The right obituary.

Never knew how the whole obituary thing actually worked. I have long enjoyed reading them. Weird, I know. My friends say I am like an old person. That is true in so many ways-  another story, another day. Well, the day we went to the FH to do the FH sorts of things, the guy who was helping us (went to school with buddy boy) started asking for the facts and so forth for the obit. Lovely. I have always hated how they say so and so died. It makes you wonder, WHAT FROM? HOW? Buddy Boy’s ended up being no different. I told them I would supply the picture for the paper. That is where we are heading today.

I figured I would use one of the pics from our wedding proofs since they were pretty much the most recent phots we had. I found my fav of the 2 of us and asked a friend to take it up to the paper. In all my anger and sadness, I decided I wanted them to run it as it was- both of us. I thought since we never got to put our marriage announcement and pic in the paper that this was the next best thing. I was pretty excited to see it actually. So, someone brings it up to me at the FH the first day (viewing). I was SO ticked… they had cropped me out entirely. Oh my. It was like a whole can of salt being poured into my bleeding open wound. Somehow someone took care of it and the next day the obit pic was changed to the one of us both. I felt better about it but still. I bet people probably thought I was off my rocker. Made perfect sense to me at the time and I don’t regret it now.

Oh the sadness.

and another thing

Back in my widowhead days, I was quite odd. I am certain my neighbors thought I had bought a one way ticket to the loony farm.

Jan. of 2003, we had a really bad ice storm. The home I lived in was surrounded by old trees. Naturally, I had MANY limbs down in my yard. The thing was, I didn’t have any help to take care of them. So, I dragged them all into a HUGE pile next to the garage. A few months went by and I decided I needed to do something with them. I figured if I chopped up the wood, I could store some in the garage for the fireplace and use some for the fire pit in the backyard. The remaining wood I thought I would just drag into mosquito haven, swampy mess, my backyard. How doesone cut wood? Hmmm. I had this really old hand saw but that didn’t do the trick for the huge ones. Off I went to Home Depot. Looked around at the chain saws not knowing what the heck I was doing but knowing I didn’t want a gas one because it would smell and because it would be too heavy for me to work with. I came home the proud owner of a 100 buck, electrical chain saw. In the first day, I sawed through an electrical cord and many branches. My kind, kind neighbor sent his boys over to help me drag the pieces away. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That same neighbor eventually helped me with my lawn mower once AND collected neighborhood donations for me after the big dying episode and stuff. I should write them a letter. I digress…

So, I am chainsawing away so much that I have pretty much destroyed the chainsaw. The chain kept loosening and I had no idea at the time that you have to replace them after so much use. I ended up tightening the chain so much that I broke the knob used to tighten it. I did manage in the summer to use it one last time to, just for the fun of it, saw a 2 ft. around, 25 ft. long branch off a tree in front of the house. It almost crashed through a window in the basement but I guess I was having a spurt of luck that day. You think that is funny?

That very same ice storm broke this one branch on the aforementioned tree directly over the entrance to my house. I didn’t like it that it never fell and just swung there. I found that I could not reach it from the roof either… another thing I used to do. Climb the antenna in the back to get on the roof of the house. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, just for the fun of it. Anyway, I found one day that if I stretched the garden hoe up, I could catch it on the limb and pull. This was certainly going to get it down, right? I jumped with the hoe in hand and swung while holding on but all that happened was the hoe breaking and me falling to the ground. Heh heh.

I suppose in the end it was a good thing that the chainsaw broke. I had big plans for cutting down a 20+ ft. half burned pine tree in my front yard.

Green thumb and greeting cards.

I notice in a lot of my entries, things seem to come full circle. This is another one of those.

 I am 31. For my thirty-one years on this planet, I have saved every greeting card I have ever received. It doesn’t start there though. Somehow, I have the cards that were given to my mom for my baby shower. Yes, they are old but they are a perfect addition to my collection! When my DH was in the hospital, we were sent a stack of prayer cards for him and a few days later, I was sent a bunch more except this time the messages were full of condolences. I have those too. I have the cards from wedding no. 1 and wedding no. 2. AND, I have all of the cards that were sent with flowers and plants up to the funeral home. Which brings me to the green thumb part.

My earliest memory of tending plants was probably when I was about 4 or so. My grandma had MANY plants. There was even this tiny greenhouse thing she had in her home where you had to take this belt contraption off to remove the lid and water the thing. I loved it! In college, I started my own plant collection. My husband did too. He bought this ‘manly plant’ that I am still tending to this day. I think he also bought a Venus Fly Trap but that thing is LONG gone. I may not know all the funny names for my plants but I love them just the same. I like to grow leaves into rooted plants in water and then transfer them to a pot. I like to prune them. I like to save dying plants and restore them to health. By the time we purchased our home, we had a small collection but nothing too impressive. Then it happened and my house became a plant oasis overnight.

Even though it was the beginning of October, it had frosted the night he died- enough that we had to scrape the windows on the car to go back home. When we brought the five million flowers and plants home, we had to put most of the flowers in the garage. They lined the walls. There were SO many. I knew they would keep longer in the cold but the plants I had to bring in.

Over the coming months I decided to give some of the plants away to family but many of them I thought needed to be separated into individual plants. I spent oodles of money on pots and soil and made a HUGE mess in my living room. My older friend and co-worker, also widowed, helped me. More on her some other day. My brother-in-law kept his arrangement altogether and the thing is fine to this day. I guess that was another one of my stupid widowhead decisions. Anyway, my house was full of greenery and had lots of oxygen to boot.

 Cards and plants. Even though he was gone, he still found ways to get meaningful things to me.  The cards I have as memories and the plants have given me something to look after and care for. Stupid that a plant can outlive someone you love though.

Love ya Bud.