My Heart Keeps Breaking

My heart keeps breaking. A friend just died, not of Covid but of Parkinson's, and though we knew it was coming, and he and his wife had time to prepare, it is still a shock and will be an ongoing sadness. Some of us mourners will read some of his poems at his memorial service later this month. You can donate to the William Morgan Poetry Award here.

Another friend feels "done." It's not quite despair but a kind of retreat into "winter blues." He expresses himself here and encourages our response, in words or the wise use of our time.

My parents are tired of the brutal cold, though grateful for the recent sunshine, as am I. They are very old: as of January 15, the same age, 89, for about a month, till Dad turns 90 in March. They have lived miraculously healthy, productive, creative, lucky lives, right up until now. More gratitude! But the end of their lives has been shadowed by this pandemic, as you can imagine, since we are all under the same shadow. Like my friend Basel, above, feeling the winter blues, I am weary.

Meanwhile, I continue to rehearse Life Sucks, a sort of perfect play for our times, given its title, and we are in that stressful time moving toward production week and an opening in early February. I am in the "What was I thinking?" stage I encounter with every play, but all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, do doubt.

Truly, what was I thinking? But I ran this by a counselor helping me through the stress of caregiving, and she was all for an activity that was not caregiving...which makes perfect sense. And my hope now is to float everything I am feeling and balancing into anything my character can use. Because what else can I do? Oh, read! Escape to Greece! Mythical and modern Greece, in A Thing of Beauty, a travel book by Peter Fiennes. For my downtime on the couch, cuddling under the blue fleece.