It's A Wonderful Life

You know you're getting old when the only meal you cook and eat is breakfast.  Wonder why that is?  Perhaps it's the memories of starting a new day?  Smells of the childhood kitchen, feeling safe and hopeful as you grabbed the brown paper lunch bag full of homemade egg salad sandwiches?  Or simply because it only takes one fry pan, one plate and very little skill? 


In any case, depression or fear of change (same saddle different horse) reflects the alone-ness in retirement.
Retired from work, contact, purpose, stimulus, challenges....NOT an attractive living condition when alone.
Odd thing is that I've lived alone for almost 8 years without giving it a thought; within the last year I have
had the pleasure (born of financial necessity) of a roommate.  A former employee, neither of us close outside of the workplace, who turned out to be a close friend.  Now her reality has changed with serious family problems and she's gone.  Suddenly I feel the emptiness of having someone to make scrambled eggs for at
1 in the morning, discuss her work day and bad mouth each others rival hockey teams (a Canadian sport of its own in Ontario).  Soon I will be living somewhere else, perhaps in the Canadian Tire parking lot in The Beast (a non-running 1980 Dodge recreation van), plugged into my ex's garage (helping with the grandchildren) or ?????  
All this leads to the title of this blog:  It's a Wonderful Life, a classic Capra film starring Jimmy Stewart.  It's one of those movies I watch when I'm confused as to why I'm still taking up oxygen.  It's a movie which
reminds me that I may have actually had a positive influence during my lifetime on others; and of course that I still may have in the future.  For all I know I may not have completed what I was born to do here! 
I don't need to watch the movie again to remind me how precious and important everyone's life is to this big thing called life; I just have to remind myself that it's a gift I cannot return without being truly ungrateful. 
So in true Canadian style I phone for what pick up hockey for women meets tomorrow, get $10 from the ATM, pack my hockey bag, laugh at myself, count my friends & toes and get back into My Wonderful Life!