Your Story – Relighting Us

You are a story. Your departed was a story. I am a story. We are all stories. We are all stories about individual and unique people. Put together all those unique people make up the story of mankind. You know, the Bible. We are all a part of that story. It is the story of us. We are responsible for the part we have been, are, and will be. What we do about this responsibility is what makes our own unique story. We can choose our topics, our actions, our remedies, and all the rest of the ingredients of our story.

We need to find those ingredients that serve us best. Where are they? Who has them? How do we get them? The answers lie in great part in what we choose to do about finding them. Do we let events control us, or do we control them?

How do we learn about control?

We listen. We read. We express and get feedback. We need to find light to see our way. We share with supporters our learnings. We have the tools. We need the will and the incentive (one of Nancy Reagan’s favorite incentive expressions was: “Just do it!”). You can find your control ability when you find yourself. You will then know precisely what you should be doing to make yourself better.

In my story, my partner, supplied those missing parts of my behavior that made me a whole person. A person in control of where I was going. She lighted the way. I needed her light to see. When it went out I could no longer see what I needed to see. In effect, I became lost. I needed to see again. I needed to see in order to find and restore those ingredients I needed to become whole again – to relight my path.

Here is where our memories come in. Over the 62 years of our partnership, I was in places and doing things with her that her light allowed me to see. It guided me. It helped me. I needed that lighting again.

In was actually in my memories all along, but the problem was, how to restore it?

I revisited those memories. I always took someone close like a family member or a good friend of ours if you can. As a witness, they could then reflect some of that same light I needed. That reflection would be sufficient for me to see again, to see well enough to find my way again, and to restore some of my lost balance.

To complete the process I would have to bring that light back into the world of now. Bring it back in substance. Substance that supplies the missing ingredients needed.

Writing on a page in effect provides substance to those revisited memories. The print on paper is with us in the here and the now. It cannot restore the full light of the departed person, but it is sufficient to support a very good physical representation. Through this sharing and writing, your story can continue in a more balanced way. Your witness, then, becomes your surrogate supporter. In this case, replacing your departed loved one. That supporter also shares in the same relighting. You can then say about each other that this shared experience has relighted us.

Example Story: