The last time I came out to the farm, I expected to stay two nights but I had a dinner engagement wrong in my mind and had to cut it short. Then, there was all the hullabaloo surrounding Thanksgiving. Then I hurt my back and haven’t done much of anything since Saturday night. I do not like to take pain medication, but I did give in for the first couple of days. Then, just like clockwork, I stopped and my mood took a nosedive. It always does and that’s why I don’t like to take that stuff in the first place. So, if I was going to be blue, I knew where I needed to go. 

The Farm.

I cannot tell you what a blessing it is to still have the opportunity to come stay at the home of my heart. My grandma’s goodness is baked into the timbers of this house and any time I get to stay here, it’s like medicine to my spirit. I got here mid afternoon and crawled into Grandma’s bed. It rained off and on and the sound on the tin roof lulled me off to a gentle slumber. I woke up and heated up a little supper and climbed back in bed with the memory book I wrote about the farm. I’m leaving a copy here so everyone who gets to visit can see the history of the place.

As I was looking through the book, I noticed the year Grandma and Pop-Pop got married. On October 13th, it was 100 years ago!!! I can’t believe that. My grandpa died forty-eight days before their 50th Wedding Anniversary. So, he’s been gone fifty years. It’s funny what the mind does to you when people are gone. When they are a part of you, and you hold them in your heart, that’s where they live and time is irrelevant. It is elastic. It stretches out interminably and shrinks back to the size of a grain of rice. They are always gone, yet they are always here.

On Thanksgiving this year, I experienced a wave of grief where I missed everyone. All of my loved ones who went before were tearing at my heartstrings. I don’t think I’ve quite put them back to bed yet. Hence another reason to make a retreat to the farm, gaze at my book of memories, and feel them all around me once more. I’ll rest and process and heal a little more, then I’ll head back home to my beloved Mr. FixIt. 

And this time…I promise…we’re going to decorate for Christmas!

It takes a special person to love a widow or widower. I thank God I have that special man in my husband. He supports me and lets me fly and be who I need to be and feel what I need to feel. He’s so very special. 

I am so grateful I had all these photos to put this book together for the family. My brother tells me he has it in a place of honor in his apartment. My Aunt Rosie says she held it and looked through it and remembered all the wonderful times she had growing up here and had a little cry. My cousin Cathy says she didn’t know half the stories that were in it. My cousin Tammy loves it and wants me to send her digital copies of all the photos. Daughter #1 took her copy with her to the family Thanksgiving dinner and shared all the stories she remembered. This is going to be a gift for generations to come and I’m so humbled I am the one to put it together.

❄️

“Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up at the first, and I found written in it:”

Nehemiah 7:5 ESV