The Journey of a Lioness

One Year Later…….

I haven’t written in a while because, well, last month was hard. Yet as the dreaded year came up finally, we stayed home as a family. We finished our big project. A patio built in honor of Ed. It took a week to build, the week before the anniversary was the perfect time for such a large project. It kept my mind from wondering and while it was focused on him, it wasn’t all consuming. Before I knew it, the day arrived and the patio was completed though it rained most of the the day we still sat out on the patio and did exactly what we planned to. We built a fire sat around and just talked about Dad.

Now it is a few weeks later and we are still out on the patio every night. It is a good place for us and we love it out there. It is incredible what it feels like to reach the one year point. While some may see this a odd, I felt like I crossed a finish line in one way. I did something I never in a million years thought I would have to. I made it a whole year without my Ed. It wasn’t easy, but I made it and while I’m not proud of every choice I made, I feel like a stronger me on this side of things. I still struggle with being lonely, but I’m getting used to it and every day it gets easier. Or maybe that is because I started school and it has now kept me very busy.

Sometimes I just have to keep telling myself that I’m the one who didn’t die, that I am still on this planet for some reason. Some days that reason is so hard to see then something happens and that reason smacks me in the face. This morning my “adopted daughter” sent me a text. “Mom this is Millie. Pie put your number on my phone.” I reply “Okay dear! Love you!””Love you too! really would like your expert advice when you come home.””Okay dear, but I’m not much of an expert.””Well it’s more like I wanna hear it from an adult with way more experience in life than me.””Okay dear I will see you after work!”
That is why I am here and he is not. It must be. We have daughters, and even adopted daughters that need me. I am here for them and that feels really good. So I make plans to have dinner and sit around the fire pit and talk with the girls tonight. Millie is not really adopted but she lived with us most of her life. Her aunt and uncle had actual custody of her but she lived with us. She is my daughter as much as the ones that I actually gave birth to. I have no idea what she wants to talk about but I am sure whatever it is we can figure out what needs to be done and If I don’t have the answers I bet I can find someone who does. I love my children and they make this life perfect. I have to tell you about a conversation the girls had last night while I was taking my first big test. It cracked me up! I’m not putting names but it is funny.

Daughter one: “Hey say something funny.”

Daughter two: “Funny how?”

Daughter three: “Your not really siblings unless you text each other while taking a shit.”

Adopted daughter: “Yes because not having TP is a serious problem.”

Okay I’m not sure how that reads but if you would have heard it, it would have cracked you up!! Well it did me anyways. LOL It is moments like that, that remind me of their father. It is conversations like that they would all have. He would have so been in the middle of that conversation. And then I realize that he is still with us. HE is in the fabric of my being, of our being. The things we find funny, the music we love and in what I do for the family. HE is in that. I haven’t lost him or myself even, I just miss us. That is simply all and each day that missing gets a little easier. Moving on isn’t me trying to forget him, it is simply me still living. And that is what he would want. Me to live. We are talking about doing the kitchen floors next. I can do that, it’s what You Tube is for! Life is good, and nothing is as bad as things were a year ago, and every day moving forward is just another day to get better. A few weeks ago I asked what healing looked like while visiting with my counselor. What was it. I think I now know. Healing is being sad, and angry and hurt. So hurt that breathing is something hard to do. Healing is deciding every second to take the next breath. It is crying, it is ugly, and bloody, and it leaves a scar that nothing will hide. That is healing and just like an actual wound, it just takes time. Sometimes it rips open and you have to start all over again, but in the end, you do heal. The scar just says that you lived and lived a life that was full of love. So let the scars come because I want to be remembered for love above anything else.

The Last Step is a Steep One……

I have been dealing with my grief for almost a year now. I have talked about the ups the downs the struggles. And believe it or not the joys that have come my way. I have experienced more than just the loss of my spouse, I have lost friends, and love and pieces of myself during these past 11 months. It’s as if my heart was shattered into a million pieces and I have spent these past months desperately trying to get it all put together again. There have been times when I think I’ve almost got it only to let go and watch it all fall apart again. Crying as the tedious task of starting over begins again and again. Leaving me to wonder if things will always just be this broken.

I have studied the five steps in grief, and while I know I have been through most of them, it is the last two that I am facing right now. Depression and acceptance. Depression and I have fought for a while now, it is in and out and I expect that it will for a while. I fight this every day, and each day that I win is a day closer to acceptance. Yet I know that I have accepted that this terrible thing has happened to me. I also know that I am not the only one going through this. I am not alone. Yet I feel alone and there is the battle with the depression again. I don’t want to be depressed. It is the one step that I fight the hardest. I don’t want to be depressed. I want to be myself, that woman who is full of joy and laughter. It’s like she has stepped out of the room and I’m standing there waiting for her to come back.

