Cleaning out...

I’ve been cleaning out my house and I’m here to say this is no fun.

It all started about 9-10 months ago.  Brooke came to me and told me she and Jared were thinking of moving.  They wanted to find a home and settle in permanently before the kids started school.  

Backing up almost 5 years  when Steve first became sick, we very quickly began discussing  that once I was alone I did not want to live in our home.  We built this home together and have lived here since 2002.  It was such a fun adventure and we enjoyed planning every inch of it and watching it grow into our home.  I knew once I was to live alone, I would want something very different.  This wonderful home has too many memories of us.  

So Steve, being Steve, began his quest to find me the perfect house.  After about 6 months of Steve wanting to look, needing to look, I finally put my foot down and said no.  We were going to spend his remaining time living life, not worrying about what I would do once he was gone.  He finally relented, but he would continue to broach the subject whenever possible.

Then Brooke and Jared came along with their idea to move.  Their initial thoughts were to make their move in 2 years, give or take.  One morning on one of my walks about 2 months before Steve died, it hit me, I had the perfect plan.  I came home and told Steve of my decision, I would buy Jared and Brooke’s house once they moved.  It was perfect, everything Steve wanted for me, smaller, less upkeep, 4 bedrooms (that he was adamant about), one story, gated neighborhood and we both loved their home!  Done, everyone was happy.

Little did we realize that the Meabon’s perfect house would come along so quickly.  They closed on their new home November 1^st and therefore I bought their/my new home on that day.  Holy moly, that was quick...now I own two homes.

So after I calmed down a bit, I decided to take my time.  I will remodel their home to make it more me.  I am not going to put my house on the market until later, after the holidays, after my trip to Israel...later.

In the mean time, one evening Brent was sitting in the kitchen, innocently looking ceiling to floor, wall to wall, shaking his head and flatly with little to no emotion, said, “What are you going to do with all your stuff?  I mean Mom, you have stuff everywhere.”  Steve had been saying this to me forever and I always thought it was humorous, but for some reason when Brent said it, I started to hyperventilate.  What was I going to do with all this stuff?

The day he left, I went straight to HEB and started grabbing boxes.  I vowed I would begin packing a few boxes each day until I moved.  Thus my daunting task has begun.

There are areas that feel good to purge.  My pantry, full of serving pieces I never use.  My closet...heaps of clothes that were decades old, yet I could never get rid of.  I kept thinking, “Oh, they were so cute, surely they will come back in style again?”  Gone!  

Knick knacks, or rather, treasures, or as Steve called it my junk, that I’ve hauled around with me for way too long...out!  Purging feels like a great weight loss program, that’s working.

There have been areas of the house that I have gone to with great trepidation.  I boxed up all our framed photos.  Oh, incredible memories came flooding back as I looked into Steve’s eyes.  I smiled back at his spellbinding smile. The tears came as I wrapped each frame carefully and placed it in the special boxes labeled  ”Important.”  

I went into an upstairs closet and lining several shelves were all of our travel books.  Fodor’s from France, Croatia, Austria, Greece, Italy... stacks of books from Maine, California, upstate New York, Bryce Canyon...we had traveled.  I stood staring longingly at all of those shelves of books and tears poured out of me like a broken spigot as I touched each book and smiled through my tears.  

The books were dog-eared from handling.  Steve was big on referring to Fodor’s for the best restaurants, hotels, things to do and see.  I had written in the margin of many of the books, commenting on what we loved, simply liked or felt like was a waste of time.  Steve’s handwriting was there on many of the pages.  He was the one to plan our trips ahead of time.  He would read through these books for hours before we would go on trips, making reservations, plotting our course, determining our routes.  

What is one to do with mounds of travel books?  Books of places you have been with the person you most wanted to go with...and now, well now I’m left with this painful stack of books.  So I scooped them up, grabbed a glass of wine, and I spent the evening flipping through the pages of each of book.  It was a private, intimate time and it was difficult, but once I had looked through each book I laid it carefully in the trash bin and at the end of the night, I shut the lid.

I think I may be through cleaning out for a while, my bones feel too dry and I have time.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven...

    a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to throw away…”  Ecclesiastes 3:1-6

Sometimes for your birthday you get exactly what you need...

Brooke took Harper to Target and allowed her to pick out whatever she wanted to give me for my birthday.

Brent came in Saturday for the weekend.  Brooke & Jared got a babysitter and the four of us had grown-up dinner Saturday night.  Sunday morning Brent and I met the Meabon family for breakfast and Harper proudly presented me with my birthday gift.

