Friends

I have trouble sleeping these days. As usual, tonight I'm up very late, despite the fact that I woke up at 5 this morning.

Today my good friends and neighbors Carol and Peter helped me hang some quilts on the wall. Carol has an eye for color and placement, and Peter has a willingness (dare I say drive?) to drill holes in the wall and to listen to Carol. Yeah, that sounds weird, but hey, it’s after 11 and I’ve had a few glasses of wine.

It took a tragedy to make me realize how many good and true friends I have. I'm also realizing how lucky I am to be alive at a time in history when the Internet makes it possible to keep in touch with all those friends. I haven’t been very good at answering their emails, but I’ve been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and love.

Since I returned to Mexico I’ve been a homebody, making curtains and pillows and rearranging things, making plans for painting the bathroom and hanging a hammock on the terrace and installing a clothesline on the patio. For some reason I have a desire to redecorate, to clean, to add more of myself to the home I shared with Stu for such a short time.

Next week I go to Acapulco with friends, and then at the end of August I go back to Washington state for the birth of my first grandchild. So I guess it’s true that life goes on.

I lost someone who was very, very dear to me, someone who was kind and generous and sweet and who asked for nothing more than to take care of me. Now I’ll be welcoming into the world a new life, a grandson who will be dear to me, and who will ask for nothing more than to be taken care of and to be loved. Life does go on.

Returning to Mexico

I have been in Eastern Washington the last few days, driving long stretches of deserted roads through the dry countryside. The last few weeks of my life have been nothing like I had planned or expected, and only now am I coming to terms with that.

My best friend and husband Stu died on July 16, exactly 3 weeks after we flew to the U.S. to find out what was wrong with his back. It turned out that he had an aggresive form of cancer, and in the end the only thing his family and I could do was to make sure he was free of pain.

I've learned a lot in the last few weeks. Most of it I already knew. But one thing I have learned in 60 years of living is that it's not until we really experience something that we really "know" it.

For example I always knew that we should treat every day as if it's our last. But I never acted that way. I always knew that nothing is forever, but I never acted on that.

I always knew that love isn't easy to find, and when you do find it you need to embrace it and live it and practice loving acts every day. I'm happy to say, if happy is the right word, that I do believe I acted on that in the last 18 months of my life.

I'm going back to Mexico, because I feel that it's my home. I've spent the last 6 weeks in Washington state being loved and pampered by my friends and family, and by Stu's friends and family, and now it's time to go back home. Where I will be pampered by more friends, and where I hope I will find the strengh to continue with my "goals:" learning Spanish, writing, traveling around Mexico, making quilts, swimming, renewing the bonds with expat and Mexican friends who have reached out to me in this difficult time.

I want to write about the sweet and generous and kind man who loved Zihuatanejo and Mexico, and who loved me, and eventually I will...but I'm not quite ready to do that yet...