A More Fitting Shrine

January 3, 2024

It does little good attempting to hold onto things and images as reminders from the past. I no longer live there and can only return there through memories. There are many good memories stored in my memory banks. There are also other memories that I prefer not to revisit.

The reality of it does generate a certain sense of sadness. Yes. The sadness still comes and goes but it is short lasting. That is part of the package. That which was once familiar can now only be looked upon as the context of the past. Clinging to the past, to both the calm and blustery contained in it, for me anyway, cannot be allowed to hold my “present” captive in its tenacious life-sucking tentacles.  

An old Chinese proverb says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

This line is pregnant with meaning and validly describes this journey through the hell of grief that I have, rather obviously, emerged from. Ah. The heat of that hell singed my feathers and scorched my skin. In fact, that hole was so deep and hot that I, for months, honestly despaired of life, wanted only to die, and did my best to drink myself to death. Then, after I managed to take a first step to move in some kind of forward direction, there came along several serious tailspins that caused me to nosedive and crash hard. Each of those crashes brought with them their own sets of emotional and physical ramifications.

The past is gone except in memory. 

There is no going back. There is only now. There is only doing now what is necessary to move forward … taking with me all the good in the fond memories of the past while remembering the lessons learned from those memories that I choose to no longer entertain. Both have, after all, been important tutors grooming me so I can keep carrying on in my life.  

I am doing precisely that … carrying on in my life.

Part of the carrying on, now that I am just David rather than the David in Shirli and David, is doing a major makeover on the inside of this little dwelling that I affectionately refer to as the shack beside the track. 

The goal in mind, where this project is concerned, is to create an environment that represents and reflects where I have arrived in this huge life-altering transition. While it has to be “mine”, there is also something of a necessity to keep a healthy balance between the past and the present. A certain integrity has to be maintained. What I am doing is nowhere close to what might be considered a purge. It is, in reality, more of a purification. Shirli’s touch and footprint will always be here. They will always be an indelible imprint on me as well. And rightly so.

There is another angle to this that I cannot help but to think about.

In one of our last conversations, shortly before I began administering the morphine and increased measures of the other medications, Shirli told me in pointed terms that she wanted me to move forward and not sit around in this little house wasting away.

I am finding it very interesting how every change, every letting go of “things” that hold particular sentimental values, every step in creating my own personal environment adds layers of peace and interior freedom to this new life that I am living. 

I think what this little shack is becoming is more of a fitting shrine to Shirli’s memory than anything I attempted to do by amassing shelves and countertops full of “Shirli Memorabilia”. But, at the same time, what I was doing at the time was the best I could possibly do in grappling with such an extremely difficult set of circumstances that had been levied against me. It was part of the process in my grieving the death of one so dear to me.