When good things take you back in time

[lilyjohn]

Wow I have not posted here for quite a while. It seems like my days are pretty full. Sometimes with doing things around here with or for my neighbors and others just being lazy. I never knew how to do that until recently. Maybe I was afraid that if I did I would have to face the fact that I wasn't happy or at peace. Johnny not only encouraged me to learn to relax but gave me the security of his love to make me able to do it. He will be gone 9 years in December and his influence on my life is something that seems to grow instead of deminish. Strage sense if you added all the time we actually had together, dating when young and living together before he died, we probably only had a year. Life. so hard to explain or understand.

Recently I have been visiting on line with many friends from school. Nearly 50 years for some and over 50 for most that we never saw or spoke to eachother. What a thrill it is to have someone to share so many memories. Like they say you have to take the good with the bad but I guess it is really that when you get the good some how the bad memores are more about what you missed than what really happened. I hope that I am making sense. Hard to explain.

When I married at 17 I was pretty much cut off from my school friends especially when not long after we moved to Louisiana. Came back to California for 9 years but my life was different than theirs. I was raising my children while they finished school and moved on in thier lives. The truth of the matter is looking back that my husband really liked me to be home with the kids and little communication with anyone but my family. Once we moved back to Louisiana for 32 years we lost track of eachother.

Now here I am in my old age talking about things we did as kids and thinking how much fun it would be to do them again. Silly things and nostalgic things. I see how much I have missed. While discussing our beautiful Santa Clara Valley that existed before silicon robbed it of not only it's name but its main purpose, the subject turned to the canneries. That led to talk of my mom and the over 40 years she worked to raise 5 kids virtually by herself on the seasonal pay of a cannery worker. That cannery was like another part of her family. A major part of not only her life but ours. One of my friends posted a site with pictures of that old cannery and I sat looking at them and the tears wouldn't stop. All the memories of those days and my mom. How little I realized how much she sacraficed for us. How selfish I feel when I complain about what I sacraficed. How could it ever compare? Mama buried 4 of 6 children. When she retired she fell and broke a knee soon after when that healed she got knocked down by a slamming door at a grocery when the electroic eye failed. One day we passed to take her to the doctor and they were tearing down that cannery. Her death certificate said Lung Cancer, but I will always believe she died of a broken heart.

Now here I am back in contact with 2 of my 3 best friends and what do I learn right away? They both lost their parners on December 1st. Nancy her husband of nearly 50 years and Ginny the man she loved and was living with for nearly 20 years. Is it ironic that it was December 1st and my Johnny had died on December 2nd? Now Ginny is having some serious problems and I feel like it was just meant for us to find eachother again at this time in our lives. I think we can help her and in the process help ourselves.

So I will say be careful when you take that trip down memory lane. When you find old friends and old memories and see places that are long gone so much comes with them. Don't compound that by watching a vidio of Buddy Holly's death and all the good and bad of the 50s and 60s then listen to a Willie Nelson CD and then share memories of a neighbor who passed a week ago with your neighbors. So much emotion at one time makes you cry but the truth is the good feelings from those memories make the bad memories just as precious. I miss my Mama and I miss my Johnny and oh how I miss those days and places of my youith. I am just so grateful that now for a while I can have some of them back.

[Joppette]

I get it Lily,

I'm with you in your grief.

Judy in MI