a new season

It has been five years since I last posted on my blog. There were some exciting trips during that time- to Sweden at Christmastime in 2014 when our daughter was doing a semester abroad in Stockholm, a three week trip to Hawaii where our older daughter’s husband was stationed, and a week long trip during the Fourth of July to our nation’s capital. We also became grandparents and have two beautiful grandsons! I guess I had abandoned the technology because this blog started as a way for me to fill my husband in on everything I was doing while traveling to see our daughter and he was at home.  The other trips I didn’t blog about, we were traveling together, therefore no need to “keep him abreast”. I regret not keeping up with the blog because we had such great times on all those trips and I’d love to have had them recorded. Especially now. Now that a new season in my life has arrived.

The biggest part of my journey since I last blogged in 2013 and the reason for starting up this blog again, is that I lost my husband to cancer on March 12th, 2018 and four months later lost my 94 year old mother (of whom was in my charge) to congestive heart failure. The year 2018 was a life-changing year for me. My friends all told me I should blog about what I was going through instead of just writing posts here and there on FB. They thought it would help me with the grieving process and it could help others. But I just couldn’t. It was too raw and I was too broken. And exhausted. I had nothing left in me, yet I had so much to do. When someone dies, it’s a lot of work! That sounds callous, but oh my gosh, that’s one of the reasons it’s so hard. So much to do and that person that you need so much is not there to help or to share it with. Maybe someday I’ll write more, but I just can’t right now. I’m still trying to get through it. Trying to get back on my feet. I had to immediately start preparing the house to move out and sell, then in the midst of that Mom died and I had to switch gears and start all over with the “things to do” that have nothing to do with the grieving...all the legal paperwork. Then I had to go through her things rather quickly to make room for my things so I could move, then go back to preparing my house to sell...My things still remain in boxes at Mom’s. I am living in limbo. Move? sell? Lease. Whatever I decide, Mom’s house needs major updating. Most everything in it is how it was 50 years ago. Old. Tired. Like me.