BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO

A long and sleepless night filled with anger and self-pity.  It doesn’t matter that it is your own idea, or that it is the right thing to do, when you watch all the heavy euipment which has been the source of your refuge and comfort for fifty years pass out the door, now belonging to someone else.  And it doesn’t matter that physically you are no longer able to throw another pot, or lift a 50 pound block of clay at a time.   And there is where the self pity takes over.  Laughable really, when I think of all the pages I have turned, and all the people I have admonished to “get on with it” when something didn’t go their way.  It is human nature to blame someone else for our own shortcomings, but worse when you have to turn the blame back onto yourself.  I am embarrassed when I think of my mother-in-law, who lived around the corner and daily complained that life was no longer worth living because she needed hearing aids and could no longer drive her car.  Both her children lived around the corner from her, and visited each day.  I was fond of reminding her of how lucky she was.  How insensitve and foolish I was in my youth.  She lived in her own home until she was 93 and died in her own bed.  We always hope for understanding from those closest to us, but no one else walks in our shoes.

I have recently watched so many dear friends come to the realization that they can no longer manage their large homes,and choose another path.  Surely this is far more difficult that breaking up a sculpture studio.  It has been a week, and becomes easier each day as I dispose of more and more bits and pieces, finding so much I had forgotten, and some which made me think “what in the world were you thinking?”  Strange the things I am keeping: dusty tools, boxes of dried up paint tubes, etc.  Perhaps one day I will part with those as well.

 

“At the end of the day, only kindness matters.”