I have told you this so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
John 15:11

I work alone every day. The hours pass very quickly between school drop off and pick up. Bridgy’s last day of high school is Wednesday. My days will grow longer.

I’ve been talking to Heather a lot since she died. Telling her all the things I couldn’t tell her when she was alive. Do you talk to the dead? Do they talk back to you?

Today, in honor of Heather I came to Regatta Park with the one and only Patrick “Paddy” McCollum. I need to get out more, and as Heather wrote in her obit, do something that stretches me. Right now, a walk outside the neighborhood stretches me. I should aim higher.

I read that dogs become paralyzed with boredom. Today, I am investing in Paddy’s mental health. He’s walked a spell, seen some geese and taken a grand ride in the Jeep. I bet he sleeps well tonight.
I am not sleeping so well. I’ve been thinking of Heather and the Amy Grant concert we attended together on December 6, 1998. It was such a magical evening with our husbands. We were all college friends and then church friends and then neighbors. A year later, I was divorced. Everyone was shocked but no one more than me. I had a sheltie back then, too. Her name was Zofie Zloty. I’ve had so many shelties. They’re all the same and trick the mind into believing no time has passed and they have not died. They all died and I’m still here.

In the mid 1980s, When I was 17, my friends and I could not imagine all our children would face. Battles and injuries of which we could not conceive. If we’d known we might have ended it all right then and there.

One thing is for certain, we could not imagine dying at 55, like Heather. If we had, we would have made different choices. I have to explore what they might have been and maybe figure out how to start anew with the time I have left. Heather lived a full life and that is one message for me from her untimely death. There is fullness for all of us if we choose it.

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