OK I will admit it, I am sad.

Monday, May 16th, 2026 Mo/> My topic today is being sad. I almost never admit that I feel sad. At the doctor's office we fill out this lomg chart on a clipboard about our food habits, our emotional state and I would NEVER say that I feel sad. it does ask if we (old people, patients) are depressed, and in fact, I am NOT depressed. But every day, sometimes more than once a day, I am sad and even cry. When I say 'cry' what I mean is a tide wells up of emotional ache that begins in my chest, around my heart, and surges up to my head and my eyes fill with tears and sometimes the tears spill out down my cheeks and I have to get a tissue to dry them. This is painful, not a good feeling. I think the old term 'heart sick' is an apt one because I think this melancholy is both inherited and part of my heart disease.

I have a variety of practices to combat this sadness each day, my morning latte' from Dunkin Donuts, and an activity, writing in this blog, distracting myelf with the e-mail news feed which often kicks up an idea that I follow and that leads me ut of the woods. Writing this blog is a major palliative.

Today my usual dog walking neighbor, John Krauss, was not available so I walked Uma down by the river at Proprietor's Park. I smelled the river on a little breeze and it brought back memories of Gloria Dei Old Swedes Church and my early childhood when we went to church there early on Sunday mornings and I smelled the River.

Trips into the past are often one of the prompts to my sadness because I am always saying goodbye to the world now, goodbye to my wonderful life. My heart is, in fact, sick. I have two kinds of heart disease and I am 80, so truly my days are numbered. Love prompts the sadness too because these are things I loved and because I am one of the fortunate ones in that I have loved myself and my life. So, I am NOT depressed, being sad is something different.

Mom was not sad, so I inherited this from my father. Dad was sad but not articulate. He never verbalized what was going on with him, except once when he said he couldn't do anything anymore. As always, I made my constant mistake of trying to 'fix' this, correct it, by telling him he could still sit on the porch and enjoy the view of the mountains and the peace and beauty of an afternoon. He just looked at me and the look represented that I didn't understand at all what he was feeling or trying to say. He was correct. I didn't validate his feelings, I wanted him to find a better way.

We talked about this in church on Sunday, trying to fix things rather than sitting quietly with them and validating the feelings.

My sorrow is a little different. Not having been that much of an action oriented person in the first place, I can cope with my loss of vitality and mobility. My sorrow comes from saying goodbye to so many things I have loved, like the river, like church on Sunday at Gloria Dei Old Swedes Church, Mom and Dad, the men I loved in my youth, about whom I had written yesterday. That no doubt promted a great tide of sorrow, thinking about those men I loved who are dead, like Rob Sweetgall. He was a good, genle and sweet man and he is gone, like my best childhood friend Chris Gilbreath (later Borjet). Like my grandmothers.

After the walk along the river today, I drove along the workers' Mill Houses built in 1840 to house the factory workers who labored daily in the nearby mill which was still standing in the 1980's when I went to work in Gloucester City at the library. I thought about the mill workers getting up and making breakfast and walkng down the road to another day in the factory. The old fashioned alley between the back yards reminded me of the alley behindmy Grandmom Lyon's house. Everything reminds me of the past.

I am not sad anymore, the walk and the coffee and the writing has switched my train onto another track and I am going to close now and have some breakfast.

My sorrow passes like a morning fog for which I am grateful. The porch also cheers me up and when I sat there for a few minutes after the walk and I looked at my trees and listened to the birds singing I felt FORTUNATE, which is another emotion I experience every day, gratitutde for my immense good fortune! I have been given such a wonderful life filled with treasure.

Happy Trails!

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