Where do I go from here?
My life has definitely been divided into chapters. Chapter One I was born and my family grew while living in a quaint little house in Shaker Hts, Ohio. Chapter Two we moved to a larger house with more land as our family grew. We lived in a more rural area, went to a school that had strong expectations of its students, found a church that became important in our lives. Chapter Three I went off to college. I went away from home to an (at the time) Women's college, found myself, met my husband, trained as an Elementary School Teacher. Chapter Four I got married, hub and I went off to Indiana so he could go to graduate school, then to Georgia, so he could do his training with the army, then to Illinois so he could start his career in business. Chapter Five I became a mother. That in itself is an amazing thing. It took me two tries. We lost our first son but weathered that pretty well and had our second son (our oldest child) nine months after the loss. Chapter Six was a move to Ohio to join the family construction business. We thought this was where we were going to spend our lives raising our children and building our future but this chapter only lasted 13 years. 13 wonderful years in a lovely little small town, near family, with great schools, and good friends. It was an idealic time. Chapter Seven started when the family business was closed because the construction industry in northeast Ohio was slumping but also became a business that my father no longer wanted to participate in. We moved to Florida, lived in first a more urban then suburban area, started our kids in okay schools but moved to much better ones. Far away from family we had to create our own traditions and circle our wagons. We worked hard at experiencing "the real Florida" and making ourselves at home in an environment totally different from any place we had ever lived before. Although two of our kids went to college in Florida all three of them left as fast as they could figure out how to do it. I consider Florida one chapter in our lives even though we lived in three cities and five different dwellings. Even though we became empty nesters, my father-in-law died, and my own father died. There was just something consistant about our time in Florida and maybe it was being off by ourselves. We loved it but making connections was really hard. In a lot of ways we did not fit in. Chapter eight was when we moved back to northeast Ohio to live with my mother who could no longer be in her house alone and was not ready to be moved to a facility. This has been a chapter of hard work, an emotional roller coaster, but with the advantage of being able to reconnect with family and to know my mother in a way that I had not known her since I graduated from high school. There is just something so much more intimate and connecting to be with someone 24/7. This has been a difficult chapter in so many ways I don't want to get into it here, but also so special. Both hub and I have grown so much spiritually during our time here between our church, our closeness, my therapist, and the struggles we have gone through, I think this has been a special time in our lives. Chapter Nine is the unknown future. We are moving to Massachusetts to be near our oldest son and his family. He is the father of our two grandchildren. We are doing this for two reasons. Number one is to be a part of our grandchildren's lives and to be able to help their parents in whatever ways we can. Number two is to be prepared in case I end up with dementia like my mother. I want to be settled near one of my children and a part of their lives so that if I require help it is just a natural thing, not a change their whole life thing. My Mom seemed to live her life like it wouldn't happen to her (it happened to her mother) and I want to face it head on and try to live with it as best I can if it happens. Who knows. It is a genetic crap shoot. So far my mother's sisters seem to be aging differently from her, although her one sister shows some early signs at the same age my mother did, they don't seem to be throwing her into the same isolating depression that it threw my mother into. My mother has three cousins that are brothers, the youngest just turned 89 and they all have dementia in some form or another, the youngest is the worst, but the oldest is living by himself in his home and seems to be doing fine. There is hope. So as we get ourselves prepared to move on to Chapter nine in our lives I think we do it with our eyes and hearts open to new experiences in new places. It will be sad to again be far away from my family but we have done this before and we will have some family near us. Change is hard, but change can be good and when you aren't staying in the same place change is something that you just have to figure out how to handle. Hopefully this is a long happy chapter in our lives.