I know this is because of we are close to the anniversary of his death. It is like knowing a terrible wreck is going to happen and not being able to stop it. You stand and scream in silence as it happens and there is nothing you can do to stop it as you watch it happen in slow motion. And the pain of each cut from glass that nicks every part of your soul. That is what it feels like. Yet this determined woman shows up out of nowhere. I don’t know who she is. She is amazing, she stands there in the wreck of the mess and stares down the danger. She sees a daily struggle or a problem and takes action. She isn’t bothered by the challenge she just takes the lead and gets things done.

I like this woman, I admire her, she is brave. Then one day something happened, I looked into a mirror and found her staring back at me. Even with the cuts and bruises and smeared blood all over her, the biggest wound where her heart is, she is still beautiful. And I realized she is me, she is made up of hundreds of women who have come before her, and the hope of all the ones that will come after. There is something special about her you don’t know what it is, all you know is that you want to be just a small part of what she is. That is how I will make it through this month, through this difficult time and I will finally reach the top of that last step. It is a steep one but I have seen her, there is nothing she can’t do.

Dee

A Hurting Woman’s Mind……..

Love is complicated, it is messy and it hurts us like nothing else. All kinds of love does this. The love of a parent, or even lack of love does something to us. Falling in love with someone who doesn’t love you back is another. And when two people fall in love and get married only to find out they are not who they thought they were it can be just as devastating. All of it, is this thing that we are constantly trying to figure out.

I am in the mists of trying to figure out why I fell in love with Ed, and how was it that we could fall in love, get married after only six short months and spend the next 21 years happily together, and wonder if I will ever find that again. Or if I even want to. It is a daily mind change for me. I see other people in love and happy and I know how that feels. How good it feels to be wanted and needed, and loved. Yet I also know how the loss of that feels. I also know what it feels like to think you have that but you really don’t. To know what it feels like to love someone who just doesn’t love you back. The rejection that comes with that is awful. Yet I have also been the person who someone loved and I didn’t love them back. Neither side is a good place to be. Both are confusing and in the end just walking away is the best no matter how much it hurts both parties. Because when you are the person that didn’t love the other, it’s not that you don’t love them, you just can’t seem to love them enough. It feels like you keep waiting for the deeper feelings to develop but they just don’t. You hope it does, you may even stay with them for months waiting for those deeper feelings to show up, but there is something there that just stops you. So you are the one that ends it. It breaks their heart, you know it does, and there is nothing you can do to change it. You don’t want to hurt them, they haven’t done anything but love you. They feel like they have given you everything and you are just throwing it away as if it meant nothing. Trust me it never means nothing. It does mean something, just not what you want it to mean. We give all kinds of excuses of why it is not working out, and you even fight about things that were said. It hurts both parties because yes you said you loved them no that wasn’t a lie, but what was missing was the most important part.

What is that part? The knowing that you don’t want to spend a day without them next to you. Without them talking to you, or telling you that they love you and you letting them know that you love them too. That is what is missing. And when one feels that way and the other doesn’t it could mean a lifetime of living a half life. It is the spark of needing or wanting that person past sexual pleasures. It’s more than that, it’s wanting to go to sleep next to them so that you wake up next to them. And it kills us when we feel that way and someone else doesn’t.

As I said I have been on both sides of this recently. Here is what I learned. Love is nothing to mess with. It scars us. It molds us, and it is what makes us who we are. Because the heart is not attached to the mind so to speak. I tried to make mine love someone and it wouldn’t, I also tried to make it stop loving someone else. It doesn’t do that either. The old adage “The heart knows what it wants” so rings true here. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is hard. It can destroy our belief of what love should be and it can even turn us hard and cold. Because we never want to be hurt like that again. We constantly ask ourselves what we did wrong. We replay conversations, and things that were said, and to us it should be simple to love someone. And the thing is we haven’t done anything wrong, we just gave our deepest of love to someone who just couldn’t receive it. We do move on, we do get over it, we do love again, maybe not as quickly, or as deeply right away, but we do love again. And if we don’t then it is our decision not to yet when that decision is made it is best to not get involved with anyone. Even if they say they can handle that. Because guess what we can’t, it is impossible. Someone’s heart is going to get broke. Use caution. Because crushing someone is terrible and it makes you feel like shit and it hurts them deeply.

