How It’s Done
Most evenings, as I head off to slumber, I’m thinking about what I want to write the next day. Last night, for instance, as I lay there ready to doze, I was thinking about this little process and how it was the way I created the beginning of every day. Then it came to me that I was shining out a little bit of light to pull me up out of the dark and get going. Best of all, I was in control of the script. I could be happy, sad, or funny, whatever I chose. And in doing so I could set the tone for my day.
Then the idea popped into my head, it’s pretty much what I’d been doing my entire life, except other people were in charge of the script, school, church, work, family, you name it. I always went to bed thinking about something and woke up the next day ready to deal with it. The last several years, for instance, were mainly consumed with my wife and her care and then my wife and her passing. And while the latter still occupies a fair bit of my time, it’s certainly less pressing these days. I guess it’s become a fact of my life.
And right there in the second movement of this verbal sonata, I hit a small sad note. But in recapitulating the first movement where this essay can be happy or sad, I choose happy. Because later this evening I’m going with a friend to hear music, and the same will happen again on Saturday and then on Sunday and basically, I have a lot to anticipate today and in the coming days. My writing hopper will be full of potential material, and that, my friends, is how I get through the days, these days.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale