How I Passed A Cardiac Stress Test

Here's a photo of what's left of my big, pretty Dodge Ram after my son nearly had a head-on collision with a motor home.

This happened while he was taking my granddaughter home to her mother's. Yes, OMG, he had Anna with him.

No one was hurt in the wreck. That's the good part.

My late husband and I bought this truck brand new five years ago and I had just finished paying it off. Now it's totaled. Ironic, yes?

I found this recent near-tragedy quite emotionally troubling, having lost my husband in a motorcycle crash just last year. You know it's bad when you have to remind yourself, "Just breathe."

The often-heard phrase from friends, "It could have been much worse," meant to comfort me, is the very idea that makes me weak in the knees to contemplate.

Thank God no one was hurt. Absolutely grateful for that, I am, indeed.

I'm also relieved I didn't have a stroke or heart attack when I found out about it. I did have a giant panic attack of sorts when my son called to say, in trembling voice, "Mom, I've been in a wreck." Hearing that totally freaked me out so bad I very nearly fainted, which freaked me out even further. Panic attacks feed on themselves, have you ever noticed?

I've seen people in the movies faint upon receiving bad news but had never really experienced that extreme-shock reaction in real life. It's like your brain just goes, "Nope. I am not hearing this, I am definitely not dealing with this, and I am out of here, right now." It's a weird sensation. It felt like my heart stopped, but of course, it didn't.

I have advised my son, should such an unfortunate incident ever happen again, to please begin such phone conversations by saying, "Mom, we're alright, but ..."

So now I am looking to buy another vehicle, which is one more thing I've never done without my husband. Sometimes I wish so badly that I could just call him up and have him tell me what to do.

That ain't happenin', though, so I'll just have to wing it once again and delve bravely into the strange world of "man stuff."

Last year at about this time I was pondering getting in my firewood supply for the winter, which had always been another one of my husband's domain. Followup: Red fir is my choice as No. 1, followed by Tamarack. A blend of the two makes a nice mix in my particular stove. No more Birch for me, however; burns too hot and causes creosote in the stove pipe. The darn bark is unruly, too.

Live and learn. Roll with the punches. Such are the cliches I live by these days.

Could an angel on a Harley have been there to intervene? Well, actually, I thought that was fairly obvious. Of course he was.

Accepting What I Cannot Change

"He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless."

--- Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English author

Seems like some things never change. Other times, it's obvious that nothing will ever be the same in my life.

There is a huge division now in my concept of time: Before Roger died and after Roger died. To even say the phrase, "Roger died," out loud sends a jolt of something close to panic into the pit of my stomach. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?

Part of my mind subversively clings to the delusion that Roger's just away at work. For the last six years of his life, my husband worked in Russia on a six-week-off, six-week-on rotation.

I got used to him being gone half the time. But reality bites me right in the butt when I see his things untouched, just as he left them more than a year ago. Now they're gathering dust.

I can't change the facts, so I have no choice but to carry on, as I must. But don't worry about me, dear readers. There is no easy way up this steep, dark path for anyone who's ever walked it.

If it's a just matter of hanging in there for several more months before it begins to smooth out, as I suspect, then in there I shall hang. If, in a year from now, however, I feel like nothing's changed, then we will have to seriously discuss a Plan of Action.
I was startled when someone said to me recently, "Maybe the best is yet to come." That was a totally foreign thought to my mind. Really? Not just better, but maybe, the best? Of my whole life?
Anything's possible with God. Of that, at least, I am certain.

Old Photos, Windows to the Past

I love old photos; I always have. Aware of my fondness for pictures from the past, people give them to me. I have lots of them.

Sometimes I know who the people are in the pictures, sometimes not. I like to examine everything in an old photo with a magnifying glass. I pretend I was there.

This is a picture of a guy named Sumner Stonebraker standing on his head on his brother's front porch in Stites, Idaho, in about 1903. The Stonebrakers operated a pack train hauling supplies and mail into Idaho gold miners.

I made a little slide show of some of the best of these rare pictures for YouTube, which I just added here for you to watch. It's interesting, I think, even if you don't care as much about Idaho history as I do.

It's a well-known fact in the newspaper trade that editors become historians when they retire. It's just natural.
Even while I was still working on newspapers, I always had a sense of recording history. 

I love to go to a library and spend all afternoon reading really old newspapers on microfilm. The stories in them are usually hilariously slanted by today's journalistic standards. Early newspaper publishers were usually guilty of shameless "boosterism" when writing about their newly formed little towns.

This old photo is of my grandmother in a canoe in about 1919. I love the way she's trailing her hand in the water; it shows her serenity at that moment. It makes me glad to know she was happy then.

That's her younger brother, my great-uncle, to the right of her. I can't tell who the two other people are because they're too out of focus, but it doesn't matter.

I love the picture just the way it is. Aside from adding a little tint of color, I did nothing to enhance it. It has the ethereal feel of a soft watercolor painting, I think. It's almost Impressionistic, in a way, but maybe it's just the era and how my grandma was dressed. Whoever took it may have felt it wasn't a very good picture. I'm just glad it didn't get thrown away, and that now, it's mine.

I love to scan and share these windows to the past. I hope you like them, too. I'll post more when I can.

A Sunny Day, a Lake, and a Little Girl

Lake Pend O'reille (pronounced "Pond'-er-ay") is near my home in the Idaho Panhandle. A natural lake, it was formed by glaciers long ago. Encircled by mountain peaks and deep-green forests, it's Idaho's largest lake and in my opinion, its most beautiful.

You can boat all day on Lake Pend Oreille and still not see all of its surface area of 148 square miles. It is 65 miles long, and 1,150 feet deep in some regions, making it the fifth-deepest lake in the United States. If you find this incredibly interesting, here's a link to learn more: http://www.visitidaho.org/thingstodo/view-attraction.aspx?id=30620.

I'm very fortunate to have a good friend who owns a cabin on the eastern shore of Lake Pend O'reille. I took this photo last week from the second-story deck of her perfect hide-away after a full day of playing in the sun in the crystal-clear lake water. My son, granddaughter, friend, our dogs and I swam, rode in a canoe, snorkeled, built a fire after dark and in general had a wonderful time.

It was while riding back to the cabin behind my son on a four-wheeler, with Bric running happily alongside, that I had the odd realization that I actually felt happy. Wide-grinning, childish, light-hearted happy.

I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be so glad to be alive. I was happy that I hadn't missed that day. I cherished it, very conscious of being in the moment..

Maybe it was my impish, high-spirited granddaughter, Anna, who broke my long-running gloomy spell. She is a joy, to be sure; she brightens up the world around her. I'm not sure if she's aware of her positive effect on me.

I'm reminded of a good movie from a few years ago entitled, "As Good As It Gets," starring Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson. There's a scene in a fancy restaurant when Helen realizes she is very under-dressed, and she's mad at Jack for taking her there without telling her what to wear. She demands that he give her a nice compliment to make up for it.

Jack thinks for a minute, and then says, "You make me want to be a better person." Helen melts, of course. She cries a little, because that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to her, she tells him.

I'm not sure if Anna, who will be only seven next month, could really grasp the meaning of such a profound statement yet. She might say something like, "But Nana, you're not a bad person!" Then I'd have to try to explain, which I really can't, at least not in a young child's perspective.

But one day I will say to her, "Anna. you've always made me want to be a better person." And I'll hug her and say "thank you," and let her know that because of her, I am.