Margm

Well Gin, hope she does not minister to the widows and widowers. Good gosh, I think I better cut it off at that. You know, there really are idiots out there.

I remember somewhere writing about "a pill" as the answer to my problems. I did used to look for "a pill" to cure my problem, but actually, how do you cure the biggest problem and that is your own self. You cannot find one. I used to go the pill route. I went the psychoanalysis route for many years, and your right, I am the only one aware of my problem and honestly, just like all of us, talking out the problem helps some people. Yesterday I was testing my faith. Do you really test your own faith? I think not. You either have it, or you don't. I've always known I had faith but going into the multi-faith chapel with Billy dying, somehow I felt God could not walk in with me. That, other than Billy's death, was one of my most traumatic events. There are debates against this and for this and I am actually not worried about other people's feelings in something like this. I don't want to sound so totally selfish, I think selfish is not in my vocabulary, but in this case, I am in search of a feeling. I once had that feeling and I will know when I have it again. I just hope my big behind will let me get off my knees when it hits me. No, he didn't really help, but somehow what I was searching for was something only I will find the answers to. Just like the pill, I have to find my own direction. I already knew that. Thank you Kay, I think you understand me. Actually, I think you all do.

Gwen, I wrote that silly little ditty back in 1982. Yes, I have had troubles even back that far. Worries that Billy got so tired of me worrying about. I do have the DNA kit I have to send off because I know since I cannot be Native American and instead have to be one of the ancestors that came over here and took it away from the native people. I just figure one of those people was a Jewish woman that worried all the time. Nothing against Jewish people except that supposedly is what they do, worry a lot, and somehow when my brain wears out into cold ash, there will be some minute part still worrying. He was a nice fellow and sincere but it went like I figured it would and honestly, when it comes down to it, we have to handle our own problems. My mustard seed faith did not grow any bigger, but I am a little more proud of it than I was so that is an improvement. I will never get over feeling guilty for my sister's problems, even though it was her personal choice and right now I want to rush over there and do something..........what? Interfere? (I can't anyhow). Like I said, I think God demoted me and told me to quit trying to take his job away from him. You know, if I was in the middle of the ocean, I would drown. I know you all have that feeling too. And, I need the outlook of the man who cried because he had no shoes and then he saw the man with no feet. Sometimes I am too human. And then, what else am I supposed to be? I will find my answers in reading Marty's offerings. they have helped more than anything. That doctor who gave me the antidepressants, with me trying to beg off, she did not listen to a word I had to say. The #1 side effect was constipation and old people cannot take what I could have taken at 40. Sometimes, you really do just have to help yourself. I'm trying.

I go to a counselor this morning. He is a Baptist counselor. I have very mixed feelings about that. This man has many years experience.......so do I. My book is too long. Do I discuss my guilt at the sin I lived and with my Baptist guilt spent many years in psychotherapy. Do I tell about my sister who is undergoing detox? Do I talk about my mustard seed faith that has turned into the size of a grain of sand. I am not a spring chicken anymore. I visited two shut-in friends yesterday. One was my dad's sister who shares our family's essential/congenital tremor, do I talk about my friend who secretly drank until her little brain shrank and she is in the nursing home. My sister has spent the last 15 years falling off the wagon that she spent so much time getting over a younger rehab. I did not really suspect. Do I get a tablet of the 10 commandments and flog myself with the many I have broke. I cannot seek absolution from a stranger, I need prayer to help my own self. It has left me. Was Billy right, will the shepherd come looking for this one lost sheep while the other 99 wait to be protected also. Am I so arrogant that I think I know more than this counselor because I have more experience? We will see if I can just let myself go and let God make me give up the job of his I have tried to take over. I just don't know. Certainly thinking I might be smarter than he is, that won't work. Seventy-five years. Can you possibly imagine how jaded and arrogant a person can get in that amount of time. Is my shield made of wax or steel. Maybe I have to just shut up. "I'm not that important, life does go on, if I was not here, then I'd be gone."

Feel better soon. Know fur babies are glad your home.

