Copied from Sangre de Cristo at some point.

Not real sure where I copied this from, but I do know I was with Hospice at the time, so pretty sure that is where it comes from.  The point is that it hits the nail right on the head.  I have lost a lot of dear friends, family, acquaintances, pets, a few enemies and the list goes on and on, in my life as I am sure it does in yours.  

I recall an advertisement on television where an older woman is in the bathroom preparing for bed and she is talking to someone, I assume was her husband, off camera.  She lays down her hairbrush and turns out the light and the camera pans to an empty bed.  I did not understand that as much then as when it happened to me.  The realization came to me just a few days after my husband passed.  I was devastated, but then life does go on.  There is no do overs when death comes knocking, but we are given no choice but to go on putting one foot in front of the other and living one day after another.  

It does become bearable after a time, but the one we lost will never be replaced.  I think about my mother every day.  I miss Shirley.  I miss my sisters and my brother and all the aunts and uncles.  The first actual death I recall was my calf, Dennis.  Then it was my nephew that was born at home.  Then it was grandma Haas.  I am sure there were others before, and I can not remember all that have gone since and still continue the march to the grave.  But this gives me solace.  This and the one about the departed being a ship sailing off across the ocean.  It is leaving the shore where people are weeping and it grows smaller and smaller until it is gone, but on the other side of the ocean, it is arriving and the people are cheering as it draws nearer!  

I do hope something I have written today in my own rambling little way gives someone an ounce of peace and acceptance.  And some day, when I make that journey, and you learn of my passing, know that I am happy and think of me with just a touch of sadness and a whole lot of joy!

Until then, may the peace that passes all understanding be with you all.

And now she is no more.

She was there and I planned on going to see her yesterday, but then I decided it would be tomorrow.  Tomorrow is now here and it is called today.  And now she is no more.  It is strange how this death thing works.  Some people hang on and linger and put it off and wait for another day.  Just one more day.  Just another hour, or another year or another anniversary.  Or not.  I do not know which is better, but I think she did it just right.

Many times in my hospice days I had set by a persons bedside for hours, or weeks or months, waiting for the Angel of Death.  And when it happened, after what ever period of time, and even then we were not ready.  It was too soon.  The family needed just one more day.  One more hour.  One more minute.  But that was not to be.

What did I learn from my hospice training?  I learned not to put it off until tomorrow.  Tomorrow may be too late.  5 minutes from now may be too late.  And yet I still procrastinate.  I have projects in various stages of having been abandoned for something I found more intriguing.  Another brass ring in this thing called life.  And it is called life for a reason.  It is meant to be lived.  It is meant to be lived now and in this moment, because there is no tomorrow.  Tomorrow never comes.

A friend just called and invited me to lunch and since I have not seen her in a while, I am dropping every thing and going.  This may very well be a tomorrow that came and I did not see it.

Climate change or somebody's butt sucking air?

I watch very little news on the national level any more.  When Trump was elected I made up my mind that I would give the man a chance and let a business man handle the finances of my country.  I do still call it "my" country although my fore fathers came here only 119 years ago.  I still have pictures of the Haas family clearing land to farm.  They are very grainy pictures and were not taken on a cell phone, but they show the progress.

I am proud of my roots.  My grandfather was 9 years old then.  My great grandfather brought the whole family a little at a time.  They settled in the Reno County area, but have since spread out across the country.  They cleared river bottom land and began farming.  Back then, there were no King Soopers, or Walmart and mostly people depended on each other.  My great, great grandmother was a person who took care of people when they were sick.  Great, great grandfather raised turkeys and geese and did custom farming.  I forget what they grew, but it seems like it was sorghum and they made molasses out of it.

I diverse.  Back to the subject at hand, which is the environment.  For years steel mills belched black smoke and there was no concern for the air we breathed, but then the powers that be woke up to the fact that we were killing each other by not protecting the air we breathe.  Thus was born the EPA and it became a world wide concern that we were polluting our environment and we only have one world.  So we passed laws and then we held summits and passed rules for protecting our earth.  It became a global concern.

And then someone elected Donald Trump and his ilk.  He does not believe in Global Warming.  He sets in his air conditioned office, rides in an air conditioned car from one place to another.  And or storms get more violent and more frequent.  We keep cutting down our rain forests and not replacing the trees that clean our air.  We pull out of the global community that is trying to save our world and hide our heads in the sand.

I do not profess to being an intelligent woman.  I hide from things that scare me, like global warming, genocide and anything that upsets my little apple cart.  I do not watch the national news because I am standing over here with my head in the sand.  I can not abide with racism and ignorance.  There are no gun laws.  We just settle our differences with an AK-47.  For God's sake, people, we are sending our children to "active shooter training" in our schools.  Where are the day's of sand and shovels?

Last night I talked to a friend in New Zealand.  Telephones are our link to any where in the world.  But now cell phones have replaced communication in person.  Send me a text.  What happened to coffee klatches?  What happened to a walk in the park?  What happened to a moonlight stroll?  What happened to honesty?  Integrity?  What happened to helping an old lady across the street?  Where is our common decency when we could carry on a conversation with someone and not tell them to go back where they came from?

We play follow the leader here in America.  It is now right and just to lock people in cages because they want to escape genocide in their country.  We build walls when we should be building bridges.  I never dreamed two short years ago that our country could be so divided and that Republican and Democrat could be dirty words.  But here we are.

I am going to church in a few hours and pray for my country.  It is my country too, you know.  I will first post this and then read the comments to my thoughts on facebook.  My friends will be supportive, but there will also be the negative comments calling me "an effin liberal."  Such is life.  I am proud to be who I am and where I came from, but then God made us all and he made us in his image.....or did he?