Only you can make yourself happy

You have to make your own happiness.

This is a lesson that is reinforced daily after you lose a life partner. You learn it early in your grief journey - if you didn't learn it before then - and it hits you in the face often as you work at carrying on in your new life alone.

Isolation heightens the awareness that while there are others who influence your activities, actions or thoughts, you are still the only one in your body. You are responsible for the way you think, feel, and act. You are responsible for creating your own happiness.

I interviewed a fascinating man many years ago who spoke about living in a refugee camp. The physical conditions at the camp were best described as squalor. Still, he had been happy there ...  because he chose to work at being happy every single day.

I am working at that too.

This was a beautiful day in my neighborhood. Since physical activity boosts emotional wellness, I planned on taking a bike ride to distance-chat with a widow friend and compare notes on how we are each doing. She is struggling with this pandemic isolation on top of her grief at losing her husband - a concept that had struck me more times than I care to count during these past seven weeks - so we chatted and sent love by text messaging instead and agreed to connect again in a few days.

I then contacted another friend and rode my bicycle over for a distanced visit with her. I needed that connection, with a few laughs thrown in, to keep me saner and happier.

During my ride, I enjoyed the sunshine, the clouds, the scenery, and the moments of face-masked smiling and saying hello to passersby from a distance. (Here's another positive about wearing a face mask outside, aside from it keeping me safer - I won't have to wear as much sunscreen this summer!)

After I parked my bike at home, I set up a "Gravity Chair" I had purchased at the end of last summer and had not had the opportunity to use yet. I spent the next half hour sitting in that chair and staring at the fluffy clouds while listening to chirping birds. It was the most relaxed I'd felt in weeks. (Guess what I'll be doing a lot more of in the weeks to come!)

I then peered into my garden beds and was thrilled to see green shoots of Springtime!

I smiled. A lot.

When I finally went back inside my house, I saw a small, yet big surprise sitting on the kitchen counter.

A feather. 

A sign of love from my angels - my departed husband came to mind, of course.

This amazingly small yet perfect white feather was sitting on the counter in a house where there are no down-filled jackets or anything else containing feathers.

How did it get there?

Maybe it attached itself to my clothing during the bike ride or in my backyard and flew off my clothing as I turned the corner to enter the kitchen, landing perfectly still on the corner of the counter, where I could see it.

Or maybe not. The "how" doesn't really matter to me.

Because I am responsible for my own happiness, and I gratefully accept any help I can get from wherever I can get it.

And that feather is going to stay right where it is until it decides to go somewhere else to bring a moment of "happy" there.

I found a dime - an angel sign in Newfoundland

On a recent vacation in Newfoundland, I and my author friend Janice Howden visited the village of Woody Point, across the bay from where we were staying in Rocky Harbour. We listened to a local musician, looked in several gift shops, checked out some sites of the Writers at Woody Point events, enjoyed lunch and a visit to the library, then walked along the waterfront.

About half an hour before we had to be at the dock to catch the passenger ferry back to the village of Norris Point on our side of the bay, I said to Jan, "We should walk down this way. We haven't gone there yet." (I'd unintentionally caught on to Newfoundland sayings and dialect, in which everywhere you want to go is "down" even if it is actually north of you. 😊)

So we walked in the direction we had not yet been and I noticed a small pier made of rocks and such. It felt like a nice place to walk out onto and listen to the water lapping against the shore, so that's what I did, as did Jan.

On our way back to the street, I suggested we sit down on big rocks near the road to wait until the ferry came. Jan agreed, so we sat down and stared out at the bay.

For no reason at all, I looked down at my feet and saw a dime between my shoes. I knew it was an angel sign from my late husband, Al, to tell me that he was with me on this journey.

The  Bluenose ship on the dime was facing up - a ship Al and I saw in dry dock during a trip we took to Nova Scotia many years ago.

I couldn't believe my eyes, but yet I could. I had found coins in the strangest, most unusual and unexpected places many times since Al passed away in 2015, but this was the first coin I'd seen during this vacation.

I'd seen other signs of his presence on this trip. I saw 13 dragonflies fly in front of our vehicle one morning as I was driving beside a river. Thirteen was Al's favourite number. A single large dragonfly flew right in front of my face more than once on this trip in different locations - an unusual experience for anyone, but being "in my face" is in keeping with Al's strange sense of humour.

I'd been travelling for two weeks with my friend Janice. She is lovely, funny, smart, and kind, but she is not Al. There have been many times when I have missed him and even a couple times when my brain sent me a thought that "I need to tell Al about..." before it registered the fact that I cannot do that in the way I once did.

Another writer friend once told me that since her beau died, she believes that he sees everything that she sees. It is a comforting thought for her and it has helped me many times since she shared that idea with me. 

On this day in Woody Point, I know that Al sent me and my friend Janice a message. He was with us, sharing our vacation and the things we saw and did. It was a good moment. We smiled.

Christmas in February - an angel sign on a plane

On the last leg of my flight home from a recent vacation in Kauai, I was sitting in a plane at the airport in Calgary, AB. I closed my eyes and said to my dear departed husband, "Hey, babe, I'm coming home," which is weird because I feel his spirit with me wherever I go.

But I said it. Without questioning it or thinking too much about it.

Then I noticed that the background music playing on the airplane was Little Drummer Boy.

On February 28th. A Christmas song. Weird.

Weirder still is that Little Drummer Boy just might have been Al's favourite Christmas song. He especially loved pumming along as we sang this song with the ragtag group of carollers from our church.

Messages from heaven come in all sorts of ways at all variety of times. I've learned this from my daughter Lisa Driver's three books (Opening Up, Leap, and Boundaries and Bucket-filling) in reading and editing her writings about angel messages and connections to our departed loved ones.

I have learned not to doubt angel signs or question them. I have learned to accept them and be grateful that my departed loved ones want to show me they are with me.

Some angel signs are stranger than others. I have found some to be upsetting because I'd rather have my husband here than wherever he's hanging out these days. But there's nothing I can do about that except feel my feelings.

This particular angel sign made me shake my head in wonder and then smile. Christmas in February on a plane in Calgary. Strange.