Life Is a Bag of Frozen Peas

　　My mental state at the time was fragile. Losing a spouse² is an unbearable³ pain. I got on my hands and knees and pulled them into a pile to dispose of. I was half laughing and half crying as I collected them. I could see the humor in what happened, but it doesn't take much for a person dealing⁴ with grief to break down.

　　For the next week, every time I was in the kitchen, I would find a pea that had escaped my first cleanup. In a corner, behind a table leg, in the frays⁵ at the end of a mat, or hidden under a heater, they kept turning up. Eight months later I pulled out the refrigerator to clean, and found a dozen or so petrified⁶ peas hidden underneath⁷.

　　At the time I found those few remaining peas, I was in a new relationship with a wonderful woman I met in a widow/widower support group. After we married, I was reminded of those peas under the refrigerator. I realized my life had been like that bag of frozen peas. It shattered. My wife was gone. I was in a new city with a busy job and a son having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings and the loss of his mother. I was a wreck⁸. I was a bag of spilled, frozen peas. My life had come apart and scattered⁹.

　　When life gets you down; when everything you know comes apart; when you think you can never get through the tough times, remember, it is just a bag of scattered, frozen peas. The peas can be collected and life will move on. You will find all the peas. First the easy peas come together in a pile. You pick them up and start to move on. Later, you find the smaller, harder-to-find peas. When you pull all the peas together, life will be whole again.

　　The life you know can be scattered at any time. You will move on, but how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you keep scattering¹⁰ them around with a broom, or will you pick them up one-by-one and put your life back together?

　　How will you collect your peas?

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