T-273.5 hours Until Luggy and I Leave

I am reminded when I worked for NASA in the mid-seventies, mostly around the time of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, when the count down clock was started. All the work and preparation and man-hours that went into a launch were unreal, even back then. The anticipation was so great you could feel it in the air.

While my "Launch" day is not as important as a NASA launch into space, there is still the preparation, the anticipation as if I'm about to under go a life changing event. Well, I am. I was thinking about what may lay ahead the other day and I was struck with a feeling of what was being left behind.

As most of you know, my wife of 35 years has decided that she wants to be alone, to find herself and be responsible to only herself and for only herself. After a separation for one year we got back together again but after about six months she told me that she did not want to live together, she was happier alone.

Yes, at first I was struck by all the emotions you could expect but after some time thinking about her side of it I can say I understand. I may not want it or like it, but I do understand.

I met her in college in 1973. Over the years I use to tell people we met in January, I started dating her February, asked her to marry me in March and married her in April.

One year and 4 days later we had our first child. In a little over a year my wife went from being a daughter, to becoming a wife, and then becoming a mother. Over the next 10 years we had two more children. Time had a way of warping the events in our lives. We would wake up one day and we were in our thirties. Life became consumed with building a career, taking care of the family and making ends meet.

One day we were in our forties and our children were growing up. Someday we thought, when they all leave home, we will travel the country on motorcycles. Doing all the things that responsible parents don't dare do when your children are under your roof.

Then like an atomic bomb going off we found everything changed. In just the course of a few years our children had left home, we became grand parents, our son was assigned to Afghanistan, I was broadsided by a pickup truck running a red light, and we lost everything. Everything changed. Our home, our van, our children and my health were all gone. Not only was the nest empty, but it too was taken away.

Learning to deal with constant pain, endless depression and all the changes took time, and it took its toll on us as well. We were no longer the same people we were 5, 10, or 20 years ago.

My wife said one day that she went from daughter to wife, to mother, and to grand mother and realized she never knew who she was. She had always been labeled as someone's daughter, my wife, or Jennifer's mom. And yes, one day she became Darby's grand mother. Thirty years had passed and she felt as if she didn't know who Beth was.

I love my wife dearly, but when someone wants something you can’t give them, what do you do? Because of my disability, I could no longer provide the things as the head of the household. Instead I had to watch her go to work, sometimes working all night in all kinds of weather. It bothered me to see her do the things she had to do.

I was once told by a psychologist that when a person becomes disabled their spouse is injured as well. Maybe not the same way with the same type of pain, but the emotions, the stress, the depression is just as real. And in some case even more so, they don’t get the attention, the caring concern or even the support that someone who becomes disabled does. Often they are left on their own to try and sort things out and find their own way. Coming to terms with life’s situations can be just as hard, if not harder.

As I spent hours filling out the divorce paperwork I reflected on the dates; our marriage, the children’s birthdays, when we acquired this vehicle or that lamp, it all started to form a story, a story of my life.

Setting in the oversized recliner I thought of how I would miss it. Along with the things we sometimes take for granted, I thought of the good times we had and the life that we shared, knowing that this lifestyle we call Full-Timing was not going to be shared with someone I had shared more then half of my life with.

Now as I look ahead, wondering what the future may hold, the excitement, the adventure, the newness you find only with the discovery of something you have never seen, felt or did before, I feel a part of me will be left behind as well.

So, in a way, they are bittersweet, these feelings that I have about what lays before me. And as I finish getting moved into the Motor Home I can’t help to think that I am forgetting something.

So I know this is not much of a discussion but more of a frame of mind. But I was just thinking, has anyone else, maybe years ago in the mist of getting ready to leave, to begin an adventure, has anyone else thought about the things they left behind and in some way been able to sort all this out to where it makes sense? Or is it even suppose to?