The Dilemmas We Face in Life

Courtesy Krista O’Reilly-Dvvi-Digui

As we are packing up to make hopefully the last major move of our lives,
I look back and forward at the dilemmas we face in life, sometimes that we have to
decide very quickly, And sometimes we have to ponder over whether we are making
the right decision or not.

Strangely, as many symbolic things have happened in this last month or so,
I had an e-mail from the only other man I was ever married to in this lifetime.
We were young, and it was during turbulent times in the U.S.  People were disgusted
with the government, and a branch of people decided to start buying up all the gold
silver, something like what is happening now.

My husband, who was a practicing architect at the time, got hooked up with some
people who were buying and selling gold and silver, along with the Hunt brothers
and many others.  Worse still, he decided with some other good friends that if he
did not pay taxes, it would help to make a difference in the government and
perhaps get them to stop their foolishness.

How naive people were in those days (unlike people today - really???).  I was
working at a full-time job and attending my last year in a university.  I was not
in agreement with this decision.  I was going to to continue to pay my taxes. 
When you play the game of monopoly, you cannot play by the rules of checkers.  It
became more and more stressful.  Our home, which backed up on an alley, and
was surrounded by bushes all around, was highly susceptible for someone to
come in and rob and perhaps even kill my husband.  Plus there was the worry
from the government itself.  They were locking up protestors everywhere, 
and the ones they were going after first were those doing it and teaching
others how to do it.

Finally, under the stress and concern that I would come home and find him gone,
and perhaps be taken to jail as an accessory myself, I told him that if he would not
quilt doing this, I would have to leave.  I simply could not take it any longer. It was
a sad day after I had graduated that I packed up what I could of just my own
things and drove away to start a new life and perhaps adventure, one what was free
of rebellion.

I would travel back and forth for the next some years to an anthropological/
archaeological adventure with a well-known anthropologist who had discovered
 some very talented potters down in the interior who had literally re-invented
the craft of creating clay pots from just finding pot-shards. My own degree was in
archaeology, so it was right up my alley.  I took turns helping with running my friend's
economic and free market publishing business and editing a book he was in process
of publishing of his grandfather's work and filling book orders, getting the
book published majorly old school in hot type, and other aspects of the business
while he made trips down and back to Mexico.

It was a good adventure, but I never forgot my friendship and love of my former architect
friend and husband. Suddenly, just a few days ago, I received a notice from him that he was
on his own once again (after what I thought was two additional marriages), but he
had called to let me know his last wife, whom he had loved, had died back in January of Huntington's Disease, a horrible inherited disease that affects all the motor parts
of the brain, unlike Dementia or Alzheimer's, and may or may not be inherited.

It is so strange to look back on all the dilemmas I have dealt with in this life, and
the choices I have made related to them.  I have a significant other now, some years
my junior (yes, I guess I am a cougar, but what is age but numbers?).  I took him into
my home and heart when he got injured on the job in this senior mobile home park,
and have been his caregiver/advocate (unpaid as a volunteer) since perhaps 2016 or
17, and we live a very simple lifestyle.  He became my caregiver for a short time
when I had breast cancer surgery, so it was a good trade.  Today we are in process
of moving to another state with less issues or so we think, and hopefully where
I can finally get the care he needs so much since he has two failed neck surgeries,
and is now partly disabled.

Perhaps life is always intended to be full of dilemmas and perhaps that was
the symbol of the lives of Adam and Eve.  I thought about the man, Jesus,
bearing that cross, and how it too  represents the life and death dilemmas
we will face in our times. What dilemmas do you face today?