semi-random flotsam
It’s quiet when I wake up. My eyes are still closed and my first thought is that it must be small hours, because there is no sound – no gurgle of coffee or the hushes of morning conversation.
This wouldn’t be unusual: Most mornings I have awakened in small hours and put myself back to sleep, usually resulting in being among the last up and about. Continue reading “First morning home”
It isn’t a new destination for any of us, not by a longshot. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been, but it’s enough times that there was a pattern emerging of major career upheavals after every fourth visit.
(My company got bought while I was touring the Grand Canyon two years ago. I’m going to say that Myrtle Beach passed the torch.) 😉
The weather was fine and sunny for the first few days, then overcast, then stormy, and then sunny and warm again.
And it all worked out pretty much perfectly.
There were fun and silly car games and beach days and arcade days and dinners at the places we traditionally try to fit in. (Chances are good that one of those is coming off the short list in future, the prices having stayed ridiculously low but the food quality seeming to have been reduced to match.) Continue reading “A week in Myrtle Beach”
She didn’t want a funeral. A waste of money, a funeral, she’d thought.
But a gathering, a party, a celebration of life… this was more to her taste.
And so one last time, she brought us all together. In the spring, with new life.
All the jumbled feelings of losing someone, even when it’s expected. She was younger than me, with teen kids and a husband and friends without number who will feel her absence sharply. She was sicker than sick at the end, having fought the evil that is cancer with all that she had.
My memories are a mixed bag, full of all the complexities and challenges that come with such sharply different personalities, and also with all the warmth of familiarity that comes with having been in each others lives, though mostly at the periphery in our adult lives, for – well, forever from our small perspectives. All her life, all but a year of mine. Certainly as far back as we’d remember.
Sometimes we found each other challenging, but there was still always love.
I am sad, even more so for closer family and friends. Also I am relieved for her, and the end of pain and sickness. Touched to see how many she inspired in her battle. Thankful to know true perfect healing is hers now. Hopeful that we will see each other again, by grace, when we are both made perfect and are full and joyful in His presence. Happy for her, that she is there today.
Have fun with Jesus, Lora. Say hi to Mommom and Poppop for me. Give Kelly a hug. Love you.
And amid this, because there is not quite enough emotion in the day, my parents closed on their new home. It’s great and exciting and happy and feels so strange amid the other news. And even this happiness comes with just a hint of gray, that it means the days of having them here with me, sharing my place, are numbered.
It’s a day of feelings. Quite the range of them, actually.
This looks familiar,
Vaguely familiar…
I spent the weekend at a reunion – if you can call a first-time meeting a reunion. But in this world of online connections, these people who came together to bring and receive Christmas cheer have become something more. A mini-tribe, as it were. It’s hard to believe that 8 months ago, we were all strangers. Continue reading “Invisible strings”
One of my dear friends from home has been out in Fort Collins, along with my sister and much of the rest of their organization for the last few weeks, and so she, my sister and I have a fun reunion over coffee. Continue reading “Of reunions, weddings and birthdays (Day 14)”
Second post for today…
It’s my brother in law’s birthday. I think the world of my brother in law. He’s awesome. He’s smart and funny, and all indications from where I sit tell me he’s a good husband and father, and a man who loves the Lord and desires to live his faith and share it with those around him. And I am blessed to know him. I’m so glad God has made us a family, and I love him, and I hope he knows all that. (Well, now he does, anyway.) 😀 Continue reading “Jul 20 Interlude – of birthdays, business and blessings”
Oh look, there’s a Cheesecake Factory. Those things are EVERYWHERE.
Outlet shopping ahead…
Continue reading “Overheard from the back seat”
Alec and Michael and Lynn and Kaycee
are all having birthdays this month
(and that’s not even counting all the anniversaries) Continue reading “Today”
Three of the finest young men I know are or very shortly will be en route to places afar. Continue reading “Only a few words”