I always believed that love was the easiest thing in life to do. It doesn’t cost anything to love someone right? Yet it does, and the price of it is deep. And I don’t know that I’m willing to pay that price anymore.

Dee

On Days When the Sun Shines……..

This month is the most difficult month of the year for me. It is supposed to be the best month. You know the kids get out of school and summer is on the way. We are supposed to be looking forward to the long warm days and spending time outside. Yet a cloud hangs over us this month as the one year anniversary quickly rushes towards us. It is unlike anything that I know. All year I have wanted the days to just get over with. Yet now I am screaming to slam on the breaks. I’m not ready for this. Yet suddenly God shows up and once again and hope is on the horizon.

We must move forward in life. If we don’t then we miss out on things that God has planned for us. It wasn’t long after Ed passed when a friend I had met on line to help with my marathon training also lost her husband. He was much younger than Ed was and she is much younger than I am. I sat in stunned silence as I read about her loss. It killed me, but I knew what she was going through. I reached out to her and suddenly our bond over running became more. We were suddenly both part of a club that neither one of us wanted to be a part of. We have visited many times, both of us trying so hard to figure out what life is supposed to be now that it is no longer what we planned for it to be. It is nice to talk to someone who knows. I mean someone who woke up one day thinking life was perfect only to have our worlds come crashing to a halt.

Last night we talked about how we both miss being a wife. Yet what I am learning more and more is that while I miss being a wife, I am getting pretty dang good at being alone. We talked about staying busy to avoid the grief, but I told her that it doesn’t matter how busy you are the grief will catch up. Usually when you don’t want it to. So we might as well face it. People call us brave, and most of the time we don’t feel it. We are just trying to get down this path that was laid before us. We try to run down it, but it doesn’t help, it doesn’t lessen the pain it just makes us tired. The only thing that has helped with the pain is facing it. Letting it knock you down and you stand up and fight back and face it again. It is the only way.

Yet here it is almost summer and getting outside helps. It reminds us that life still moves forward and so should we. No matter how we want the clock to move, fast or slow, we must move with it. We have had some pretty cloudy mornings here, but the sun has shown by afternoon and warmed us up. That is like life, we will have times when it seems like the sun has disappeared and it will never shine again. Yet here we are, the sun is beginning to shine, because we have chosen to move forward.

I am reminded daily that I am not alone. I am loved by friends and family and on my worst nights there is always someone to talk to. So while the anniversary is barreling down the path, I am going to face it. It will come and it will go and I will make it out on the other side. Beaten, bruised, and maybe battered beyond recognition, but I will make it out on the other side. Twenty days to go.

Dee

When You Decide………..

A sunset after a storm here in Oklahoma…..

One of my favorite scenes in a movie is in a movie that I have not even seen. Yet it is passed from one person to another over and over again on Facebook. The movie “Rocky Balboa” (2006) where Rocky and his son Robert are standing out in the street and Rocky says “Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
― Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa

Life has hit me hard, but I am still moving forward. I am not perfect, I won’t ever claim to be. I make mistakes and I will make many more. Yet I am learning that writing is something that for someone like me has become air. I have a dependant personality. It was only 11 months ago that I would struggle to make major decisions and most of the time I would let my husband make them. I trusted him and he was an excellent leader of our family. We had a savings, we had retirement, we had a solid life. It is his planning that allowed us to make it through his death the three months we had to with very little income. If I disagreed with a decision that he made I said nothing for fear of upsetting the harmony of our family. Believe it or not, that is a part of a dependant personality.

For the last 11 months I have had to step into the leadership of the family. I have made what I think has been some very good decisions and I am proud of the way I have handled things. Though mentally it has been the hardest thing I have ever done. I have learned that my knee jerk reaction was to quickly find someone else to help with that burden. Yet in the past month I have learned that I can take that burden on myself and do well on my own. Not that it is any less scary, but what it is doing is giving me this self confidence that I have never had. I can figure this out, I can find the same balance that Ed taught me. Because he was a teacher, he didn’t just do the things he taught me to do them too. Yes it is stressful and I have to have a million reminders on my phone. But they work and things are running smoothly. And I can crawl into bed and thank God for the day and be ready for the next.

