An Ordinary Life

One year ago today, I said goodbye to my best friend, the love of my life, the person who had the power to make me laugh a full on belly laugh, cry crocodile tears or so angry I could spit nails. The person who no matter what was going on around us, or how intense the situation was, I could be completely confident had my back and even if I was wrong, would take my side, then set me straight in private if need be.  Even with all of the challenges he faced in life, he ALWAYS made me feel like I could do anything and usually would get me started on the road to getting there. I loved him and had NO DOUBT he loved me. I’ve heard time heals all wounds. I’m not sure this one will actually heal because there isn’t a day, most days an hour or even minute I don’t still think about him. If I’m watching TV and hear a creak in my old house, and even if I don’t hear it, I still look up expecting to see him taking a break on his way back from the bedroom, leaning on the kitchen island, or sitting

Interesting couple of days. It has been an extremely busy week at work. I'm talking crazy making busy. Strangely, people are starting to request to deal with me when they arrive because I'm the one who answers the phone and who they've already talked to. That is kind of cool, but I'm also not licensed and cannot help them with many, if not most of the things they come to us for. This week there were multiple times that the funeral director and I were each assisting a family and we had at least one other family waiting for something. And then the phone. Good gracious that phone never seemed to stop ringing this week. Crazy making I tell you! While Friday had the same sort of pace to it, it had a couple of moments, for me, that put it into perspective and reminded me why I wanted to take on this job. We handled things for a family who's loved one passed very early Wednesday morning. They came in to make arrangements just before lunch. About 4 pm they calle

Mmmm REAL coffee! My weekend treat! Yesterday was just nuts. Not a bad day, a fairly good one actually, just busy and full of speed bumps and very little of what I planned to get accomplished at work actually happened. For example, I had 6 "guests" that I needed to help along their journey when I left on Thursday. I had agreed to run back over to the office in the evening because one of our guests was returning from a trip to the other side of the state and needed to be let back into the building. This guest, and one other were scheduled to leave us on Friday morning (if I agreed to do the late drop off) Plus 1 other who was actually at another location would be joining them. This drops me down to 3 guests. YAY! Wellllll, on my way to work as I'm dropping Nate off, the funeral director calls me and says, swing by Bigby and grab us some coffee? Huh? 1st of all, I didn't recognize the number so I almost didn't answer. 2ndly, he doesn't drink coffee. Uh, ok

It isn't so much that I haven't come to terms with my current "status" in life. I have. . . At least I think I have. I mean I've said things like, "I'm the surviving spouse." and "My husband has passed away." and other people have called me the "W" word and it hasn't really phased me. . . much. I've even had to put that as my status on a few forms. But I really hadn't said it out loud. But this week I got a phone call and the caller asked to speak to Ed. That may seem unusual, but we had started giving out my number for his business calls because he often didn't have his hearing aids in and missed important calls. It caught me off guard a bit because, while it happened frequently right after he passed, it had tapered off and I hadn't had any for about a month. "Hello, this is _______ Ambulance, Company, may I speak with Edmond please? We're calling to make sure he was happy with the service

My current situation is such that I have no choice but to find a job. My husband thought he had things in place to take care of me as I took care of him for the past several years, but unfortunately, that isn’t how it is working out. So, at a month short of 55 years old, and after nearly a decade I am looking for work. Things have really changed. I’ve researched “best practices” as regards resume’s and such and it seems that now you almost have to create a resume’ for each firm you ship one off to. This is required because the objective is for a living breathing human to take a look at it and hopefully find you worthy of an in-person meeting. To even have a shot at this viewing of your skills summary by “organic” eyes you are, in many if not most cases going to need to get past the electronic/mechanical “gate keeper” the applicant tracking system. The challenge is to “seed” your resume’ with exactly the right words or phrases that this app tracker has been programmed to “like” so t

I had not really allowed myself to "fall apart" over the events in my life recently. A few tears and a lot of involuntary heavy sighs, but that's about it. Too much had to (and still has to) be done to indulge myself that way. Well, my mail yesterday changed all that. I'd not been "counting on" a positive outcome from my claim to the VA but I had been hoping for it and really did think my chances were good. Nope. The letter came yesterday. Denied. And everything crashed.   Then this is the Bible verse of the day in my email this morning: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28 NIV   I believe I've been "coming to Him" all through this. or I wouldn't have been able to hold it together. In fact I believe that while I've always been firm in my faith, I've actually been stronger in that aspect of my life than I'd been in a long time. It had been a conscious