Over Before We Know It....

A smidgen of beautiful sunshine around these parts today...  But the forecast is for more gloom, more rain, more overcast ....  I associate Easter and Good Friday with this kind of weather, the dove gray beauty of Spring.  Our vacation begins tomorrow at one o'clock.  We traded in a longer vacation for the days at the end of the year to make up the blizzard weeks we were off...  I couldn't be more ready.

A long time ago my grandparents had some wonderful friends who had lived in the same house for many years.  Something happened to them, possibly financial or more likely health-related, that I never understood, but they were going to have to move from that home they had loved all their life... My grandmother wanted to help them avoid this move, but something was in the way of helping them keep that home.  Our family was in turmoil with sadness for them.  One morning our phone rang those familiar two shorts, our party line's signal for my gramma...  Then a phone call came in to my mom, and the news was out...  My family was prepared to help.    

Gramma's message:  "Vera and Ernest are moving right now!...  the people who bought their home are coming in the front door, and they have to get their stuff out the back!"  

My family galvanized in our own cars and pickups to move those pots and pans, linens and delicious granite-ware pitchers... The story goes that Mom plopped the lid on a pan of bacon that was frying and buried it all in a towel, carrying it out to the car as is...  Daddy carried out the old rocking chair with Vera's sweater still hooked on its spindle.  The old couple just wrung their hands and cried. Mom and Gramma cried...  it was just pretty awful until Vera finally started laughing.  She came over to my gramma, gave her a hug, and made the statement:  "Well, honey, I had really been dreading my last night in the house.  I thought spending that last precious night would kill me," she said.  "Now I don't have to face it..  It already happened, and I didn't even realize it."

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Sometimes life gives us those funny gifts in the middle of some kind of loss or sadness---  we see a way to appreciate the good things that we have been given, and we forget to be sad because it is just too late for much of that..  It is time to move on.  I am not speaking of real losses such as death or divorce..  but of those other kinds of loss, such as moving, changing homes, or leaving a lifelong career...

Possibly some of us are facing something like that...  and we have already had our "last night in the 'old house'."  We have had our last "first day of school" and our last chance to share the magic of a favorite novel with a class of teenagers....   The only thing left to do is laugh and move forward... I promised myself retirement wouldn't be sad or difficult...  You guys hold me to that promise.  Okay?