So What's Up?

Flagler Beach, Florida

February 10, 2017

My husband, Bill, died on March 18, 2015 and I will tell you without embarrassment, that, for a full year, I lived in a complete fog.  Don’t get me wrong – I breathed and I existed, but for the most part, I took one breath at a time and made one decision at a time. Friends stepped in and my calendar stayed full.  I simply looked at my calendar each day and did what it told me to do.  I became involved with a wonderful group of hiking women who accepted me, cared for me and just went with it when I would melt down.  I began working on our Benevolence Team at church.  I couldn’t imagine ever having the desire to travel again as Bill and I had, so I tried to convince myself little trips here and there to visit friends would be enough.  Those “little” trips were BIG milestones for me! 

Walker Sisters Hiking Adventure - June, 2016

Roan Mountain, Tennessee

 Blog Friend, Sherry, in Shenandoah National Park

September, 2015

Sherry writes a wonderful blog -  Direction of Our Dreams

Anyone who has been through this will most likely tell you that you DO hear your husband’s voice, he sends you “messages,” and you “see” him in a thousand different ways.  My personal opinion is that this can be handled in either a healthy (part of “letting go”) way or an unhealthy (a way of “clinging” to) way.  From the beginning, I prayed to handle it in the healthy way and sometime around the first anniversary of Bill’s death, his clear voice in my head began to say, “you’ve mourned long enough, I’ll be forever with you, I’ll always love you, but I’m gone, I’m INCREDIBLY proud of you, please just spread your wings and fly.”  I can’t say I’ve done a stellar job with all of that, but I am trying and I do feel him just behind me, constantly prodding me to FLY.  It’s what he always wanted for me when he was here.  Why should this be any different?

For new readers, wanted you to see one of my favorite pictures - he was special!

Boston, 2012

So this week, one year ago, I set out on my first travel adventure.  In both wonderful and painful ways, I deemed it a success.  Monday’s post will be all about that trip, so you’ll have to come back for the details!   Since then, I’ve taken several trips to visit friends and built a couple of trips around attending conferences.  My first BIG adventure was a three-week trip to Texas over the holidays.  A detailed post on that trip will come later.  I am writing THIS post from my home away from home in Flagler Beach, Florida that former blog friends may remember.(Our History in the Flagler Beach House.)

Feeling the desire and gathering the courage to start traveling again was big, but my greatest lifestyle change didn’t come until August.  Don’t laugh when I tell you that you are reading the words of a 61 year old college coed officially working on her Master of Arts Degree in Applied Theology and totally loving every minute of it.

 REL509 - Old Testament Foundations for Christian Life & Service

That's a mouth full, isn't it? - January, 2017

Here’s the short backstory….When Bill went back to school for his advanced degree, I wanted to do the same thing, but we were newlyweds and one of us had to work.  He NEEDED the degree, I still wasn’t sure what my career goals were.  Years later, he was still encouraging me to go back to school and I was the one dragging my feet saying, “not now.”  Eventually, “not now” became, “never” and he stopped mentioning it although I doubt he ever forgot it.  Last August, out of the blue, my church, announced a new partnership with Carson-Newman University offering a Master’s Degree program with a combination of residential Saturday classes and online course work.  The Saturday classes would meet AT MY CHURCH on SELECTED Saturdays making it very convenient for me.  I first saw the announcement on the front page of our newsletter and simply stood in the middle of my kitchen floor feeling both God and Bill saying, “OK Sharon, what lame excuse are you going to offer now?”  And I had none!   So, here I am, in my second term and feeling more settled into a project than I have felt in years.  I love the coursework, the professors, the reading, the writing, ALL OF IT!  Whether I actually obtain the degree (it would take three years if I go straight through) seems irrelevant.  It’s the journey that counts.

When I told my 88-year-old mother what I was doing, she said, “are you going to be a preacher?”  Ummmm, that would be NO!  I have no idea what I’m going to DO with this.  For now, it’s enough if it makes be a better teacher, encourager and friend.  I just know it feels right.

So that’s what’s up……….what’s been happening to your life over the past year or so? 

It's Time!

Middle Prong - Great Smoky Mountains National Park

January 20, 2017

I’m not sure how today became the right time, I just knew that I would know!  It has been almost a year and a half since I have posted on Gains & Losses, yet I’ve never been tempted to take down the blog because I always knew there would come a time I’d be ready to blog again.  It isn’t that I haven’t been writing – my journals and my Facebook page are full of my ramblings.  But the blog felt different and until now, it just didn’t feel “right.”

Why now?  Perhaps it’s that I don’t feel quiet as vulnerable as I did during those days of deep grief following Bill’s death (that’s still so hard to write).  Perhaps, it’s just that I miss the friendships that had been created through the blog and I’d like to see if any of you are still there and maybe start finding some new ones.  I loved reading posts and developing friendships from people all over the world through the blog and learning what life was like where they lived.  My life is completely different now and what I write will be completely different. 

