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After Hanna City, I spent time getting the house in order in Texas. It took a lot of time and sweat as well as hiring some help. In that time, we got the yard in good enough shape, had to redo part of one of our bathrooms, and repainted a bit. Other things had to be replaced as well. As I was getting the house back in order, we were getting ready for a wedding too. My daughter was managing most of the logistics fortunately. It was a very busy time and every muscle in my body was screaming!
I took a pause to return to Hanna City one last time, for Ron and most of our things. We got them and moved into the house, working around everything as much as we could. But with all the details of finishing some of the construction projects, not everything was able to be put into place. Suddenly, it was time for people to be arriving and the house, although mostly fixed, had not been put in order. What was I going to do?
The wedding weekend
My brother and his wife arrived earlier than expected and they helped finish painting the final 2 walls. It dried and we got the curtains hung there. Then my daughter that was staying at our house, arrived with her family. Her husband set up the living room and family room while I was out for something I had to attend. When I returned, It looked lovely! I was stunned. Photos were on the wall, furniture was in place and everything looked very inviting. It was like a lovely “fairy” had come and touched our home and made it look beautiful!It meant I would actually be able to get to sleep that night. I think the very next evening was going to be a shower at our home for our oldest daughter given by her out-of-town bridesmaids.
She stayed with them at a hotel because they wanted to catch up with each other. It was fun to have family and friends from way back, come to visit for the wedding. Sadly, we didn’t get to visit with them as much as we would have liked. It’s always that way at weddings, isn’t it?
The wedding was lovely. It was April 26, 2008. Our normally smiley daughter broke into tears 1/2 way down the aisle. It was sweet and touching. I was teary too. She was 36. She enjoyed her single years because she wanted to enjoy every stage of her life. But she had always hoped to marry someday. Now, it was happening. She had found someone to share her life with.
After the wedding I got a job in Rehab nursing
I knew I would need to get a job soon after the wedding. I had looked a little beforehand but hadn’t found much. Now my search became my full-time job as we recovered from the wedding and finished settling in from the move. I had a few interviews and soon got a 3-11 job at a nearby rehab hospital. It was connected to the main hospital, which helped in emergencies. Most hospitals were on 12 hour shifts and I just wasn’t sure I was up for that. I was hoping not to work in a hospital, but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t in a hospital. I didn’t have the luxury of time or I might have. The gap in my resume didn’t make me a great candidate either.
The first months were hard. There is no getting around that. My brain was getting stretched in ways it hadn’t been in a long time. There were procedures I had never done before, and the person who was “training” me was not a trainer that was easy for me to grasp. She was from a culture that didn’t stop to think if you were getting what she was talking about or if you understood her. She just told you what to do and if you had questions about parts of it, she told you, you were overthinking. I learned to work with her, but it was definitely the “sink or swim” method of training. Every few days I would want to quit, but I knew I really didn’t have any options, so I plugged along and kept working. I enjoyed the patients. Soon, I discovered I was developing a rhythm to my work and some of it was becoming more automatic. Then, I knew I would survive.
After work, I would come home and shower and eat. By then, I would be pretty wide awake. So I would write for my blog that I started in IL. It would encourage me as I wrote to encourage others or I would get something off my chest in general. Then, I would be tired enough to go to bed. By then, it would be about 2 AM -ish and I would go to sleep.
Ron started driving a bus for the public school system
Ron finished off the summer getting rested, seeing his doctor, and finding his place now that we were back in town. There was no other church in our denomination in town, so we returned to the church we had served to worship. The “new” pastor had been there nearly four years. We knew we weren’t there to cause any problems and our absence might have been more of a problem. So we went there in good conscience. Toward the end of the summer, Ron was getting restless. He wanted something to do. So he checked out the public school bus driving situation and discovered they could always use a driver. He applied and drove. The first year wasn’t too bad, but by the second year, he found he was having more and more issues with discipline. They often originated with the moms, making it worse. So he didn’t continue after the second year. It was too difficult dealing with the same kids and mom all the time and not being able to resolve anything.
Then he got prostate cancer
In the middle of our second full year there, his routine prostate surgery turned up prostate cancer in the results. His PSA wasn’t elevated. No other symptoms had been found. It was very early. So they simply treated him with radiation for a month. If I remember right, it was about December of 2009. The month before, our daughter that was married April 2008 had given birth to her son. It seemed like we were having lots of highs and lows. I think Ron decided he was tired of dealing with these people on the bus route in the summer after his surgery. He was done. Life was too short. I was still working to keep bread on the table, but it wasn’t as stressful as it had been. The end of December and early January were spent getting radiation for Ron. At the time, he had no complications. He had a few shortly after our move, but that was a few years later.
In April 2013, we moved to Huntsville, AL
We stayed in Tyler a total of about 5 years. Then I was old enough for me to get Medicare and full Social Security. So we sold our house and moved to Huntsville, AL in April 2013. This put us near our youngest daughter Holly and her family.
We sold the house so fast that we had to rent a house in Huntsville. We also had to do some work on it. The landlord was less than cooperative, but after struggling to get help from him, we finally got disgusted and took payment for the paint and decided not to put a lot of sweat equity into the place since he was so difficult to work with. We cleaned up the yard, painted some walls, got it feeling like home. We also realized there were a lot of other problems with the house so we didn’t get too involved in it after all. It was only slightly smaller than our home in TX. As it turned out, we lived a bit further south of most things we were involved in. On top of that, the neighbors weren’t terribly friendly. There was a small fire in the neighborhood that overflowed into a nearby neighbor’s yard. We knew them a bit and went over to water their yard to keep the fire from their house while they were at work. Their yippy dogs were barking in the house, but I didn’t realize they had a way to get out! Eventually, they got out and one of them bit me on the leg!
A couple of weeks later, a neighbor a block or two away murdered his wife. It was basically a bad marital situation that had nothing to do with us of course, but the combo of all the things led us to think about other living options. It was a lovely looking neighborhood. It was just that a bunch of odd circumstances came together to make us think maybe we should move. It wasn’t a comfortable place to live. We have certainly lived in uncomfortable places before, but we didn’t HAVE to stay there. In the process, we ended up opting for an apartment. (3 bedroom) closer to where our family was and where we did most of our activities.
After a year, we moved to an apartment
When our lease was up, we moved to the apartment and wondered if we had lost our minds. Not long after we moved in, a family from Africa-Ghana, I think, moved in next door. We enjoyed them so much. They had grandparents, teen-aged children and themselves. They also had relatives in the apartment complex. A sister and a brother-in-law who pastored their church as well as a younger brother or sister and their young family. They were Christians and were such an encouragement at times. They had spent a long time getting all their papers to work here. They had lived in the US for quite a few years so we were able to communicate with them easily.
Of course, we got to know others in the apartments as well. It was such a melting pot! Some people were there for a short time. Others were there for the long term, while still others were there with government assistance. Every so often, someone was tossed out with all their belonging on the grass. I rarely saw the people. I only saw their things. It was very few things and I always wondered what it must be like to go through life with so few things. For people like that, it probably wasn’t the first time it had happened. It may not have been their fault either. I think of a women married to or living with a man who told her he had paid the rent when he hadn’t. She believed him. He may have even had the money, but took it to do drugs, drink or go gambling. Then it was gone. How awful!
During those first couple of years in Huntsville, we got involved in a church, a small group, and I got into a Women’s Bible study. It was through those groups that we got to know quite a few people.
Then, one night almost exactly 2 years after we moved to Huntsville, everything changed.
(continued)
Listen to me…
who have been borne by me from before your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save.Remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, “My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,”Isaiah 46:3-4, 9-10 ESV
