Love is an action, but the feelings that you get from loving are incredible. Those feelings have to be love. So love must be a by-product of acting on love.
I’ve been wallowing in love-sickness these last few days. We took my youngest child and our only daughter to college on Friday (she opted to start this summer). Why is it that when you take a kid to college, everything that you do, and that you see, reminds you of them?!? Everything. I was in the grocery store yesterday, and on the clearance shelf they had a big bag of candy corn. I got a lump in my throat because my daughter is the only one in our family who actually likes candy corn. I almost publicly cried at our local grocery store over a huge, stale bag of candy corn.
My daughter seems very happy though. She’s meeting lots of people and I am so thankful for the technology of Facetime. Our youngest son is living with us this summer, while doing a summer internship. (His epilepsy has been well under control. Regular readers, thank you so much for your love and concern, and your prayers and good wishes. He is doing so much better than last fall. We all are doing so much better, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your love and support.) My youngest son is one of our middle two sons, of our family of four children. He shared a bedroom with our second eldest son, his entire childhood. He has never had the experience of being an “only child” with his parents’ attention entirely focused on him. Never. There has always been at least one other child at home, every time that he has lived with his parents. I am not sure that our youngest son is enjoying this “only child” experience all that much. He seems to find a lot of reasons to work late, and to go to the gym for hours and hours. I’m hearing, “Don’t worry about me for dinner,” a lot. Interestingly, all four of our children are dating only children. I can’t decide whether this means that onlies are somehow attracted to big, loud, boisterous, chaotic families, or if my kids are just tired of sharing with others?! It’s probably a mix of both.
On Twitter this morning, the Wise Connector posted this:
I like this take on the “Bucket List”. As a 51-year-old woman, the “Bucket List” thing kind of stresses me. I start worrying about prioritizing, and questioning whether I am wasting too much time, and even the state of my health. “The Bucket List” makes me concentrate on my demise too much. Last night, a group of good friends and I went out to celebrate one of our friend’s birthday at a new restaurant in town. The company was great, but the restaurant sucked. This restaurant is not long for staying in business, we all agreed (interestingly this restaurant is in one of those “doomed” locations. Three restaurants have already failed at that same spot. This is a phenomenon I have noticed my entire life, wherever I have lived. Some locales just seem to be cursed in this world.) Still, I am thrilled that we went to this new place. I am always curious about new places, and new people, and new things. I am thrilled for the experience which we had last night. I love having my curiosity satisfied, and now that particular restaurant will be conveniently tossed into the orange bucket above, leaving more room in the other bucket, which we middle-agers are expected to obsess over.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
OK, Kel, you’re going to think this is macabre, but here it is:
I recently realized that since I am now officially single, there was one more piece of business that I owed it to myself to complete. So, I bought a pre-need arrangement plan through the Neptune Society. My family of origin are not the type to visit the gravesites of our loved ones – that just isn’t who we are as a family. We prefer to remember our people as they were in life, not still and cold in the ground. But I digress…
My son will be the person “responsible” for me when I die, so as a “final” act of love, I decided to take the burden off of him. I’m a Capricorn, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’ve now got my entire existence under control.
One thing I didn’t expect with having made these arrangements: I feel freer, lighter. I know that all the bases are covered, and that wherever I am on the globe at the time of my passing, everything can be handled with one phone call. That gives me complete peace of mind.
I don’t really have a bucket list, but I’ve now checked off the only item on my kick-the-bucket list, and it feels great!
I get it, Kelly! We recently updated our wills and honestly, it feels so freeing and makes me feel more brave in my everyday life. Good for you!!