Time to Heal
More than a year has passed since I last wrote a column. Faithful readers have sought to know why I’ve not been writing and continue to comment on particular themes explored or sentiments expressed that have stayed with them. (Thank you.)
Often mentioned were columns reflecting on time savored at a simple cottage beside a lovely lake in the Upper Peninsula. You said my words made you feel as if you were there or helped you appreciate the importance of the natural world in restoring inner balance.
Not surprisingly, my last column (August 2008) was composed at that spirit-renewing place where I had retreated, hoping to come to terms with a series of losses. In little more than a year, I had lost a sister
to cancer, a close friend to a heart attack, and all four of my longtime, much loved, animal companions. Anyone who has
ever loved understands the stumbling, painfully necessary process of attempting to move through grief. If it isn’t acknowledged,
grief can eat you alive, literally and figuratively.
Even in facing these losses, I knew more were inevitable. My husband and mother were with
me for part of that August ’08 visit to The Cottage. At 92, she had given up driving but still lived independently. We fished,
laughed, and shared the beauty and serenity of The Cottage and lake.
In mid-November 2008, Mom was still volunteering three mornings a week. Then, one morning
she awoke unable to walk. Now, nearly a year later she is quadriplegic, tragically for more reasons than neuropathy. Yet,
her mind is clear and her spirit is loving. I am ever in awe of her dignity and grace.
I had not written a column all these many months because emotions have been raw, priorities
elsewhere, energy levels depleted. When my family, Mom included, urged me to take some time away at The Cottage, I made
the trip reluctantly after canceling it once. When I finally went in early October, most of the first day was spent cocooned
in a quilt near the soothing heat of the woodstove, weeping, meditating, and sometimes simply just being. Grief and anger
have a way of tangling into a hard knot. Faith and a belief in human goodness struggle to untie it.
By the third day, I was able to open my laptop and begin work again on a manuscript that
has been neglected and to find my voice as a writer. By the last day at The Cottage, many pages had been written.
Time at The Cottage was about more than writing. It was about slowing the tempo enough to
be contemplative. It was about internalizing gratitude for the genuinely good people of this world. Were that not the case
I would never have had the use of The Cottage, firewood to keep it warm, friends and family to reassure me that Mom would
be looked after and to send me off with a box packed with fudge, wine, music, poetry, and hot cocoa mix.
This was my first stay at The Cottage in autumn. The days were serene and nightfall brought
total darkness. Nature gradually perfected extraordinary brush
strokes on the trees and then mirrored them in the water’s
surface, creating yet more beauty. A walk along a luminous wooded lane, rich with the scent of cedar and evergreen was aromatherapy
at its finest. A leisurely drive along a winding rural road yielded old farmstead apple trees and crisp flavors of long
ago that became pies and applesauce after returning home. The opportunity to photograph and step inside the oldest standing
building in Mackinac County was a bonus, especially because it is a log barn.
No one said life would be easy. But to get through its most difficult times, it does wonders to be reminded that Nature offers respite; good people give comfort; and faith and perseverance hold it all together. One day at a time.
Jan Corey Arnett©2009