Starting at the Beginning

     Starting at the beginning would be the normal way to begin, but because I'm not so normal, I'll start with who I am today and the rest will take care of itself.
    I started writing this when I was sixty-six years old, now I am seventy-one.  I still have the white hair, wrinkles and creases that were all well earned.  However, I can now see without glasses, and that's a plus.  I also had just retired from my job as a Judicial Assistant which was a hard decision to make but I have never regretted that decision.  
     I have had to make many hard decisions over the past seven years, since my husband and best friend Jim has passed on down the river to a new landing.  I still miss him every day, which is not surprising since we spent more than 45 years together.  It's amazing how you don't really think of those things at the time they are happening, you just look up one day and realize all the time that has passed and wonder if you couldn't have done it better, made different decisions, different choices to do everything you wanted to do and get where you wanted to go.
     I never knew where I wanted to go, except for one time,  when I left my hometown and flew to California four days after I graduated from high school.  I never went back except to visit.  Usually my goals were those Jim and I set together.  Even after seven years on my own, it's hard for me to make a decision that affects my life without asking for another opinion.
     Explaining my feelings about losing my best friend is not possible, not even if you have been in the same place. It is different for each person.  The emptiness, yes, this you can understand, but can you understand waking up in the night and reaching out and not feeling that other person next to you? Or, listening to them breathe or snore or grind their teeth?  Or, missing them fluffing their pillow every night before they get into bed? Or, the smell of their cologne?  I still get lonely for these things even now.  There are so many other things I miss but will carry in my memory.  He was instrumental in making me the person I have become.  I loved him so much and will never get over missing him.
     Our life together was a series of ups and downs as all relationships are.  Most of our friends remember us in our later life together (I called it our third life), as being happy and loving each other unconditionally.  However, we still got on each other's nerves from time to time, just not as often as we did in the earlier years.  We had each other during the bad times, the great times and the sad times as well.  That's what life is.
     I guess to understand our life together you must first understand my life; how I was raised and where and, how I came to be the person I am today.