Monday, April 28, 2008

Grieving

This was emailed to me today by a friend from Sparkpeople. I wanted to share it here with you.

Ecclesiastes 3A Time for Everything 1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. A time for everything. Peggi you are in your season of grieving and it is just something one all has to go through. The emptiness is hard to fill but through your time of healing it will be filled once again with fond memories and etc. Time will heal and I pray for you and your children as you go through this grieving and healing process that you all will be closer than ever before. There was a time he was in your life more, he was the father of your children, you can't help but feel for a time of what you are feeling now.Hoping for the best and keep exercising, journaling, it's great for healing.God Bless You and your family

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Garbage Trucks

I received this in an email from my boss, thought it was pretty neat and wanted to share it here.

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport.We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly.So I asked, "Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!" This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, "The Law of the G arbage Truck."He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. Th ey run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so..... "Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don't." Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!

Grateful


This morning is one of those days. It's a day off from work, the sun is shining and I have about 20 gold finches out here at the bird feeders along with one male bluebird, who is absolulely beautiful. It's a day that makes you realise how much we all have to be grateful for. I know that there are times when it seems like the world has us down, there is grief and pain and loss and cloudy, rainy days. On days like this though it helps to remember the sun does shine again, we can smile again and we can remember and hope and love again. I am grateful today for the sunshine, the day off work and the time to do things that I want to do. I am grateful for my husband, my kids, my family, my home, my job, my life, my health and the list goes on. I'm grateful for the ipod that I will be wearing and the music I will be listening too while I plant flower seeds in the back garden. Oh, I am grateful for those flower seeds and that garden too. I think today is just a day made to be grateful and a day to be thankful and a day to love.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Happy birthday to Me



This is a picture of what our gazebo will look like. John ordered it for my birthday and it should be here in two weeks! We measured out by the pond for it last night and think we finally decided where we want it. Then the fun begins, we can landscape around it once we decide what we want to do. The guy is coming down tomorrow to see about digging out the sod and putting in the pad for us. I have always wanted a gazebo, can't believe I'm actually going to have one out here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Giving it your all

From a Sparkpeople Email this morning :

If you can do your best and forget your worst, you've already got a head start on tomorrow. As long as you lay it out there every day, you can relax when yesterday is behind you. Of course, the only way this will happen is if you give yourself permission to forget. You can use this approach in anything: Pick up a problem, do what you can with it, and then put it down. Work your tail off at the office, then leave it there (the work, not your tail). Deal with a personal crisis by finishing off one day at a time. There's a great deal of satisfaction in leaving things be for a moment. There's a great deal of freedom in knowing that you could do no more. And there's a great deal of success awaiting the person who gives it her all, no matter what.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Blue Funk

I just can't seem to snap out of this blue funk I am in. Mike has been gone over a week now and I know that it takes time to grieve and that it cannot be done by the clock. I guess a week really isn't all that long when you compare it to the length of time we had together and the life that we shared. It seems that I am going through life right now just making the motions. I am not really seeing or feeling the beauty of spring around me. We have had some absolutely gorgeous days here since I've been back, I've been sleeping through them. I am not finding any enjoyment in the sunshine, the warmth or the flowers coming up right now. A friend sent me this link to a site for grieving and I have read through it, and have searched through others also. www.grieving.org/page6.html

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Not myself yet

Still recuperating here this morning. Still have the cold, the cough and jet lag although the leg cramps are finally gone. Don't have any energy yet and so far all I have done is go to work and come home. Tried the eliptical last night and did 15 minutes but then quit. going to take a while to get back into things I guess. I'm off today and the sun is shining, chilly though. supposed to warm up this week and looks like it may start. I'm glad that I am off, I need a day to be home.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Leaving Arizona




I wanted to post a few of the pictures from Arizona here. I will be taking these off my computer. Have them all saved to disc now and think that is best. I came home from Arizona both physically and emotionally exhausted, with a severe cold and leg cramps that are horrendous. Am glad that I went however, I needed to do this. Bo helped me get a few pieces of a hummingbird vine and I brought them home. They made it through security on the plane,wasn't sure they would. Am going out now to plant them and pray they grow. They are from the hospice home.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Hospice Home



