I had a wonderful evening last night with my brother and sister-in-law. They had invited me to join them for dinner. The food was delicious, the view from their patio lovely, the evening weather beautiful, the company perfect. After loitering long enough to enjoy dessert and visit some more, I drove home.

Before that lovely dinner, I hadn’t written one word of today’s blog post. Worse yet, I had accepted a request to be the substitute organist at church in two days. As of yesterday, I could not even play through the liturgy and hymns without error on my piano, let alone get through prelude and postlude music. It’s been too long since I have played regularly, and music I once could play adequately, I can’t play, even badly, now. It seems totally overwhelming to me. I would love to duck that obligation, but about one Sunday a month, they need a substitute organist.

This morning, the alarm woke me. I discovered a message from a life long friend who is seriously ill and in the hospital. It was a copy of her morning’s devotional. The theme of that devotional was being overwhelmed, stopping all attempts to fix it on our own, and instead turn it over to God. I read that devotional and just dissolved into tears. That was a couple hours ago. Since then, I brought the kleenex box into my home office.

Tears seem a regular visitor this year. Just getting through each day sometimes seems a monumental task. It is not because I am unacquainted with grief. I believe I have been sufficiently schooled in it. I failed at my first marriage, which I have grieved for decades. I’ve lived through the deaths of both of my parents. But then, last March, my best friend, dearest love, and my last husband died. Since his death, things that never bothered me before, seem menacing now. I have become afraid to sleep. To get any sleep at all, I must stay up until I can barely keep my eyes open, usually after midnight. My dining room and kitchen tables are still covered in papers, bills, and letters pertaining to my husband’s death. Multiple times each week, I tackle the filing or shredding those papers. Inevitably, it seems, I get overwhelmed. I am still not finished.

Most everywhere I turn, I find that I am again overwhelmed at some point in each day. Nothing in my life prepared me for the death of Ron. Not even when he was so sick, and when I knew death was soon to come. Some days I feel as if I can barely move. I say a prayer and dissolve, once more, into tears.