I have always been fond of saying that growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional. And I am sure that there are a lot of people throughout my life that wished I would just grow up.
This time of year has always been a very mixed bag for me. I am very grateful for all the things that I have had in my life. And I take a short time to reflect on what I should have done differently as I made my way through life.
I had the time to do some reflection today and memories of things that I loved to do and things that I wanted to do in my life started flashing, just as if it was the last moments when they say your whole life flashes in front of your face. But I knew that it was a combination of good things and dreams that I had and not all of the regrets and mistakes that one would assume would be a part of that final movie.
Even though I have had a wonderful life it is sad to see the days going by so fast and all the things I used to love to do are not available to me anymore. I have been blessed with so much and as time is running down I have had to give most of it all up.
We come into this life with nothing and we leave the same way. Try and tell a young person what you have found out on your journey through life and they will not hear anything that you are saying. I am so privileged to have the opportunity to put my thoughts here and share them with others. Young people have to tread their own path, as I have, and any help that I can give them goes away. It is just the way it is.
There is an old saying that “cowboys never cry”, well whoever wrote that sure did not know what they were talking about. I have had a couple tears in my eyes today because it is about time for Christmas and the group of people that we had that shared our table every year is dwindling down too fast. We just were getting used to our old friend Tuffy not being here and now we are not going to have Carl with us anymore. Neither were related but we considered them to be family.
I just had a phone call from Jack and Vicki and they will be coming. I have a smile on my face for we thought that they would be too busy to come this year. With all of the health issues around here we think we are living in a nursing home. It feels that way but it is still our home.
There are many changes coming in our lives and we have to reflect on what we have been blessed with. We remember the friends we have lost and we are joyful in all the friends we have gained.
We are blessed to be living in Kansas and I continue to write about my home. Even though I only get about half a day of work at the computer in, I have enough projects that I know that when I am visited by that final Angel I will say I had so much left to do.
I believe that we are not to live life as though we are building a castle to store up our gains in, but that we are to slide into the grave saying WOW WHAT A RIDE!
