8 posts tagged “wife”

Happy Spring!

Mar 20, 2008
2 comments

Happy first day of Spring!

There aren't really any daffodils blooming here yet, but there are some tiny buds that you can see in the ground and on the trees at the nearby Botanic Garden.

Daffodils are my favorite, though. My wife got these for us for Spring, and also to celebrate our six-month anniversary. It is a precious time.

When I lived in Washington DC, there were huge fields of daffodils that bloomed near the Pentagon and the Potomac.

QotD: A Vox "Bucket List"

Mar 12, 2008
2 comments

If you had one month to live, what five things would you do?
Suggested by Acerebel.
This is not totally hypothetical, as there was a time that I was so ill it did seem that perhaps I only had another month to live.
If that were to happen again, I would:

--emphasize to my son how much I love him
--emphasize to my wife just how much I love her
--make sure my "affairs" (legally, financially) are in order.
--pick readings and music that I would like at my funeral.
--try to get the house cleaned up a bit more!

None of them all that much fun....
But if I had a whole year to live, I think I would try to get in a trip to China. Never been, always wanted to.

Turning Point

Mar 6, 2008
3 comments

I am feeling some internal difficulty right now, or lately. Conflicting interests, or commitments.

On the one hand, I spent nearly my whole adult life as a student of, or participant in, or teacher about, government. Forty-one years, if you count undergraduate studies as a poli sci major: 1962-2003. One builds up certain habits with that much of a time commitment. (Among them, for example, is always watching the State of the Union message. Buying a lot of non-fiction books: economics, politics, sociology, management. Subscribing to 50 or so magazines).

On the other hand, I am retired, very fully so. As retired as they get! My (first) wife passed away in 2003, and I became ill and stopped teaching after that. It was necessary, from a health standpoint.

And so a new life formulated itself slowly, a new life with a new wife, a wonderful second marriage--and a new focus of attention, especially on travel, which we both very much enjoy.

But here we are now, in what is certainly a crucial election year, a turning point, perhaps a defining point, for the American future. There is a good chance at least that whomever is elected president will serve eight years. When you are 65, and not in very good health, that is perhaps most of your own future.

Lacking any meaningful way to exert political or policy leverage, I guess it makes more sense to just sit this one out. I am torn between wanting to monitor campaign developments, and wanting to forget the whole thing. For us, there is still much of America to see: the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, California, upper New England, and Canada. All interesting places.

And, political discussions can create interpersonal tension. Even among good friends, people can be of very different minds. Talking about pleasing restaurants is far less controversial.

I'm not sure which way I will turn. But I am of the generation that started college just as John Kennedy came to the White House. I remember the hopefulness of those times. Even with all that has happened since--the many governmental and societal failures and disappointments, including assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, voodoo economics, George W. Bush, September 11th, the failed search for bin Laden, climate decline and social decay, and an apparently endless war in Iraq--it is hard to accept the idea that the true American spirit has been wholly extinguished.

I hope that it isn't so.

QotD: I'm So Grateful

Jan 13, 2008
1 comment

"What are you most grateful for in your life right now?"
Submitted by Becca-Pink.

Connie down the shore

Without any doubt, the thing in my life now that I am most grateful for is my wife, Connie.
She is my greatest joy--and indeed perhaps the reason that I even have a life now. I was pretty ill after Barbara died, and really almost entirely alone quite a bit of the time.
She is a very good woman: a loving mother, and grandmother, a good friend--and to me, a loving wife.
Exactly how it happened that Connie came along, I am not sure. I had not known her at all in my "previous life."

But for her, for her company and her daily presence, for all the help she offers to keep both of us going, and for the many pleasures we share together, I am incredibly grateful.
And, I am very fortunate. Extremely lucky.

Barbara's computer lab

Jan 9, 2008
3 comments

Barbara, my wife of 35 years, and who passed away on the 9th five years ago, was one of the very early computer teachers. She had been a middle school counselor, but stayed home with our son for a few years after his birth. Then, when she went looking for a job, she tried something new. It must have been around 1980, we had an early Apple ][, and she learned enough to be a teacher for the customers of a store near Alexandria, Virginia.

That created a career which served her well the rest of her life, which was another twenty-plus years.

She liked helping to bring technology to the students and the teachers (and learning herself, and sometimes learning from students as time went on).

