My favorite Grateful Dead song (written by Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzman ) is playing right now – “The Wheel” –  “The wheel is turnin’ and you can’t slow down, you can’t let go and you can’t hold on, you can’t go back and you can’t stand still, if the thunder don’t get you then the lightnin’ will.”

The last few months certainly feel like I’ve been hit by both thunder AND lightning. The move, losing Terri, my job situation suddenly up in the air along with everything else has me trying to rearrange all the electrons in my body back to their former state. The darned ol’ wheel keeps turning though, and there is no going back to that state, ever.  I am forever changed by all of it.  The question is, how will I be rearranged?

Some things remain familiar.  The new job at the skilled nursing facility is just fine – nice people, I know how to do the work with my eyes closed.  I do noticed that after working in home health for so long I have a better sense of what  realistic therapy goals may be for this patient population.  I envision them at home – will they be able to go back to independent living? Will they need a caregiver 24/7 or just four hours a day? – and can better judge now what the expected outcome will be.  This in itself is a sign of experience and maturity that I did not have before.

Today I spent setting up my sewing room in our new home.  It is a bright room, like all the rooms in this house, and although I look across the street to another house instead of a fabulous view, it is just fine, cheap lace curtains softening the scene.  It is ocean overcast today, grey and humid – I can tell I’m near the ocean.  So can my hair.  Frizz city.  I sorted all my thread, started sewing the scrubs tops I am making for work, my computer iTunes keeping me company, when the Grateful Dead came on with my favorite song.  So philosophical.

In the corner on the bookcase that belonged to my Dad’s mother sits an 8 x 10 photo of my sewing partner in crime for the last ten years or so.  It is my favorite photo of Terri.  Al took it one evening when he need a photo of her for his iPhone – when she called her photo would come up.  It is very candid – she’s wearing a casual white three-quarter sleeve cotton tee, her cross necklace on, her hair tied back, her black bangs framing her smiling Irish eyes and face.  We were sewing that night when Al stopped by.  So now she is still here in my sewing room, proud that I have all but finished my scrubs.  She knows I will find comfort at my sewing machine as I always have.  It was more fun with her, but it is still comfort food for my soul.  The fabric, the colors and textures of the thread, ironing seams into perfection.  All’s right with the world when I’m in this little world.

I thought perhaps I would be tremendously sad to start sewing again, but thankfully that is not the case.  It feels wonderful and Terri would want no less for me and would be seriously irritated if I lingered in sorrow for too long in this room.   I will grow old now, the photo of Terri will not.  She will always be as I remembered her that night.  It’s left to me to hold on to the wheel until it’s my turn to let go for good.  The song ends this way:

“Small wheel turning by the fire and rod
Big wheel turning by the grace of God
Every time that wheel turns round
Bound to cover just a little more ground”