Home Sweet Home

Assignment: go on an adventure, take a path you've never been. So, it's 5 degrees outside, I slap on my "sleeping bag with arms", warmest gloves and hat and head up the road with my dog Cooper. We're going to find our way to Matt's pond. He's my nephew. When I met my late husband Lance, he owned 10 acres near where I live, which he promptly sold to Matt. I'd been there a few times when we first met, when Lance was 26. In his late teens, he actually lived in what was once their campground's bathhouse. Pretty rough but hell, I lived in a house with no water for a month in my twenties. Same attraction as he had - it was free. I'd forgotten all about that bathhouse.

What surprised me most was that I felt no emotion. My husband's been dead a little over 4 years and I never know what will trigger the sadness that has become part of me. This was not a trigger.

Cooper and I found a convenient road down to the pond. Again, I'd been there a few times with Lance when we first met but I barely recognized it. Mother Nature can change things in 21 years.

So another lesson learned about how I grieve - things/places that weren't a big part of my life with Lance don't necessarily bring on the tears, even if they were a big part of his life before we met. Plus I am currently well rested and in a very good place mentally. Fatigue and feeling vulnerable brings the sad closer to the surface. Or maybe I'm processing things differently as time goes by.

As I walked home, I thought it was too cold for a pretty sunset sky. I had hoped for a picture of the pond with color behind the trees' silhouettes. As I got nearer to my house, I realized I was wrong about the temperature affecting the color. The sky glowed behind the trees, behind my home, the place Lance and I shared it all. No tears. Just Home Sweet Home.