IS ANYBODY THERE? DOES ANYBODY CARE?

Somehow, in the past few years, I lost myself.  I've done it before and it usually turns out to be a blessing because of the spiritual and emotional growth I experience finding myself again.  In 1983, a year after my husband died, I went to BYU for the summer term and walked the streets of Provo for hours every Sunday.  I wondered to myself, "What am I looking for?" and I realized I was looking for me.  Somehow, in 20 years of marriage, I lost myself to Carmon's dream. It took months and years before I felt like Kathleen.

I've done the same thing again - lost myself.  Again, my life has been about someone or something else - my sister, my friend, my school.  When I moved away from my mountain home in 2016, I essentially lost all of those things and I lost myself in the bargain.

What has made it more complicated is that health problems, physical and emotional, have brought on an accelerated aging which makes it hard for me to do what I did almost forty years ago.  I can't walk for hours - or drive - or work.  I spent the past two years almost housebound. I had brain surgery last August to address the physical issues, but it didn't heal them or correct them.  I have lost my independence and I don't think I'm getting it back anytime short of heaven.

I don't know what to do next.  When Carmon died in August 1982, I got "stuck." Where he's concerned, he is still 42 years old and I'm 37.   I'm now 76 and my body and mind know it. 

I'm stuck in 2016 and grieving.  How do I find me again when the me I am now cannot be the me I was then?

I am giving my sorrow words.  Is anybody there? Does anybody care?