5.24.26
I woke up the other morning feeling odd. Well, odd is not really an apt description, maybe I should use the words indifferent, apathetic, listless, dumpy or plain old lazy. Usually, as soon as I open my eyes, I am awake. Not being one as a rule to enter the new day slowly and gently, I tend to wake up, get up and get cracking on with my day. These days however, I sometimes find myself slipping from my old routine into a one that is, shall we say, a more gentle awakening. Yet the other morning was different. It felt odd – there I am, back to using that simple little word again!
The night had been a rough one, as many since my dearest left me have been, and that, I am sure, contributed to my feeling of grogginess and lethargy. Waking up in the middle of the night sobbing uncontrollably does tend to leave one rather depleted the next morning! As I lay there for a while trying to analyze why I felt the way I did, it dawned on me what was wrong. I was overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed. A funny little word. If one looks it up in a dictionary one finds it described as being “overpowered”, “overcome” even “defeated”. Then in some more modern dictionaries – yes, I did actually look it up – it will discuss how one is “emotionally paralyzed”, in a “mental fog” and needing a “brain dump”. Brain Dump? Now that is a new one! However, I think I will just put it down to plain old “overload”. For you see, I have been here before.
I have always led a very busy life. My father’s adage, well beaten into me, was one of “work first and play later”. I am not one who can easily just sit and read a book or dilly dally about when I know there are things waiting to be done. Never have and probably never will be someone like that. Although I will admit, in the past few years with Darrell’s help, I did come to see how important it was to slow down a bit. Taking the time to sit with him on the front porch in the early mornings, sipping our tea and coffee and just listening to the world waking up around us. Taking a break in the hot afternoon to retire to the shade at the side of the house, sipping iced tea and watching the hummingbirds busy at the feeder hanging from the eaves right in front of us. Yes, with my dearest’s help, I learned to slow down and savour these precious moments.
Now here I was, finding myself on overload again. Last night was once again a hard one. Bonnie dog came and rested her head on my pillow and whined, knowing I was sad. She comforted me then lay down on the rug next to the bed as I drifted back off to sleep. This morning, I allowed myself to wake gently. With the morning sun warming my face and illuminating Darrell’s in the picture frame by the bed, I lay there for a while. At first, I felt that feeling of overload creeping up on me so instead of trying to ignore it, to bury it inside me where it would niggle and nag until it burst out again, I let it come to the forefront. I accepted it.
Some folk may be thinking that since I am now on my own, the pressure of running a farm, tending to the animals and the necessary spring work around the place, the planting of the garden etcetera, etcetera, has just become too much for me. Let me hasten to explain that so much of what I am doing now is what I have always done. For so many years when my dearest was working over in Bend, making the money that allowed us to build up our place and life here on the farm, I was here alone, doing just what I am doing now.
After he retired from his electrical contracting business and we worked together around the place, I was still the main farmer and livestock mistress. His support of all the things I wanted to do, the raising of pigs, the custom butchering of game animals, our own butchering too, he fully supported. Yes, he often felt I tended to take on too much, but all he wanted was for me to be happy. So, when I occasionally bit off more than I could chew, such as having four elk hanging in the cooler to process for customers and three sows about to farrow and felt more than a little overwhelmed, he was there for me. That is the difference I miss. When the chores seemed to pile up and threaten to engulf me, I always had my dearest to turn to.
With patience he would let me rant and moan and groan and then gently suggest I give some things up. Let them go. Listing out all that I loved to do and did not really want to give up, we would end up laughing together and I would feel better.
This morning as I sit here with my second cup of tea by my side, Bonnie dozing on the settee and the sun streaming over the fields where the beef cows contentedly graze, that odd feeling of being overwhelmed has left me. Is my list of things to get done still as long? Oh, indeed it is. Are there chores waiting for me outside? Absolutely. Am I fretting about them? No, I am not! For you see, I can hear my dearest and see him smiling as reaches for my hand and reminds me, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time my love, one bite at a time.”
