A New Decade Arrives!

Birthday Celebration Began With A Slumber Party! - July 30, 2015

(Don't ALL 60th birthday celebrations include a slumber party?)

 

This post, more than any other, reflects how woefully behind I am with the blog.  But I keep plugging away because it is important to me and looking back at past posts (more on this later), I came to realize how thankful I am to have been writing the blog for the past five years and now having access to the events it has documented and the thoughts I have expressed.

My end of July birthday came and went ushering in a new decade for me with no apologies whatsoever.   Can’t say that I really even cared that it was my 60^th birthday.  Mostly, I just cared that the person with whom I’d celebrated the previous 40 birthdays  was not here to make me laugh and remind me I wasn’t getting older, just better! 

My amazing friends had some very definite ideas about how I should celebrate and in the end, I could not have asked for a better day given the circumstances.  Without exception, anyone wanting to help me celebrate ASKED me in advance what I did or did not want.  The only thing I requested was no large crowds and no surprises.  The entire week was peaceful and full of the celebration of another year of life, yet always deeply respectful of my feelings and my grief.  I could not have asked for more love and kindness.  I am so grateful.

So what are my plans for this year of my life?  To put it simply, with every fiber of my being, I hope to continue working through the grief of no longer having Bill by my side in a healthy and mature way.  I want to return to a concentrated focus on my health as many aspects of caring for myself have been forced into the background and it is catching up with me.  I am not happy about that and plan to turn it around quickly.  It is impossible to explain, but I see the world and other people through totally different eyes now and it has changed the way I view most everything.  As a result, the things I consider high priority have changed and the way I spend my time has changed.

For sure, it will be a year of adjustment and coming to terms with life in a way I never anticipated.  Looking back at my “birthday” posts from 2014 (read it here) and 2013 (here), I am once again reminded and can’t end this post without reminding you that things can change very, very quickly.   I am so thankful that Bill and I never approached our lives thinking something might happen to one or the other of us, but neither did we ever put things off with the idea that we had forever.  We lived fully, loved deeply and laughed constantly!  Please, please don’t take the opportunity to do that NOW for granted.  I can still hear his laugh as clearly as if I’d heard it yesterday and I have literally hundreds of pictures to remind me how much fun we had loving and living life!  Through my tears, I can always find a reason to smile. 

We were out on a September afternoon drive - see anything unusual?

September, 2014