Catching Up Here and in Old Diaries/Journals in 2020

I haven’t been writing as usual here in the past weeks, or writing anywhere, but I do continue with creative options to watch great movies, seek out arts and nature shows on TV, read, print some leaf backgrounds, to pull out past work and reread it…a sort of life review goes on daily, without planning it. I drifted to it and find it enjoyable. My memory continues to be affected by that mischief the monkey in my mind carries on. I couldn’t say the word septic recently to complete a thought about the pipes here when chatting. And, linguistics was another…I kept trying and coming up with the word “statistics.” As I march toward my last year in the 70s…life is getting interesting in those new ways.

But as my first child, our daughter Kim, was 59 on the 16th, I got out my creative start to a diary looking forward to my own 60s and 70s. I started it and did some work before closing it… back when I was 59. Did some notes for a garden, etc in the back of the book. But in the front of the bound diary, I love the quirky creativity, there, and think I have achieve a lot that I set out to then. I’m tempted to start another one when 79 rolls around June 10th of this year and try the same theme but finish the entire bound album. Here’s how it developed–

At 59 I’d just cleared all of my office out at FL Hospital, here, and brought the materials I’d developed home. I was retired. I noted that. I was truly entering a new area of life. (I haven’t worked formerly outside my home but once since–and that was to be a story listener for patients in a little hospital in a country town near here for a few months until my husband had open heart surgery and needed my attentions at home.)

I began to list things I wanted to include in my 60s and 70s and things I wanted to not include. “I will pass by that I do not love,”this was a key statement, for example. More from this in another entry I think.

Since then writing there, my life was a time of both being free and/or being responsible to care for my husband during his various and serious illness and recoveries until his death in 2013.

And, then, grief took center stage for a time. Following that? Figuring out what kind of life I wanted as a widow, as well as making that life, this one I live, possible. Of course, I never expected a pandemic and isolation back then. This currently has made an entry and now I’m busy negotiating an isolated life with a future income that may be no longer secure. I feel able to meet whatever comes, however. I’m not afraid, I don’t worry over this situation. I know I can move through what ever comes.
~~~~~

I was glad to find in that diary something I could never forget, of course, but with so many diaries and such I didn’t know where this item was.

To Pat, My Valentine

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways,

I love thee for

45 wonderful years of marriage
3 great children
5 beautiful grandchildren
2 years of support when I finished college
47 Valentine’s Days together
6 months of support when I finished chemotherapy
43 years of support during demanding Tax Seasons
Countless days of caring for our children when I was away on business
Innumerable hugs, kisses, and smiles
Thousands of days beside me while I traveled through life, encouraging me, counseling me, and making me into a better person
Innumerable contributions to my knowledge and appreciation of the arts, to my appreciation to people and things beyond business and sports, and for contributing to my thirst for life and worldwide experiences: and
Infinite comfort in being my soul mate both in good times and in difficult circumstances.
I will cherish you for eternity.

Last updated May 17, 2020