Love is...

...in my own back yard

125

Sometimes, we meet people that absolutely speak to our spirit. Those people can stop by for a day, a week, or a lifetime and bring such experiences - pain, beauty, intense sorrow... but knowing them can also bring happiness and a tremendous opportunity for love.

Candace was like that.

I will never forget our first meeting. I think I was 22 at the time, and visiting her aunt. Candace walked into the living room like she owned the world. The sun shone through her big mane of hair. She was talking as she came in the door and didn't, at first, even see me. When she took a moment between topics to take a breath, her aunt introduced us. She turned to me and stood quietly for a moment. Then, she crossed the room, sat down next to me on the couch, looked into my eyes and took my hand.

I recognize that might seem odd, seeing as how we'd just met, but it wasn't. It was the most perfect thing in the world.

She said, "Hello friend. It's been a long time, hasn't it? I'm glad we found each other again."

And I said, "Hello friend. It HAS been a long time. I missed you."

In that moment, I clasped her hand tightly, immersed in this intense joy at being loved. It felt instant, complete and forever. My world shifted. I knew I had a person in my life that would always be with me, who knew me and loved me exactly as I was - just as I loved her.

I wish I could have seen that more clearly when I had her in my life.

In my life, I've struggled to see love when it was right in front of me. I've been on my Wizard-of-Oz/Dorothy journey to try to find perfect love and happiness somewhere outside of myself.

Recently, I was told I acted like I had the emotional makeup of a 15 year old. At first I dismissed it as ridiculous and completely off mark. As I thought about it, perhaps in some ways, I have been stuck at that age. At 15, I was taught that the 'best' love comes in a perfect partnership, and that the love of the 'One', is the 'best' love there is. I bought into the belief that some kinds of love and happiness are more 'valid' than others, and I believed in Disney's storyline.

This morning, with my window wide open and a cool autumn breeze filling my bedroom, I burrowed under my covers and thought about love, happiness, Candace, and so many of the other people in my life - and decided to stop labeling some love and happiness as more valid than others, and the 'One' more real than other 'ones'.

'Perfect partnership' doesn't have to be, for me, the end goal. My life shouldn't be about the happily ever after, but about the 'happily in the now'.

I missed a lot of 'happily in the now' moments with Candace, with my friends and even with partners, because I was so busy trying to figure out if it was perfect - if I was perfect.

Finding and appreciating love and happiness in all forms is important; moments of happiness are brief. There are no guarantees they will continue. Guarantees would mean Candace and I would be looking at golf cart ads and she'd be giving me advice on dating.

My goal is to get better at recognizing love and happiness the moment it is present. Like singing at the top of my lungs at a drag show with my daughter - Candace's child - and laughing about how close we are to the stage.

Losing myself in that moment walking along the water in Edmonds, holding hands and feeling tremendously happy. Watching the sunset and appreciating it for what it is, not what I want or think it has to be.

Being mindful of the moment is honoring happiness as it is, and finding it in my own back yard.

...if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?

Not that I won't click my heels together in sparkly red shoes, because seriously, my life is seeking travel and adventure - especially when I know my shoes will always bring me home.

But in seeking love and happiness, I know I need look no further than the moments of my own heart.

Peace,
MaryKate

It's more than losing someone you love...

Letting go of 'golf carts'...
110

In my English 11 class today, I was sharing with my students why I missed the last week of school before our two week Winter Break. I told them about the death of my best friend and going to Ohio to tend to the details and the pieces I could tend to.

While I was talking I had a realization. Maybe it is a realization that everyone knows about and I am late to the party - wouldn't be the first time :).

