How We Choose to Be Happy by Rick Foster

Author:Rick Foster [Foster, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101007389
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that

there was in me an invincible summer.

Albert Camus

Clara’s House

Cleaning out the homes of loved ones after their death is an inevitable experience for most of us. Watching this kind of event unfold in the life of a happy person gives us insight into how recasting can help us live effectively through troubling yet predictable experiences.

Alan’s story begins when his beloved aunt Clara, never married and childless, died unexpectedly at age sixty-nine. Alan had been her favorite nephew, and she had been his favorite aunt. Together he and his sister Deborah were faced with cleaning out her rambling two-story home-the same one in which they had spent many happy weekends as children. Clara had provided enrichment in their early lives, financing their piano lessons and trips to the theater when their parents couldn’t afford it. As Alan began his task he was shocked to find old medicine bottles, doctors’ receipts and journal entries—clues that told him too late of the illness that took her life. She had kept it a secret until the end.

I had all these conflicting feelings: sorrow, confusion about why she didn’t let us know the seriousness of her illness, regrets that I didn’t understand her better and that I didn’t share more of myself with her when she was alive.

As we packed up the boxes, I tried to get to the essential core of my feelings. I could feel the sadness. It was real, something I could live with. But there were other feelings as well—guilt and regrets that could never be resolved and were only hurting me. So I let them go. I decided to work with my sadness, to get some perspective on my real feelings about Clara.

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