Letting go

Many years ago I was introduced to a rather distant family member. Even then, he seemed old, in the sense that he was from the ‘old world’; from a time when people were civil in all circumstances. He was incredibly gracious; welcoming and kind; immovable, but in a nice way. His standards of behaviour were high at all times, and yet he was always calm and always quiet. I liked him immediately.

Over the years, we shared a good number of meals. He and his wife would sometimes cook us a wonderful roast meal with a fruit sponge for dessert. Do any of you remember the ‘Sunday roast’? He was ‘mine host’ at such events, and he just had to know that you were happy in every way.

“Would you care for another glass of wine, my dear? Or, I could offer you a port? Let me tell you what I have.”

They would come to our little house for a meal sometimes, and when we lived overseas, they even made the trek out to the country to visit us there. In more recent years, we’ve had them here for family celebrations.

He’s old now, very old, and he is not long for this earth. He’s in a nursing home, and if we don’t go and visit him very soon, we will have left our run too late, and that would be a great shame.

J was a prisoner of war in World War 11. He was a pilot and a feisty lad, and he tried to steal a Japanese aeroplane. And, he almost did, but, not quite. They locked him in solitary confinement in an extremely confined space for many months. He kept his marbles by throwing a button into the air and trying to find it. That’s J. Never give up! He didn’t tell me that story. That’s not his style. I heard it third hand from another family member who managed to get it out of him somehow.

When the going gets tough and I need to dig deep to find my courage, I think about J and that button. I think about the way he lived his life, with a deep integrity and honesty and a sense of what is right. I think the world of him and I guess my husband and I made a strong connection over the years, for it was to many family members’ chagrin that he had chosen us to be on the ‘high table’ with him at his special birthday affair, ahead of those closer to him.

His son is unable to see what I see in J. Unfortunately, he sees him as judgemental; that he didn’t care for his choices in life. He sees the standards as rigid and he considers him uncompromising. I think it is a shame. All his life he has possessed noble qualities. He has been honourable and true. He had much to pass on.

Nobody’s perfect. I may well have my rose-coloured glasses on when I see J. After all, I never lived with him. But these old guys, that have lived through wars, and endured horrors and seen it all, they just keep keeping on. They have backbone.

Some days I feel a bit like J in that confined space, when he did whatever he could to endure through to the next day. The hardest thing about life can be, not knowing when a difficulty will end. You can almost touch what you want, but not quite.

I received a little piece of advice this morning via email from someone who knew that I was having a hard time. He wrote,

“I encourage you to take the risk of seeing the joy in your life and letting the rest go.”

J would agree with that. See the joy. Forgive. Let it go.

I entered the D/s arena to learn just that; to learn to let go, to forgive, to embrace the joy in my life.

Learning about yourself, the good and the bad, is not easy, but we, in this ‘space’ as they like to call it, have the courage to go on that path of exploration.
Like J, we are doing our best to live with courage and honour; to ‘let go’. I think that really says something very positive about us all.