Year 27 really started off slow, but it ended the last 6 months like dynamite.
During this year, I:
- Traveled to Arizona to visit my grandparents and family
- Took a total of 18 credit hours of graduate credit
- Taught 12 hours of university English
- Cut off 18 inches of hair
- Traveled to Arizona for the wedding of a best friend
- Worked a full-time job at two different universities.
- Traveled to Point Blank, Texas to enjoy one final year of Odomfesting at the Odom Lake House
- Planted a ridiculous amount of plants with my crazy, gardening husband
- Very suddenly, changed jobs from one university, where I had been working as a senior assistant director of admissions, to another university, where I am working as a Student Success Coach
- Very suddenly listed our beloved Cliffhouse
- Faced the death of a dear friend and neighbor, Robert Barnett
- Faced the death of my grandmother, Daisy Marie
- Faced the death of my grandmother, Ruth, one week later
- Faced the death of another dear friend and neighbor, Miss Jo Stephens
- Faced the death of my unborn nephew, Philip
- Moved in with my parents
- Sold our Cliffhouse
- Saw my husband graduate with his Master's in Counselling
It was a weird year. When the year began, I told my husband that I found myself pre-grieving. I didn't know why, but my heart told me it would be a painful one, and it was. I said goodbye forever to four beautiful people. I said goodbye to a family home of memories in Texas. I said goodbye to the home and garden we had poured ourselves into in Arkansas. I said goodbye to a team and a university that I had given everything to for roughly the past decade. I said goodbye to Siloam. I said goodbye to many friends and neighbors who I moved away from and who moved away from me. I grieved. I grieved a lot.
I am so thankful for the time I had been able to share with those who died. I am equally thankful to be closer now to my family. I missed them. I am thankful to share space with my parents (even if it makes me realize just how much clutter we own) and play games and watch The Mentalist and be silly. I am thankful for my new job and for the new job that Julius will be starting soon. I am thankful that, somehow, we were able to harvest every plant Julius had planted before we sold the house. We got an offer, transplanted to pots, had the first frost that killed everything, and then closed on Cliffhouse. It was amazing.
It's been a really exhausting half-year. But we move forward and hope for good and plant good seeds, maybe even in our own garden soon.
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