Recharging your batteries

This past week has been an interestingly difficult one. After the loss of a loved one last week and all the pomp & circumstance leading up to & including the final goodbyes, the funeral, I did what I have never allowed myself to do. I recharged my batteries! The weeks leading up to his death were draining for everyone involved but I actually did bodywork on him to make him more comfortable. My hands were able to help someone on their deathbed, do you know how amazing that is? My energy, my hands and the comfort they were bestowing on him in the end made me feel like i had been a part of something truly special, inexplicably beautiful. Seeing him lying in that bed suffering wasn't beautiful, i am not that twisted!...but the energy I felt was. It felt like I was helping him in a way cross over peacefully.
However, i have never felt drained like i did after all was said and done. Is it depression, am I hiding from the world, am I preventing myself from living b/c i am too afraid of losing again? All these thoughts crossed my mind but then I realized, I was recharging my proverbial batteries. The best part of that realization was allowing myself to do it... being ok with the process. Well, I am still charging the batteries and little by little going out into the world. But how do I do that without wasting what little energy I have already acquired? And at what point does it turn into hiding from the world, depression, not living? Where is that balance or at least how do I find it? And what if this particular moment in time, is the Universe's way of showing me my true life path??? What is the Unviverse telling me that I am not hearing? What does the Universe have in mind for me after this? I guess these are all questions that have come along for the ride in the battery charging zone.

Time

How is it time just zooms by? When we are little, it takes forever. I remember sitting in class and looking out the window or looking at the clock and the day just dragging on.... 3 more hours til lunchtime/recess.... 3 more hours til i get to home.... 4 more days til Friday... uh! drag drag drag! Now, it's the extreme opposite. I find myself saying, " How is it noon?... Holy crap it's 5? How is it Friday???" It's funny sometimes. I mean who isn't happy to leave work at the end of the day or for the weekend, right? Well, there's a price to pay for that I guess.... when you start noticing grey hairs, or your joints & muscles aching, or you're just plain tired all the time.
Those things are normal I know and not as freaky to me as say seeing someone turn 21 when you changed their diapers and carried them as babies. THAT's freaky! And yes, it's happened to me! The worst thing though, is seeing the people you care about, your parents, their friends, your elders, growing older by the minute. WIth every birthday or New Year comes new aches, pains, injuries, diseases, surgeries, and death. How do we get to this point and how can we deal with seeing those people that once took care of us and protected us growing fragile and eventually dying? How do we prepare for that? Is there a way to prepare to lose your parents/granparents/aunts/uncles/friends,etc. And how does one, as an aging adult, say goodbye to their friends who are dying or sick?
We spend our whole lives trying to find people to relate to and some of us are lucky enough to find that community. What happens 30, 40, 50 years from now when that community starts dying one by one? That saying,"it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all", I don't know how I feel about it anymore. I mean, YES, it is better to have loved and lived than to hide your life away. OK, agreed! BUT when you are the one losing the people you love and you're left behind, alone, then what? Is it still better to have loved and lost and lived? Left with your memories, the voices of the past, and, for those people lucky enough to commune with the spirit world, left to communicate with souls... never to see their loved ones again or touch them.
LIFE.....