Time, it happens ...

January started a new year, just like all the Januaries before it. The earth keeps revolving around the sun and continues to rotate in twenty four hour time periods. It just keeps happening! I can't stop it, you can't stop it, time moves onward ...

And Susanne, well, she would prefer to just find her little comfy little spot in the universe and stay there. Grab it, keep it, everybody hold on to your spot and don't move! Actually I found a really comfy spot once ... but then time ... it kept happening and I lost my spot. I think it was around 2012  when I had the amazing privilege of living in a sort of nirvana, only I didn't know it at the time. Yup, that's the gift of hindsight. I can look back to a time where I had it all, you know, everything a girl could ever want. The amazingly cozy spot in the universe ... all the kids home, well, mostly ... my lover and best friend traveling through time and adventure with me. He saw me and loved me anyway. He rode my roller coaster with me. We delighted in the highs and hung in there for the lows. It was a wild and glorious adventure. And then poof one day it all changed in an instant ... the C word ... the war on cancer ... death parted us ... and Susanne fell flat on her face. THE END

Honestly, I am so okay with stopping my story right there. There is something soothing about the thought of not having to go thru the painstaking hill climb to where I am today. I feel like it would have been okay to skip that part and let the falling flat on my face be the end of the story. But somehow that's not where my story ended; I have this amazing thing called FAMILY and LIFE and I grateful for all of it. But the race course has been and is arduous. And well, I don't know how long the race course is going to be so I can't even pace myself; so it's just balls out everyday.

Truth is, I literally did fall flat on my face the day Brian died. Nothing in life could have ever prepared me for that moment when the unthinkable arrived and so did the undertaker. I will never forget the undertaker wheeling his body down the long hallway from our bedroom out the front door. There were quite a few people there that day and they watched as Brian left the house for the last time. But I followed his body to the driveway where the hearse was waiting to take him away. Apparently the hospice nurse followed me. And when the hearse pulled away I collapsed and literally fell flat on my face. I had no intention of ever getting up again, but the nurse picked me up that day, just as so many have picked me up since. I really have been blessed beyond what words can describe by the sheer number of people who have been sent to pick me up at various times throughout this journey. Sometimes it's a stranger along the way that offers a word of encouragement. And then there are the professional mentors who've come along side. And then there's the "love people", you know who you are, the ones that keep loving me and propping me up and cheering me on. My children and now my grandchildren, well they are the heart of my inspiration and I could not be where I am today without them. You've all played a part in picking me up. So it takes a village ... and she kept living.

Okay so that was the preamble and I think I have a point in here somewhere. So hang in here with me!

Left to my own devices, I would still be laying on the driveway ...

But God ...

Sends people, human angels, and then sometimes I think He even sends Angels. But in any case, I get to keep going so I do and I wouldn't be here if I didn't have the village of sojourners in the thick of it with me. And while I don't want to take pot shots at the politics of today ... I can say the Pandemic is hurting all of us ... we are losing our village, our people that pick us up and inspire us to keep moving onward. We need to return to the village. Isolation is not living. I choose to live while I'm breathing. And if I stop breathing ... I KNOW there's a whole new adventure in the Great Beyond and I am so ready! Bring it ...