We are sitting here listening to some soft slow music on the radio. The days now just run into each other one right after the other. Our life seems suspended in space. The suspense of where this Pandemic is going and what it is going to do to us and society is immense, and it creates fear that one has to tamp down occasionally so it won’t take root snd grown out of control!

Because there is so much time on our hands, there is much time to think. I find myself comparing what is going on now to other times long ago when people felt helpless and powerless. Shelter in place may save our bodies, but what happens to our minds? In every other kind of war throughout history, people took action, and the action taken brings along with it a kind of adrenalin which pumps throughout our nervous system helping us to counteract our fear. Staying in place and laying low brings no adrenaline rush with it, with the exception of the quickened heart rate that occurs when fear comes to visit. We just exist in a suspension of the life we knew. But, we understand and believe the scientists when they say this is our best contribution. So we obey and pray that this will bring a blessing to our society!

The virus is bad…really bad, and we know we may or may not survive it. Shelter in place just prolongs our turn at being infected, and we hope as time passes something will come along that will save us..a therapeutic drug or a miracle vaccine.

We are not the first society to go through something like this and we won’t be the last. Somehow, knowing others have survived pandemics makes us feel somewhat placated, but we also know that there were a great many who did not make it through those times.

So, with that in mind, we began to go through our safe, checking our wills, sorting and discarding papers that no longer apply to our life now. I was setting aside and marking different jewelry pieces for our daughter that I have that come from her Great grandmother, Grandmother, and Mother. There are only a couple of pieces that have any real value. The rest have more sentimental value than monetary value. But, their value is in tracing the history of the women in our family. There is a very old lapel watch in a round Elgin watch case made of metal and glass. There is also a cameo brooch that my Mother gave her Mother as a gift. I am leaving her all my rings with notes about when they were purchased and received and the occasion that brought them about. I have a beautiful set of amber topaz earrings, ring and necklace that my Mother bought while living in Venezuela and they are our daughters birthstone, so there is that little story about how she was chosen to receive these. I have a beautiful bracelet that my Mother was gifted from her best friend. This has its history written with it as well. Our daughter has no children, so I am requesting that when it is the right time that she please pass these items down to our only two grandchildren, both girls.

As I am going through the motions, I realize I am packing for our next move. We have moved many times due to my husbands career, and so there has been a lot of packing and unpacking for those moves. We have lived in 10 homes in our married life. It got to the point where I dreamed and longed to just stay in one place for a long, long time. My desire came to fruition. We built our last home around 23 years ago and I have been so happy to have been able to sink my roots in and to become a part of a community.

Now, I am preparing for our final move that requires no unpacking. Well, at least no unpacking that will include any effort on our part. Our next stop is heaven, and as has oft been said, shrouds have NO pockets.

I have been very, very blessed in this life in so many ways. As I look around our last stop here on earth, taking in our beautiful home and grounds, I recognize that nothing really belongs to me anyway. Everything we own is simply an earthly blessing, leant to us to use and enjoy, but not to keep. When we leave this earth, we may “regift” the blessings, but those recipients won’t be able to keep them either. They will change hands once again as the recipients move on to the same place we have gone to where we will meet and greet them joyfully, unburdened by material goods!

I do not know how long we have ahead of us but I am prepared. There is only one thing we can take with us and it is non-material! What we bring with us is love. All the love we received on this earth and all the love we gave to others is always with us. No need to pack it up because all love given and received becomes a part of us and stays with us always.

Tomorrow is another day. I have more things to do in regards to our eventual departure, most important being the notes of encouragement we plan to leave behind. Our final farewell, if you will. If it so happens that this is not our time, well, then the work will put us ahead of schedule in the game of closing the final chapter, the epilogue!

Who knows what lies ahead here on earth? I spent today in the past…almost akin to a life review, where I reread old report cards of mine that my Mother had saved, our marriage certificate, our birth certificates, our children’s birth certificates, old mortgages borrowed and satisfied as I revisited the many homes we have owned . Then I reread our wills. If anything is a reminder that life eternal is not in THIS life, one only has to read ones own will.

But, as our one son always likes to say…”It’s all good, Mom, it’s all good!” For the most part he is correct. Everything is as it should be. We are born. We live. We die! We live again which is the greatest of all gifts. “It’s all good!” Yes, yes it is! All we have is right here and right now. I hope I get another day to finish up my farewell to our kids. If not, well, what is done will be understood by them too!

Jjb/April 16/2020