I haven't been at the computer for a couple of weeks or so. After becoming a county delegate at the precinct caucus, going to a lot of meet the candidate meetings, and searching out the candidates information on their web pages - I then went to the County Convention. It was fine, slow, and accomplished the task of deciding who would be put on the General Election ticket or who would go to the Primary Election where the voters will decide who will be the Republican offering at the General Election.
Jerry flew to DC (that same day as the County Convention) to attend a convention concerned with Mail and Shipping, stamps, etc. I fell ill that evening and was very ill for the next 5 days (and nights). I had fevers, chills, and gripping pain in my abdomen, and the beginnings of a bladder infection. Not fun!!! Thank goodness I had Rachel to help me out and listen to my moans and groans. But I am well now, and very glad to have the misery in the past.
Isn't it interesting how pain distances one from the normal everyday world. I didn't read much, I didn't watch TV, I just suffered and waited for normality to come slowly back. I think that pain and grief do that to us. We just go on, one step at a time, sometimes cocooned in the immensity of grief or pain, other times we feel empty and somehow altered from what we were "before" or what we consider is our "norm". Light slowly comes back when we have deep grief from loss of access to our loved ones; and a physical fragility is associated with an experience of great pain that has passed. One of the great joys I have is the contemplation of having no pain after we leave this life. Just that one thing seems worthy of my best efforts in order to obtain that good place where I will no longer have pain. When I was young, I was healthy, and wondered what it would feel like to have constant pain, or arthritis, or have handicaps. I have those answers now, and know what it feels like....but I don't want to experience them for eternity!!! Sometimes eternity is the length of a night's intense pain. Time passes so very slowly that one wonders at simply getting through the night. But all of these things slowly pass. Grief lessens as time passes, although there are moments or days that bring back the intensity of the initial grief. Years pass and much becomes bearable where grief and loss have been endured. Ongoing chronic pain is simply endured, and proves to have different levels of intensity also. As the years pass, and accumulate, I can see how one would be ready to go on to the next level of life in passing from this world. Some of my older friends explain at the death of a long lived relative, "they were so ready to go, they felt that they had lived a good life, they were ready". I hope that I will be ready 20 or 30 years from now, if my work is done, if I have served and helped, and given of my heart and soul to all in need.....then maybe I, too, will be ready for the harvest beyond the veil. But right now, there is still much to do!!!