She never did retire. We had talked about it, and she said that if they ever switched from Macs to Windows, she would quit. Or if they hired a new tech support guy, she would quit. She didn't want to have to learn so much new, or "break in" a new staff person.

So she taught until early November 2002, when she became too ill to teach; went into the hospital in early December; was finally diagnosed right around Christmas, and then died in early January.

Glowing Macs

This is a photo of the computer lab she taught in. She would be happy to have it viewed, in memory of her.

She was a fine woman, and deserved more than sixty years of living.

She died too young, still working.

Now Connie and I are pursuing some of the trips and other activities that Barbara and I had intended to do together, in our so-called "golden years."

Connie, too, is a fine woman. And I feel the loss, and I am also very grateful to have my new, my second, partner. My second wife, for my second life.

Taken by Surprise! David 2.0

Jan 3, 2008
7 comments

It is so strange to have a real life again, a second life as it were. The first one ended when my wife of 35 years, Barbara Ann Barlow, passed away following a brief but powerful illness on January 9, 2003, at only age 60.

T-cell lymphoma. She was sick for a two-month period, but wasn't diagnosed until Christmas. It was all awful!

But now I find that, after nearly five years, I do have a whole new life--David 2.0, as it were.

Connie and Me

And I have a wonderful new wife, too--Connie, a very fine woman--like Barbara in some significant respects (a public school teacher, Catholic, caring, kind-spirited) but different in others (ethnicity, region of origin). We were married in in mid-September 2007, three months ago.

We don't get along perfectly, all of the time. Do two people who are retired and thus together 24/7, ever do? Especially a newer couple? I doubt it!

But we are both so much better off together than we would be separately. We now each have "a person" as she calls it, a "witness" to our lives.

We can eat together; meals by yourself are lonely, and Connie would not cook only for herself, although is glad to cook for her and me. We travel together, that I think is our greatest pleasure. And we are looking forward to several new trips in 2008.

Our two separated lives are knitting together, becoming one. One!

Also, even though I am officially and formally retired, I do have some "jobs" again, too--or at least some activities.

Things to do, things that keep me pretty busy. Services as a volunteer and so forth. Connie has a pretty active social life, and has two daughters living in the Chicago area also.

Anyhow, to me, it is, wholly astonishing! Back in the Dark Days, of 2003 and even in 2004, I would never have thought it possible. My health was terrible, and my mood was worse. My heart was broken, figuratively and literally. I needed a lot of medical care, and had some hospitalizations. All pretty bad.

Better now! David 2.0.

This blog is providing a record mostly of this new life, which I am very relieved to have!

Once nice thing

Jan 1, 2008
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Apple stock in 2007

One nice thing this past year was watching my Apple stock's value rise. It started 2007 at around $80 a share, and closed it out at nearly $200. That is, it way more than doubled.

It is the only investment made chiefly on my own say-so, and the only company I watch a bit. I guess I think "I like the products, so why shouldn't other people?"

But my professional portfolio manager had wanted me to sell it off, thinking I was too heavily invested in that one company.

Wish I had made more "mistakes" like that!

The other major really good thing for this last year was getting married in September. That more than doubled my "quality of life." And the initial investment was even less. It cost only $104 to get married by a Montana Justice of the Peace.

So there were, at least, two nice things in 2007!

And maybe more that I am not recollecting at the moment.

I wonder what will happen on the market when movie rentals for iTunes and the Apple TV are announced? Probably in a couple weeks?

Anyhow, I am not going to relinquish my shares--and certainly also not my wife!

Sunday breakfast, offered with love

Dec 30, 2007
7 comments

Sunday breakfast

This is the fine breakfast that my wife made me this morning. Everything healthy, everything good!

Egg beaters, small whole wheat muffins, Canadian bacon, an apple sliced up in pieces.

I am very fortunate to have such a wonderful woman sharing my life now.

There were a couple years when I didn't, when I was alone, and was ill much of the time on top of it.

Now, I am so very lucky to have her, and her love, which one of the ways she shows is by offering food. Which her mother did, also.

Happy Spring!

QotD: A Vox "Bucket List"

Turning Point

QotD: I'm So Grateful

Barbara's computer lab

Taken by Surprise! David 2.0

Once nice thing

Sunday breakfast, offered with love

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