The healing balm of night

Fortunately, the sun came out this week after several days of cold, wintry weather. A gray and wet Thanksgiving passed in a depressing haze. Just me and Mom. Holidays can be very difficult. November and December’s reduced light and short days have accentuated my depression. Everyone seems so “normal” and happy when you’re in a funk. This has been coming on gradually for several months after I retired. A lot of stressful things happened over the summer and fall. Continued anxiety about caregiving and what is best for my mother have upset any sense of equilibrium I had hoped to establish in my early foray into the world of retirement. I never really expected this to happen. I thought things would be much different, that I’d be coping better, and yet, of course, we can never know what’s coming after major life changes.

I went back to the doctor for some new strategies for dealing with the depression. Counselling session tomorrow. I’m being proactive, and I am above all a hopeful person. I’ve been through this before but I’ve never tackled it head on like this. So that’s a real positive. I seemed to be managing things ok before I retired, but then everything gradually seemed to change and slide downhill.

The last couple of weeks we’ve had a brief and intense flare up of late Autumn color, which was beautiful to behold but fleeting. I’m trying to get out and take a walk every day and take photos when I can. I read my devotions every morning, I pray and I try, despite the depression, to have faith and trust that I will be feeling significantly better and mentally able to cope with all I have in front of me. But when depression takes hold, it’s hard to break free. Meds, other than sedatives, take a long time to help, if they work at all. You try something else. You go out on your normal errands and routines and everything seems slightly altered, familiar but different, like you’re the only one who has this problem.

The saving grace for me these days is night, especially late at night when Mom is in bed, the caregivers have gone home, and I feel, sometimes for the first time all day, a sense of peace and relaxation. My head feels clearer, miraculously, and I can sit out on the porch and think without being afraid to be alone with my thoughts. Maybe the medication I take each evening around 6 is more responsible for the calm than I want to believe. I accept it for now because I need it. I want my brain free and clear of everything eventually.

I am taking this present period of rather intense depression and anxiety as an opportunity given to me to burn off forever self-destructive and injurious patterns of behavior and thinking that have plagued me and which I haven’t been able to rid myself of. One has to look at depression as not only a medical or biological condition (and I’ve always struggled with this idea), but also as a spiritual and religious experience. In periods of depression throughout my life I have had to confront the most urgent questions about life’s purpose, good and evil, and the nature of suffering and why some of us must go through such terrible suffering. In years past, after long months of struggle and then slow healing and awakening as from a deep sleep, I have come out transformed — hopeful, optimistic, and happy. I hope and pray a new path in life awaits, this time during my final years when my life’s work is done and I realize there will come a time when I see everything clearly.

Here is a poem which I recently discovered. I found it beautiful and deeply moving and reflective of how I feel about the night.

Here is This Night
by Nancy Byrd Turner

“What though the day was full of weariness,
With many a jarring sound and fitful sight,
Here is this night.

“Whatever went before, here is an hour
Of pure, clear dark with peace on wood and hill,
And every flower folded honey cool,
And every quiet pool
Brimful of starlight, and the winds all still.
Here is This night.

“The day went hard, and with tomorrow’s light
May come new care; but by the tender grace
Of God’s good thought, now falls a little space
Of dusk and dew and dreams.
Here is this night.”

At 2 in the morning I lie on my bed, a stack of books and magazines beside me. There’s not a sound. Earlier I sat on the porch, bundled up, the night cold and quiet. Blessed peace.