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Strenuous

I meet a retired friend monthly for breakfast. He asked me this morning how I was doing and I said the first thing that came to my mind: it's been a strenuous month.

A long-term friend passed away at the beginning of March, someone who had been part of my created family, godmother to my daughter. On Saturday we had the memorial for her; I did a reading which was a comfort as it gave me something to focus on but the experience wiped me for the weekend. I also sang in a concert Sunday, further draining me but also giving me some strength as performing always seems to do.

More and more funerals, more and more conversations about loved ones with dementia. As my breakfast companion noted, we used to go to more baptisms than funerals but the balance shifted somewhere along the way.

In my youth when I had the knees I was born with I ran long-distance for myself, never as part of a school team but steadily from my teenage years through my twenties. I was never fast but I did keep going. That has been my modus operandi for as long as I can remember and I still seem to keep going, despite a large number of loved ones whose cares are on my mind each day.


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