Little Bottoms Trail - Great Smoky Mountains National Park
May, 2015
To those of you who may still have me on your
Blog Roll or in your Reader, this post will come as a complete shock and for
that I truly apologize. Since I last
posted on December 8, 2014, my life has taken a total turn in a direction I
never would have anticipated and even now, can’t believe has happened to me.
But it did.
Bill, Me, My Mom and My Dad
October 10, 2014 – McCloud Mountain
Jellico, Tennessee
On February 18, my sweet
daddy, died of a brain hemorrhage after five agonizing days in the Neuro
Critical Care Unit of UT Hospital. He
died peacefully with my mother’s arms around him, his granddaughter, my sister and I beside
him. He was 83 years old. He was in declining health, but his quick
death was unexpected. Thankfully, all
words had been said many times. He knew
we loved him and we knew he loved us. I so miss his quiet manner, sweet smile and timid hugs.
Little did I know that the
greater shock was yet to come. On March
18 (yes, one month to the day), I lost my sweet Bill to the horror that is
cancer. We had learned on December 23,
that although his original cancer had been cured, new cancer had appeared in
other parts of his body. Despite more
treatment, the cancer continued to spread quickly and in three short months, he
was gone. He died peacefully in his sleep. He was 59 years old and we had
been married 37 years and 9 months.
Bill and Me – Colorado Springs, Colorado
One of My Favorite Pictures of Us
Any reader of this blog
knows that Bill was my life partner, my rock and my best friend. His death was a complete and total shock as
we both fully believed until the very end that he would beat the cancer. He faced his illness and ultimately his
death with a courage and determination that I can’t begin to describe.
His Celebration of Life
Service was attended by hundreds of people and only then did I even begin to
realize the scope of his influence in our community and at the school where he
taught. His legacy will live on forever in
the lives of many people.
Why didn’t I know just how
far-reaching his life had become?
Because when he came home, he was mine.
We lived life fully, we loved deeply and we had no regrets. I miss him more than there are words in the
English language to express and wonder each day if I will survive the
pain. To have lost my father and my
husband in the span of one month is still simply incomprehensible to me.
But thanks to an
unbelievable community of support who have surrounded me with love and
kindness, I am beginning to see glimpses of what life might be without Bill in
it and I am finding my mind more open to discovering what God might have in
mind for me to do and accomplish.
One thing I know for sure
is that I will write. When I began this
blog, five years ago this month, I began with the words, “I love to write, I always have.” That has not changed and
it gives me hope for my future that the words I had lost are beginning to come
back. How little I knew when the title
of the blog came to me, that writing about the gains and losses of my life
would only become more and more fitting as the years went by.
So that is what I will
do. The blog will be totally and
completely different. But I hope you
will stay with me as I attempt to move forward.
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