Since my husband’s death, I have found that I try to keep busy, work on projects, and get together with family and friends. The task of writing blog posts had me stymied because I needed to figure out where to focus.

But then, my calendar exploded. The last time I could travel substantially was in 2019, when my husband and I took two major road trips. We made one trip out to Arizona, where we had lived before moving to my home state of Ohio.

Here is Ron at our former home in Arizona

We also took a road trip down south — visiting family & friends in southern Ohio and then in Georgia and North and South Carolina. I am so thankful that we were able to make those trips.

This was taken when we were visiting with dear friends in South Carolina.

My husband died early in 2020, and after his death, I went back to work part-time and could pay off his credit card debt and most of mine, working from the smallest to the largest. There are two left, and I will keep working on those, but it will take some time.

I am thankful for my extended family: my daughter and son-in-law and their family, my brothers and their wives, my cousins and nieces and nephews, and my dear Ronnie’s daughters and their families. I love getting and receiving snail mail, phone calls, and the occasional video chat with some family and friends.

The excitement just began. Last Wednesday, February 22, a friend from Arizona flew out for a visit. Last night we had a scrumptious dinner in my favorite local restaurant, which I’ve written about before, Don Tomasso’s Italian Kitchen.

In March, my daughter, son-in-law, and their little ones, including one son whom I have not yet met are visiting for the better part of a week. Come April, I have a delicious invitation to attend a significant birthday party in Missouri — which I wouldn’t miss for anything in the world.

But it doesn’t stop there. Two college chums are coming to visit in May. Friends who live in the state of Washington are coming for a visit sometime in the early summer. Then, “God willing, and the creek don’t rise,” I will take a road trip to visit friends and family in southern Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Recently I learned that it might be possible for me to see dear friends of Ron’s and mine from Arizona who now live in a state I have never been to — Alabama!

My dear Ronnie would have approved of this chaos.