Yes, I know her so well.

Just rewatched the ending of the movie. Those words were said at last and I believe they lived "happily ever after." As long as "ever after" is.

This picture tells me how it really is. This is something we all know. What we are doing is walking paths with other people, but they cannot walk it for us and we cannot walk it for them. We can just commiserate and sometimes that empathy helps. I see that little girl in old pictures of myself. (We did not have color pictures then).. I remember Mama had my picture with the "rat hole" hair-do colored and is still on her wall. That little girl is me walking down that path by myself.

Good for you Tom. We planned many years to take the RV and go east but every time we got in the truck we knew we were pulling across Texas. We went as many different ways as we could, but Texas was still Texas. And, I do have to say it has to be one of the best states in the USA to see every kind of scenes you could only imagine, desert, piney woods, mountains, rivers, beaches, The Gulf, anything and anywhere you would want to go, but we were heading to Arizona and New Mexico and we just could not stop doing that. No other place appealed to us. So, I admire your persistence in keeping up with this, even though it hurts. I won't cross the Texas state line ever again. We do what we have to do,.

Elizabeth, we all could use those prayers whether we think we want them or not. I have an appointment with a counselor on Tuesday. Some things that are happening in my family I have no control over and honestly, God is tired of me trying to take his job away from him. Cape Cod Elizabeth. Honeychile, this old southern gal wishes she was there right now. Just got back from grocery store and got rid of all the sweaty undergarments and feel some better but I put that AC on the lowest I have ever had it. I know Marty, we don't sweat, we glow, but honestly my glowing was about to drown me. Keep cool my friends.

Thanks Karen, now................................Dave????????????????????

Okay, I know Katpilot, but I called him Dave the other day. Where is Dave? Addendum: Want to know about Patty and her business starting up too.

Katpilot.........cannot remember your real name. You don't hang around much anymore and am happy for you and Patty. We had a Dave somewhere. Maybe you are Steve.

Best advice given anywhere.

I believe that for myself. Other people have had more than one partner before and after, but somewhere there is always that one, even if it was not the last one. My friend's mom outlived three husbands and cared for all of them. My sister-in-law's husband died when she was pregnant with their 4th, a young fellow in his 40's, bad heart. Then she had three she was going to marry die with heart attacks. They teased her and said she was just too much for a man. She was a joking waitress that joked with everyone, but she wound up on the psych ward afraid it might be true. Her daughter had heard her tell her last husband she loved him more than any of the others. She lost him too. Then her daughter died of the family heart ailment and my sister-in-law just went to sleep five months later and didn't wake up. Who knows? I don't want to even get a pet. Very worried about my sister now. I'm tired of dying.

Well I cried at that song at 15 and I cry still at 75.

Oh, we sure were not perfect, sometimes pretty imperfect, but always perfect for each other.

I think we miss anyone when they leave, for whatever reason. I "met" Brad when I first got on the forum. I think Bill joined much later. George is one of the constants that makes the forum a better place, as do all of you. We actually do not "know" anyone on here except some of us keep in touch by email, some have phone numbers, but no matter what, we usually are faceless people that suffer, maybe not all the same, but we all suffer. We do the best we can, all of us. Sometimes we kick our own-selves and that has not helped me at all and I doubt it helps any one of us. We really cannot believe anyone would come on here except to help. That is what we expect, that is what we do. You have never left Darrel. And we have not either.

