My husband, Gary, was stubborn tenacious. Diagnosed with late-stage, slow-growing prostate cancer, there was a two-year life expectancy. But Gary stubbornly insisted on living ten years. Ten far-reaching, astonishing years.
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I loved that I was married to a tenacious man.
Armed with a Chai tea and a map of the Fruit Loop, I rambled through beautiful farmland past vineyards and alpaca ranches and warted pumpkins with Mt. Hood standing guard in the near distance.
All photos: Marlys
Today, September 28, is National Good Neighbor Day. This thought from NationalDayCalendar.com:
It is a blessing to have a good neighbor, but it is even a greater thing to BE a good neighbor.
What if we made it our goal to be a good neighbor year-round?
Photo: Pixabay
Today is my husband, Gary’s, birthday. It’s also our wedding anniversary. If cancer had not stolen him from me, we would be celebrating forty-five years of marriage.
In Fredrick Backman’s novella And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, a young boy asks his grandfather a question about his grandmother: “How did you fall in love with her?”
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Speaking from experience, living with less is rather liberating.
When we have too much stuff, then we have to maintain it, and build fences around it, and pay storage fees for it, and we can’t actually park our cars in our garages because of it.
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I remember exactly where I was when my cell phone rang. “It’s cancer,” said the deep voice I knew and loved so well. “Oh, hon,” I said, letting my breath out, my brain firing in all directions like that little silver ball in a pinball machine.
Photo by Sydney Rae on Unsplash
It’s infinitely more comfortable to wrap the security blanket of my routine around me — with stacks of books and pots of tea nearby — than it is to travel alone without my best friend/tour director/husband.
And so, I booked a cruise to the last frontier as a brave-making venture. Alone.
All photos by Marlys unless otherwise noted
Daughter Summer and my two granddaughters flew in from the Far East (a.k.a. New Jersey) this week. And we four girls have stories to tell of our time together.
This thought from an author unknown:
Fill your life with adventures, not things. Have stories to tell, not stuff to show.
Is there a difference between criticizing and critiquing? Absolutely.
Criticizers express disapproval and point out their perceptions of our flaws and mistakes. Someone who offers critique is contributing their careful opinions with the intent of helping.
Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
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