Phase Two
I need thicker hide, tougher skin, something to absorb the blows. Every little thing these days feels like a personal affront. I realize as I get older that my skin gets thinner, but you’d expect better callouses on the emotional side. Although maybe a little weepy sensitivity is to be expected because of the circumstances and maybe it’s not as bad as if feels because generally speaking I can get to the happy face fairly fast and then forgive and forget.
Maybe this is something that will come as the second-year journey progresses. I’ll toughen up and become less exposed. After all, the death of a wife is a pretty big wound to heal, and I imagine that takes time, plodding, grinding, one-day-at-a-time sort of time, where you feel every tick of the clock, night can’t come soon enough, and the sun always rises too early. And on a more pleasant note, I think I’m finally getting the khaki weed under control. I dug up some errant plants yesterday in the rain-soaked side yard, and everything looks generally clear.
This weed victory is four or maybe five years in the making, when I simply decided, I was just going to dig all the stuff up. I started by the big oaks, worked my way down to the street and then went after the side yard. Every spring it was the same, me on my knees digging. It’s hard to quantify how much work that is because there were always new seeds germinating trying to replace the old plants I was digging up and I spent a lot of time on previously plowed ground. But I just emptied my mind and did it. Now it feels done and just in time for me to apply the same energy to healing by soul, on my knees in the dirt. Watch out world I’m down here, don’t run me over.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale