Me, Myself and I

I am, but me is who I am ... when I was myself.

As I have observed at nearly this time last year, who I was (an old me) is dead, killed by the death of my wife and my other half, Anita.

This year gone has been not only one for reflection but one for handling many health challenges which it could be argued threatened my life.

I did not die (although that was something I wished for).

For the last year I have struggled with many things. I have slowly walked the path of comprehending the changes in me, and the changes in the world in which I live. Only recently has this left me wondering about myself, for earlier I was preoccupied with her death and survival.

Tonight I have been looking at a candle which I lit on the table. It is beneath some flowers I bought to share with her. You may shake your head and dismiss this as slightly insane (perhaps it is). However I have come to feel that she is not gone, but passed.

It is small things, a song I hear, a call I get ... I do not know if these are things I only imagine, or if there is messages being left in the world, like the way a bit of stuff is washed upon the beach. If I was less sensitive (and perhaps less interested) I may not have noticed them. But I did.

Peace is not the right word, but tonight I feel strange. I feel that amid the sadness (and the tears welling in my eyes) that I am less anguished by her absence than I was. I look at her paintings and the roses and feel that somehow she still knows I love her. I know that the trip to Heinavesi tomorrow will not be as hard as it has been.

Perhaps I have made progress towards my goal of becoming better not bitter (as I wrote on the 30th of December 2012).

The other day I listened to a talk by a Rabbi who learned that buried amid the muck of religion was an old Jewish idea that God himself wished to seek atonement for all the bad things which happen to good people. That God knows that these things are horrible and shares our anguish at these wrongs. This concept challenges many things that I have been taught, yet at the same time sits well with my view of what God should be (if God at all loves us). Perhaps this is in itself an important step, for this whole thing has challenged the way I have thought of God.

Perhaps next year I can work on building myself into a new me. Perhaps I can be a better man than I was.