Life Changes—and Everything Stays the Same

How long can a caterpillar live in its chrysalis? How long can a bear hibernate? How long can a cave dweller hide from the world before the natural laws of nature kick in and force us out into the bright light of day? Change happens and if we’re lucky, growth happens, evolution happens, life happens and we learn to adapt to our new surroundings.

I haven’t written since 2020 or talked about the pandemic. I felt the world’s pain and frustration but my family was lucky. We made it through the pandemic years unscathed, healthy, safe and sound. My life wasn’t significantly different when the world shut down. My husband continued to work and shop (I hate to shop!) I stayed home (nothing different there) and continued to struggle with my weight, dealing with it through diet and exercise, getting fit and then falling into deprivation mentality and eating whatever the hell I wanted. But in 2023, a daunting birthday was looming and I was determined to go into my 70s strong and resilient, flexible and fit.

To celebrate my birthday in September, my daughter and I spent a week in New Mexico, revisiting old haunts and luxuriating in the mineral waters of Ojo Caliente. It was fabulous! I felt renewed, refreshed, reinvigorated. I came home and burrowed into my comfy cave where I stayed until January, not writing, not painting, just being.

January 2024 began full of hope and wonder.

On January 3, we lost Max, our beautiful six-year-old golden retriever to cancer. It happened so fast! At four o’clock, he was a happy, bouncing, cat-chasing, healthy dog. At six, he refused his dinner, turning his head and ignoring both me and his bowl. I stayed close to him, slept on the couch next to him as he stretched out on the floor, my hand on his back, feeling for changes in his breath or heartbeat. By the next morning, he could barely walk. The vet at the animal hospital diagnosed a ruptured tumor. Max was bleeding internally. His X-rays showed multiple tumors, indicators of cancer. We had to let him go.

One week after Max, still reeling from the loss, I felt a cold coming on. Two weeks after Max, I found myself at the ER diagnosed with COVID. I’d missed the five day window for treatment—every day I’d told myself, “I’ll feel better tomorrow,” and every day I’d felt worse. A month later, I still feel weak and listless but the cough is gone and I can breathe comfortably again. 

So, my big plan to go into a new era of my life and a new year full of opportunity fell by the wayside as I struggled physically and emotionally just to stay alive. I am surviving day by day, which is an improvement from the dark days of surviving minute by minute. I remember giving up, surrendering to the illness, surrendering to whatever comes next. But I’m still here. 

My life is changing. I’ve stopped watching the news. I’ve rearranged my office and expanded my attic studio. I’m creating a space for me, the expansive, evolutionary me that I am becoming. I’ve decided if I’m going to live in the present minute by minute, day by day, then I will use those minutes and days to create the life that I am dreaming, the me that is a writer and a painter and a woman who is all she wants to be. I know I’ve said this all before but this time it must be different. Life changes—and everything stays the same, but different this time.

Happy February 2024!