Good and Evil

 

I’ve recently been reading several books in addition to the e-book that I downloaded from the library. One of the books I’ve been reading is the ultimate “good book” also known as the Bible.

I thought that my re-read of the Bible after 20 years should begin in the beginning as “In the beginning.” The knowledge of good and evil are up front and center. Early in the Bible, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent for disobeying God. This shift of blame exists today. Too many people won’t own up to their mistakes and/or evil ways.

I’ve been watching videos from Bible scholars which shine new light on some old translations. Nevertheless, I’ve been plowing my way through Genesis and it caused me to think about good and evil. Some of the goings on in the ancient text seem more evil than good to me. The stories are rife with incest, concubines, multiple wives, slavery, bartering for human life, destruction raining down from the heavens and etc. etc. etc. There’s a lot going on among God’s people and I’ve not yt efinished Genesis.

 The Biblical meaning of good is aligning with God through righteousness, holiness, and love. Evil is associated with sin, darkness and disobedience to God. Psychologically, good means a lack of self-centeredness while evil means an inability to empathize with others. Ethically, good actions are centered on the well-being of others, truth, and charity. Evil acts cause harm, destruction, and violating the dignity of others.

I’ve come to the conclusion that each of us has both good and evil tendencies. Some of our moral compasses think north is south, and east is west. Some of us wander around in a wilderness of hopelessness for years while ignoring the abundance of love emanating from family and friends.

Some battle and overcome addition while others choose to continue on the road to self-destruction. Sad are the ones who don’t believe they deserve a better life.

We cannot always know what lies in the heart and mind of another person. We only see through the windows they open for us, and not through the blackout blinds guarding their darkest secrets. Even in the most loving and open relationships we guard secrets that would not absolve us from our sins, but could only cause pain.

At one time when I was younger, I would think about wh,at others had done to me. The boyfriend that decided to dump me for someone else. The girl that I thought was my friend who said unkind things about me. I was a grudge holder and never forgot a wrong. Anger kept me awake. 

One major difference is what keeps me awake at night now. Sometimes in the stillness of night, I think about what I may have said or done that harmed another. I think about how it is too late to make things right. I think about my mistakes. That’s the way I roll. Self-reflection to a fault.

I have to remind myself that I never claimed to be perfect. I’m only human and sometimes life is overwhelming. I’ve spent fifteen years of my life as a caregiver: ten years with Jim and five with Harold. Caregiving is hard and all-consuming. Caregivers get worn out and cranky at times, but quitting isn’t an option. Respite isn’t an option either.

I don’t regret being a caregiver, but I’m not happy about the occasional meltdowns. In the end, love made me persistent.

 I heard a pastor say that some Christians believe that a box exists around Jesus and you are either inside the box, or outside the box. The job of the people in the box is to try to convince those outside the box to come in. He said that if we look at Jesus as inside the box and everyone outside the box, some people will move toward Jesus throughout their lifetimes and others will move farther away.

Old Testament good and evil aside, the New Testament gives us numerous examples of following the light (good) instead of falling into the ways of darkness (evil). I Corinthians 13 says that Agape (Selfless Love) does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. At the end of the Chapter: Among faith, hope, and love, “the greatest of these is love.”

 

Copyright © February 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

#ENDALZ

Olympic Injury

 

I’ve spent the past two weeks binge watching the Olympics. I’ve watched sports that I never realized existed before. With 116 events, and 16 different disciplines, my TV was recording day and night on two different channels. I had to keep a sharp eye out for figure skating since that was my favorite. I usually had to cancel two or three other recordings to make sure that I was watching every figure skating event.

The athletes were amazing and I prioritized events that had an athlete from the USA. Eventually, I noticed that some of the athletes representing the USA were actually from another country but obtained citizenship prior to the Olympics. Also, athletes from the USA sometimes represented a different country, especially if a parent was from that country. It’s a small world after all.

