This blog started as my homage to my mother-in-law, Joanna Mitchell Maclaughlin.  She died in October of 2013.  When he eulogized her, the priest at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church mentioned that he never heard Joanna complain, neither in the years he knew her nor in her final illness.  I decided to take Joanna’s inspiration and turn it into a Year Without Complaining.

In the months following Joanna’s death, I also weaned myself off of prescription painkillers after forty-five years of depending on the pills to dull the chronic neurological and muscular-skeletal pain which plagues me.  I succeeded, taking my last Percoset on 31 December 2013.  The next day, I did my inaugural entry here.  On 13 February 2014, my husband announced that he was leaving me, about which I still have not openly blogged — nor shall I.

In June of that same year, my favorite curmudgeon, Jabez MacLaughlin, received his cancer diagnosis, which led to his death in November,  The following April, my third divorce received an electronic signature and came to me via the e-filing system to which lawyers in Missouri subscribe.  I again joined the ranks of the unmarried, which I had pledged never to do in my wedding vows four years earlier.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Most of it found its way to passages over the last three years, and the rest of it could be gleaned from between the lines.  Surely you’re over all this, you might be muttering to yourself.

I am and I am not, a state which prompts this entry.

Yesterday while Catherine Kenyon and I pulled weeds and bagged the vine clippings, I told her that I did not think that I would be able to trust anyone again.  By this, of course, I meant “a man”, as in, at the ripe old age of 61, should any man ever chance to glance in my direction, I would rebuff his overture.  Not that i expect this to happen; I think I wear that cynicism on my bodice like a scarlet letter.  But giving voice to this mild bitterness prompted a long trail of contemplation ending in a rueful laugh tendered to the evening air as I sat on my lovely porch last night.

It seems that with all my efforts to live a joyful life, I’ve created a shell that surrounds my heart.  I ask myself, What  use, joy, if it only lights a tiny, shuttered space?  Not that I’d invite another opportunity for romantic mishap; but letting go of this festered anger would surely open the path to a personal contentment with even my solitary existence.  And as so many poets before me have remarked more lyrically than I, even the light from a single candle casts out darkness if it shines unfettered.

Healing takes many forms.  I started this blog to keep myself honest as I learned not to complain.  I also wanted to invite others to reflect on how their lives became enmired in the bitter bile of discontent.  In the tradition of being a good example or a horrible warning, I’ve let you see every step forward, every step backward.  This weekend, I think I took two steps in a direction towards my personal peace.  I owe the effort to a three-month accumulation of weeds and Catherine Kenyon’s cheerful disposition.  Both have my gratitude.

It’s the third day of the forty-third month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.