You need pasture

So, of all these therapist I've seen in the past two years, the words of one keep resonating in my mind. "You need pasture."  Mind you, this is the same therapist whose practice specializes in "dysfunctional" families. I sat in my car reading his business card, not having scrutinized it before, and was quite offended by the inference that I was somehow dysfunctional. We were not a dysfunctional family...having been married over 22 years, our 20 year old son still lived at home with us, he respected us, enjoyed our company, ate dinner at the table every night, said "I love you."  We were not dysfunctional!  Then it hit me...that is not who I am anymore. That was then and then is no longer now. I'm as dysfunctional as it gets, my only child was burned, we watched him fight for life until he could fight no more, we prayed for healing and we watched him die, we sang to him as he lay dead in the hospital bed, we sat in a house of worship and remembered our son, our only child, our great love. There was no more family, only the two of us; there is no more child or children, there will be no grandchildren. My very identity was obliterated, my purpose in life gone, my hopes stolen...all that I had worked for and all that I had dreamed of was ripped away. Everything I knew, all that I was, and all that I stood for was at question.  The decisions I made in life, every one of them, were at question. What if rattled in my brain like dried seeds.  "You need pasture," he said. You need to let the trappings of this thing go, forget for a while the things that scream at you, sit and soak up the sun, read a book, take a nap, be kind to yourself, breathe in - breathe out.

I can't get it out of my mind. "You need pasture."