My Time With Judy

Some of us spend our lives looking for a mentor, someone who can teach us the most valuable lessons for our lives and then something happens and we realize that the teacher had been there all along. Everyday we encounter people and they generally come into our lives for a reason whether we understand that at the time or not.

Her name is Judy and her intelligence and wisdom sparkled in her eyes. She was a mother to six and a grandmother to thirteen. She led a normal life with ups and downs with her husband of around 50 years. Together they raised the large family she was so very proud of. She worked outside the home during a time and I am sure with such a big brood to take care of, things would have been pretty tough, but that glorious spirit never ever stopped shining.

Our dear close relative was diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year and when we saw her last, two months ago, she looked different, she was bedridden but her spirit was so strong; it was soaring as she lay in her bed and was organizing everyone around her to take care of things, to tie her loose ends, because, you see, her faith was solid and she had come to what was possibly the most peaceful time of her life. You see, she was practicing acceptance. She had come to terms with the inevitable and accepted it; she vowed to leave it all up to God now as she found herself in a situation neither she, nor anyone else could control. She did not want to reach the end of her time on earth fighting outcomes; instead she made the wise choice to enjoy every precious second she could muster with her loved ones as she sat up in her bed as best she could beaming with pride and she observed her husband, their children and grandchildren.

We live a long away from her and I was taken aback when I visited her, not by her appearance – I was prepared for the changes- but her attitude, her acquiescence.

The phone rang early in the morning and we knew that the beautiful light had gone out for sure. I looked at my husband, his eyes were red and he looked tired and old; he was neither of those things a few months ago and I know he will come back to his young self again; right now he is exhausted by his feelings. He has lost his mum. We found out that she had passed and that peaceful energy is gone, the smile, the blue determined eyes are closed. She is no longer breathing. We were unable to be there with her when her light went out and what a bright light it was!

This is about a life, a rich and full life. A life lived with integrity, pride and above all love. There are a lot of people touched by this tragedy and a lot of individuals grieving and reacting to the injustice of this disease.

Why? Why her? Why now? These are the questions that always comes to mind at times like these. I have been told it’s God’s will and everything happens for a reason and there is a basis for all of this, we as mere mortals are not expected to know what that is. I admit that I find that a little hard to acknowledge at present and for that I apologise.

The end can come for any of us at any time. It does not discriminate age, sex or gender. So is there no way of knowing if or when it is going to be our turn.

Judy was not a perfect person, nobody is, but her positivity was an all calming influence to anyone who knew her. You could not help but relax around her.

It is now that she had gone that I have come to realize what a precious teacher she was and I have regrets. Life is busy and we did not spend a great deal of time talking. Whenever we came together, which unfortunately was not often enough due to the distance between us, we would connect so well. We were dissimilar people but she truly was like a dear mother to me. I never told her any of this, even after her grim diagnosis. My reasons were based on denial on my part. I could not practice what she did so well, acceptance. Intellectually I knew what was happening to her, but I was paralysed by another part of me who would not come to terms with the situation and had me convinced that we would spend this Christmas with her, because such an essence could not possibly die; but it did, or at least has moved on and I so desperately need to trust that one day we will convene again and I will again experience her all soothing influence.

My time with Judy, while she was sick, taught me one of the most valuable life lessons, the only time you will ever a have is now. That’s it. Tomorrow will not be here until then and yesterday is nothing but a memory and that is exactly how she spent her last few weeks, revelling in the attention, enjoying being looked after. “I feel like a queen, sitting here in my bed, watching T.V. all day and look,” she said as she picked up a silver bell from the bedside table, “all I need to do is ring this and someone will come running to see what it is that I am needing, how lucky am I?"

Lucky… Judy considered herself lucky. It is not to say that it is fortunate to be bedbound and sick but it is the way we perceive situations in our lives that determine our happiness. It is about choosing how we see circumstances. Judy could have spent her last days miserably feeling sorry for herself and despising her condition and this would have prevented her from the beautiful precious time she had with her loved ones, memories made from love for all of us to treasure.

She became excited at the prospect of reuniting in the after life with a grandchild who died several years ago and she genuinely could not wait for the encounter. Judy’s faith was a precious gift.

Judy was an amazing person who worked hard at preparing her loved ones for a life without her. She gave away jewellery and clothing to whomever she chose so she could see the look on their face as they received the gift; she did not want family members to deal with all that, because she knew how much she was loved and how difficult it would be for her kin to go through all her things while in the depth of grief.

We caught a plane two days after she passed and upon our arrival to her house on the day of the funeral I was handed a box containing a few pieces of jewellery Judy had chosen for my daughter and I. She had everything so amazingly well thought out.

What can I do? What can I say? What should I be doing? The rug has been pulled out from under me and I am at a loss as to how to handle it. How do we put one foot in front of the other now?

This was a warm, courageous, wise and spiritual woman who will of course be dearly missed and who has left a significant legacy. I sincerely hope that by my life’s end I can put into practice even a small portion of her warmth, positivity and acceptance.

