Breathe, Just Breathe

One of the blessings of this winter break has been the time to work on projects around the house without interruption.  There are so many of these projects just waiting for me to embrace them.  I love that they are calling out to me to try and get my attention! "Pick me!"  "No, pick me!"  "Choose me!"  "I need your attention!"

It just so happens that the one most inspiring project has been the cleaning and keeping of my crafting room.  It's become a "catch all" over the last ten years.  Around the house when no one knew what to do with something, its new home became the crafting room.  One of the things that landed in there was my dad's bag of coloring books which got passed back and forth between him and my mom as they were in separate nursing homes the last two years of their lives as they both had extreme health issues that were incompatible with cohabitation.  My dad passed in 2017 and my mom passed a year ago on New Years Eve.  Touching the coloring books felt off limits.  I just couldn't look.  I couldn't handle thinking about how much time they spent in the last moments of their lives with the books and colored pencils.  It calmed them, passed their time when we couldn't be there.

Finally a few days ago, I was  clearing the crafting room, going through the stack of books (one by one)-this is how my one little word for 2020 found me.  I opened the book to this page as it was marked by two pencils left in the book.  My dad colored the picture a few months before he died.  My mom got the books from him but her dementia didn't allow for remembering that he had passed.  She wrote him a note on the back of the page...she loved him and missed him so much.

Just Breathe

Steve Senior, Always think outside the box and embrace opportunities that appear, wherever they might be.   Good job!

After reading the adoring message she wrote to him, I flipped back to the colored design and seeing it, burst into tears...ironically, not being able to breathe is what brought my dad's life to an end.

After my tears subsided, I reflected and felt like my parents were angels just then, talking to me, whispering a reminder to take things slowly, calmly.  Then, consider things but remember to breathe, just breathe...embracing opportunities when they appear!

So that is how my #OLW2020 found me and I chose Breathe...