This care worn world

I’m sorry that I’ve been such a slacker lately in the blogging department. But you know, life is meant to be lived and not just spent blogging about it all the time. Not that I’m putting down any of us who do this – although I sometimes wonder if my friends and family think I’m a little touched in the head for writing regularly on a website for anyone to see.

So you should understand that when I don’t write, I've either got nothing that I think is worth saying or that something is happening in my life that I’d prefer not to share.





I have had something in life that I have preferred not to share.

Today, my husband’s younger brother passed away. All I can say is that it hurts. It hurts so many people. He was only 52. He was loved by so many and left a wife, two children, a brother and his family, a sister and hers, and his parents who I can’t even fathom how much are hurting. One thing that has happened through all of this is a newfound respect I have for his wife.

Oh, I’ve always respected and liked her but I will say out loud right now that we had never actually been what you would call super close. Like hang out outside the family kind of close that I am with some of my other sisters-in-law. Does that make sense? But the love and admiration I have for her right now and the pain I feel for her is actually surprising me.

And it’s a nice surprise.

Except for the pain part of it.





I’m sorry if I sound so . . . oh, I don’t know. Morose. It’s just that I've spent the past several hours pouring through my old photographs looking for photos of Rich and finding them but also coming across pieces of my own life that are making me feel very nostalgic.

I can’t believe how young we all were ~

I had meant to look through the photos earlier, just in case you know. But I was honestly and truly convinced that he would not die. And there was nothing I was going to do (like begin looking through photos for a funeral video) that would jinx his getting well.

So I didn't even think about it.





One thing I know is that I will remember this entire day forever.

:   :   :

I’m also watching  Sleepless in Seattle and enjoying the last couple of days of my little Christmas trees before I take them down. Of course, this is all adding to the feeling of nostalgia.

Things will never be the same without Rich here on this earth.





I have the nuthatch photos in here because Rich, like his brother, liked the birds. When I would visit him at the hospital in Philadelphia, I would tell him what birds were at our feeders. He had been there since the end of October.

There is no night without a dawning
No winter without a spring
And beyond the dark horizon
Our hearts will once more sing...
For those who leave us for a while
Have only gone away
Out of a restless, care worn world
Into a brighter day.
~ Helen Steiner Rice

Respectfully submitted,