52 card pick-up...

Louie L’Amour once wrote, “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” (Maggie, did a beautiful post incorporating these very words here.)


Do you remember learning the hard way what the card game "52 card pickup" really entailed?  You eagerly accept the chance to play a brand new to you game?  And then you watch, dumbfounded as the cards twirl to the ground in messy disarray, and you picking them up isn't such a fun game to play?  I just remember how obsessed I was in organizing the cards into suits to be sure I had found them all.  Something about cards and order have always married well in my head.

Dad's illness and passing this summer, were like a giant game of 52 card pickup.  After Dad's funeral, I remember how desperately I wanted to get back to my "normal."  The routine of a SAHM and the daily household activities I thought would be a solace somehow to a battered spirit.

But, I am finding lately, my cards won't go back into the deck in their proper order. I was invited to join a mail art group, and envisioned myself sitting at the table creating pieces of mail art to send the world over... except I haven't.  Instead of sitting still for very long, I've found myself wanting to be active, wanting to leave home, instead of stay home.

When the EMHE show came to town, I leapt at the opportunity.  I wanted to do, to be, to have, instead of contentedly watching it all from the sidelines.  Its not my "normal."  

Last weekend we kicked off our hockey season with a hockey social. In the past, I was happy to attend and socialize, but when the music came up and the lights went down, and the floor filled with everyone dancing, I was ready to leave. I'd left that chapter behind, it was finished.

But there I was this last Friday, and I am not saying it was a sight to behold, but I leapt onto the dance floor. I simply wanted to move, to be, to do. So I did. Fleeting images of a former party girl hovered about, as the 80's music I had grown up with, thumped through the floor.

Who is this girl? This woman? I recognize her, but have not been acquainted with her for some time. She grew into this mom who laid down her life and lived for her kids and felt blessed the entire time.  But lately, through this game of 52 pick up, she is seeing a new possibility. What if those cards aren't meant to go back into the deck in the same order?

She watched her oldest take his first communion.  His first step into growing his own relationship with God.  And she was so proud of how willingly he embraced this first stepping stone, this milestone. And this woman knows these steps towards his independence are just a beginning of more new steps towards a life outside of hers. His beginning.











And when her father's grave marker arrived, she went to see his grave now complete.   The grass will fill in over the top of it now and the marker will become scattered with leaves and twigs.  His story of his life on this earth is finished.  The end.  




And what she is realizing, reflecting upon, is this idea.  This is where she will begin.  As T.S. Eliot writes "...the end is where we start from."