35 years later

I was watching the TV show "Airline," which follows the day-to-day operations at various airports served by Southwest Airlines. This particular episode showed a woman whose husband was killed in Vietnam 35 years ago. She was traveling to a reunion of his unit. She showed pictures of her husband and talked about how they had gotten married while he was home on leave. She cried thinking of the memories. Here were pictures of her young, handsome husband and now, 35 years later, she still mourns.

I cried with her; I was so moved by her loss and her quiet dignity.

Unplugged

The toilet in the hall bathroom got plugged up. It overflowed all over the floor and was quite a mess to clean up. I was quite annoyed that I was up to my elbows in muck and neither of the kids was at all helpful. However, I was not mad at Ken. A couple of months ago I would have railed at Ken for not being here to take care of the problem. I just mopped up the mess and went to OSH for advice. Though at OSH I did rush to tell the man in the plumbing department that my husband had died and he usually took care of these things. For some reason it was important for him to know that I had had a husband who took care of me and that it wasn't my choice to go it alone. He just looked at me and then went on explaining how to insert the auger in the toilet and then crank.

So I went home and unplugged the toilet.