Normal
We cannot live in the excruciating moment the moment of shock, then disbelief, then despair. The wound is tended to immediately by the psyche’s attempt to make meaning, take control, to vector itself back to a state of normal. Even if nothing about the excruciating moment could be considered acceptable, acceptance comes. Little by little. I lived thirty-two years, incrementally accepting the unacceptable until one night, weeping, driving on ice in the pelting rain I knew this was not normal. The excruciating moment cracked open a long-hardened shell of denial. Something had to change. Then came the excruciating moment of being loved in all the ways it had so long been denied. Shock, disbelief, despair. This was not the normal, prescribed order of things. Yet Love persisted, insisted, on the truth of a lovable soul. Acceptance came. Little by little. We are six weeks from his diagnosis, one week since his first chemo. Tears fell like rain as the nurse pierced his skin with a needle, the IV tree of chemicals at the ready. “This is our virgin run,” he said, smiling. “We’re just being redirected.” These have always been my Beloved’s words when we are lost on the road, wandering a landscape of mistaken turns. We cannot live in the excruciating moment the moment of shock, then disbelief, then despair. So we cling to the thin thread that all will be well. All is well. A new normal. Acceptance comes. Little by little.


Every post has been beautiful. Thank you for honoring us with the hard truths and tender moments of this season in your life and Bill’s.
So moving.