When one must be ill, for one does not chose it, the illness choses the victim, one is forced to stop. The disease owns you, and mine reminds of that in a million little ways every day. It lacerates the darkest hollows of my mind. It causes the stirring up of memories that are so bad that I recall them in their most perverse permutations designed to cause me the most pain. Then, it does not stop, and I relive them again and again. All this because of one illness – and an illness I am assured is temporary.
The passage of time affects us, and we would like to think for the better. Like reading a great classic as a child, then reading it thirty years later as an adult, the change in your perspective changes the character of the story for you completely. It allows you to have insight into characters and events that perhaps changes your entire perception of them, for you may have the necessary wisdom to understand their qualities which you were blind to heretofore. Two favorite novels of mine that I experienced this phenomenon pronouncedly with are Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhavago, and the other is Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. An illness is like that, too. It forces you to stop and evaluate your own life over time. In so doing, your life’s story is a very different one.
One day I may reexamine my last marriage, another day I may reexamine my decision to create Blyss Kennels. On another day, I may reevaluate my love for Opal, and then on another day yet, I may reexamine the devastating break in relations between my mother and me. Not to be unmentioned, I now must accept the final breakdown in relations with my sister. For, in many cases, prior, I have erred from the advantageous perspective of wisdom I have gained today from my own sufferings imparted by my illness. Must wisdom only be found after the long passage of time and much suffering, like characters in novels and movies?
I do not regret my beloved Blyss borzoi, although loving them has broken my heart. When I lost Opal I destroyed my mental and physical health grieving for her in the present and for decade into the future. But there was more to it than that. I needed Opal because I had lost so much of everything else, in particular, my peace of mind, and presence of love in my life from people who were important to me. I do not believe I was so very wrong. My response was appropriate.
Then, The Horror: losing Bob so young and unexpectedly in 2011. I had to be there for him, and fortunately I was. however, I was very angry at him then for failing me as a husband for so many years. But the memory of our great love at the inception of our relationship never faded, I simply wondered where it was. By dying prematurely, we would never have the chance to try to get it back – and I believe we would have! Still, my anger smoldered for his mistakes and cruelties toward me. I was a zombie and felt no normal state of mourning for this man for whom, in other times, I would have died rather than live without. In truth, when he died, I hated him and did not grieve.
It was only weeks into my own illness, and I admit the coward that I am compared to him, that I realized I was wrong to feel as detached as I did when he died. Yet life is hard, and with it, so is marriage. A great deal of confusion about feelings at different points in two lives lived together can arise. Then I watched him fight his own battle with infinite dignity, unlike my cowardly drivel. I understand better today his grand qualities, and his larger-than-life love for his sons and me, an eternal love that never died. Why he could not express it I shall never know. It was tragic, tragedy of the highest order that he could never say the words I needed to hear to be happy. However, he never could, he never would and he never did. Yet, now, today, three years after he is gone, I am moved with overwhelming love for this great man. Bob gave me everything meaningful of himself for being his girlfriend and wife, spanning a period of twenty years together. Most of all, he allowed us to “live boldly”, to make Blyss Kennels a reality, and to live with our blessed borzoi!
Therefore, it is shocking and surprising to find, amidst the horrors of an illness, some mote of beauty can be found in memories. Even sad memories can be changed into happy ones, like magic over time if you let them.