It is Time

by Cynthia M. Brown

It is the holiday season again. I just finished that horrible year of firsts. My mother died last November so we did the first holidays without her; first Mother’s day without her; first birthday without her; first anniversary of her death. It was a hard year. I think it is like that for most people. Everything feels not really new but foreign or somehow out of balance. I don’t know that this year will be much different. There are still times when the absence of my father still feels out of balance somehow, I guess that is part of the reason I recently changed jobs. Well, I have a serious nut and peanut allergy which forced me to get serious about making a change. I had too many exposures and got very sick after one exposure. A job opportunity hit my inbox and I took it. It is a very new chapter for me. The work is very familiar. I am back in the food industry. I do some food preparation but mostly it is customer service. I supervise the closing shift in a retail food establishment. What is new for me is that for the first time since I was 19 years old, I am not the boss. I have only three responsibilities: I make sure guests are taken care of. I make sure the food is taken care of. I make sure the place is clean and buttoned down at close.

It is an odd place to be for me. I am not in charge. I do not hire or fire. I do not make schedules or do inventory. The reduction in my stress has been incalculable. I sleep better. I am just much more relaxed in every way. I have more time for my home life which includes going back to school for my masters which has been a dream of mine for decades. My sister says life is full of seasons. My season for leadership, at least in the form I have known for almost 40 years is over. This is a new time; a new season; a new beginning.

Missing my mother, the void created by her death; the lack of balance it has created has made it necessary

for me to create a new way of looking at my life. Time is very fleeting. Both of my parents died at 80. I will be 60 very soon. I have never thought of my work as a career with a capital “C”. I have always wanted to work to live but I reflect now that in many ways, the nature of the work I did actually meant I was living to work, 60-80 plus hours each week. Now, I work 40 hours a week and I am paid for every minute I am there. My time has value to my company and, ironically, it has made me value it more.

I am looking at my life and discarding those habits of a stress filled, time starved existence. I am having my home redone. I have a new roof; new windows ordered; bathrooms and the kitchen are being updated. I have painted rooms and created a study and music studio. Now, I have time for those things. I even have time to study and complete my masters degree. One of my great loves is teaching and now as I near retirement, I will have time to teach a few classes at a local community college.

Every time I think about making a commitment now, I have a new habit. I ask myself how this commitment is of value to me and my family, not just those asking the commitment of me. I try to be conscious of how these decisions affect my own life. I do not want to be selfish or lacking in compassion. I want to be more self-compassionate and more mindful of my own needs, and those of my family. I ask myself, what is my time worth. How will this commitment affect my home, my health, my existing commitments.

As this holiday season approaches, I am so very aware of time; how fleeting; how precious. It is one thing we can never make up. I want to make the most of it. I want to create balance in my life. I ponder the gifts I give this year and keep coming back to the same idea. I want to be here for my family. I want to share time and experiences with those I love. For the first time in nearly 40 years I do not have to ask forgiveness for working on holidays, on days off and late into the night. That is a true gift to me and those I care most about.

I wish you a season of peace, balance and precious time to be with those you cherish. It is Spring. Since my mother died, everything reminds me of her. She loved spring. She was an avid gardener, self-taught and extremely gifted in creating outdoor spaces of beauty. Everywhere, I see her and hear her wit and wisdom. I am older now and I have come to appreciate something about her I simply took for granted my whole life.

I wrote in this column shortly after her death that she always chose joy. She did. But, it was more than that. My mother so loved life that she found the joy Enlightenment – Incredibly Easy! in everything. I have been looking at pictures of her. She was always smiling or laughing. Even in the last three months of her life when she was in agony and was frightened that she might not have any remedies left to preserve her life, she was always smiling and laughing. I have pictures of her in a hospital bed with tubes everywhere, smiling with her nurses and doctors just because they indulged her and allowed a photo to be taken. I have a photo of her eating a Many paths lead people along the long road to enlightenment – when one overcomes the difficulties of negativity in the world of duality. At the conclusion of the journey participants experience nothing but line Sound (& Color) Healing School. Jill presents new ways of approaching health and everyday issues using the benefits of sound and color! Free music & School of Sound Healing at www.jillswingsoflight.com chocolate glazed donut with her granddaughter in a hospital bed and she is smiling from ear to ear. There are pictures of her baking cookies with her great grandson and even though she was almost blind, she still slowly mixed her ingredients and helped him drop them onto the pan, laughing when she missed

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