is just a little shadow that yanks my mind back from complete enjoyment of whatever it is I’m doing.

I’m intentionally keeping busy with different projects, as a distraction from the sorrow that sometimes overtakes me. I am still restoring my 1977 GMC RV motorhome. I have a camper rally next week in Athens, Texas, where owners of other RVs like mine can swap stories and tips on how we keep them running after 42 years. 

I have polished and painted on my 1949 Allis-Chalmers tractor and put it in an antique tractor show last month. That was fun, and a lot of people liked my electric drive conversion, but I didn’t win any prizes. 

The most intensive activity, and the most successful at keeping my mind focussed on the here and now is riding my bicycle long distances. To a Buddhist, meditation is a practice of controlling your mind and keeping it from wandering to bad places. Some advocate chanting mantras repeatedly, some focus on your breath, to the exclusion of all other thoughts. I find bicycle meditation works just fine. I can get in a zone mentally where my mind is totally locked in to the rhythm of the pedals and the hum of the tires on the pavement. 

Since I have gotten in shape, I no longer feel any pain in my legs as I used to, and my respiratory capacity is markedly increased. When I am climbing long hills now, my meditation shifts to my breathing, with my inhales and exhales using every bit of my lungs. My mind stays right where I like it to be.

Not long after Carolyn left my life, I tried to fill the void with another woman, thinking that would make things better. It did not work out well at all. I was sure I could love her just like I loved Carolyn, but it wasn’t fair to her or me. I wanted Carolyn back, and no other person could have filled in that gap. 

She tried hard, but i’m afraid I just ended up hurting her again, as her life was already filled with abuse and rejection by her parents and former husbands. She was a lovely nurses aide who took care of Carolyn before she passed on, and who had mentioned that she wished she could find a man to love her as I did my wife. 

I was sure I did love her, but my trying and her trying still didn’t work out. She has gone back to school to upgrade her certifications, and if I did nothing else for her, I hope I convinced her that she is a good person, and smart besides.

Now I have joined a Unitarian/Universalist church just across the river in Texas. I have made many friends there, and have become one of the fledgling choir. We sing for the first time this Sunday during the service. They have also found out I play keyboard a little, and I’m sure I’ll be helping out there someday, too. 

They don’t mind at all that I am Buddhist in my beliefs, and there is one other Buddhist member there, too. This denomination goes back over four hundred years or so, and many of the founding fathers of this country were Unitarians or Universalists. Five of our presidents have been members, also. They don’t hold to any doctrinal tests, but find fellowship in common values of love, peace, and tolerance. My kind of people, for sure.

I am in the middle of buying a house near Durant, out by Lake Texoma. I am working out the loan arrangements now, so I should get to closing on the house within a month. My nephew Joe, who has let me share his house for three years, is moving north to Talihina, to work on the Choctaw Casinos computer network as a systems administrator. Should be interesting to see what happens to this old house we’ve been living in.

So to sum it up, life goes on. It will never be the same again. Each day is a new window into the life to come. I am waking up each morning now with anticipation and wonder. I don’t know how much time I have left, but the moments of joy are more and more a major part of my life. 

I have reached the point where I can work on assembling the chapters I have written for the last five years or so without breaking down in tears every few minutes. With a little more writing to tie some of the chapters together, and some editing for clarity, I will have a manuscript finished. 

This will probably be the Epilogue.