Thursday Thoughts…

Here’s a thought…I am so much more regular when I’ve got a theme going or a challenge. Are you like that? Can you be regular and diligent without a deadline looming? Even if it is a passion? I mean I love to write and take pictures and I like to write poetry too but of late it has forsaken me. I say this because I never seem to be able to think up a poem on my own…as in, when something, anything really, affects me deeply (whether at a conscious or sub-conscious level), I let it stew for a while…ruminate in my soul as it were and see if something emerges. It used to be that a poem would often emerge…scattered words and thoughts that would wander into my consciousness and coalesce gently into an idea and birth an emotion that felt ‘right deep down in my gut’. That’s when I would sit down and put pen to paper and eventually they would flow and make sense.

These days however that happens less and less frequently. I always seem to be ‘doing’ and never taking time out to just ‘be still’. And although I’m doing things I love to do, I crave the stillness that births my poetry and so this morning when a thought came into my head, uncalled for, sudden and persistent, I felt fulfilled…like when you find that elusive piece of the puzzle, that puts everything in the right perspective? Just like that 🙂 It’s just a couple of lines but it helped me understand what’s been going on underneath all that ‘doing’. My family is ageing…everyone I love is growing older, and age brings with it a unique set of circumstance and issues – most of which have appear to have no solutions. And while for the most part I can cope, lately I think the worry & concern that’s never far below the surface must have increased ever so slightly tipping the scales, so that it finally ran over into my consciousness. Well that’s what I think anyway.

And for some reason the first thought that then popped into my head was of this picture of a leaf in it’s final stages that I took ages ago. It’s a favourite of mine…because of the intricate patterns that a bug has created, delicate and fragile like Life itself. And so it is with Dementia…as Time eats away some parts of the brain and spares others, creating patterns that change the very essence of who we thought we once were. So relentless, so merciless, so final. It’s hard to watch the people who were pillars of your world fade away and slowly disappear, while you watch on helpless. It is hard and hurtful and tremendously scary, coz through the constant concern for their well-being, there’s a little anxious voice that whispers, “Will this happen to me too? What if this happens to me?” and “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” in a never-ending loop.

And because it is so scary, we push it deep down and cover it with all the ‘stuff’ of Life, until we feel insulated enough to go about our routine as normally as we can. And we get pretty good at the cover-up, so that we begin to believe that things will indeed be alright, until Wham! One day – a thought emerges…

P. S. I’ve decided to make ‘Thursday Thoughts’ into a weekly thing…just one more attempt at being regular at writing and a place where I can lighten my load by sharing it with you guys! And don’t worry…not every Thursday will be dark & heavy 😛 It’s not in my nature to stay that way long! What do you think? I’m game if you are.