I’m busy. Sometimes too busy to sit at my computer and compose my blog posts. It’s not like I don’t have anything to say, I do. There are things swirling around inside of me looking for cracks to ooze out of, like some sort of ocean tide that can’t be stopped.
It’s just that the new job has me tied up. I started at a critical time, hit the ground running, and jumped in to conducting training sessions for the other members of my team. I have a certain skill set and that makes me the gray wolf amongst the pups at work.
Speaking of gray wolf… I turned 50. I’m at an age where I can no longer fool myself into thinking I still have one half of my life to live. I’m not having a hard time with my new age, after all, it’s just a number tracked by the mental part of me. The body part of me feels good. No aches and pains, no daily medications, no more gray hairs than what I’ve had for a while, but who can tell? My stylist always gives me honey blond highlights like I’ve been out in the sun, frolicking.
And out in the sun is where I’ve been when work doesn’t beckon. Even though everything is dying back, fall is such a beautiful time of year. The Japanese Maples are reddish-orange. The chestnut and the black walnut are yellow. The oaks are red. I bought a couple of burgundy mums for the front of the house. They sit right next to the white geraniums, still blooming, left over from the summer containers.
Being outside gives me a chance to admire the new roof and lament the fact that the house needs painted at the top of the eaves…the part I can’t reach with the ladder. Once spring rolls around I’ll hire painters to get up there and finish off what I could not get with my current gear.
Lastly, I heard from Husband #2.
A letter arrived shortly before our ten year anniversary. The three paragraphs summarized:
- His mother is in poor shape
- He’s not filing for divorce until things get figured out with his parents’ situation
- No need to respond to his letter and have a good holiday season
Paragraph One: His mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease about six years ago. As it goes with Parkinson’s, the decline is steady, debilitating, inevitable. We’ve known for a while that she would lose her battle sooner rather than later. Thankfully her family had time to come to grips with her illness and spend precious moments with her before she left this world. Six years of knowing she would leave eventually and getting closer to her before she did.
I Googled her name and found an obituary for her. She died the day that Husband #2 mailed out his letter to me.
Paragraph Two: Husband #2 is going ahead with a divorce but just not now. He doesn’t know where he’ll end up, possibly living with his father, possibly staying where he is, possibly moving within the state to a new location. So he doesn’t want to muddy the waters with a legal proceeding as he’s not sure where he’ll end up permanently.
Paragraph Three: No need to respond… Sorry, kiddo, I’m not a block of stone. If someone I’ve been in a relationship for 13 years has his mother die, well… I’m going to reach out. I had my father die quickly from cancer, we weren’t close, and it still impacted me.
So I called him. I broke down my barrier of no contact and reached out to someone in an hour of sorrow. Our eleven minute phone call consisted of me stating how sorry I was to hear about his mom and him stating about how he’s screwed up his life.
What a shame.
I mailed my soon-to-be former father-in-law a condolence card and a care package with a small gesture inside. Something he could share with his wife’s family and friends. Something they could remember her by.
About a week later I received a padded envelope in the mail. Inside was a copy of the church program from my mother-in-law’s memorial service, a thank you card, and a six-carat amethyst and white gold ring.
“Thank you for your gift and your love. Her ring is one she would want you to have”
I mourned in my own way.
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