A Very Different Path...

I don't know how it slipped by me but it did: July 6th, 2013.
It would have been my fiftieth wedding anniversary, had life
gone differently...had a dreadful disease not ended the life of
my otherwise healthy young husband, leaving me and our
three children reeling, a sense of disbelief the overriding emotion
for all of us, including my parents and sisters, our extended
family, and all of our friends.

And with the memories I am once again made aware of- hit in
the face with, actually- life's delicate fragility, of the reality that
we never, ever know what tomorrow will bring. Trite-sounding,
I know, but unarguably true. Today is all any of us really has...
this moment, this breath...to use as we will or to let slip away
like sand through an hourglass.

Who knows what our lives would have been like- mine and my 
children's'- had the fickle finger of fate not intervened as it did?
Who knows what our paths would have looked like or where
they would have taken us? We all could spend a lot of time and
energy wondering, what-iffing. I only know that right now,
at this moment, in THIS place, at this time of my life, the sun
is shining, the ceiling fan is whispering its secrets, and I see
before me the photos of the faces of those whom I have loved 
and lost, knowing that they are with me still, wherever this
journey of life takes me.

Linda and Carl, July 6, 1963

Happy Anniversary!