The realization worked its way up from the murky depths of my unconscious when I wrote the extra credit assignment on the board today - write an essay about, 'one event that changed your life.' I explained that they were young, and it didn't have to be a huge event. It didn't have to be as difficult as the death of a friend. It could be the death of a favorite pet, or a divorce, or a huge argument with a friend that ended a friendship. It could be a positive event, a trip they took, a race they won, a competition they participated in, a summer camp. Regardless of the event, when they look back on it, they had to realize they had changed - something inside them saw the world a little differently. Assignments like this can be tricky. Some students really don't like writing about their lives and I don't force them to do so, thus the 'extra credit' part of the assignment. And, as always, if a student is genuinely uncomfortable or can't think of an event, that student can come to me and we figure out a different assignment, together.

But I started thinking about why I put that assignment on the board. And the realization that was bubbling below the surface of my awareness, came to light.

I was telling my students about my 'big future plans' with Candace. We used to sit up at night and laugh about our future. We would talk about how we were going to get little cottages near each other by the water. We were going to get golf carts. Every morning, rain, sleet, or sun, like postmen, one of us would throw on her slippers and bathrobe, jump in her golf cart, and head over to the other one's cottage where coffee and something homemade would be waiting. Coffee cake, bread with homemade apple butter, donuts, whatever our latest experiment was, we'd share it in the morning over coffee. We'd trade off days making breakfast for each other. We'd talk about politics, about Madalyn and Grant, about husbands. We'd get dressed and go make flower arrangements at the Senior Center. We'd take bus trips with the other seniors and laugh about that crazy bus trip we took together so long ago. I'd be writing novels, she'd be planning our next adventure. We had plans! We had stories we wanted to tell. We had adventures we wanted to share. We had a future we were creating.

And that was when I realized, when you truly love someone and they die,  you aren't just losing the immediacy of the present with them. You are losing the 'future' of them.

Last summer, Candace went on a trip with her husband. She was excited to spend some alone time with him; they hadn't really had the chance to do that since Madalyn was born. When her husband was diagnosed with cancer many years ago, doctors only gave him a few years to live. He's lived much longer than 'expectations' and is doing very well right now. One of the things we talked about when she returned from her trip, was how, while they were on the road, the two of them 'future planned'. She said, "You know MK, ever since he got sick, we haven't dared to future plan. We've been so caught up in the present and his getting chemo and staying alive, then my getting chemo and staying alive, that we lost that ability to dream about the future. I didn't know how much I missed that. On our trip together we talked about growing old, we talked about things we wanted to do with the house, we talked about the kids and college, we talked about moving to the lake someday. It was really great to reconnect like that. It reminded me how much I love him."

Until I lost Candace in December, I didn't really understand what she meant. I mean, I understood it on a head level. It made perfect sense that she hadn't had the opportunity with all the cancer around her to 'plan the future' with her husband - but I didn't really 'get it'. When I lost Candace, I realized on a heart level that I had also lost the future with her. Not just her laughter on the phone, her telling me how sexy my blond hair looked, her telling me how much weight I'd lost and how great I looked (even when I hadn't lost a pound), her telling me how happy she was that I was finally happy in my life and had met someone so loving and 'worthy' of me, her excitement about meeting my boyfriend for the first time (something she never got to do), the absolute joy she felt whenever she talked to me - the same joy I felt talking to her. Even when she was upset, angry, in pain, or scared, she shared those things with me in the context of "this too shall pass". I remember in August of this year, her doctors told her that her liver was doing better. When she told me on the phone, we both let out whoops of joy and said, "HELLO GOLF CARTS!" No one but us understood that reference, but I realized even then, even when in the back of my mind I thought, "I don't know that there will ever be golf carts", I was excited and I held on to the hope that our shared future included those golf carts.

Perhaps there will still be golf carts in my future. I don't know. Even if there are, it won't be the same. Of course I will carry Candace in my heart for the rest of my life, but there will be no shared breakfasts, golf carts or floral arrangements.

Losing Candace in my present, also means losing Candace in my future. I realized that is a large part of my grief. Having to let go of all those dreams and hopes for what we would be doing 'tomorrow'. I'm fortunate I have no regrets about what we did in our past together. And I am fortunate that in the time I knew her, we had almost enough adventures for a life time.

Almost.

Peace,

MaryKate