My Other Life

My Other Life.

My other life is calm. My other life has no emergencies; no lurching from crisis to crisis and no feelings of impending doom for my family.

In my other life I arise serenely at about six am (I love mornings) and take my cup of tea out on to the verandah and have it. Then I have another one and maybe another one.

In my other life I can get up at three am and turn on my computer and write solid for hours about anything and everything and for as long as I like.

I can hop on a train or plane and visit my daughters and spend at least a week with them. I can do the rounds of all my sisters and go back home and see the old places and people.

In my other life I can visit my Mother and Father’s graves.

In my other life I can go to the movies and then go shopping and I can spend hours just looking.

I can read book after book uninterrupted and hang as many pictures on the walls and not even measure it all up beforehand.

In my other life I could have the white Kombi Van painted the very same green as our old Kombi. I miss the old van and maybe I could find out where the old van is.

In my other life… what life would that be? To have all that “wished for” time, I think it would be too lonely. There would be no one for me to barge in on, already talking… no one to show funny pictures to, no one to interrupt and to read the good bits out of books to.

Who would make me angry? Who would make me cry? Who would make me laugh? Who would look at me with such honesty and such devastating lack of tact and tell me that I don’t hear as well as I used to?

There is no other life. I am exactly where I am meant to be for what I need to learn and the Divine Plan is working out exactly as it should. Why would I, a fallible human being, imagine that I know and understand more than the force of Creation and Love which created the Universe, from the smallest atom to the largest heavenly body?

Why should I worry when all I have to do is to be who I am; knowing myself and knowing there can never be my other life?

This is my life and it is a good life, the right life and the only life in which I am meant to be.

Therese Mackay   12/11/05