Mae Schlick's Third Act

 Who Am I? Wedding ceremonies are rife with talk of "and the two shall become one flesh". However there is no expression that I know of for the reverse process that happens when you loose a spouse and become one again in your own right. Just as two becoming  one is not an instantaneous process neither is becoming whole again.  One of the most unexpected and difficult emotions of the past year has been how lost I have felt. Who was I? What did I want? What made me, not us, happy? I didn't know. And to a large extent I still don't know. Perhaps in part because of who Mark was dictated who I was for so many years. He was a pastor so I was a pastor's wife.    Not all but most jobs do not dictate who the wife is. The wife of a plumber, or factory worker, or cab driver is just a wife. Her identity is found in her job, or her children, or hobbies, but not in the job of her husband.  The job of pastor is different. I embraced being a pastor's wife and spent much of...

 The Middle of the Room It is impossible to predict which losses the absence of a spouse will cause to be felt most.  Ordinary ones like companionship and shared decision making are fairly obvious. Others are less so like motivation to cook for just yourself.  Most often we talk about loss in the same way that we believe it is disrespectful to speak ill of the dead. To speak of things gained somehow is inappropriate. There needs to be space to talk about both.   Mark was always a strider whereas I am a stroller. He walked briskly even in the house. (When he started shuffling through the house, then I knew that he was not well.) A consequence of this was that he didn't want any furniture in the middle of the room. Marriage is a compromise so without really realizing it, I stopped years ago trying to put anything in the middle of the room. The chairs, bookcases, even the dining room table were pushed dutiful against the walls.  In a smaller room that is okay....

A Year of Mourning                                                                                               April 6, 2021  Little did I know a little over a year ago when I wrote the previous blogs that my life was going to change dramatically in five days. Although written a year ago I just posted the English tea one. I was waiting to attach pictures with it but that never happened. On March 25, 2020 Mark was diagnosed with brain tumors and twelve days later he took his last breath here on earth. There was no way that I was going to continue on with my 63 adventures for my 63rd year of life. In the beginning it was all I could do to get out of bed, cook for myself, and get my dishes done. For better o...

Adventure Two- English Tea                                                       March 21, 2020 My oldest sister, for years, maybe all of her adult life has taken the time to brew her tea in a teapot. To the teapot on a fancy tray, she adds a pretty teacup, a pitcher of cream and a honey pot. In recent years when I have visited her in Nova Scotia, I have soaked in the calming quietness that this practice brings. A true pause in an otherwise busy day. A time to slow down and smell the roses, to really enjoy the beauty around you. We often took tea outside in her English Cottage Flower Garden, always my envy and dream. But not always. Sometimes we had tea inside by the fire or at the kitchen table, looking out at the trees beyond. In my heart I would say, "I need to do this for myself when I get home," but I never did. It was not for a lack of tea...