Jessica Refocusing

By Marsha Reed Nall

After a trauma or major upset, Jessica had always refocused her life: changed jobs, moved to a different city, discovered new friends, took up gardening or a different book club or tried piano lessons, even different husbands.

This time she’d run out of ideas as if she no longer cared, was left with what she considered shrinking options. Her brother and most trusted confident and advisor had died suddenly that year, two weeks after his doctor had told him he’d live into his nineties. Her brother was only seventy-three. How could his heart stop working after such a reading?

His doctor had said he was doing everything right: exercise (he walked daily and gardened, had little fix-it projects around the house—he was no couch potato), had a healthy diet (loved salads and vegetables and ate fish, salmon his favorite, and everyone knew the health benefits of salmon), eight hours sleep a night (he and his wife had a mattress each could adjust to his or her own liking), and he had little stress in his life. He was retired. What kind of stress could he have?

And he drank plenty of water but maybe too much wine, on occasion.

After his funeral, a black car procession and flag presentation and gun salute and taps in far off Kentucky, Jessica returned to her home in the California desert. She dropped her activities and friends, stopped exercising, put herself away. What was the point?

What could she do when she didn’t want to do anything? You get on with it, her brother would have said.

A few weeks passed, or maybe months, and one night Jessica saw a gorgeous pink sunset. She remembered how her brother, a photographer and news editor, had chased sunsets to shoot the perfect one.

A few days later an acquaintance recommended a new history about the Revolutionary War, just out, and Jessica remembered how her brother knew history like no other. He could name every world leader and scoundrel. He had solutions to problems and saw no reason to ever give up or leave anyone behind. Of course, he’d been a Marine.

On New Year’s Eve, alone, sitting at her pool, staring at the floats and lights her brother had given her on her birthday, a week before his last appointment with that doctor, she noticed the moon. She remembered her brother had covered one of the space launches. She didn’t know which one. It was a long time ago. He’d marveled at the experience, the excitement and hope for the future.

She’d read some of his writing. His positive attitude about the future usually surprised her, coming out of war-torn places, having certainly seen some of the worst man could do.

Would he be disappointed in her if he were up there, somewhere near the moon, watching?

She’d unattached herself from life as her brother had loved and lived it. She’d thrown away precious days he no longer had. He would think she was wasteful.

Jessica took a deep breath. All she had to do (and she knew the word ALL was a very big word) was refocus.

She’d take up painting again, even baking. She needed to gain back a few pounds. How she loved the smell of cakes and bread and cookies drifting from the oven. She’d give most of it to neighbors and friends, couldn’t eat all that stuff.

She’d put red and white and purple petunias and pansies in the pots around her pool. She might pick up a camera. She could do that. She was her brother’s sister after all.