Cinderella Hair-Do Head

Yep, my very own Cinderella with hair to style, just for me!  Sometimes you get exactly what you want and what you really need for your birthday.

Thank you Harper and Harris.

I love you,
Honey

59 and Still Counting…

Yep, today I became 59 years old.  Odd, I don’t feel any differently than I did a day ago, I don’t even think I feel any differently from what I felt a year ago, or have I forgotten?  I can’t remember.  

I look at my children now, 35 and 33 years old and I’m amazed that I could possibly have children in their mid-thirties.  I remember being in my mid-thirties like it was yesterday, or does it seem like another life ago?  I remember I was given a surprise 30^th birthday party and I got hit in the face with a cream pie by our church’s youth minister.  I was given a lovely surprise birthday roast when I turned 40 by all of my Midland friends. That was the same weekend Steve asked me to marry him...my best birthday of all!!

30th Birthday after the pie in the face

40th Birthday Roast

The telephone just rang, it was a recorded message asking me to participate in a survey for senior citizens, did they get the wrong number?  Am I really a senior citizen?  I don’t yet qualify for senior discounts at movie theaters.  I can’t sign up for Medicare yet.  I was able to get the shingles vaccine, but that’s because they changed the age last year from 60 to 50 years old.

Another birthday that stands out in my memory was my 10^th birthday.  I wanted nothing except a pair of royal blue stirrup stretch pants (leggings today) and the album of “The Sound of Music.”   I remember pulling those bright blue stretch pants over my boney birdlike legs, draping a towel over the back of my head and taking my record player into the backyard.  I plugged my little red portable turntable into an outside outlet, turned that volume up and stood spinning in large circles, arms wide, in the middle of the yard.  There I was, Maria von Trapp, a nun in towel, singing every word from “The Sound of Music” as if I were Julie Andrews on top of that Austrian mountain top.  I still remember all the words of those songs today.

Several nights ago I pulled my hair back in a clippy and had washed my face.  As I took the towel away from my face I was taken aback at the image staring back at me.  For a brief moment, as I stood there hair back, without make-up, looking at a very young Janet of about 8 or 9 years old.  I watched motionless for a moment staring at my young self as memories of myself as a child surged through me.  

Minnie Mama always gave me a Toni Perm...oh the smell!

I felt a certain sadness for a small awkward little girl that seemed too thin, too quiet, too bland for the world around her.  I felt a warmth for the formidable childhood memories this young girl had.  I pictured my bedroom, remembering the little printed flowered wallpaper and my puffy pink bedspread that I would burrow into.  I remembered being a little older, the wonderful memories of our family’s lake house grew vivid in my mind.  What fun summers we spent skiing, swimming and simply enjoying simple summers there.

7th grade with my sister, Barbara

Brent and Brooke also grew up spending summers at that same lake house.  My thoughts skipped decades as I remained still in front of my reflection.  A smile grew in my heart as I thought of teaching each of my children to waterski, of my father, their Papaw, taking them on bear hunts and following Indian trails and other great adventures through the piney woods Texas.  

Brent & Papaw

Thinking of my father, my mind traveled to the times I enjoyed with my parents in their older years at that lake home.  They were frailer then, our times together were more placid in those last years.  We would sit out on the large sloping front lawn and look out at the lake and talk about everything and nothing.  They are both gone now, as is that beloved lake spot.

I looked at my reflection and I came back to the present.  Where did those 59 years go?  Has my life been worthwhile?  Have I done anything of value or legacy?  I certainly can’t compare myself to someone like Mother Teresa, Gandhi, or Einstein as I would fail greatly as a person of worth and value in this life of mine.  So have I had a good life?  Have I evolved from that awkward, shy, child with little self-esteem, and if I have, how did I get where I am now?  Am I okay with this middle-aged woman staring back at me?

I don’t know if I have answers to all the questions that caught me so off guard that night, but what I do know is that I am good with who I am.  I like being 59 years old, I wouldn’t want to go back to 19 or 29 or 49 (I skipped 39 because that’s the year I met Steve).  I love that I have adult children of my own.  I am proud of them for who they are, for what they stand for, for the love that we all have for one another.  If I have done anything of value and worth in my entire life it has been giving birth to Brent and Brooke, they are my finest legacy.

Are there things I would have done differently if had the opportunity?  Of course, but maybe not...because each part of my life, whether good or bad, tragic or thrilling has caused me to become the person I am today.  While my life hasn’t been perfect, it’s been a good, an excellent life and I hope that, God permitting I will to continue to be able stand in my backyard with a towel draped down the back of my head and sing at the top of my lungs...

“Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow,
'Till you find your dream.

A dream that will need
All the love you can give,
Every day of your life
For as long as you live.”

Oh Julie, where are you when I need you?

The Domino Effect...

Everyone has tried this simple, yet oh so complex little game some time in their lives.  Setting up at line of dominos and watching them cascade one after the other down a perfect line until the last one drops.  Of course, unless you are a master at the precise placement and spacing of each domino you will end up with heap of dominoes that has stopped in mid stream.  What then?

Our domino effect began November 21, 2008.  Once Steve realized he had Stage 4 Gliomablastoma Multi forma he began placing his first row of dominos.  Steve, thinking his time was very limited began stacking multiple rows of dominos in lines.  You’ve seen these displays, the dominos spiral round in a huge circle, they go up and down levels...it’s amazing to watch row after row of dominos fall in syncopation.  

Steve was striving to master his domino effect of life.  He began by first putting all his finances in order.  Each placement of every domino was strategically placed.  He spent hours making sure everyone would be well taken care of and there would be no hitches at the end of this domino line.  Lynn and I are still marveling at how completely Steve’s proficiency was in this area, as each domino has fallen smoothly and perfectly into place.  Steve so wanted this to be an effortless task for all of us, what a gift.

Steve’s second line of dominos has many unexpected twists and turns.  It’s the area that would cause bystanders to laugh and applaud his foresight and his humor.  This domino effect would be called, “The More the Better Effect”.  

Steve always felt it was important to have extras on hand, in case production of an item stopped or models changed.  As Steve realized his time here had been extended a bit, he was able to take great care in buying all the necessary items needed to form these twists and turns.  

Like what?  Well, I’ll start with an extra kitchen faucet.  Brand new still in the box labeled in his handwriting “Extra Kitchen Faucet”.  Then there is the extra master bath toilet seat and flush handle...just in case.  I found an extra complete hardware kit for our front door (deadbolt, handle and all the stuff that comes with needing a new door knob), extra rolls of wallpaper, carpet, fabric for sofas, chairs...just in case.  Being the master domino placer that Steve was each item has been discovered in rather obscure places and labeled for their purpose.  Such as the extra television lamp I found for a TV that we no longer own.  I now have the light when that television stops working.  Masterful, complex, always planning for the next unexpected twist...Steve Boswell, I love you!

Then there are the fascinating spiral domino tumbles.  Where you have circles inside of circles and they seem never ending yet suddenly they fall back into their straight line and continue on until the last domino drops.

Steve’s spiral effect was our gift of time.  Steve was given time to go over and over with me issues that concerned him.  Things that would help make my life easier, explanations of why he had all these “extras” and what I was to do with them.  He had instructions on finances, instructions on equipment I had no idea how to use, comments on where things were.  I’ll admit, I hated hearing him start a sentence, “Janet, when I’m gone you need to know…”  I would cringe.  I would try to listen because I knew it was what he needed to feel his dominos were in a row, but the thought that someday I would be needing to face all these dominos alone was too frightening, too lonely, too overwhelming...so I listened halfheartedly.  Shame on me.  I wish I could have every one of those instructional moments back.  I would take meticulous notes that I could refer to now.  Instead, I have cloudy memories and recollections of, “Oh yeah, I remember something Steve said about…”

The core of that spiral of dominos, right before it becomes a straight line to the finish, I will never forget.  I’ve often wondered if it is harder to lose a spouse suddenly or have years of knowing your spouse was terminal?  Neither is good, but in this one scenario Steve and I and our family were given a gift.  

Steve’s 4 ½ years of knowing his time was limited gave us time to set up many dominos together.  Dominos that came together in the core, the very heart of that spiral.  Time to say all the things he wanted to each child and grandchild.  Time to talk to his mom and his sisters, his cousins telling them how much he loved them.  Time to have long visits with good friends and say those things that most men might never have the courage to say to one another.  

Time for the two of us to say how we were the luckiest people in the world to have found this love we have for one another.  Time to talk every night over dinner about our life together and how amazing every day of it had been.  This is when knowing you are going to die is a bestowal.  

This is why Steve mastered his domino fall to perfection. No one can stop the Domino Effect, it can’t be avoided.  All that can be done is to choose which pattern to arrange, the rest, I believe, is up to God.  Steve used the last of his life, his time, energy, knowledge and wisdom to put everything into place.  When his domino line grew from it’s complicated maze of a masterpiece into a straight line of the simplicity that signified the end was near, one day his very last domino fell, just as it should have...timing perfect, task complete, job well done.

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” 1 Peter 5:6