During the Olympics several athletes were injured. Many of the sports are intended for the daredevils of the world. Freestyle skiing and snowboarding seem to be a combination of skill with a healthy dose of luck. Of course, ice hockey is a brawl with players wielding their sticks like swords. I thought the women were vicious until I saw the men. And I don’t even want to speak of the flying blades in speed skating.

One afternoon, I was lying back in my recliner watching the Olympics when someone knocked on the door. I used the buttons to pivot myself toward the floor and took a step and tripped over a shoe. I twisted my knee and as the pain was somewhat unbearable, I had to cancel my plans for Monday.

I whined about my injury which was minor compared to the multiple falls throughout most of the disciplines. Anyway, I have sympathy for anyone who was injured while living their Olympic dream.

  I missed Jim during the Olympics. He enjoyed them as much as I did. His favorite skaters were Katarina Witt and Tanya Harding. The only reason he liked Tanya Harding was because she could do a triple axel when no other woman could. He would have loved Amber Glenn who completed a quad axel in the Olympics.

The first time Jim and I went to see Stars on Ice it was in St. Louis. He was showing early signs of dementia but hadn’t been diagnosed yet and there was no way I was driving. A few things stand out in my memory. One was that our hotel bed had only two pillows on it, and Jim was used to sleeping with two. I dialed housekeeping for him, and he said, “My wife doesn’t have a pillow.” Which, I guess was technically true since he had confiscated both of them.

Another thing I remember about that trip was Jim getting confused and going the wrong way down a one-way street. At the arena, we discovered our seats were the highest ones possible. The skaters looked about two inches tall. I had always though that Oksana Baiul should not have won the Gold Medal in the 1994 Olympics until I saw her in person. She was magnificent on the ice.

We went to see Stars on Ice three times in Kansas City. The first time we went, we parked on a side street and had a difficult time finding our car. Jim had lost his uncanny sense of direction, and I never had one. We exited from a different door than where we had entered. When we started crossing a parking lot, I knew we had zigged when we should have zagged. Jim argued with me, but I insisted we go back to side of the building where we had entered. We came across a family looking for their car. We followed them and found out they were in the same lot where we’d left our vehicle.

The next year we parked in a side lot, but I wrote down the names of the streets and the buildings so that we could find our van. The following year, we went on a bus tour with my mom. Jim refused to take off his parka and he listened to his Walkman throughout the show, and paid no attention to the skaters, including Katarina Witt.

I miss the Jim that would have watched the Olympics with me and recorded the figure skating on the VCR if I wasn’t home. Of course, he couldn’t help himself and told me that, my favorite at the time, Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal at the 1992 Olympics before I got to watch it.

Good memories keep Jim close to me during the Olympic season. He would have totally babied me after my “Olympic injury,” but he would have also reminded me to leave my shoes on my feet, not underfoot.  

 

Copyright © February 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

#ENDALZ

The Book of Love

 

The Monotones 1958 Doo-Wop song, “The Book of Love,” breaks love into chapters. It also poses the question as to who wrote the book of love.

I like the idea of chapters of love because each of us has several chapters in our love story, or more likely stories. The person who finds true love on their first attempt is rare indeed.

My chapters are different from the song, and may exceed four.

 

Chapter One: Learning to Love. We come into this world ready to love. Our first love is usually our mother, or possibly our father. When we start meeting other children, we fall in and out of love with friends and the cute kid in first grade. Throughout our lives, we will develop several crushes, or puppy love, that we may change as often as we do our clothes.

Chapter Two: Looking for Romantic Love.  Different people begin this quest at different times of their life. Sometimes heartbreak ensues when one person is ready for romantic love and the other person isn’t. Without enough experience, some people don’t realize that the relationship is doomed. People move in and out of our lives, and their impact on our romantic interest often diminishes due to time and distance.

