Sigh....

Here we are at the end of the year. It is a year that I will gladly say goodbye to...and yet not. It came to a horrible end, and yet it was the last year with my husband. I find myself thinking, if only I knew that it was our last year together, how it would have been different. We had gotten to the point in our marriage where we were comfortable with each other and with our lives. We had been married 20 years. We knew each other so well, we were an extension of each other and could predict what the other thought. I look back at all those opportunities that I missed to spend time together. I didn't like fishing, take the kids instead. I don't like to work outside, I'll do the inside, you do the outside. He missed home so much that when he was home, he didn't want to go out. I was so stir crazy when he got home from his work week that I took every chance I could to go do something just to get a break from the house. What was so important about these things that we couldn't give a little, just to be together? Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely grateful for every minute we spent together, but just as always, I wish it was more. How we fall into the thinking that there will always be other times, that we have the rest of our lives together. Who knew that God would bring him home so early? I know that we should live our lives as if today is the very last, but it's still it's so easy to push that thought away and it's a shock when that time comes. So tomorrow starts a new year. I pray that I will go forward in a way that is honoring to my husband. I pray that I will take every opportunity that I can to spend with my kids, for his sake. This upcoming year is a new time for us. A new life. We have to go forward, we can't go back. We look to a year of decisions. A year of helping each other to get through to the other side of grief. One of forging the new lives we will be living. So we wrap our memories around us like a shield and go forth into a new path together... minus one.