On Endings and Beginnings

It is curious how things happen simultaneously. People often say that things happen in threes, but of course, that isn't true. It's fixed attention. We see what we want to see and find what we are looking for.

And yet.

Yet sometimes, there is a cluster of events that happen in a closer-than-customary proximity and forces us to observe the occurrence. Perhaps make meaning, perhaps not. But there you go.

The last three weeks -- for me -- has offered up an extraordinary amount of endings and beginnings. As I am writing this, literally, my best friend's brother's life is slipping away. Some of the drugs were removed this morning and he is in his final decline. The family is around him and it will be an ending. Today. Today at 11:54 am EDT the summer Solstice occurs. Summer begins. The end of spring leads to the beginning of the next season. My own mother died on the night of the winter Solstice in 1999, and though I do not make comparisons or draw conclusions, I observe. All during the month of May, my office at work prepared to move out of our building. Because I was the liaison for this process with people in my suite, I was hyper-focused on getting that ending done right. I had been at that desk in that weird, lovely, quirky space for fifteen years. My boss had been in the building for over thirty. It was a grueling process, saying good-bye to the familiar, the space which I had claimed and loved.

I finished up packing my own things on the day of Commencement ~ May 30th. Commencement: the day where universally, multiple meanings of endings, beginnings and going forward are addressed. On Monday, June 3, the move happened. I was the last person in our suite, which I had always jokingly referred to as our airport runway since it was a hall with offices like gates off to the sides. I shut off the light and cried. 

June 11th, my son graduated high school. My 18-year old, first-born son. So grown up: shaving, learning to drive, buying himself a new suit to go to prom with money he earned at his job. Am I proud? Hell yes. Did I cry? Of course. 

And on June 6th, I went back to my original name when my divorce was decreed. 

Graduations happen every year. People die, trees are cut down, people move. Of course.

I also became a home owner in the last three weeks. My house -- my sweet, small, garden-encircled, hot-water-challenged house -- is now my own. It is a beginning. 

In the garden at work, the seeds that we started in March are flourishing and producing food. 

I have begun to take my new space at work -- a God-awful mauve cubicle -- and make it my own. I am not sure what to do yet about all that mauve, but in starting again, I am finding myself delighted. Truly -- a surprise! I am truly delighted in both the process of figuring out what makes my heart sing, and the observation that yes: my heart can and does still sing. 

And the encore is just that: encore. Again. For the good and for the bad, take the next step. I have nothing more profound than that. Be alive while you are alive.

Peace.