I use to think that I had a very weak personality. No, I just didn’t have self confidence, and some people say well just get some. That’s like telling someone that is mentally ill to “just feel better.” It takes work, very uncomfortable work. Work that most of the time most of us would just rather avoid. Yet there are times in life when we are just forced to face ourselves. It is not pretty because we tend to focus on the faults that we don’t like and we end up feeling even worse about ourselves. It is then that we must realize that those things that we don’t like can be changed. It is just seeing that a change will take time, but in the end you will feel better. It is also taking time to list all the things you love about yourself, and remember that what you see is a problem others may not and visa versa. If you are going to go through the mess of changing, and yes it is a fucking mess and it can hurt emotionally, make sure the change is for you it is the only way to make sure it sticks.

Life is hard and it will knock you down, but forward is the only way to go.

Dee

The Long Night…….

One of the hardest things about grief is that it shows up when you most don’t want it to. Mine shows up everyday when I lay down to go to sleep. It’s like it is just waiting there for me. Most days I try to ignore it, but I can’t any longer. So I have done something very hard. I got rid of all the distractions of life so that I could face this head on. It’s odd how easy it was to let life distract me from the thing I needed to focus on the most. Okay not the most but more than what I was. I just figured I would walk around with this hole in my heart forever. I mean that’s what people tell you. “You’ll never get over it.” “Time doesn’t really help.” and my favorite, “You just have to get use to the new normal.” All of these things are the proper things to say to someone. Because they are all true, yet I am not your average person. I am different, I am me. And I’m not looking to get over it, I know time isn’t going to help, and the new normal is the same as the day before he died, it’s just him not being physically here. I am not in denial, I know that my husband died and that he is not going to come back. I have been through all of the steps of grief. Yes even my counselor agrees with that. Yet I feel like I am in limbo of the last two. Depression and Acceptance.

I tried to fight the depression by dating. Big, huge mistake, because I was not ready to deal with someone else’s emotions or even lack of them. I dated three guys all completely different from each other. The first was just a train wreck and I came off as a very needy person. Someone I just don’t want to be. Cool thing is that guy is one of the greatest guys around. We are still friends and he just got what I was going through. One date was all but a lifetime of friendship was gained. He helped me grow.

The second one caught me by surprise and I fell madly in love. Real love, but he was the wrong one. He is your classic emotionally unavailable heart throb that every woman needs once in her life. Why? Because the sex is great, and when you are lonely and just need someone to hold you on the worst nights of your life, he was the the guy that did that. He will always be the guy that fills every woman’s dreams. Yes the kind that no woman wants to admit that she has. He was that, and I tried not to fall in love with him, but I did. We broke up in a terrible way the first time him breaking my heart. Only to a month later while I was dating the third realize that he loved me too. That was a very difficult time because the one man that I longed to hear say that he loved me, finally said that and more. Yet he was filled with conflict and his emotional mess could not become mine. And that breakup was the most crushed I have ever been over a guy. More to come on this one……..

The third was the perfect on paper but I just couldn’t fall the way I want to. I have learned by talking to many women some who marry young believe that they did not marry their soulmate. They married the guy that was going to be the good father, the strong provider, and the one that would always be rock solid. Ed was that for me. We were happy, but never in my life had I ever experienced a love like number two. I was blissfully unaware that such passion was real, believing that it only existed in movies. Yes I loved Ed deeply, more than anything, I was happy and we had a wonderful marriage one that I would have never left, or even felt unfulfilled in. The third man was a safe reliable wonderful man, it would have ended up a safe stable marriage. But after knowing what passionate love is like, it was like, I just realize that if I can’t have it all, then I just don’t want it. Not that I didn’t love or couldn’t love, it just feels like a half life. I refuse to live a half life.

I know what you are all thinking, is she crazy!! It hasn’t even been a year yet! Yes at times even I thought this. But I think people need to know what goes on in a woman’s head while she is grieving. If you think it is confusing to just ask her what she wants to eat, ask her what she is going to do with her life once the man that she loved and promised to love forever died. That head and heart are just a complete mess. She is scared that she is old and no one would ever want her again. She is afraid to be alone because she just doesn’t know how to be. Then a million decisions that have to be made are overwhelming. I’m not talking about funeral I’m talking life decisions. Then to add to the top of that the fact that one should not make life altering decisions in the first year after a loss and the confusion, all of the sudden makes sense. Compile that with a million people that want to come up and tell her exactly what she needs to do and how she should do it. When all that she is consumed with is who in the hell would love her again. Then ask her how she is doing with her grief. I am telling you grief is the easiest thing to put off. This may not be every woman, but it is me.

For the last year I have walked around the actual grief of losing Ed. I stay busy, I work two jobs and sometimes more just to say busy. I run everyday and fill my weekends with a ton of to do lists so that I don’t have to confront that grief face to face. And the more distractions that I could find the better. Yet here I am one month and two days from the year anniversary and the grief that I need to be processing is still waiting there for me.

