The Only Thing that Heals the (happy or sad) Heart is Time

When we moved from our old cottage to our new one, less than one year ago, I literally thought our hearts might break. I was so incredibly worried about my husband especially that I felt I may have done wrong in encouraging us to leave. His sadness, loneliness and depression over this move seemed more than I could handle. We felt hopeless, distraught and truly sad. Our bank accounts were emptied out. We felt like we had lost total control.

What was incredibly crazy is that we were surrounded by beauty, by luxury, by liberty of choice, by the empowerment of a choice that we had made mostly together nonetheless. We moved to a cottage that by most people’s standards would have been a dream.

We could only see happiness through other people's eyes as they visited the new cottage. And bless those friends who decided to make a big old fashioned fuss over it all. They saved our souls  during those visits. We got to see-what others saw. We got to feel happy through them.

Sitting here as I am now, in front of our newly installed fireplace, my husband and daughter in the kitchen happily cooking a delicious meal as I write this, music blaring, and a martini in my husband’s happy hand….. we are feeling all very different  now. We feel truly and utterly over the moon with happiness.

The only things between the sad time and this happy one are……time. We needed to experience all the stages and feel all of the things to get us here. There was  simply no way to skip those phases-we needed to go through them.

At the time of this transition-I felt tremendous guilt and also alientation  mostly because I knew most around us could not at all understand this blanket of sadness around us that enveloped us every moment for so long. It of course seemed like such a happy time-since we had bought this gorgeous new cottage!  What could we possibly have to complain about?? Most could not understand. We did not understand. I felt so guilty for complaining about….heaven really. Regretting what we had free will to choose and chose to reject.

There is a reason that moving is right up there on the list of lives biggest stresses along with death and divorce. I remember as a kid using this “Stress List” for a project in school and even as young as 14 yrs old questioning why moving would be such a big deal. I mean clearly death is. But moving???

Trust me, even now I would take moving every day of the week over death. And moving over divorce too. And I would take divorce over death. But I still really comprehend why moving is so stressful and sad and has its place on that list. I understand now that on that list are not only negative things ,positive things have their place in stress too.

For us we left a family cottage that had been in my husband’s family for generations. He built the newly renovated winterized version with his own two hands; he poured love into the place. He grew up there, his mother loved him there, and he ate bagels and made pies there every weekend. He spent summers there lifting up his girl neighbor’s shirt! He knew every corner of that lake far better than he knew his job or his own body. He lived breathed that place for so darn long.

Once I joined the scene 17 yrs ago-we raised our babies there. Our kid’s lives were there since the moment they came into this world. We lived there with our first newborn during the Quebec ice storm. We made pizzas there. We fought there, we made up there, and we grew up together there as adults and parents. We almost lost each other there more than once. My husband almost lost his life there when a tree fell down inches away from him and crashed the sailboat as opposed to his skull there. We ate many, many creamed filled donuts there.

When we left there, my Protector left people too. He experienced it like death in many ways as that is where he felt he left his mother and father who had died years before. He left their memories there all alone. He divorced his ties in many ways it felt to the life he had known, to his sister and her family who still stayed there. He buried a part of himself there along with his dad’s ponytail and our kid’s umbilical cords in the garden trees. He was the leaver. He left it all.

He left it all.. for the potential of something better. The promise of a future that was always meant to be ours. He left it for the unknown-for the deep black hole of ambiguity.  He left it on an intellectual basis but was tied to it emotionally. He left good for good. He left something he loved in hope that he would love the next one. I imagine it felt like divorce to him in a lot of ways. I can understand why.

As we sit here now. I cannot even begin to tell you how truly happy and blessed we feel now at Trent.  We love the leaves here. We love the long walks. We know how to work the jacuzzi and we understand how the water well works. We know  how to turn on the TV and we know where we store our flashlights. We have a place for our slippers and a name for every room. Our antique oven is with is. His Dad’s chair is in our livingroom. We have a round table to eat at now again.

Our perfect candle is lit at every meal-becase everyone knows that cottage food just tastes better when you have that candle on.  

Our fireplace is installed and my daughter wears a chef hat to cook. We have time to cook and to watch a movie and we know people’s names around here. We finally finished unpacking and have lamps to read with behind our chairs.
We get people to write on corks sweet messages when they drink wine at our house and we have a special calendar to circle the next day we look forward to back up at Trent. We have homemade  rocks for goodness sakes to hold napkins down-that were made for us. We have special personalized pillows and frames and beautiful quotes hanging on our walls. We have traditons there.

We have love again.

We love our beds and the view of the water. Water has found its way back into our hearts. Merci Beaucoup!

So like I said, I would take moving any day over death….but I am also grateful to have gone though this experience to know that the grieving process is a long one whether that be for death, for divorce, for moving or for anything really that involves a sense of loss, sadness and creates stress for you. Sometimes grieving is for things that are sad (like death) and sometimes they are things that end up happy (like us moving).

What this experience has taught me is to believe that the only way to get from where we were then.. to where we are now-is to simply let the days between those two places happen and to allow ourselves to feel them. It actually doesn’t matter who understands or does not understand. It’s only ourselves that we have control over. And when it feels like things are spinning out of control we have to trust that we will end up in the driver’s seat again with clear vision at some point again in the future.

We will always get happiness back somehow. We can always claim it.  We covet it, need it and deserve it so it always finds its way back if we want it bad enough.

If we want happiness –we will find it. In this family we won’t sit around waiting for it to find us that is for sure.

We are desperately, hopelessly in love with Trent. Phew. What a relief. Music to my ears. Glad I did not give up on us. Glad I waited and survived.

Onto the next big project for us! Hmmmm..what shall it be?