The Last One Standing!

Guess you've noticed I haven't been around this month. Well, don't think it's because my life has gotten so joyous that I have nothing to say! Not so! It's been a long, long month.

You'll remember that January 17 was what would have been my 23rd wedding anniversary...oh that was just a barrel of fun...NOT! (I "celebrated" by putting yellow roses out for Larry at the cemetery--a real blast if ever there was one!) Then 3 weeks later on February 9 I turned 60 years old...another barrel of fun...NOT! Though my "Red Hat" friends did give me a great party and I now have a new red lawn chair! Then of course there was Valentine's Day on February 14...another barrel of fun, though not as big a barrel. (Valentine's has always been rather anti-climactic to me. Guess because it's so close to my birthday.)

Then on the February 19 I left for New Orleans for the Keller Williams international convention...Larry had wanted me to register him, but I'd told him we'd wait til closer and see if he felt like going...well, needless to say he didn't! Everything I do, everything I touch brings me back to Larry and the fact that he isn't here...even a business convention that he probably couldn't have gone to anyway (too much walking for him).

I've discovered that I don't really mind living alone or going places alone, or dining alone (all those things you think well be so bad)...though I do miss him being here when I come home. It is the being alone that I mind. My mind wanders to him at all hours of the day and night...I drive along and think of things we've done, I go places and I think how much he would have liked it, or of when we were there together! New Orleans was particularly hard, as last time we were there (1986) was the first time he'd ever been there. I hired a limo for the evening and we had an absolute blast! It always comes back to I'm all alone. No more of those wonderful times. It's all over and it is all the harder because, except for my precious mother-in-law, I'm the last one left standing.

There is no longer anyone who knows my "history"--no one who remembers my Aunt Jeri or my Mother & Daddy or my Mudgie...no one who is actually interested in my stories! (If Larry wasn't interested, at least he faked it well!) I always knew it would come to this somehow...but it never occurred to me that Larry would be gone too.

We hear people say that 'it will get better'. Well, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't. As time passes it gets harder! I just want to stand in the middle of the street and scream "This isn't how it's supposed to be! This isn't what I bargained for!" But it is how it is, whether I bargained for it or not. I will cope with this aloneness (is that really a word?) one day at a time...no, rather one minute, one second at a time--but it will never seem right...it will never be 'the way it was supposed to be'.

Widderhood ain't for sissies!