I went back to the second guy, after all he said he loved me that he needed me, that no one would ever love me the way he did. Yet after a while we were right back to him not wanting a relationship and me feeling like I was just a walking heartache. Funny the very thing that I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be that sad widow walking around just broken. But as long as I couldn’t be loved the way I loved, I would walk around exactly like that. Truth is, it is impossible to love a broken person because they don’t even love themselves. And even though the passion between him and I is so intense, it just can’t be lasting. So this morning I ended it all because there is something I need to do. I need to love me. I now know what kind of love I want and what I deserve. I need to be unbroken, I need to face the grief. Which is confusing for me as I feel like I have gone through all the stages of grief, and I have. But what I haven’t done, is face the depression that comes with the loss. The feeling sad, the actual weeping of the soul so that it can start to heal. I wanted to skip that, but I can’t. I must face it and until I do, it will always be waiting there for me.

Here is how I know that this is the right path. As much as I love number two and would throw myself in his arms just to be held by him again, after letting go, that grip of a constant heartache started lifting off. He doesn’t want to be loved, and once I stopped trying love him enough, the sting of rejection was let go too. You can’t love someone who doesn’t want to be loved. He has been walking around his own grief from whatever loss he had suffered, and I can’t love him through that.

So now I am exactly where I need to be. Facing the longest night of my life. Yet I’m facing depression, grief and loss, with a power that I didn’t expect to have. Because I know what mad passionate love feels like, and somewhere on the other side of depression, grief and loss, that love is waiting. So here I go let the work begin.

When the Time is Right, You Will Know It………….

This has been a very rough week for me. I am learning a lot about myself and not all of the things I have learned I have liked. Yet the good thing about that is that now is the time to change those things. Listing those things is not my intention on here it is the results of those things that I want to talk about. When Ed passed some people talked about how I was handed almost a clean slate I could do what ever I wanted now. At first I was like how dare them? I was doing what I wanted to do with him. But reality is they were right. I can now write a new book, not a better book but a different one. And as I looked at my character in this book there were things about her that I saw and thought wow, I want my character to be stronger than that. To want more than that, to be the person she knew she was the whole time. Nothing is more freeing than realizing that yes, it is a new book, and I can create the story the way I want it to go. Not the way someone else chooses.

Let’s just say I know what I am looking for, but reality is I don’t want to look for it. I want it to happen in God’s time. I can’t say that I trust him then try to do things for him. I have always been a dive in head first kind of girl. And in most instances that is okay, but it is not always. Somethings are worth waiting for, and I have learned that loneliness is a dangerous place to be in. No one wants to feel alone. Yet learning how to be alone is a must, not just learning how to be alone but be happy while you are alone. That is what I must learn how to be. I was that at one time in the other book. I wasn’t really alone, but spent a lot of time alone. I was good with that, what happens when your spouse dies, you suddenly miss being loved.

News flash, what I have learned is that I am loved. What I need to do is learn to love myself. I have been told that I am easy to love, I am a smart, funny, beautiful person, that people want to be around. So why is loving myself so hard? We are our biggest critic. And like someone keeps telling me, I am way too hard on myself. Yet the thing is if I am to become who I want to be I must love myself enough to change the things I don’t like and value the things that I do. Loving someone else is easy if you so chose. I fall in love easily and hate it when love doesn’t work out. I hate to think that I caused someone pain, but the truth of the matter is, we must follow our hearts, we must listen to that sill voice inside our soul that just says something is not right, and no matter how much hurt there is now, it is nothing compared to the hurt that there would be should you ignore that still voice.

God is a giving God, if you ask it of him he will give it to you. If you plead for love, even though it is not the right time, he will place someone in your life to love. It maybe someone that you love and things work out for years, and you are happy and think nothing could be better. But it is not what God chose for you, so while you think it couldn’t get any better, God knows that it could have been. You just were not patient enough to wait for it. Let me tell you how I know this.

Ed and I crossed each others path many times before we became a couple. He remembered the first time we met. It was at a mutual friends house. I remember the night, I do not remember him. He said just one look, and he just knew. A year later our paths crossed again. He did not remember this time but I do. I played piano for him at my high school. We were alone on the stage with a huge grand piano that was being used for a concert and I was there playing a piece that I had wrote. He asked me to play a Richard Marks song and I played the only one I knew. “Right Here Waiting For You.” How odd that it was that song? I fell for him then. Yet it was still a year later before we really even started to hang out together and get to know each other. When we did, we both just knew. It was our time. If God can do that once, he can do it again. I want it to be like that. Where maybe that person comes in and out of my life like little introductions to see if we are ready. Then one day you just know you are. Real love is worth that. In the mean time, I must learn to love myself and be happy truly on my own.

