In the last few days I've felt happy a couple of times.
Little things. I sold my father's house to a man who wanted it because he wanted the falling down milking barn. His great grandfather had cows in that barn and his grandfather too and he remembers it from when he was a child. He had the money. I was being very paralyzed about all of my parents' stuff (and grandparents' and great grandparents') but here was someone who really wanted the property. So I arranged to get rid of the stuff and sold him the house. It closed at the end of January. He invited me to lunch yesterday. I didn't realize until the night before that it was my father's birthday. It felt like a blessing on the sale from my father, to see how happy this person was. He and his cousin are repairing the barn, which is truly an act of love, because it was really close to falling down entirely.
My daughter hugged me a ton last night. She's not the touchy sort, at least, I'm way more wanting-to-be-hugged. But she knew I was missing my father, so she was going out of her way to hug me.
Someone else wanted my father's property too, a young farming couple. I was still in the stunned grieving state and couldn't really believe that anyone wanted it. I felt bad that I had to choose, but I did. I went to dinner tonight after my daughter left for a regional Robotics competition. I recognized that I knew a woman who came in after me, but had no idea who it was. She came up to me as I left and said that they'd found another property and are very excited about it, so she wanted to reassure me that they were fine. I teared up after I left the restaurant, relieved and blessed again.
I had a quite sick patient in clinic today. Worrisome enough that I thought she should go to the emergency room. I called, but every ER room was full and three people in the waiting room. As second best or perhaps best under the circumstances, I sent her husband to the pharmacy and kept her quiet in a room through lunch until he returned. She took the medicine and went home. Risky, but so is sitting in a crowded crazy emergency room and maybe not being noticed. She thanked me for sticking my head in the room and checking on her off and on while I ate my tuna sandwich.
I talked to another person about meditation. That when you meditate and have pain or fear or some awful emotion, you can try to go towards it. If I go to the part that hurts and really try to stay there, I can't. It's just like trying to focus on my breathing: my brain goes wandering off. It's very interesting to try to really focus on the pain that I have been ignoring/fearing/avoiding and then trying to stay in it and then realizing that I'm thinking about the grocery list. This person is very compassionate but not towards themselves. If you can't be compassionate towards yourself then you can at least think about being present as you would with a friend.
Sometimes happiness is the absence of feeling traumatized.