My Road to Peace

I have a breakthrough after my meltdown on August 15, 2013.  I have been doing a lot of thinking.  In the evening, it seems all I do is think.  I never used to have this much time to think.  I hope I don't deplete the limited supply of brain cells.  I still need them to last me for a few more years.

I have been paving the Road to Peace.  The road to peace, apparently, is made by walking.

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If a friend has an important job interview, or a child has a big test, or an significant event that is about to happen, we would bestow encouragements like "as long as you do your best, that's all it matters.  Do the best you know how."  

We should truly mean it if we say, "Do your best.  That's all it matters."  There is nothing more one can do but to do his best.  

If I can wholly and peacefully accept "the best was done," that would be my Road to Peace.  There is simply nothing more to be done.  To feel peaceful is everything. 

We all struggle with and adjust to Eric's absence, and need to cope with our grief in unique ways.  The road to individual peace is individual acceptance that the best had been done.  The six million dollars question remains:  Did he?  Did he try his best?  Did he do the best he knew how? 

I was the one who lay next to him every night for nearly a decade and a half, whose hand he held.  I was the one who shared his deepest fear.  His worst anguish.  His greatest pain.  I was the one who stayed home with him the first day hell broke loose and flooded our home. I was the one who witnessed spinal tap, who fought tears, injections after injections. I was the one who pleaded with the useless gods when three Oxycodones wouldn't do shit in the middle of the night.  I was the one who faced Sisypyhean efforts and disappointments with him, over, and over, and over.  I was the ONLY one who knew, who comprehended, who witnessed how he exercised relentlessly every day, to search for a prognosis, to seek relief, for solutions; for ways to live a life HE deemed worthy of living.  I was the one who knew:  this man never gave up.  Devastated as I am, these are facts.  

Other than Eric, if anyone should truly know whether my husband tried his absolute best, it is I.  It is I, his wife, Daisy Gilman.

And I knew, unequivocally, he did his absolute best.  That's enough for me.  
  

Road trip to NE Washington, 2010
Eric enjoying One Pot Gourmet

If I had said, "Do your best. That's all it matters. There is nothing more you need to do but to do your very best" I ought to truly mean it.  That's integrity.  

Accepting that statement at a time it counts most takes incredible strength and courage.

I am paving my Road to Peace. I am ahead of my schedule. WAY ahead.  I will be kind to myself, and pat myself on the back.  

Well done, Daisy.