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How Do You Memorialize Someone You’ve Lost?

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This is a very meaningful week for me. Today is the one year anniversary of my brother’s death and in two days it will be the one year anniversary of my best friend and mentor’s death.

What, exactly, does that mean? It means different things to each of us. Should it mean more? I don’t know. I just know that it’s hard for me to memorialize these two people’s passing once a year. I’ve given this a lot of thought, but not enough.

I know that if I want to keep them first and foremost in my mind, I have to do something that reminds me of them every day so that they aren’t relegated to the back of the closet like my old work clothes that i no longer wear since I’m retired. They need to be under the chair in my bathroom where my running shoes are as I see and wear them every day.

And these things, whatever they turn out to be, must be small. It’s only when you start with small things, that they become a habit and will stick. If one decides on some major undertaking to keep someone’s memory alive, they will fail unless it’s broken into a series of small steps. Even those who have created some organization or cause in honor of their loved ones, conceived of the idea but implemented that idea in small steps.

I know that I write in a gratitude journal every day so to add two specific gratitudes each day will not require much effort on my part – this is called “habit stacking” (James Clear in Atomic Habits) and increases the probability of success exponentially.

For now at least, I am going to add one gratitude for my brother and one for my mentor every day. This will keep memories of them and how they impacted me alive. It will be a gratitude for something we did, something they did or said and how it impacted me.

Can you imagine what a year of those gratitudes and memories will do to keep them forefront in my mind?

What do you or can you do every day (or once a week even) to keep someone’s memory right there in the place of honor in your mind, scattering all the clutter that has previously been in its way? Share what you do to keep them alive.

Oh and it’s the Ides of March too.

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Riding the Wave

Learning to Surrender

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I told you last weekend that I was going to buckle down and “get this editing phase” done with this week. I started to do that. But instead of getting it done, I learned that the Universe (and in this case, the book) have their own timeline and no matter what I do or did, I, a mere mortal, was not going to budge that timeline. In retrospect it was funny to watch but at the time all I felt was immense frustration.

No matter what technique I tried, I always got the exact same number of pages done a day. That made absolutely no sense because some of what I tried was more time consuming than the others. Each day I produced only the same amount. I was puzzled.

Then I realized that this all was supposed to teach me to surrender- that there are many things in my life that I can’t control even though I had been under the illusion for much of the past 70 years that I could. I am finally waking up. Talk about Rip Van Winkle!

I decided to let it go and let it evolve on its own. Why? Not only because it was going to do it that way no matter what I did but also because I didn’t want the frustration that went along with trying to force that round peg into the square hole. Sure I could live with and tolerate the frustration – don’t we all do that every day and think that’s “just how life is?”. But I didn’t want the resentment that would come with the sense that I had failed in getting things done “right.” I knew that resentment would be the best way to destroy the love and nurturing I wanted to experience. This book is a creation and deserves love and nurturing. Resentment is the quickest way to nip that in the bud and turn it into awful feelings – feelings that might lead to its demise and lead to 7 months of my life being put away never to be touched again.

I found that it was much easier to ride the wave rather than fight it. I would get somewhere simply by letting go and letting that wave take me where it wanted. It wasn’t up to me to try to control the massive force behind that wave. When will we humans really understand that? If I fought the wave, I would get exhausted and probably drown (the death of my book, my creativity and my desire to write). Which did I want to choose? The easy flow even though it required letting a force greater than myself take me away; or, the constant fight which we all know I could not win?

I chose to ride the wave and surrender to whatever timeline the book had in it. I guess it’s like planting that rose seed and then digging up the soil every day to see if it has grown yet. The book has to marinate and incubate and each phase and part that I’m going through is not under my control – that is, if I want it to be what it’s supposed to be.

What are you fighting in your life? What are you doing that is exhausting and having no apparent difference? Can you surrender and just ride along with it and see where it takes you? Do you have to continue fighting? I hope you can learn to enjoy riding the wave with me.

Despite temps in the high 20s and 30s for the past two days, there are many signs that spring is coming…yippee.

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What’s Your State of the Union?

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Hope you enjoyed your little respite from my daily musings. But I’m back and after a week of being a sloth, I hope to get back in the saddle pretty quickly. I’ve spent this sloth week sleeping or watching TV since the day after I got home I was struck with a bout of vertigo. That is never fun but I am grateful it waited until the race was over. Speaking of the race, I have included some photos from the race. You can barely recognize me but I included some other people I know or met with comments on the photos when appropriate. Thanks to Jeremiah Justis and Trail Racing Over Texas for freezing his fingers off trying to get shots of us all (most of us would have preferred he get shots FOR us I think even though I’m not a drinker).

Anyway, we had the state of the union address this week. It’s an annual tradition and if you take the politics out of it, it’s a good idea. Of course, if you take the politics of out these things, then there is nothing left. But you get the gist.

I, personally, am reminded to do my own state of the union review each year. So often, we simply think of the past in terms of regret and “missing outs” and “I shoulda done this’s” or even “what ifs”. When we’re not concentrating on that, then we move into the future wishes and hopes. We’re always on the move. Movement and action is necessary and useful but not all the time. We need to stop and regroup. In order to regroup, we have to be able to review what has happened. What went well AND WHY? What didn’t go as we’d like AND WHY? What can we do differently to help improve whatever situation we’d like? Ask these questions of yourself and your life. Take time to review what’s happened in the past year (or longer if you’ve never done this). You’ll see patterns I guarantee you. And you can change or improve or continue these patterns depending on the results you’ve achieved.

You don’t have to wait a year to do your own state of the union. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to do it once a month even. What progress have you made, if any, on your New Year’s goals/resolutions? What do you need or want to do differently regarding them? What has worked well and you’d like to continue it? What new goals or ideas have you had?

Try to get yourself really psyched up about this process. You can even make it a family affair and give out awards. You can even come up with the name of the awards yourself. Get your kids and grandkids involved. Teach them to review what they’ve done and to learn from it. What good is working hard on something and then never applying what you learned again? This is one reason my book will be different than most because I hope I’ll be able to finish Vol State again but even if I don’t, I have taken the life lessons from that race and can incorporate them into my daily life and I hope to be able to provide that for the reader as well.

By the way, if you want to put your name on a mailing list to be notified about things related to my book, you can sign up at this page. This list will be used to request people to do advanced reviews with ideas and edits and will also update you periodically on my progress. That way I can reach people separate from Facebook. My site remains a work in progress as I am a work in progress so who knows what will show up next. LOL

Anyway, have a great week!