Yes I am a hopeless romantic, but what is life without romance? It is the hope of that romance that gets me out of bed every day. Maybe today is the day, we meet for the first time. Or maybe it is someone I have know for a long time that comes back into my life. Or maybe it is someone that I have recently met, and just haven’t had my turn to see it yet. All I know is that I know what love feels like, and I am not going to cheat or wish my way out of the love of a lifetime. So I must love myself first so that I am fully ready to love like that again.

Dee

Facing the Storm

Since Ed has passed I have had trouble keeping my focus on anything. Work, home, friends. It all is up in the air and I am the ill equipped juggler trying desperately to keep everything exactly where it needs to be. So far I have dropped quite a few things and the plates and glasses are shattered on the floor at my feet. Yet I wonder if those things were not meant to be dropped in the first place. All so I can work on the grief. I hope one day my blog will no longer be about dealing with this. I know that I will never get over Ed. I just want to stop hurting so much. I tried to skip this part. The part where you just hurt, where you are just sad. Yet no matter how hard I try, the truth is, I am sad, and yes even a little depressed. I don’t want to be. I have tried this whole time to not be the “oh look there is the sad widow.” Nevertheless, I am that. The sad widow. The one who misses her husband desperately and just doesn’t quite know who she is without him.

There are a million books on the grief process, and well there should be right? I mean there are millions of people dealing with grief every day. Everyday even though we don’t want to believe it, someone loses a child, a spouse, a parent, a grandparent. Somewhere someone is losing someone. It is a hurt that is always with us. Sure we have years that it doesn’t directly affect us, but it eventually catches up with us. It is part of life, the part that teaches us not to take our loved ones for granted. The part that sharply reminds us that we were not made to live on this earth forever and making every day count is something real. Right now I am facing a storm. The cold bitter winds blow from all directions and causes my heart to almost freeze. To protect itself from the anguish that it is currently feeling. There are no answers for this, no road map with the destination marked. It is just a long narrow path that must be taken no matter how much I try to not be affected by it, but I am.

I keep telling myself that this will pass, like the virus. I just need to be strong, but being strong is starting to wear on me and I am fighting the urge to just crawl into my bed and not get out for a month. Yet I know that my kids can’t see that, it is not what I want to teach them. So I pick myself up and I keep going, it is the only way. To face the storm, to let it know that I may have a weak moment, but I am not out of this fight. I will win this battle, and I will get up every single day and I will find the ability to love again one day. It won’t be today nor will it be tomorrow. But I will wake up one day and be the woman I have chosen to be. I must believe that somewhere good will come from this bad. I believe that, I must, for that is where my hope lies.

Dee

The Simple Life……

The virus has us all in our homes spending time with family. Though for someone like me who is an essential worker life is pretty much the same as always. Go to work, come home, run, make dinner, shower, go to bed. It is a simple life, though I have to admit I will miss my son playing baseball this year. We have yet to be told that it is off, but right now I am guessing that it just is. My heart breaks for us, no prom (my youngest daughter is a senior this year) no graduation, no baseball, no swimming pool. Life seems pretty meek. Yet I watch my children and they are still smiling. (well as long as the internet is working) They are still laughing and helping each other and we have fallen into a somewhat normal day to day life.

Maybe we are the lucky ones. We have always lived a simple life, We cook most of our meals at home, we only started traveling in the last year so not having big trips is nothing new for us. Sure we miss our weekly shopping trips and going out to have dinner. Yet itt just doesn’t feel so different for us to say home. The other day I was sitting in my favorite place, my front porch. We have this old wicker table and chairs. They were my great aunts, she used them in her dinning room. When I got the set it was over ten years ago. Then it was in good shape but years of sitting outside on my porch has really done a number on it. I repainted the set two years ago trying to make it last. For which it has, but as I sat outside with my kids the other day I realized that the set was just too big for the space. Really only three people could comfortably sit and visit. It was then I decided to make a change. So I got online and ordered a new set. Here is what I didn’t think about. The chair that I sat in was where my husband would always sit. It was his place, it was nothing for him and I to wake up every morning and head outside to sit. He was a smoker and he never smoked in our home. So we would be outside. The porch was the selling point to our home. We love it out there.

