Thursday, June 9, 2011

Not bad eh

I'm quite pleased with myself. Thanks to the company of friends, I've had one long (for me - maybe an hour?) walk through a bush reserve on Sunday; all the way from Courtenay Place back through town on Wednesday (don't laugh); and along the waterfront today. The weather has had a lot to do with it - still remarkably good for June.
         One of the many advantages of living where I do is that the wonderful Marsden Books is so close. On Tuesday evening I went there to hear sisters Atka Reid and Hana Schofield talk about their book on the war in Bosnia, Goodbye Sarajevo. (New Zealand is such a small place - turns out that Atka is married to a good friend's husband's cousin... )
          Something Atka said struck me as applying very well to my own situation, even though what she and her family went through is of course incomparably more harrowing. She said that during the siege of Sarajevo, "we just had to get on and work out some structure for our life, based on the things we could control".
           I thought, yes, that's exactly what I have to do too. I couldn't control Harvey's becoming ill and then dying and not being here, and I can't entirely control the sadness that wells up in me because of that. I just have to accept those things as a given. But I can control pretty much everything else in my daily life, and that does give me plenty of scope for working out how to live.


2 comments:

  1. Congratulations! I'm impressed.

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  2. It seems so hard to learn this Life lesson ... that sometimes (too many times for some) there are situations/events/conditions beyond our control and we need the wisdom or tenacity or creativity to figure out how to choose aspects of living 'around'/'alongside' them. For situations like yours, it seems this takes real courage (not the he-man variety, but that form that is born of acceptance even in the face of deep grief).

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