Life on the Edge

Sometimes I feel like I’m living life on the edge. Life is full of so many twists and turns and yet we negotiate our paths on a tightrope. If we lean too far one way or the other, we fall off into the Abyss. One misstep could lead to our doom, yet stopping and standing still is not an option. Life calls us forward whether we want to go or not.

Recently, I had a checkup and my EKG caused my doctor some concern. He sent me to a cardiologist who sent me for some very expensive tests that could determine if I had serious heart problems. The outcome of this series of tests would determine if my life could go on as it had or would change dramatically, irreversibly for the worse. The outcome of these tests became a knife edge of reality, MY reality. Not knowing was no longer an option. It was a door I could not go around. It loomed large before me. I had to open it and walk through it.

In the weeks prior to the tests, my fears took hold of me like sudden gusts of wind. I struggled with my “balance pole” to keep my feet steady and thereby avoid the fall into the void. If the tests went one way, I might have to quit my job and undergo expensive hospitalization, surgery and a lifetime of medication to stay alive. Without a job I would have no insurance to pay for all the modern medicine that could sustain me. Even if I could find insurance… could I afford it? My fears whispered that we would lose our house and our life savings. Lisa might have to give up her artist lifestyle and go back to the corporate world in order to sustain my life at the ruination of hers. Could our marriage survive the stress? Would I be left sick, debt ridden and alone? My fears were definitely working overtime on my brain.

Since Lisa and I made our move to San Antonio, over 4 years ago, we have rebuilt our lives. Each of us has realized many or our hopes and dreams for our future together. We love our lives as they have unfolded down here. Watching Lisa grow and develop as an artist in her own right has been amazing. I have enjoyed my work at the Alamo, which allowed one of my dreams to come true. I published a beautiful book about the Alamo. Our wonderful house and yard have provided me with endless projects to satisfy the “gardener” and “handyman” in me. The thought of losing it all was overwhelming me.

Lisa refused to let my dark thoughts be expressed. She would not hear them because she worried that if they were expressed, I would attract that outcome. (We create our own reality.) We worked on positive affirmations and thoughts to crowd out the negative fears that were always there…waiting to pounce. I began keeping my fears to myself which left me quiet and withdrawn at times. Part of me kept saying that if the results were not good, I still had to have a plan of attack. How would I deal with the news? No matter how I struggled, it kept coming back that it was REAL and it was happening to… ME. I was walking on the edge of knowing. It was my tightrope.

The day before the tests, I wrote down all of my fears on a piece of paper and folded it. I then wrote down all of my positive affirmations on another piece of paper. In our home, Lisa and I have this ceramic elephant. We put our hopes, dreams and visions into the elephant jar to send them out to the Universe. In a small ceremony, I put my positive affirmations into the elephant and we burned the fears in a bowl to release them…to let them go.

The day after the tests, the clinic called and notified me that my results were normal. Life goes on.

Food for THOUGHT…

Good-bye Mary!

When Lisa and I bought our house on a corner lot almost 4 years ago, our only next door neighbor was a tiny, elderly woman by the name of Mary. We shared a fence in our back yard. Lisa and I quickly became the “good neighbors,” as she called us, because the neighbor on the other side of her yard was a troublemaker since he was a kid. He went to prison. We took the time to talk to her over the fence.

When Mary would call us over for a chat by the fence, we knew it would be a while before we could go back to whatever we were doing. Mary loved to talk about her long dead husband, Teddy, and her son Buddy, who was an engineer that used to work over in Nigeria. That’s Africa, you know! She never failed to let us know that Teddy worked for the Credit Union. We would listen to her talk about her husband, her many homes and her children again and again. And of course there were her beloved NBA Champions, the San Antonio Spurs. If they were playing and winning…we heard about it!

Mary was close to 90 years old when we moved to our new house in 2005. She lived alone and most amazing, she still drove her car to the grocery store and the beauty shop. Her son Buddy and his girlfriend would drive up from Rockport, Texas about every other weekend to mow her yard and help around the house. Over time, we were introduced to her other grown children and their spouses. On warm summer afternoons we could hear the laughter and good natured arguing from Mary’s patio which was visible from our Kitchen window. Her son and two daughters were in their sixties, I guess, but they looked after their “momma” and enjoyed their visits with her.

Mary had to stop driving about a year and a half ago. Buddy began making more frequent trips to help his mother. Her daughter would come over in the afternoons and they would sit outside on the patio. Many times they would call me over to the fence for a chat. Did I know that Teddy used to work for the Credit Union? She would repeat her now familiar stories I could tell she still missed her husband after all these years.

This spring, Lisa and I noticed Mary was unsteady on her feet and she was looking pale and tired. Did we know she was almost 94? Teddy used to work for the Credit Union, don’t you know. We wondered how long she would be able to live on her own. About a month ago, her family came together for her 94th birthday. Lisa was home that day and said that Mary looked better and happier than she had seen her in a long while. A week later, she called her daughter about “a parade that was coming through her backyard.” Then she fell. Lisa saw Mary as the paramedics carried her from her house and placed her into the ambulance.

Buddy would keep us updated on Mary when he was at the house and working in the yard. She had a urinary infection, but she was being treated for it. The big problem was that she was not eating. Buddy would tell us she wanted to know how the “good neighbors” were doing. We made plans to go see her in the hospital, but they were getting ready to move her to a nursing home near her daughter, so we waited.

Today, Buddy came with the sad news that his mother had passed away. Mary had finally given up to go be with her beloved, Teddy. Mary, who had welcomed us to the neighborhood almost 4 years ago, was gone. She would not be coming back, not even for one last look around. At some point, we will have new neighbors and we wonder…will they be, like Mary, our “good neighbor?”

Food for THOUGHT…