ohbloodyhell8

Well, I feel better.  I don’t know about you, but last night’s post really offered me release.  I know people read it (thank you!) yet even if it had only gone into the great big void of the internet, it helped me.  I think that’s one of the things I enjoy about writing a post.  It can offer a cathartic release for the soul.  Not knowing exactly who will read each post, if in fact anyone does, blogging is a very selfish project.  At least the way I look at it.

Throughout the day, I felt stress leaving my body.  I reflected over the course of the day about the post and felt warmth filling my spirit which worked quite like a hot water bottle for the soul.  I missed Brigs just as much today as I did yesterday, but the emotional baggage I had attached to him is fading.  This is a good thing because then I can begin to enjoy the memories of him and the happiness he brought more purely, without the crap.

I have been asked by several people if we have gotten a new dog yet.  Nope.  I have looked at the listings at our local shelter.  Little yippee dogs-not for us-or pit bulls-also not for us.  You can list it as an American Staffordshire terrier but still a pit bull.  I know that the dog is usually a sweetie and only becomes mean through the treatment it receives from an owner, but you have to wonder why the dog is in the shelter.  I’ve also looked at other pet adoption websites and there are some sweet dogs listed on it, but crying while reading the websites tells me I am not ready.

But at least I am ready to begin letting go of the remnants of hard memories.  Letting go is a lifelong process in my book.  There are always events in a life that cause strife and then you have to deal with them.  Sometimes the way I deal with them is to bury them deep down so I don’t have to work through them right away.  Maybe I’m not ready to, maybe I’m being lazy, maybe I’m scared to process it all.  So every now and then I work through some big chunk of stuff in my memory.  It’s sort of like purging the crap out of my house.  Time often helps process the hard stuff just like it makes the stuff in my house magically become crap that I can get rid of without regret.

Simplicity in life can be hard to achieve within my society.  It can be done but it means going against the mainstream and ignoring mass media and aspects of the consumer-based society.  I fall into the trap of “needing” things that are truly wants.  Then there is either buyer’s remorse or the need to purge items from our home.  It’s challenging to teach this to my sons when I still am struggling with it myself.  Happily, they help me get better at it.  As I try to teach them about wants and needs, it reinforces it for myself.

And so Brigs keeps helping me, teaching me, loving me unconditionally.  Isn’t that the heart of what Uncle Stevie reminded me of a few weeks ago?

“May be she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life but the end of pain.”
― Stephen King, Pet Sematary