Yesterday the new furniture arrived and it took us a while but we got it put together and then started moving the old out and putting the new in. As we were putting the finishing touches on my two oldest daughters and I had a very raw conversation. One had stated that she was glad her father had passed away before this virus. Because if he would have gotten it he would have died a terrible death. Let me take a minuet to explain this. Ed was a big guy. Every bit of two hundred and seventy five pounds, he smoked, he didn’t work out, he didn’t eat healthy. It was only in the last nine months of his life that he started to take care of himself. Yet what my daughter said was the truth. This virus would not have stopped him from going to work, he was a railroader so his position would have been considered essential as well. I think he would have had the attitude that many young people have, “not me, I’m going to be fine”. It would have made me mad that his attitude would be that way, but I wouldn’t say anything. I would just worry. It was odd to hear my daughter say that she was glad her dad was already gone, and then to have the other agree only showed how mature they were. How well they knew their father. How well they knew their mother. He would have gotten it. We all know this, we would have all waited for him to come home sick. He wouldn’t have, he would have suffered in a lonely hotel somewhere not believing that he was ill, and he would have went to work and died. Instead he was doing what he loved when he passed and he was gone within minutes he didn’t suffer. For whatever reason that has brought comfort to us.

It is odd where you find your blessings. Yet with our simple life, we seem to see them quite easily. We thought nothing about taking his chair and placing it in our shed. Funny I still can’t get rid of the chair but it is put away. We placed the new furniture in its place and then sat outside and enjoyed the simple life that we have always had. People talk about reconnecting with family during this time. What is odd is that I don’t have to do that. The tragedy of his death did that for us already. We were a tight family before, now we are even closer. My kids are ready to start their lives, to leave the nest. I reassure them every day that I too am ready for that. Their brother and I will be just fine. It is time, yet it is hard to just walk away from our little bubble. I am sure they have the thoughts of “what if” and I am doing my best to teach them that we cannot live in the world of “what ifs”. That we must live in the world of hope and take joy in the moments of life. Not the past, not the wish of the future but in the very moment. For that is what Ed and my life was full of. The beautiful little moments that made life beautifully full of happiness, joy, and love. Don’t get me wrong we had big moments too, but it is the little ones, the simple life that adds up to a beautiful love story of us.

The Real Neat Blog Award #1……

Real Neat Blog Award – Lee's Hall of information

When I started blogging I knew I wanted to reach people. To somehow say something that made a difference to someone. That it would make a difference in how they saw life. Yet my travel blog has gone in a whole different direction. What has been amazing is that that direction has been nothing but the exact direction I needed to go. I want to thank “Mr. A” for the nomination for this award. His blog is below. If you have not checked him out please do so. He is an amazing writer and his blog inspires, and is so insightful I have enjoyed reading his writing.

https://barbariangentlemen.wordpress.com/

So what is “The Real Neat Blog Award”? It is a peer nominated award and the person that nominates you gets to ask you seven to ten questions. To accept the award you first thank the peer for the nomination and make sure to link their blog to your response. In their nomination they ask the seven to ten questions and your acceptance includes the questions and your answers to them. The next thing is you nominate seven to ten other bloggers, ask them your seven to ten questions. It is neat because we get to know a little more about each blogger and everyone gets some really good exposure. Below are the rules.

Display the Blog Logo in your blog.
Thank the Blogger who nominated you.
Do not forget to link to their blog for nominating you.
Answer all the questions they have given you.
Nominate 7 to 10 other bloggers of your choice.
Ask your Nominees 7 questions.

Here were my questions with the answers.

1.) Tell us about a time where you are thrown off course only to find yourself exactly where you intended to be? When I enrolled into college back in 2009 I was very excited about starting. Two weeks after enrolling I found out I was expecting my fourth child. I thought great I’m gonna get my degree and then no one is going to hire a mom of four kids! I still pressed on. I had chosen a specific degree that would seem to work in many different areas. After a year of class I had a very strange number call my cell phone. It was local but also one I didn’t recognize. I usually don’t answer those types of calls but something told me to just answer. It happened to be a local doctor that needed an office assistant and I was who everyone suggested. I landed the exact job I was going to school for and I wasn’t even done with school yet. I worked for that doctor for two years and loved every minute of it. The fact that I had four kids didn’t even make him think twice about hiring me. It was my character and ability to gently communicate with patients that made him hire me.

