An Ending

I haven’t written in the blog for quite some time. I have written loads in my cheap back-to-school notebooks. Without publishing those things here there seems to be no reason to polish them or make them clever for any reason except my own amusement. I am lazy that way.

Today I effectively cancelled this blog. Sometime in September it will simply disappear. I no longer feel the need to bare my sole to the limited public I have had. Bless their hearts for hanging in there with me on my healing journey. I am grateful to The Honeylamb Chronicles for helping me examine my grief after losing Jimmy. Writing what I was feeling helped. Plus, there was something about sharing that was also therapeutic.  I don’t know why. Maybe that is the next thing for me to explore. Or maybe it is time to explore other things.

Today is July 4th! Independence Day. I am about as independent as one can get. The only person I answer to is myself. I have means. I have a mind that works pretty well. My doctors tell me that I am healthy. I have children who I am so very proud of and love so dearly and friends that I depend upon to make me crazy and keep me sane.

I look at the faces of those two people in that black and white photo. There was so much we thought we knew and so much we knew we didn’t. I would have been 34 and Jim would have been 32 when Julie Dean came over to our little house on Sumner Street to photograph us for our engagement. (I have another picture taken in that exact same spot a little while later with Bill and Brooke McVicker joining us!) A very many things happened to us over the ensuing 35+ years. A wedding. Friends. Kids. Moves. School. Deaths. Life. Life happened to us. Or with us. Or through us.

How do people come together? How is it that this one and that one meet just at the stage of their lives when making a choice, a commitment makes sense? We actually explored that question in our wedding vows. What if I had stayed in Omaha? What if he had moved to Wyoming after that summer with the UP? So many what-ifs that didn’t happen. And there we were, smitten like two adolescents. Neither one with two pennies to rub together, but both of us willing to take that leap of faith together. And then we continued to travel that parallel road that is a marriage and neither of us found that road to be so bumpy as to make us determined to take another. We held in there. We made it through. We did it.

We made stupid mistakes and great decisions. I am happy for us. We created a pretty darn good life together. In the end we knew that we loved and were loved by each other. That is no small revelation. And I do not say it in jest or take it lightly. Rather I cherish the fact that it is true.

So, how do I end this blog? Am I still heart-broken? Yes. Am I settling into my new life? Yes. Pretty well I think.

What have I learned? So many things that I would have to begin a new blog to examine them all. But I will tell you the highlights. And these are not new. They have been written about by more learned folks than myself.

Appreciate your blessings. Love fiercely, celebrate that love. Take a deep breath in and slowly breathe it out. Live your life with intention. Leave behind no regrets. Forgive, even forgive yourself. Be grateful. Be kind. Find joy.