I am thinking here that I should backtrack a bit. I need to say that Mike passed away on Thursday, April 10 at 7:18 in the evening in Chandler Arizona. He was right, although I never admitted that very often. I do think I would have loved Arizona under different conditions. I am sure that through the next few weeks you will be seeing some of the pictures of the desert and flowers here. Although, it was early april there, the flowers were beautiful. I am particularly wishing that I would have gotten pics of the awesome petunias somewhere between his house in Tempe and the Hospice Home in Chandler I didn't get many pictures, this wasn't a fun time or a vacation for us, but my daughter and I did take off for a little bit here and there to just get away. We needed to rest our minds and our bodies and what she termed retail therapy helped somewhat. Speaking of retail therapy, I never knew my son in law was such a great shopper. We all got a chuckle out of the him buying me a pair of sandals. When I first got there I realised the homes floors were all laminate and my sandals were very loud. I wanted a pair with soft rubber soles and Bo was going to Walmart. I asked him to pick me up a pair, size 7. the boy did wonderful! They were a hit and everyone loved them. Guess Michelle will be sending him out for shoes next.

The Stranger

I recieved this in an email and thought it cute. Also thought I needed something a bit light hearted today. I am physically and emotionally drained. Not quite capable of doing anything yet today. Still trying to come to terms with the death of a long time friend and ex husband. We are all so glad that Mike is not in any more pain and is not still suffering, it has been a long rough road for him and he sure put up a fight. The docs gave him a year at the most and we had a year and a half. However, all of that does not change the fact that we miss him terribly.

The Stranger

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind. Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.) Dad ruled our household with certain in moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave. More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name?.... . . . We just call him "TV." (Note: This should be required reading for every household in America!)
He has a wife now.... We call her "Computer."

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Gone from my sight

I just received this poem via email from a very good friend, wanted to share it here.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”
”Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: ‘Here she comes!”
And that is dying. Henry Van Dyke

Goodbyes

I'm in Arizona this minute in a Hospice Home. My daughter is exhausted and napping on the cot in her dad's room. Everyone has left and it is just her and I now. The last aunt left this morning. Mike is resting. He hasn't woke up much the past two days and we are grateful he is not in pain. Hospice is great with giving pain meds when needed. I wrote the following paragraphs last week before coming out but never posted it. I feel the need to do that now.

"I've never been good at goodbyes. I cry when I leave people. I cry when I leave my kids after a visit, I cry when they leave me. When my ex and I used to travel and visit with friends, I'd cry when we left them. I'd cry when we left his mom's or his sisters. I cry. I'm a cryer, guess there is nothing else to say about that. I need to be strong this week. I need to be strong for my kids and for my ex and for his sister and for my self. I am going out to say goodbye to the man I have known since I was about 9 or 10 years old, the man who is the father of my children and the man I have spent a major part of my life with. I talked to him the other night and cannot believe how much weaker he sounds in just a few days. I pray he holds on till I get there but yet how selfish is that. I do not want him in any more pain than he already is. I don't want to go but yet I have to. My daughter needs me now probably more than she ever has. I need to do this to be able to live with myself. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shouders since I made the decision to go. I'm at peace with my decison and know that this is the only thing I could have done. I am so very grateful that my husband is "okay" with this. No, he is not happy about it and No, I am not sure he even understands. But he is "okay" with it and I guess that is truly all I can ask for. Please people, if there is a relay team in your area, sign up for it. Donate to the American Cancer Society, lets all do what we can to help erradicate this terrible disease that takes so many of our families and friends."

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Choices

Haven't posted here in a while. It's been a rough time for my family. Saw this on a Sparkmail this morning and it felt appropriate for now.

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made. - Wayne Dyer

Own all of your choicesThe choices you make today will determine the path that your life will take. When you sit back and look at the decisions you've made in your life, are you happy with the route you've paved? If you're not, make a change today. The next time you make a choice, ask yourself if this decision will lead you to the path you want to travel along. Set some new goals that will lead you to your dreams and then plan your course.

Sometimes we do what we have to do today to be able to live with ourselves later. We have to be able to look back and know that we did the best we could and go on with no regrets.