For anyone reading for the first time, my story can be found in previous blog posts, but a good starting point might be early in 2013. (Archived posts on left of blog)  It was August of 2013 that my sweet husband and best friend was shockingly diagnosed with cancer.  He fought a valiant battle for 18 months, but died on March 18, 2015.  I simply cannot comprehend the fact that it has been almost two years.  I expect much of what I write will reflect my journey since that day and how I have changed.  As always, mostly I write for me, but always with a view of encouragement for anyone reading who might be traveling a similar road.

I guess you might say I’m doing o.k.  The days fly by, I stay busy, I have begun traveling again, something I questioned in those early days of deep grief whether I’d ever be able to enjoy without Bill.  It was so much a part of who we were and what we most enjoyed doing.  But my travel these days is different and there will be much to write about that!  My “community” at home has widened considerably and I can say without a doubt that I could not have weathered these last two years without them.  As I wrote about in THIS post, my faith, my family and my friends have carried when I didn’t think I had the strength to go on. 

Yes, I still have the pink and blue chairs you saw so often with Bill and me in them!

On this gorgeous January day, they held myself and a friend going through a hard time.

We shared both laughter and tears. Life is wonderful, but life is hard!

 January 20, 2017

 

My health has suffered and I am paying for bad habits developed when I simply didn’t have the energy or stamina to care what I ate or how I treated my body.  Thankfully, those days are behind me and once again, I DO care.  I care very much, but the piper has to be paid and it will take a long time to get back to the healthy weight and strong body I had. The extra weight, lack of exercise and poor nutrition have aggravated the Rheumatoid Arthritis which I wrote about so often, so now am working with my Rheumatologist to try and get that pain back under control.  To say I don't feel good and am in a good bit of pain would be fairly accurate.  I’m also a few years older and have had lived through tremendous stress so it’s possible I’ll never be back to where I was in 2012 when I both looked and felt better than I ever had.  But I will try!

As was always my bad habit, this post is already too long, but it feels good to just ramble.  We’ll see if there is anyone out there to read. 

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

Out and About, But Oh, So Painful!

Great Smoky Mountains National Park - August 4, 2015

I find myself wanting to write, but when I sit down to do so, the words just simply will not come.  Amazing how I compose these fabulous posts while out walking, but when sitting at my laptop, those words have simply vanished.  There is no logical explanation for anything going in my head these days.  There is no logic to grief!

Five and a half months have passed.  The inability to take a deep breath has, for the most part, passed.  The ability to go about my daily routine has, for the most part, returned.  The business aspect of Bill’s death is, for the most part, complete and things are functioning as they should.  As for the tears, there is no, “for the most part,” to it.  They flow every day.  Multiple times every day.  Sometimes, it’s just a eyeful of tears when a memory crosses my mind or I hear his laughter in my head.  Other times, it’s tears flowing down my face because I open a drawer and there lie the jade necklace and earrings he brought me from China and presented to me in the wee hours of the morning he returned because it was our anniversary and he couldn’t wait.  Or one of his students posts yet another picture on Facebook that I haven’t seen along with an amazing tribute to the influence he had on their life.  And sometimes, there is no trigger at all.  The reality just hits anew that he is gone and without him in them, the days seem empty.

But I try.  Part of that trying includes efforts, feeble though they may be, to resume the activities I most love.  Being outdoors, traveling and hiking.  Our weather during June, July and the first part of August was simply miserably hot and humid, so there hasn’t been much hiking, but I have taken full advantage of my early morning body clock and walked regularly often before it is fully light.  (Another perfect time for shedding tears!)

I have taken several short trips to visit friends and have attended a couple of conferences at The Cove.  I wrote about one of those adventures in my last post.  When you read this, I will be on my way to another destination with new friends that aren’t really new at all.  It will be a week of seeing new things and deepening a friendship that already exists.  I promise to write all about it.

My support system here at home continues to humble and amaze me.  My fear that it would go away as time passed has not materialized.  My schedule remains full and is a delightful mixture of time with folks who have been part of my (our) life all along and others, who have moved to the forefront and caused me to wonder how I managed to live life without them in it regularly before.

The "gypsy" in me seems to be changing.  That's a whole post in itself, but I am learning that the independent Sharon who once sought solitude for weeks at a time, really wasn't so independent at all.  There was ALWAYS a certain someone waiting to hear from me, calling to see where I was on my journey, wanting to know when I'd be home and of course, in later years, constantly texting from his office begging for pictures or being curious about what hike or road I was on.  His favorite way to end a conversation when I was traveling or hiking with friends was, "ok, it's time for you to come home!"  Even if I was only two hours into a week long adventure, that was a special communication between us and is the way conversations always ended.  Then he'd laugh and say, "I love you - have fun," and be gone to his next class or rehearsal.  

So, without that centering presence always "there," no matter where I was, I find myself being much more content here at home among the support system that is a constant source of encouragement.  Once September arrives, I have made some commitments which will keep me closer to home and that is ok.  There is still plenty of room for adventure and plenty to write about.

So, as the saying goes, time does march on.  Time is a gift.  It is also a miracle.  Never take it for granted or assume there will always be another opportunity to do or say what needs to be done or said NOW.