One Year...

This is the day…the one year anniversary. So far, so good. It’s definitely less easy to dwell on the past when you have an active 3 year old asking for cereal and orange juice, or when an active 5 month old kitten decides to jump on your lap with her claws extended. I know that at some point today, my mind will wander, but I plan on being in a safe place with family and friends. We will toast the OG and wish he were still here, and we will miss him. We will all still move forward knowing that we had the best of times together and that relief from pain is a joy.

This was the celebration of his 81st birthday, with the family, and still "lookin' good".

Grief…it’s not what you expect

Dave has been gone for eight months. I have been chugging along, doing my regular stuff: I made 2 cakes for Easter; I finally got the car in for a long needed service; I pulled weeds and watered; along with other “regular” stuff. The big days are hard, and we expect them to be hard: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Anniversary, but what we don’t expect is the effect that the “little” things will have. Every Easter for 50 years, Dave has given me a chocolate Easter bunny from See’s. It would appear on my nightstand sometime before morning, just as if the Easter bunny had brought it. He would come in in the morning, full of joy, saying it was the “enter correct number here” year that he had delivered a bunny. He was so proud that he would remember this little thing. It didn’t matter that much to me, but it mattered so much to him. I realized this morning that there would be no Easter bunny on my bedside table tomorrow morning. I never thought to take a photo of the bunny and I never thought of writing a story about the tradition, and now it’s gone. It’s the little things that get you, people--the very little things. His birthday is in a couple of weeks…that’s a biggie…wonder how I’ll handle that one.

March 20, 2019 Walker Canyon Poppy Fields

In these days of “shoulda”, “coulda”, “woulda”, and “maybe”, and “what if”, I have been doing some re-evaluating of my “life”…we aren’t talking about the big LIFE, but about daily living. An example of my new thoughts: I have lived my entire life in California, as a matter of fact, I am a native Californian. Yet, in all of my years, I have never gone to see the poppies in bloom. It was always, “too far”, or “maybe later”, and after Dave’s passing, I realized that we had never shared so many things because we didn’t get our rear ends off the couch. I am trying to do better. Today, I went to see the poppies. It was a little over an hour away, a bit of an uphill hike, and by taking it slowly, I got it done. It was a lovely experience. The day was rainy and overcast, so the poppies were not in their full open glory, yet, even so, the beauty was unmistakable. I am going to try to do more “stuff”, because, as we all know, we have no idea what tomorrow will bring……..or not bring.