After loss and change, the need to still feel useful remains

It’s been a couple of tough weeks around here. What with losing three good friends, storms knocking apart my greenhouse, being set back in the work I love and generally feeling that the world is conspiring to annoy me, I am relying on introspection to send me in a new direction.

I guess at this age one should realize they are hardly needed any more. For some of us, that’s a hard pill to swallow. In my lifetime, so far, I have joyfully been involved in at least five different careers, some singly and some combined with others, all contributing to satisfy my personal cost of living.

Raising a family was the first and most important. Along with that, I have taught writing, theater, English, physical education and Spanish, coached volleyball, swimming, tennis and track, directed more than 100 plays and musicals and written for newspapers and magazines since 1957. I am not bragging. That’s the kind of person I am, too interested in everything, wanting to lead and see good results.

When you lose your best friends who, at this point are living far away, it is particularly sad because you aren’t there to grieve with the family and other friends. The flowers you send and a couple of phone calls do not leave you with closure, and when you are told that there were only two from a large group of friends who attended the funeral, you realize how, in the long run, unimportant we all really are.

Teaching and coaching careers are pretty much over by the time you reach 80. I miss encouraging excitement in learning, satisfaction in a new day’s challenges and even the problems there to solve. I am sometimes reminded by family to “stop being a teacher, Mom. I’m a grown up now. I can think for myself.” It’s in the blood.

Theater requires driving home in the dark after long late nights, and patience. Directing styles and personnel change. Change is hard.

From childhood I knew I was going to be a writer; wrote my first short story in fourth grade and never stopped. Newspapers and magazines today are struggling with budget cuts, cutting back on news and stories. Television reigns supreme.

So, what can I do besides whine? There is the dog who needs more training. Friends don’t appreciate her gleeful welcomes with her feet on their shoulders, there is the garden, already time to plant peas, beets and garlic, there are watercolor lessons that are so much fun two hours are gone just as you sit down, there is editing for writing groups. I should have no complaints.

If you, like I, have been blessed with good health and love to work, you will understand these feelings. Otherwise, you may be perfectly happy right where you are. Perhaps it can all be summed up with a perfectly human need…to be needed.