Mishaps are like knives, they either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle." That is a quote from James Russell Lowell. He was an abolitionist during the 19th century, who also wrote poetry. I thought it was fitting to use a quote from him today for two reasons.
First, I am teaching my daughter about the civil war at the moment, and I thought that it was amusing that I was using a quote from an abolitionist poet. I look the person up after I find a quote I like, so I did not know he was an abolitionist or a poet until after the fact. My daughter writes poems nearly every day, so the coincidence amused me! Secondly, I usually just look up quotes on the internet. Today, I saw a Dictionary of Quotations sitting on my credenza and I decided to browse through it a little bit. Inside, was a slip of paper with quotes written on it in my wife's handwriting. It was like a little note from the past. The above quote was one of the ones she had written down. It's now just over two years since her death (shows you how often I clean my office!) and I noticed that many of the quotes she had written down seem to relate to either me or her. So, how you may ask do the quotes pertain? Well, the above quote for instance, reminds me of the event that was the beginning of the end of our marriage. The trouble began when my wife got a DWI. We initially tried to use the event to serve us. I negotiated with the judge to have my wife put into an in-patient program to get her help with her alcoholism. She wouldn't go on her own, but I knew she would go if it would keep her out of jail. The judge agreed and she was placed in a 28-day in-patient program at Phoenix House in Keene. Unfortunately, my wife grabbed that same "knife" by the blade. Instead of using that time to get a jump on getting sober, on the day of her release from the program, she left the grounds and went out and bought alcohol and came back to the recovery home to wait for me to pick her up. When I brought her home, she had the alcohol and continued to get drunk. She was pregnant at the time, with our second child, so it was a dangerous situation. When she got drunk, she miss-stepped, fell, and broke her ankle. She was close to full term and the doctors decided that it would be safest to deliver the baby two weeks premature to protect her from anymore exposure to alcohol. After the delivery, things only got worse with more episodes, all of which put our children at risk. Each of these "mishaps" were also grabbed by the blade by my wife. The cuts were deep, and eventually led to her death. I really don't want to get into all of the things that happened. Let's just say that addiction is a travesty and that it can ruin more lives than just the life of the person suffering the addiction. With that said, when a mishap happens to you, try to find a way to have it serve you. Not every mishap will be a life or death situation. Lose a job? Find a better one! Break up with your girlfriend? Find a better one. A lot of things happen to us in life. Try to make anything that happens have a positive result. It's easy to let a bad thing happen and not get a lesson from it. Look for the lesson! It's there! My wife used to say, we are all put on this earth for a reason and that there is a reason for what happens to us. I fail to see the reason my wife had to die so young. I have learned from it though. Many lessons. Some, I wish I could forget, but I do get some benefit from the others. I'll finish this post with another quote that was on my wife's little note from the past. "Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It puts out the little, and it kindles the great." Roger de Bussy Robutin The final one I will mention here is: "It is difficulties that show what men are." I wonder what my difficulties show me to be in my wife's eyes.
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