What Remains

The last year of my life has been a slash-and-burn of most of what my old "normal" was. My life, in many ways, was completely decimated by a few events, and now I am standing in what used to be the forest and seeing what remains.

I believe what remains is nearly always what is worth nurturing and growing.

For starters, I lost my place of worship after a toxic situation. But I lost more than the building, I lost a wide swath of acquaintances. The person or two who remain in my life remain as precious to me in ways I find difficult to describe.

I lost my days. I can sum this up with one word: SALAMI. Work with me here. You see, it used to be that once I got Oldest Son and Younger Daughter on their respective commutes (his is over an hour each way to school), and got the Not-a-Morning-Person Pirate Boy off crankily to school where he can torment his teacher for the day, that day was indeed mine. (Aside: Shockingly, Pirate Boy's teacher says he is an "angel"--if a bit "chatty"--today I volunteered in his class and noticed during the film about baby birds being born, he regaled his nearby seatmates with talk of the baby robins looking like multi-headed zombies . . .. but I digress.) When my dad came to live here, my day disappeared down a sucking vortex of outings. He doesn't like the salami at Wal-Mart. Nor Kroger's. He LIKES the salami a HALF-HOUR AWAY at the Italian deli. So for a pound of salami, we're talking an hour and a half excursion. I know you want to be me.

But what remains . . . after I adjusted and cried and hyperventilated . . . is a three-generation household that somehow works. If nothing else, the fact that I now have a handicapped sticker when he lives here means I park up close everywhere. In the rain, this is a good thing.

My health got not-so-healthy this year. My new normal isn't so fun there. Whether Crohn's or a second autoimmune disease, my joints are swollen and they hurt like hell 24/7. But what remains . . . is an absolute clear eye about what's important. I don't HAVE the energy to waste on what isn't. And the rest falls away.

And it's not unlike writing. The longer I write, the more I realize that less is more and stripping a story down to its absolute barest beauty is hopefully what works. What remains . . . is the heart of the work. It's Story.

I also realized that What Remains is acquired wisdom. I think when you are younger, sometimes, losing things feels frantic. You just hold on tighter. In both writing AND life. But we all have slash-and-burn years, and all writers have that slash-and-burn manuscript that nearly kills you. And there is nothing like stepping in the middle of the still-smoldering earth, seeing what remains, and walking fearlessly forward. Writing fearlessly forward.

Have you ever had a slash-and-burn book? A time of life? And what happened on the other side of it?