Well for one thing I definitely am not alone. For another neither kid or grandkid would allow it. And most of all, how in the world would someone at my age be able to connect with the kind of wonderful that it took me 54 years to beat into Billy. And most importantly, I would really like to see him again, and I will one day, but somehow I know that boy and there is no way in this world would he stand on the "other side" and let me even look at another man. (Nor would I want to) I admire all you youngsters that found love again and I wish you well and that old song comes back to me. Mary Collier was a senior. I was 15. We had talent's assembly and she sang "Hello Young Lovers" from The King and I. I remember crying so hard. She wore an old coat and an old slouch hat to look old while two young "lovers" strolled by. Remember, I was 15. I had no idea there was a Billy for me anywhere, but I cried as if I had just lost him. I still do. Don't cry young lovers, whatever you do, Don't cry because I'm alone; All of my memories are happy tonight, I've had a love of my own. I've had a love of my own, like yours- I've had a love of my own. I didn't know him when I was 15, but at 75, I knew him very well and I am just too old and no man could compare. I'm not lonesome for company. The little woman I met at Walmart waiting in the pharmacy line, she was in a wheelchair. Her new husband was picking up her medicine. She had remarried and promptly had a heart attack. They were close to my age. She told me he was a classmate and as he returned, she had just said, and he did hear it, "it is not the same" and of course it won't be. My friend who married the same time as Billy and I did, to Billy's friend and had two children with him. She remarried two years after he passed away. I think (like Kay), being married so long to someone she didn't really love, and finding the love of her life, now with him 12-15 years, and they have him on hospice. This was the love of her life and my heart is so very much with her. I admire her, but it could never be done again by me. I will be there for her though, just like Hettie was there for me. (Had lost her husband about five years before). Sometimes, once is enough. Sometimes it isn't, and if they find happiness again...........and Katpilot (Dave I think) lightening does strike twice in the same place. I want to read that book.

I'm sorry Kay. Different couples go through different things. My coworker, her daughter (beautiful girl) dated one boy probably since she was in junior high. They were both exceptionally smart, athletic, and had scholarships to go to same college, fully paid. Any picture of her had him right beside her. They married and he turned into someone else. After all those years together, divorce. She graduated from college without him and I admire the mother, her only child, and that grown daughter now who is going to medical school. Then, I have my friends, mine and Billy's age. She stays in the old inherited home place many miles out in the country. He stays in another state being the caretaker of two grandchildren. I heard a possible reason and honestly, after that many years, you have to forgive things that happened 30 years or more ago. You have to forgive before it is carved in stone. No perfect marriages. It was not like it was on TV. We did not wear high heels and aprons and all eat dinner together around the table each night. We did that during my mom and dad's generation. I found out my generation and Billy's was called the "silent" generation. Never knew that. Supposedly the newest generation is called "generation Z" and that is the last letter of the alphabet. We all had different marriages, but when you can really call them your best friend and mean it, and can and do talk over everything, I think it must have been successful, even if we never finish our forever.

My friend/cousin and her husband are mine and Billy's age range. They spent five years or longer fighting his prostate cancer and as soon as they got the all clear path reports he sank swiftly into dementia. Not Alzheimer's, but the kind if not watched constantly will drift off some place unknown, night or day. They have my girlfriend in the lock down section of the nursing home (we thought we had lost her last week), but she has walking dementia just like my friend's husband. I see pictures of him and he is smiling. She is worn out. She has help from two grown kids and her church too. Billy, my laid back, ambling pigeon toed,, slow walking tall man only stayed five weeks. I remember things though now........afterwards......that I should have noticed. I didn't, and I cannot keep beating myself up. But I do.

Gwen, my Billy felt the call to be a Methodist minister and was talking to the minister of the church, then his sister told him about the minister and Billy's mom. Well, set him back a long time, but when I felt like my faith was lacking, he was always the one to bring the message to me and did not believe I was being punished by God for a mistake I made with the cancer. He did ask me once why I believed the way I did, and I said I didn't have a choice. When his good friend was praying holding his hands a few days before his death Billy had tears. I know where he went, if I know anything at all. And I have to believe this.

Thanks Gwen, we just took it for granted it would last forever.

Tom, it is me, I always feel guilty when I mention politics.

I'm sorry Tom, I had to bring in "republicans" because I am a political idiot. I do not know what all the labels mean, but to me it is a joke to blame a political party for my personal problems. Some people do, and that I cannot understand, and don't mean to begin a political statement. As in all the AA's in the world, I wish for that tolerance and what I believe or do not believe, I have the years of experience, but they were as below. Sorry for the political words, I really am apolitical, not trying to convert anyone to religion either, just wrestling with my own life, like we all are.