2.) Tell us about a strenuous physical activity that you enjoy and why? If you have none, is there a physical activity that you are interested in and tell us why you haven’t tried it yet? I am a long distance runner. I run three miles three to four days per week. I am slowly building up to five miles and hope to get to ten plus by October when I run my first half marathon. I have talked in some of my other blog posts about why I run. I do it mainly because it lets me shut off my mind. This is something that just doesn’t happen if you just went out and ran and had never ran before. It takes training. If you follow sports any at all and listen to top athletes talk about training you will hear them talk about muscle memory. The reason they are able to react and perform at such quick speeds is because of the muscle memory. It is done without thinking of the how to do it. Dancers do this actors do it the same with with memorizing lines. They practice it so that it becomes as natural as breathing. With distance running it is the same. Once the discipline is there and the muscle memory has been established, then you can perform without thinking about it. Thus I am able to get out and run and for how ever long I am running, I can shut down all thought. I focus on deep breath in through the nose and a slow smooth release out of my mouth. Once that is set in, the beauty of not thinking about anything slides into place and for a while peace is with me. That peace is addictive.

3.) Is there an establishment that you frequent simply because you like their staff? Mind telling us about your interactions with the servers, staff, and crew? In our little town the bar is called “The Thirsty Buffalo”. Now mind you I live in a town of about one-thousand people. Yes that small. I love it and I love our bar. Yes because of the bartenders. Actually I am one of them, but if you ever came to visit and it is a beautiful night, you will learn very fast that it is very common for the three of us bartenders to be in even on our nights off. The bar is not your typical bar. It is clean and fancy and has a pool table that you don’t pay to play. There are not the typical over the table lights, nope in fact there are even couches in our bar. Yes I refer it to our bar, because that is exactly how it feels. Ever see “Cheers?” There has been multiple times that I have walked into our bar and hear my name yelled out. “DEE!!” I love my fellow bartenders we work hard and the busier we are the happier we are. It is our community that we love to serve and visit with. What is really cool about our bar is the customers that come in. All ages from the young to the old they all mingle here. The young listen to the old and the old give the young shit. It is the sense of community that you feel there. No one is really there to get shitfaced, they are there because work was hard that week. Or it is someone’s birthday and those need to be celebrated always. Working there is amazing and I love it.

4.)Tell us about a Men’s style trend that you think should end or never exist in the first place? I am the last person to judge anything about fashion. I have no clue when it comes to what is hot and what is not. As for a guy fashion that I cringe at it has to be letting jeans hang below the but with the underwear showing. Dude that is the biggest turn off for me. It feels sloppy and screams, I just picked these up off the floor and put them on. No thank you.

5) Who is the male fictional character (with no superpowers) you would like to be with, in time of a disaster and why? What manly skills do you think he possesses that would increase your chances of survival? This one is easy for me. McGiver. Dude can take an inkpen and fix a truck on the fly. Yup he is the one for me. His mechanical skills are off the hook need something fixed it doesn’t matter that you don’t have what he needs, he will find something that works no problem.

6.) What leisurely activities do you think, make a man look sexy, eg reading, cooking, etc? I love classic cars and a man out tinkering on a car or truck is very sexy to me. I’m an outdoor kind of woman, take me on a hike, to the lake anywhere outside. Working on a car/ truck though as long as he lets me work out there with him, man nothing sexier than that.

7) What is your honest impression of me, is there anything you wish for me to improve on my blog? Since I am new at this blogging thing I don’t know if I really have any improvements to suggest. But my honest impression is that you are a great father and son. That life hasn’t gone as you planned but it hasn’t stopped you from still seeking out your true place in life. You are open and vulnerable and not afraid to just be who you are. In the end you will accomplish all that you want in life, because it is what you chose to do.

Again thank you to Mr. A for the nomination I am so humbled by it. I have enjoyed answering your questions and hope that you enjoy reading my answers.

My Nominations.

http://mygrieftalks.wordpress.com/

http://duttaparikhit.wordpress.com/

https://chasingjoy.net/

https://artbyjesica.com/

My Questions

1.) What was your purpose in starting a blog? Has it changed since you started?

2) What is one of your authors? Why do you like them and what book of theirs do you keep going back and reading over and over again?

3) If you could travel to another country where would it be and why?

4) What is the one food you would never eat? What food would you never turn down?

5) Where do you find your peace? Describe your quite place and why you like to be there.

6) Who is someone who saw you when you felt invisible?

You don’t have to answer or even follow through but take the time to think about others that have inspired you. It feels good to know that what you write makes a difference in someone’s life. And you all have made a huge difference in mine. Make sure to tag me in your blog so that I can see your answers and thank you for following me. It is an honor to write for you all. As always please keep writing because each of you inspire me!

Dee