MY ADDRESS IS THE SAME

Saturday started out wonderful.  I slept in.  Had Breakfast.  Dressed and groomed. Sorted through a few things and made the big decision to throw away my Brownie uniform from when I was a Brownie Girl Scout.  I folded it up and pitched it in the waste can.  Heavens.  I have had that piece of material for almost 60 years.

This Girl Scout outfit was a dress and not a skirt and blouse.  We wore beanie caps as well.  I had saved this uniform all these years.  When we had our 2016 house fire the Brownie Dress was stained.  I just hadn't pitched it yet.  It had been cleaned by professional cleaners.  Still it had to go away.  I picked it up and looked at it, folded it, said goodbye and threw it into the waste can. Basket...two points.

That makes this little dress nearly an antique.  Nearly.  Maybe.  I had planned on doing a quick once over cleaning of the Victorian Room where months earlier I had started going through the closet, drawers, storage bins, etc. to thin out and organize the contents of the room and the keepsakes.  I am in over my head with going through things from days gone by.  I'm not operating a museum, but it seems like it at times.

We'd go over to the cottage to unload an exercise thingy majobber that I bought the day before from the Hillsboro, Kansas Et. Cetera Shop for $9.99.  A Weslo Cardio Glide.  My Mom, sister and I went there on Friday after we ate lunch at Wendy's.  We sat and chat then went to the thrift shop.  When returning to my Mom's apartment, I saw my favorite cousin, Denice who was going to visit her mom that lives in the same complex as my mom.  I waved at her as I was getting out of the car.  

We walked toward each other and hugged one another.  She said she had been to Oklahoma and saw all of her girls at her youngest daughter's  bachelorette party.  I said you must have had fun. Because I had to go to the bathroom so badly I excused myself to go inside Mom's apartment.  I told her I wasn't wanting to be rude, but I had to go to the bathroom so badly.  She told me when nature calls you have to go.  Her last words to me.  As I walked away, I told her she looked good.  

This would be the last time to see her alive as on Saturday afternoon she and her husband were killed instantly in an auto wreck.  She was driving and lost control of her car that they had just had for a week, went across the meridian crashing into a freight truck coming the opposite direction.

While I was at the local Mexican Restaurant sipping chicken broth watching my husband eat chips, salsa and enchiladas, Denice's earthly life ended.  I'd find out about it later that day when my sister called me to tell me about what had happened.  I was stunned.  Stunned.  The tears freely flowed.

I have so many fond memories of spending time with Denice in Marion as a child growing into teenagers.  We were close.  Pen Pals.  As we grew into adulthood, we were in each other's wedding.  This year she would have been married 47 years in August.  We married two weeks apart.   

I am still stunned and saddened.  She has 9 children with children of their own.  I cannot imagine how they must feel losing both parents at once.  They are a very close knit family. Denice made such beautiful cakes that she made her children's wedding cakes.  Extremely talented and active.  I don't know who would ever call her elderly at 65.  A reporter did in an article reporting their deaths.  An Elderly Couple......65 may seem old to some, but elderly?  No.

I have cried a river.  Rethinking once again what I am to do in LIFE as I live it.  I will have no trouble pitching things around here now.  No trouble.  When I woke this morning after having a colonoscopy, I felt a renewed lease on life.  I believe I have to get on with LIFE while I am still alive.

When you are 66 and still believe you have things to do, places to go, people to talk to, projects to complete, charity to extend...then being elderly doesn't seem so awful at 66. 

Child of God, wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, sister, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, cousin, friend. 

Denice touched so many lives in a good way.  Her trials and tribulations have ended.  Heaven is her home these days.  She and her hubby are there.  Her address changed on Saturday.  For now, my address is the same. 

When death is so final, the reality of it can be sobering.  She is with God.  She knew where she was going after leaving her body.  

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