That word brings forth a lot of emotional ties when said outloud – or spoken silently for that matter – at least it does for me. Yep, you guessed it – I fit in that box. It’s going on six years and yesterday, July 24, was my anniversary. It would have been 53 years married to my teenage sweetheart.

 

While today I choose to remember all the good times, the sweet times, the calm years … they weren’t always that. Those first 10 years getting ‘used’ to each other was, I must admit quite difficult. After all – we were still kids and pretty worldly … even though we both had good Catholic values, we stepped into marriage with little knowledge of how to be married. But time marched on and we managed to work a lot of things out – solve a lot of problems and held on to each other till the end.

 

 

However, instead of dwelling on the hard times, I try to focus on the great things we were able to accomplish – first and foremost was the births of our two beautiful sons – Jim & Jason. They were a joy to raise – even during the teenage years – well, like I said, I’m focusing on the good memories 🙂 So, I added a new ‘word’ to my resume. It started with daughter, then transformed to wife, then to mom (and now grandma and great grandma!).

 

We traveled to Hawaii, Costa Rica, Mexico, and many times to Israel! Jim supported me in pretty much anything I wanted to do – from showing dogs or horses, to traveling around the country! He carried my baggage, made me coffee in the morning (just the way I liked it!), did laundry sometimes, and always insisted to fill my car up when it was low. There are so many things that he did for me – and for others – and it is sad to say one doesn’t appreciate all those little things…till they don’t get done anymore. One of the last things he told me a few months before he passed was, ‘You’re going to miss me when I’m gone’….he was right.

 

So while today I have to answer ‘widow‘ on an application – I also consider myself very blessed to have had him in my life for so very long. The good, the bad and the ugly!