Writing Reality

This day twenty-three years ago. Tom Brunetto (since passed) and I met at the Ridgewood Duck Pond at 4:15am.  We made a pact a couple weeks leading up to this day. We both had topped off at running 36 miles in a day.  So, we promised each other we would do a 40 miler together.  Tom overdressed, as well he forgot his shorts. He was wearing long running pants.  The temperatures soared passed eighty degrees. And for March in New Jersey that is thirty degrees higher than either one of us were accustomed to. I think it hit a blistering eighty-eight degrees.   The sky was clear blue. The last eight miles Tom was beside himself.   He said he couldn't finish. Instead of my getting upset, I bribed him for the last eight miles to get us to our goal of a forty mile run.  I had no energy left and still had work at 11am till 8:45pm that day.  The only rest I'd get was a shower, and a drive at 3:45pm to a doctors office for four more pain patients to ...

  The Higher Source Everyday, no matter what I am constantly reminded that there is a higher Source. The decisions I am left to make as a mere human being, are not easy. Even with all my time in on this earth, a decision can be difficult. Even, if I’ve already made one, no one would not know I have some doubt. Sure, I can make it look easy and do it fast. I have done that and shocked, and stunned people with what appears to be my own ability to decide. My husband once remarked, “…You take whatever sticks on the wall.” Then he’d shake his head in wonderment.   Yes, truly there is little delay in my decision-making. I go with my gut, or rather at times on a wing and a prayer.   There are things I just know; but then they too change as do the Northeast winds of March. And I find myself once again knowing that there are only certain controls in my grasp in this life, here now. At an early age I learned to play horror shows in my mind as to prepare for what else, horror....

  I am the Widow… It’s not that it hits you all at once. I gather it depends on many things. The relationship. Your flaws. Their flaws, the ones you admit to witnessing. The ones they remind you in yours.   The histories, or the lack thereof. Upon their death you are automatically transforming into a butterfly. That’s if you choose to be transformed to something anew. Or perhaps, something you wanted to be. Yet it couldn’t arrive, because of the extension of the bond of the partnership of marriage.   It’s not always marriage, it’s the relationship. The depth, the width, the length and the breadth of it. As you pass each day, each week, each month, ‘it’ changes. ‘It’, is the perspective of what it was to be in a relationship nearly forty years and married over thirty-six years. One that’s a commitment on both sides. It’s mutual. You stayed together. Sometimes you wondered why, when anyone else would’ve left, that your partner stayed. Staying through the toughest of tim...

  The Unexpected… As I lay in bed this morning, missing the sun’s transformation into the day. I breathed, then I thought to myself. This thought arriving once again, ‘Is it the longer you live the more likely you think you won’t die? Or is it per chance we are so living busily, that we don’t reckon with death? Is it that those of us, most of us have not known eternal illness of some sort? Or, is it our arrogance and self-imposed importance that we mustn’t ever die?’ Every day I awaken, I reckon with death. Or so it has seemed more frequently than not in the last thirty years. Or perhaps only increased over the last thirty. Yet the disturbance of peace, has been the reckoning with the inevitable I’ve had since I can remember. You don’t have to be sick to have it. You just have to recognize that you are alive, and time is ticking. And that you’re here for a reason and you’d better make certain you don’t waste it. At least, that is if you’re me, and you know you do know better. ...

  Where are we now…? Today marks a year that we here in New Jersey became profoundly affected by a pandemic.   We had the beginning of a form of lockdown, state-wide.   I remembered thinking, ‘Can I go outside, social distancing as I run alone? Is that allowed?’   There were multiple questions I had back then. Usually what I do is go to the source. Government documents, New England Journal of Medicine and the like that would affect my family, my clients, my friends, my business in general, and our society. I had a few things going for me though. First, because my husband had Stage 4 Pancreatic (tumor) cancer; I was already cleaning our bathrooms and kitchen sinks and the like three to four times a day. Next, since his diagnosis in late November, I’d stopped my jujitsu training to be there for he and our family members. I kept my training to running outdoors, doing weight work, bag work and the like at home.   I was never a gym-person anyway.   When it c...

  Watching As I’ve stood back or sat in the back of an auditorium or playground, to purposely be removed from notice. I now over the past year have remained doing the same. Only now, from an even further distance from people. I’m the observer, I guess. I can say quite frankly, I find people to be as they always have been, Cruel. Cruel to one another, regardless of relationships or the lack the thereof.   I make excuses in my mind/soul so I can stomach being around them. That is when I need to be around them. People. What the past year has demonstrated rather loudly to my soul is, what are people thinking? Or rather, what are they not-thinking. The collage of experiences I’ve had are quite numerous. I know of no one who has experienced all of my predicaments. I noticed the self-importance of one over others. And for what?   Nothing really. Ego, perhaps.   Just another day in the jungle. The difference is, I know what I’ve lived for.   And I know now why I...