The Beginning of the 80's

He's been gone almost two years. It's strange that I am missing him more now now than before. Maybe that was because for more than 10 years he was slowly leaving me. Why do some things take so long?
Maybe that was God's way of preparing me for him leaving. I just can't ask,"Why God?", can I? I never did ask then, so I won't ask now. I just know that it is and has been. Don't ask questions. Just try to get on with your life. And cope the best that you can. I am never one to ask God, "Why me?"
Like with Julie. I never asked why God? I just did and took every day as it was, thankful for another day. I didn't plan for tomorrow. Or worry about tomorrow. I lived for that day. Took one day at a time. Hoping for a good tomorrow. And tomorrow always comes.
This week I was encouraging my friend Christa to write her memoirs soon. I think she is going to start doing it. She said something about some things are too painful to go back and write about. But it is time for her. Maybe it is time for me too. Some things are too painful to write about for me too. Like things that happened that day, and the weeks and months and years to come. Almost 30 years.
I always write about the first 30 years of my marriage because those were the happy years, the decade of the 1950's, my Golden Years, and the 1960's were the Turmoil of the 60's, with the assassination of a president and the Vietnam War protests and the Jesus Movement, but it really didn't affect me or my husband or children directly...well, maybe when I remember when Eddie and Trent used to argue about the Vietnam War. The 1970's were the years when my children began to leave the nest, go to college and marry. But those were such good years too. The weddings, the graduations, the family Christmases and Easters and reunions.

I had such high hopes for the 1980's. In January of 1982, Eddie and I were alone again. I was not one to have "empty nest syndrome". I was looking forward to my freedom. I had plans. Julie was pregnant and so happy to be having a baby after 7 years of marriage. Kristi and Bill were on their own in a little house in the country with their little baby Stephanie who had been born in November. They were 17 years old. Two pictures above are of a baby shower Kristi had for Julie in her house. And Miranda playing nearby.

Trent and Kathy were living in Arlington where he was a lab director in clinic, and Kathy was working for the telephone company, and they had Miranda who was 3 years old. Derek and Judy were married and living in an apartment nearby. Life was very good. This was going to be a very good year.


That summer we went to Colorado with Margaret and Johnny. We had such a good time. We got a cabin on Vallecito Lake. We rode the train in Durango through the mountains to Silverton and back. We had a snowball fight up on Wolf Creek Pass in June. We viewed the lovely landscape and planned on all retiring there some day, where Johnny and Eddie would have a little grocery store up in the mountains and Margaret and I would have a little studio room attached, where she would sell her Avon products, and I would have an art studio and give art lessons. We dreamed our dreams and hoped they came true. The picture above is me in Colorado near Vallecito Lake.

So, now as I look through the albums, I was just thinking about the last 30 years. So much has happened.

I am beginning to miss my husband. I think I have been in shock and numb for the last 30 years, and especially the last 10 years. It has been difficult for me to cry. I am alone, but not lonely, I miss him sometimes like when Julie burps and I say, "Get any on you?" and we laugh because her daddy used to say that to anyone who burped out loud and laugh his funny little laugh.

Or like when I see beautiful yellow cannas in someone's yard, and I remember Eddie.

One day, before I knew what happened, he had cut down and dug up my beautiful yellow cannas under the kitchen window, saying "Those things have taken over that flowerbed."

Then I get mad all over again like I did that day, and the days and weeks and months afterward, when I would go on the patio and see the bare flowerbed. And that was just the beginning of the things he cut down through the years, things I loved.

It makes me fell better now, because I don't miss him as much! ha.
I guess it is good to remember the good things, and not the bad, depressing things.
But I always tell people that the bad things are part of your history and make you what you are now. And I know God has been working on my testimony. Because "I overcome the devil by the Blood of the Lamb and the word of my testimony" (Rev. 12:11)
I know it is better to remember the joyful, fun, happy, times. So that is what I do. And that is what I have these days to keep me company. So I look at old picture albums and remember and smile as the good memories come back.