On the dashboard of my car is an octopus. I love him. It’s actually a Christmas ornament, but he landed there and there he lives. My oldest grandson loves him and when he’s in my car we make up stories about him. Mostly we talk about what he likes to eat and how life has been going for him. Usually, it’s good, but sometimes life takes a tragic turn for the little guy. Once, my grandson decided Winston, that’s his name, was scared when we left him alone in the car. Another time, it came to light that I had not fed him pizza in an entire year. I was roundly criticized for that. All of this to say, I feel like me and Winston relate. The other day, on a long car trip across the flat plains where I live I found myself studying him intently. He’s getting kind of faded. He’s lost some color and he’s just not as vibrant as he used to be. Same. Same. Same.

I really try not to be a downer, but I’ve had some tragedy come my way in life. All of it has been hard and heartbreaking and unexpected. I guess that’s a given. But, it’s the aftermath that has been the hardest to find my way through. I am, by nature, a can-do girl. Give me a problem and I will solve it. Plant me somewhere and I will do my best to bloom. I am not someone who wants to be sad. It is not fun to me. I know some would argue that nobody wants to be sad, but I swear I have met folks who sure seem to thrive on it. Go through life looking for bad things and you will find them. This, I know for sure. That part is easy to figure out. What I can’t figure out, and what is making me almost as listless as my octopus friend, is what to do when it seems as if life has cut off your path back to happy. Yikes.

I say that because I feel like each person in our life meets a different need for us. My mom was my mom. She always liked me no matter how I acted. My dad was the guy by which I measured all others. He was my prayers as a little girl holding his big hand and believing in good. My friend Leigh Ann was the person who never ever forgot to send me a birthday card and always believed God had a plan for everything. My little sister was the keeper of me. She held all the little bits that made me make sense to myself. My mom and sister together were the holidays. The late night trips to Walmart for tacky, matching pajamas. The cream cheese dip eaten with only one kind of crackers. Early mornings cuddled on the couch watching the parade. They were my holiday people. They came together in a car and brought the magic. I could continue, but my throat is starting to get that pain right before you cry and I don’t want to cry today. The window is open and there is good music playing. See, that’s me choosing happiness. But, more and more, as I lose my people I realize I had all these tentacles that plugged into different people for different things and now they are just dangling there. I’m sure my readers would be happy to inform me that Octopi do, indeed, grow back their tentacles. I love that for them, but my dad has been gone for over twenty years and I still look for him in every crowd. And, sometimes, I swear I see him. I don’t. That’s not the life planned for me. A life where I could replace him. My life is this. Going through these days dragging my dangling tentacles on my quest to be happy anyway. Somedays, I make it. Somedays, I don’t. All of it makes me a little less colorful and a little more faded just like my friend Winston. It’s probably why Chat GPT said I most reminded it of a character from Murder She Wrote. Angela Lansbury to be exact. That hurt. Especially when my friend got Gilmore Girls. The hits just keep coming.