Life's Rich Tapestry

Back in the day when things in my life were going awry I would jokingly say to myself as I shook my head, life's rich tapestry of bullshit.  It was a way for me to cope I suppose.  Laugh it off, lessen the importance.  Deal with the powerlessness.  I had heard about that word before recovery.  Mostly during my college days in reference to those who were struggling to become free; but I didn't understand it; at least not in its fuller implications as I do now.
This evening I watched Falsetto's from Lincoln Center,  It was one of those programs that our local public channel trots out for our viewing pleasure during pledge month; and as always it was interrupted, several times I might add.  (Thank the Goddess for the fast forward on my DVR!) 
I hadn't ever seen Falsetto's in its entirety.  In the past I tended to shy away from watching these types of performances as it hit that touchstone of loss I have deep within me.  Loss is still very real for me.  It has been something I have been struggling with for a long time, that feeling of being in a perpetual state of loss, the one that I can never seem to get out from under it.  My sponsor and I have been working on this issue for a while now and things have been shifting.  Watching Falsetto's though hit a nerve for me.  It brought it all back as if it was happening in real time; losing two former partners, countless friends.  Such senseless loss.  I have sometimes wondered if I process loss within the same neural pathways that I experience my PTSD.  They live on in my memory, my friends, as if they were here sitting next to me as I write.  As I was fast forwarding through the pledge breaks I glanced into the bedroom where on my dresser sits the ashes of both of my animal companions, Larry's sister Sylvia and my rescue boy, Crook.  I found myself crying about that and yearning to pick up my Iphone where I have videos of Crook stored.
They were trying to find truth in Falsetto's.  The truth of ones sexual orientation, of love, of friendship, and of what was taking his lover.  Finding truth is a painstakingly difficult process.  I can attest to that after eighteen years in recovery.  And that was what I am trying to always do; to find truth within my powerlessness.  The truth of why I am who I am.  Why I find myself where I happen to be.  Why I react the way I do.  I have always wanted to know the truth about losing my friends, former partners, all of whom I loved.  What was that thing that was taking them from me at such an astonishing rate?  Living a full and active life one day and dead the next.  My friend Stephen died quickly.  One day he was his partner Neil's caregiver, feeding him, bathing him, while he laid dying, three weeks later...  Mind numbing, even now.
I cried so many times during Falsetto's; in part because I remember what it was like to feel free in love.  To know that you could love and make love with purpose and truth.  Also in part because I knew what was coming, that silent unknown killer; and then when it did, because loss is still so real to me.  No one has ever offered to sit with me explaining why.  I still wonder what was the point of all that senseless death. 
Life's rich tapestry.....
What I have come to realize in a deeper way this evening is that life's rich tapestry is not only a cliche.  I have a tapestry, one that has been woven of each moment of my lives and that when another moment passes, a new thread is added.  Mine is made up of many many threads, some as delicate a fine gold, some of rich cotton, others of wool, and many of things I can not yet identify.  And that is the point, that I may not know ever know what each thread represents.  It is enough that my tapestry exists in and of itself.  I do know a great many of those threads.  They are my friends and loved ones, both living and dead.  There are those experiences that I hold within me, both life affirming and challenging.  My tapestry is an integral part of me, both known and unknown.  It is me.  I know too that at any time I can run my fingertips over the delicate unique designs and touch the one that is Steven's life, and the one that is Bryan's, and Patrick's.  That this one here, the beautifully stitched flower is Gram, and that sky blue one there is Dad; and the bright red cardinal, Mom.  And I know that there will be times when I am taken to the tapestry when I am unwilling.  Powerlessness is a part of my tapestry too, but not a major part any longer.  It has become just another part of a bigger whole.  The one that is all that I have been, Am and will Be.  My journey is that I accept what is.  That I embrace those threads of loss and longing and be thankful that they are an integral part of my life's tapestry.  Life happens on life's terms as they say in meetings.  We can rail against it or accept it.  It is the only life we have, until the next one comes along that this.