One time a year, my husband and I get FANCY dressed up and
attend a fundraising gala for Encompass, a local pediatric therapy clinic. We
go all in on this night. We arrange for overnight babysitting (thanks, Boppa
and Grandmom-mom), we arrive to our hotel early in afternoon to rest and get
ready for the evening event.
To be honest, the anticipation of this event has helped keep
me going over the last few weeks. Weeks filled with some big challenges with
kids, many medical appointments and tests for family members, and a full-scale
review of an educational plan for one kid. All on top of daily life of a big
family and the beginning of the school year. I just kept looking to Saturday
night and dreaming about my dress and the fun and the food and the full night
of sleep. On Friday I got my nails done and packed my bags, I had almost made
it.
Then came Saturday and it was amazing, and I soaked in every
minute of it. This year, I was gifted a stunning ball gown and I felt like Cinderella.
I came home on Sunday happy and rested. (You can ask my husband about how he won
half a hog in a silent auction sometime)
And it was over and all that was left of my fancy, long anticipated
evening was the still glittery nail polish (which I am still looking at as a type).
The event that had kept me going was done. Now what?
This is where all the work I have been doing on endings
comes up yet again. Life has a whole lot of endings, so we need to learn how to
handle them well. Otherwise, we can fall into two categories, one where we feel
sad that it is over and then the sad gets attached to the event and we don’t
even want to think about it because we think about the sad way we felt when it was
over. The other one is where we decide it isn’t even worth it to anticipate anything
because it always ends. Either way, our lives become generally more
disappointing.
There is a healthier way to process the end of something we looked
forward to and loved very much and now it is over. The key is we must process
it. We need to finish well, even a Saturday night out may need some processing
to finish well. And how do we do that? Here are some ideas:
Send a thank you. If there was a host/hostess of the
event, send a thank you with an anecdotal highlight of your evening. Tell them how
much it meant to you. Maybe send a picture of the event because hosts do not
generally get to take many pictures. This doesn’t have to be complicated. In
this story, I just sent an email with pictures attached on Monday.
Wrap it up. Do what you need to do to wrap up the
event on your side and put everything away. Staring at a pile of unfinished
business because you don’t want to think about the event being over is just going
to bring you down. This is one reason I recommend unpacking as soon as you get
home from a trip. In my story, I was given some phone numbers that I will need
to follow up with in about a month, so I put the contacts in my phone and
tossed the papers and cleared my desk. Just little things, but they all add up either
to wrap up the fun or drag us down.
Find what’s next. A quote attributed to a few people
goes like this “everyone needs something to do, someone to love, and something
to look forward to.” I think these are words to live by and yet, the last one
is not often done. If we are not careful, we just put our heads down and carry
on. So, my last recommendation is to find your next thing to look forward to
now that this one is over. My mom keeps a daily countdown on her phone to her
next thing and she will reset it almost immediately, even if it is for 200 days
later. She has her eye on the next fun thing to keep moving towards.
Having fun is important and on the hard days those things to
look forward to and the memories once the event has past is something that we all
need. Let’s process them well, remember them fondly, and look forward to the
next thing…even when all that is left is the sparkly nail polish.
