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04-20-2008, 08:35 PM
"LIFE IS A BAG OF FROZEN PEAS"
A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I
was cooking dinner for my son and myself. For a vegetable, I
decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it slipped
from my hands and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles,
rolled everywhere. I tried to use a broom, but with each swipe, the
peas rolled across the kitchen, bounced off the wall on the other
side and rolled in another direction.
My mental state at the time was fragile. Losing a spouse is an
unbearable pain. I got on my hands and knees and pulled them into
a pile to dispose of. I was half laughing and half crying as I
collected them. I could see the humor in what happened, but it
doesn’t take much for a person dealing with grief to break down.
For the next week, every time I was in the kitchen, I would find
a pea that had escaped my first clean up. In a corner, behind a
table leg, in the frays at the end of a mat, or hidden under a
heater, they kept turning up. Eight months later, I pulled out the
refrigerator to clean, and found a dozen or so petrified peas
hidden underneath.
At the time I found those few remaining peas, I was in a new
relationship with a wonderful woman I met in a widow/widower
support group. After we married, I was reminded of those peas
under the refrigerator. I realized my life had been like that bag of
frozen peas. It had shattered. My wife was gone. I was in a new
city with a busy job and a son having trouble adjusting to his new
surroundings and the loss of his mother. I was a wreck. I was a bag
of spilled, frozen peas. My life had come apart and scattered.
When life gets you down; when everything you know comes
apart; when you think you can never get through the tough times,
remember, it is just a bag of scattered, frozen peas. The peas can
be collected and life will move on. You will find all the peas. First,
the easy peas come together in a pile. You pick them up and start
to move on. Later, you will find the bigger and harder to find peas.
When you pull all the peas together, life will be whole again.
The life you know can be scattered at any time. You will move
on, but how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you
keep scattering them around with a broom, or will you pick them up
one-by-one and put your life back together?
How will you collect your peas?
-- Michael T. Smith
A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I
was cooking dinner for my son and myself. For a vegetable, I
decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it slipped
from my hands and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles,
rolled everywhere. I tried to use a broom, but with each swipe, the
peas rolled across the kitchen, bounced off the wall on the other
side and rolled in another direction.
My mental state at the time was fragile. Losing a spouse is an
unbearable pain. I got on my hands and knees and pulled them into
a pile to dispose of. I was half laughing and half crying as I
collected them. I could see the humor in what happened, but it
doesn’t take much for a person dealing with grief to break down.
For the next week, every time I was in the kitchen, I would find
a pea that had escaped my first clean up. In a corner, behind a
table leg, in the frays at the end of a mat, or hidden under a
heater, they kept turning up. Eight months later, I pulled out the
refrigerator to clean, and found a dozen or so petrified peas
hidden underneath.
At the time I found those few remaining peas, I was in a new
relationship with a wonderful woman I met in a widow/widower
support group. After we married, I was reminded of those peas
under the refrigerator. I realized my life had been like that bag of
frozen peas. It had shattered. My wife was gone. I was in a new
city with a busy job and a son having trouble adjusting to his new
surroundings and the loss of his mother. I was a wreck. I was a bag
of spilled, frozen peas. My life had come apart and scattered.
When life gets you down; when everything you know comes
apart; when you think you can never get through the tough times,
remember, it is just a bag of scattered, frozen peas. The peas can
be collected and life will move on. You will find all the peas. First,
the easy peas come together in a pile. You pick them up and start
to move on. Later, you will find the bigger and harder to find peas.
When you pull all the peas together, life will be whole again.
The life you know can be scattered at any time. You will move
on, but how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you
keep scattering them around with a broom, or will you pick them up
one-by-one and put your life back together?
How will you collect your peas?
-- Michael T. Smith