Two months a widow and this is my first time driving across the high desert of eastern Oregon by myself. First time visiting mom-in-law in Idaho without Hubby. I’ve thanked MIL several times through the years for doing such a great job of raising Hubby for me. She usually declines to take much credit. “He came that way,” she says. (Hmmm … can’t remember a time she’s ever said that about any of her other sons.)
My first day of retirement, defined as the first work day I didn’t have to work for the rest of my life.
I’m going to love being retired, but I didn’t exactly spend this day with my feet up, reading to my heart’s content and eating popcorn (although eating popcorn will come later this evening).
This bracelet showed up in the mail. A reminder to embrace the journey. The journey might not take you where you wanted to go. But surely there is something in each turn of the road that can provide opportunity to speak gratitude.
The tiny heart has a cursive “B” engraved on it. It may stand for the name of the jewelry company for all I know. But I interpret it as the word, “Be.” As in, be joyful. Be grateful. Be a friend. Be available. Be a source of wisdom, of hope.
The word be suggests choice. I get to choose whether I want to be thankful or complaining. Kind or not-so-kind. Loving or selfish.
I sent a farewell letter to the full survivorship e-mail list at work on Friday, my last day in the Cancer Center. A friend wrote back, sharing the words that became his mantra during the journey of losing his young daughter to cancer:
Define your purpose; live your reason.
I have an idea of what my purpose is for this next season. I believe God gave me a love for writing, an ability to write, stories to tell. And so I’m placing all my eggs in one basket and giving it my full-time effort.
The “B” on the bracelet speaks to me in this endeavor. Be unafraid; be a risk-taker; be creative, it says. Be about finding your purpose and living it.
Temps in the single digits and I’m wearing extra layers. Celebrating the start of a New Year by snow-shoeing. Not forgetting anything important. The Camelbak for hydration. Snowshoes. Trekking poles. Homemade toasted nuts to feed the birds.
Glorious powdery snow. So much beauty along the trail. Fallen logs tucked in tightly with fleecy blanket. Christmas trees decorated all in white. A family of snowmen created by fellow snow-shoers.
Much fun. Great exercise. Natural beauty. Four and a half miles round trip with plenty of uphill and down.
Final post for 2014. And what a year it’s been. I hadn’t planned on losing Hubby this year. I was sure we still had more time together. An E. M. Forster quote on a card from friends reads like this:
We must be willing to let go of the life we had planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Lovely, memorable, family-filled, fun-filled Christmas in the Far East Jersey. I’m amazed and grateful that it wasn’t hard to be with family without Hubby. I had not expected this. I had always heard that the first holidays and birthdays and anniversaries would be the most difficult.
As always, it’s good to be home. Some nice welcome-home gifts. Stacks of mail and packages. And this beautiful white fluffy stuff.
Incredibly fabulous costumes and sets. Music superbly rendered with beautiful African strains, with magical dance and drumming. The Parents and I went in together on Christmas gifts for the munchkins – tickets to The Lion King on Broadway, fourth longest running show. Going strong for seventeen years.
This first Christmas without Hubby. And still unexplainable peace. Christmas Eve service with several hundred other people. Notes to Santa and carrots for the reindeer. Cooking and savoring of delicious food. Putting together of puzzles. Playing several games of Sequence, through which The Parents gloat, which wasn’t really gloat-worthy since it was against a feeble grandmother and two young children. (I’m thinking they need therapy.)
Wonderful family time together, this first Christmas without Hubby. So why hasn’t this been a more sorrowful time for me? Why another day of waking up to peace?
Sarah, my young cancer widow friend, stopped by with her six-year-old son, Oliver. She brought a gift that had been given to her last year from a fellow widow. With instructions to pass it along this year to another widow. Before Christmas.
Thin blue skies. Temperatures soaring into the low thirties. That’s all the invitation I needed to layer up and find my hiking boots in the too-clean garage. My favorite in-town trail follows the Deschutes from Farewell Bend Park upriver for a mile and a half before it crosses the footbridge and heads back down.
It’s beyond my comprehension how the color white—a sort of non-color—can be so beautiful. On boardwalk.
Copyright © 2024 Marlys Johnson
