Who doesn’t have unfinished business?
There are monies owed and never collected. There are grudges, though we wish we could shed them. There are injustices we can name, document, dissect until we are out of breath and still we cannot defeat them. There are plans shelved for the machinery of a family unit.
There are those who depart and we remain; they leave us by design, they disappoint us in their nonchalance, they simply walk away and do not look back.
There are those who are taken, though we feel they have abandoned us.
Is it really just another day?
* * *
Sorrow is a malingerer. It rolls around inside the body, poisons our nights of dreaming.
Can women ever walk away from sadness?
* * *
I woke to a pervasive sense of unfinished business, to a bed that is a battlefield of covers and papers, to swatting at lethargy like an irritating insect.
I woke to a running list of losses, to the press and persistence of their intimacy and their grandeur. The loss of innocence is among them.
I would choose the child’s refuge if I could: sheets drawn loosely over my face, knees tucked to my chest, head bowed, my body, rocking.
* * *
Get up, I say. The sun is shining. After all, unfinished business is the proof of an ambitious palette, a canvas amply filled, a composition still to savor.
I will brew a second pot of coffee. I will turn to my checklists. I will set aside my writing and my silence. I will focus on the children. Grateful for sounds in the sky.
Some times I have the desire to ensure that every corner is folded and each piece of tape is fixed just so… everything wrapped nicely and tied with a beautiful and perfect bow. Life doesn’t work like that though – and part of the challenge is accepting it and moving on – and sometimes I even find that what I thought was unfinished was actually something left on hold to be finished farther along the path!
“Get up, I say. The sun is shining. After all, unfinished business is the proof of an ambitious palette, a canvas amply filled, a composition still to savor.”
I loved reading this and your lines I have quoted are my favorite part of your post. Having unfinished business is a reminder that we have goals that are still incomplete.
When you think about it, life itself is unfinished business. We don’t know what is yet to be done, do we?