1 Year Later

It's been one year since Mom passed away. It seems so recently that we were down visiting them in their condo, and yet it seems as though an eternity has passed since we were with them, too. So much has happened in the past year, especially Dad passing. too.

With the internet and limitless information available at our fingertips, we sometimes forget the knowledge that a person has. I can't count the times in the past year when I've needed, or wanted, to call Mom and ask her about something that can't be found anywhere else. Information that is now gone. Something about a recipe, or an event, or something about a person. What an emptiness that creates.

I don't know how anyone could survive the loss of a loved one without the knowledge that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings. The absolute knowledge, attested to so many times by the Spirit, that this separation is only temporary; that we will be together again. How grateful I am for the love of my Heavenly Father and His compassion.

I discovered the "street view" part of Google Earth the other day, and so I looked at Mom and Dad's condo. Out front of the house were the two chairs we have been sitting in at the fire pit in our yard. In The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it is fictionally theorized that every person has in invisible umbilical cord that ties them to their home. The farther away one is from home, the more stress is placed on the stretched umbilical cord and the more out-of-sorts a person becomes. Since the earth was destroyed (in the book), the surviving human's umbilical cord has been cut loose and swings freely through space, causing much distress. It sometimes feels like that. Wherever Mom and Dad lived, that was home. Not that my own home with my own family isn't home, but there was just a tie to the past, I guess.

Okay, I'm rambling. Someone slap me across the face with an halibut.

The kids are out of school now and I'm on my summer schedule. I'm on day shift right now, which is okay, in that it isn't graves. But it is not as good as swing shift. At least I'm home in the evenings (most of the time). With 4-day weekends, it's been really nice! (we work five ten-hour shifts and are off for four days) It's been so rainy lately that it's taken the fun out of even writing tickets.

I need a vacation!!!!!!! At least today was nice and I was able to get a lot of work done. Mowing the lawn (finishing what Susan didn't have time to finish before it rained yesterday), fixing the trampoline, and I finally started mudding the sheet rock corners today! I think we're going to have a fire in the fire pit (if the wood isn't water-logged) tonight, so everyone's looking forward to that. It's nice not to have to bow to clean-air controls and other "city" problems!

Take care, everyone! I've been enjoying your blogs, even if I haven't commented a lot.

Love, from Us!