Thank you Judy, you have changed who I am,you have made me better and I love you.

R.I.P.

I Am Back!

I have not posted on my blog for a really long time. So much has happened and yet nothing has really changed. External factors such as illness, family issues and computer problems have prevented me from writing and, although my hassles are not over just yet I have been really missing my favourite pastime.


It all began with the news that a close relative’s gruelling chemotherapy sessions has failed and there is nothing else doctors can do, “It is up to God now,” they all said and for the first time in years I had to wonder why He wasn’t listening when I had been praying so hard.

I have been talking to God a lot lately asking for my loved one’s health to improve and for a sense of direction especially in regards to my writing and finding a way to increase our finances. My blog has been a lot of fun but unfortunately, it has not contributed towards the bills, so it has had to take a step back, which has not been helped by the fact that my desktop Pc is on its way to Pc Heaven; freezing programs and shutting down on me on a regular basis; it would usually happen while creating a new document which would not save with the uninvited shut down.

“I’ve got to keep writing!” I pleaded to my husband who reluctantly agreed to the purchase of a rather overpriced laptop. I was so excited; there wouldn’t be any reason for me not to come up with masterpieces now!

Well I am on to my third laptop in two weeks. The first one was a demo one, which we purchased with a couple of hundred dollars discount only to bring it home and discover scratches and dents all over it. We returned it, payed $250 extra and arrived home with a brand new model that had never been out of the box. I woke up the following day eager to share my thoughts and start typing.

Well, here I was, downloading, installing and organizing documents and all ready to begin my next piece of award winning literature when curiosity got the better of me and I pressed what I now know is called a media button, just to see where it would take me. It ended up being nowhere. “That’s strange,” I thought, “A button to no man’s land.” This led to the retrieval of the user’s guide which stated in plain English that the media button should definitely lead to an interesting DVD and CD entertainment program. Of course I would never experience the pleasure of “surround sound and clear sharp images” because I had no way of entering the program.

To cut a very long and stressful story short, 15 phone calls and 5 driver downloads later I had to do a system recovery on my computer which meant of course that everything would be deleted and I would have to basically start over again, It was time consuming but I was promised that my problem would be fixed and I would be off and running again. I stayed up until 12.45 in the morning re-installing all my data and just as I finished and was ready to go to bed; I wondered again how the button would go. I pressed it and, you guessed it, it didn’t work! So the next day I waited for some red tape document to be emailed to me so that I could obtain a new machine, which of course resulted in another system recovery! Aghh!! Hours of blood, sweat and lots of tears. The media button problem was eventually resolved only to be followed by backup issues and Internet blockages.

Bear in mind that I have been inconvenienced by another two computers in the past and I’m starting to believe that there really is such a thing as curse.

It is a lot more difficult to deal with life’s s annoyances when we are overtired, stressed and trying to cope with more than one crisis at a time.

I know that in the scheme of things my life is certainly not as tragic as some, although this particular time is a difficult one. We flew to the other side of the country to visit our sick relative who we may not see again. We returned home, my husband became unwell and had to take time off from a job he had been in for only a couple of weeks and, as I gingerly phoned his boss to inform him that his newest employee would not be coming in, I began to worry about our finances should my partner become unemployed, which of course fuelled my misery about not earning and providing for the household. I am so thankful that I have had time at home with my daughter where I could be present for every milestone but a big part of me misses the independence of earning my own money.

As things kept going amiss I became more and more depressed and began to feel more and more disillusioned about something I often write about and that is faith.

That is the problem right there, faith. It’s not that I do not believe; it’s that I began seeing God as someone who hates me. I would never dispute the fact there is a God, I know He exists all right; I’m just not so sure about how He feels about me, because all these situations in my life feel a lot like a slow torture, especially the computer nuisances, a bit like being pecked to death; you fix something and another thing goes wrong, you talk to a help desk in India somewhere and discuss your situation with someone who is very nice but you fail to understand each other’s accents and so it continues until you break and burst into uncontrollable sobbing tears much to the dismay of your family who are wondering, “Never knew she was a drama queen, heck, it’s only a computer, there are more serious things in life to get upset about..”

I am upset and distressed and it is not about the computer. It is about the fear of abandonment that comes when my prayers have not been answered for a long time, even when I change my requests. Where is God? Why is He doing this to me? Although I fear the uncertain future without our sick loved one I know that as a family we’ll pull together and we’ll get through this tragedy.

I find that at times when our plate is full with the big things it takes just one more problem even of a lesser nature like a broken PC to push us over the edge; it is not about lack of money or stress. It is about low self esteem and lack of faith.

The only thing to do, I think, is to put one foot in front of the other, always do my best, learn from mistakes, put them behind me and look for the good, because every situation will have some positive in it, although sometimes it is more difficult to see it.

I’m sure things will improve, they always do. In the meantime I have to work on rebuilding my relationship with the Universe so I can go on with the knowledge that I am not alone and everything that happens is for a reason.


I believe that, I really do.