Brain On A Hook

The first thing I got when my husband died was a tranquilizer. It was offered by a doctor who meant well. I didn't ask for it. I am not criticizing the doctor because that's the usual move, I hear from other widows. That I still have the bottle of little capsules, having taken perhaps a half of one in eight years, but for reasons other than the loss of my former husband, is moot. Are we expected to need tranquilizers when stressful situations, arise? It's an issue? Does society in general, simply segue into a fuzzy state of mind when things get tough? And do we end up in a mind fuzz which is supposed to fix it all? This attitude disturbs me. I had been indoctrinated by my originators to believe that meeting head-on, life's hard happenings, made character  the solving of them, or at least, the means to harden ourselves to accept matters we could not cure, to find a way to survive no matter what. If I thought that all I had to do to make trouble seem to go away, was to take a pill or drink a glass or smoke a bit of vegetation to make it all better, seems an artificial choice.  What I need to do is shake my head, make a plan, carry it out and take the blows while I do. I think of my pioneer family who came to Canada and tilled the soil by hand and built what they hoped was a better life than the one they left. All their lives, even to the end, they accomplished only a family, a big one, one they fed and nurtured and hoped for. It wasn't a huge success financially,  but they did it through hard work without fancy holidays and houses and other accouterments. Their offspring did not become heroes or named among the famous. They remain very ordinary people today, struggling with mortgages and jobs and kids that are not going to become stars. They are the Canadians that form the basis of the citizenship of where we live. They are the people of the land we say we love and belong to. They didn't smoke dope or take pills or go to hot yoga, not there is anything wrong with it. They just live their lives the best way they can, and make the mistakes that make them love their familes and know that they must carry on and be content with who and what they are. They try to fit in with all of our other peace loving Canadian immigrants and First Nations with whom they labor daily side by side. None of it needs dope of any kind. They face the tough times by hanging together, not hanging their brains on the hooks of  cannabis or alcohol or any other kind of hook but life itself.