One Moment

               

             Tara Smith at A Teaching Life is our host for Poetry Friday.  Come visit all the links today! Thanks Tara!  Tweet at #PoetryFriday.  Have a nice holiday weekend everyone!

              David L. Harrison hosts several ideas for writing poetry on his website, including the Word of the Month. This month the W.O.M is 'train'.  When I sat to write, I thought I would write about my husband's father who was a Union Pacific engineer and told many stories about his travels.  However, the pencil traveled to a different story/memory.  Then, for last week's Poetry Friday, Jeannine Atkins wrote a beautifully inspiring post she termed "deepening", about revising one's poems.  It helped me do a little more with the poem.  If you missed Jeannine's post, return to read!  I'm not sure it's finished yet, but it is a poem I enjoyed writing, will enjoy sharing it.

A Scary Afternoon - Wildfire! #27

  Slice Number 27 with Stacey and Ruth at the Two Writing Teachers March SOLC  

What a month it has been!  

My husband is now in a mental health behavioral center.  The goal is to stabilize his mental and physical health so that we can find a place for him that will be a happier place, most probably a nursing home.  It has been quite a time this past week, and I'm not ready to process all I have done exactly.  There are lists upon lists.  Finally a bed opened for him and he was moved from the ER to this center, a difficult move, but he is calm and progressing a little each day.  The head of the center just looks at me and says, "Linda, one day at a time, remember?"  I am doing that, but so much more. My son flew back to town and we spent (with daughter and son-in-law plus daughter-in-law by phone) time talking, planning, then making some priorities.  I am grateful for my children and who they are as adults, and am grateful and blessed they are coming with me on this journey.  

The Post Most Challenging - # 20

     The March Slice of Life Challenge is hosted by Stacey and Ruth at their blog,

Two Writing Teachers.

      This is a most challenging post.  I feel I need to tell, but it isn’t easy.  I want those of you who have become my blogging friends to know why I never write about my husband of forty-seven years. 

Since 2008 we’ve lived with a disease called Parkinson’s.  Except for a new medicine regime, it didn’t affect our lives very much.  We read, we studied; we found a good doctor and joined a support group.  My husband was retired so we didn’t have to worry about work complications.  We did as much traveling as possible, like taking our grandson on wonderful trips, appropriate to his age.  Some of you might remember that I wrote last summer about our trip to Sanibel Island.  As my husband swam several times a week, and we both walked for exercise, and that helped his health.  I was given the chance to move out of the classroom and become a literacy coach part time.  Life seemed fine. 

       But it wasn’t really.  I’ve become a Caregiver.  And I’ve slowly lost parts of my husband as the days pass by.