MYSTICISM AND RATIONALISM

Everywhere Open

As a widow, do you ever feel gentle pressure to "get over it," "put it in perspective," "move on," and perhaps other, well-meaning prompts from your loved ones and acquaintances to move forward in a way that doesn't involve an identify centered around your lost spouse and your lost life?  I find an abundance of nudging from the world to move past the loss of Ted and the life we built together.  What does "moving past" look like, for me?  It took five years to understand with both my head and my heart that I faced an unknown number of days alone, without the structures of my old life even remotely recognizable as something that I could hang my heart on.  Only then was I able to design a new life on earth without Ted on earth with me.  Before I became a widow, I had an education...but I was not my education.  I had a career....but I was not my career.  I had a family....and I was my family.  My family, which began with Ted and me and now contains twelve others who are alive and living close, has always been the primary meaning in my life.  That hasn't changed, although I am no longer responsible for daily protection and providing for anyone other than myself and my two little dogs.  Ted's dying did create a significant conundrum of how to continue in my marriage with Ted, even though he had died.  This sounds very strange to most people, but it is my truest heart's desire. Ted and I always believed that love is forever.  Geese and many other animals mate for life, and that fit for us too.  Of course, we didn't realize how quickly we would become separated by death...I was only fifty-four when I became a widow.   I don't think I could be happy if I hadn't found a way to "mate forever" and learn to live with a mystical and whole relationship with Ted.  Something I recently heard made me feel at peace with all of it...although I have find peace from other sources along the way.  I subscribe to a blog "On Being." A podcast ran recently by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner whom I greatly admire.  He talks about people in modern society who are more and more realizing that rationalism can explain only some of the world around us.  http://bit.ly/1qFLAoy   Rabbi Kushner's podcast was greatly reassuring to me that more and more intelligent and rational people (I hope that's me) are open to mystical experiences to such a degree that each day is a combination of rational experiences and mystical experiences, and that there is a wholeness to be found in that kind of life.  This is, of course, what I got from the podcast and others may describe it differently.  I believe anyone who, like me, has made a decision to continue with a marriage, if you will, with a spouse who has died may find Rabbi Kushner's message both affirming and eye-opening.  It's permission to NOT get over it, put it in perspective, move on in every aspect of life as a widow.  This message is a healing one for me and I hope it is for other widows, too.  In other events, Miss Kitty has been diagnosed with something called idiopathic epilepsy and is now on a designer drug that we hope will help her with occasional seizures.  She has no idea of course that she has to move on or put anything in perspective.  She lives with it, accepts it....and for Miss Kitty, life in my home with Oliver and me is slowly bringing her to wholeness.  She has started to stay for longer and longer periods in the garden, sniffing out rodent visitors from the night before, and looking for tasty bits of fallen morsels the crows may have dropped.  There are squirrels and crows to chase, and she has started to bolt after them every now and then.  It's amazing to watch an adopted dog come into his or her own over time in a forever home.  Everything is incorporated into a life that I suspect is long on mysticism.  Oliver and Miss Kitty sleep through my podcast listening, as if they already know the wisdoms that I, as a human, struggle with and search for every day.  They make it look so simple to just be, and disregard any labels or judgments about perspective, rationalism, or how to build a meaningful life that is worth living.  Maybe that's why dogs are called "mankind's best friend."   A best friend lets a widow be a widow in any way that works, heals, helps and provides hope for a meaningful life.