It's Sunday. The usual pattern is to go to church at 10:30, have lunch, visit N at the VA.

But I'm oddly reluctant to go to church, and I can't quite figure out why. Emersonians are my friends and family, as you are, and it puzzles me why I'd be reluctant to re-engage with them, now that N in in the hospital and I have time to resume my life.

I sat down at the computer this morning, opened a blank Word document and decided to try to explore this (to me) odd reluctance. After all, these are people that I love. (Well, most of them. As with any family, there are those who try my patience.)

Ah, but I said good-bye to them, when N was so desperately ill, as I have done so many times in the past, when I was uprooted over and over. There's a clue in there somewhere...

and so I started to write. Up to four pages now, single spaced with narrow margins. The words and memories just keep coming; some of them I haven't thought about in years.

I've been at it for two hours now--no three. It's almost 10 a.m.

Maybe there's stuff from the past that is distorting and staining the present and needs to be washed, dried, folded, and put away. It is NOT going to happen all over again.

Life is good, and too short to mourn the past indefinitely.