Chapter Three: The Love Connection. After failure and heartbreak, or simply apathy, we know that special love when we find it. It may come soon after meeting someone that you find an instant connection, or it may be a long-term friendship that flared into romance through an accidental touch of hands. People find love in strange and unusual ways. Some people “fall” in love and some people “grow” into love.

Chapter Four: For Better or Worse. When a couple decides to pledge the rest of their lives through marriage, they usually begin the relationship built on high hopes. Fairy tales and Hallmark movies lead us to believe that we will be the happily ever after couple. Love is easy during the “better” times, but when we hit the “worse” we move into the hard part of marriage. Some people can’t handle the stress of financial problems, the reality of seeing another at his worse, being shattered by broken trust, dealing with addiction and/or mental health issues, or lack of prioritizing the relationship.

Chapter Five: In Sickness and in Health. We all treasure our health, but circumstances can test our love and resolve during times of sickness. It takes a strong relationship to power through a serious illness, especially when one partner becomes a caregiver for the other. In Jim’s case, he developed dementia at 49 and for ten years I was his caregiver. Our mutual love turned into unconditional love as he turned inward and could not reciprocate my feelings. I believe my love became stronger, and I became as protective of him as he once was of me.

Chapter Six: The End and Beginning. Not all long-term relationships make it to the finish line. Living with another person is difficult and requires an ongoing commitment to survive the various challenges. Relationships that end in separation or divorce can leave one or both partners with unresolved feelings. Some marriages make it to the “until death do us part” ending. When the relationship is permanently severed, the end will result in new beginnings. The new beginning may be another relationship, or time alone to heal from the loss of a loved one. How to handle grief is different for every person. There is no magic timeline when grief becomes manageable.

Conclusion: Who Wrote the Book of Love? I’m confident that we all write our book of love. Once we find true and abiding love, we co-author the book of love. Hopefully, we both come to the same conclusion.

 

Copyright © February 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

#ENDALZ

Winter Wonderland

 

For more than a week, we’ve lived in a deep freeze with sub-zero temperatures and frigid wind chills. The cold weather became officially miserable especially when the snow brought travel to a screeching halt, or worse, a slide into the ditch.

I had made a trip to town ahead of the storm and stocked up on most of the essentials. I didn’t realize that my gallon of milk was more like a pint. After considering the state of the roads and my driveway, I decided I could get by a few days without milk.

Of course, I couldn’t just hang around the house because I had to take care of the dog and cat. The dog lives in the house and the cat curls up in his own cozy, heated house. My dog likes to go outside multiple times a day and I had to replenish the cat’s food and water.

When I took the dog out, I couldn’t help but sing, “Winter Wonderland.” Well, it’s possible I was just trying to psych myself into believing that beauty trumped the cold. It was so cold, that I could almost see the words freezing in mid-air.

Still, I felt lucky to live in a warm house with running water. My car was garaged and I knew it would start easily.

I can remember when Jim and I went through all the hardships of winter. We’ve lived in houses that were impossible to keep warm.

On cold winter nights, Jim would go outside and start our vehicles several times to make sure they would start in the early morning. He could drive in any conditions, and he liked to be the first through the roads.

Jim was an awesome driver in bad weather. Even after he had dementia, I called on him to drive a couple of times when I chickened out. One time, I had him drive on a snowy day and another time, I freaked out on a mountain road and had him drive down the mountain. Traffic could cause him problems, but he never lost his skill as a driver until late in dementia.

On the other hand, I remember one time when our water froze, and Jim just continued watching TV. I called Eric and my brother-in-law to alert them to the problem.

I found my insulated coveralls, my snow boots, preparing for the chill of the great outdoors on my way to the pump house. By the time I made it outside, the two of them were thawing the water lines.

“Your dad is sitting in the house watching TV,” I complained to Eric. “He wasn’t concerned that we didn’t have any water.”

“Well, I bet he would have been concerned if the electricity had gone off and he couldn’t watch TV.”

Yes, that would have made a difference.

Now, I don’t have anyone to shovel the walk, but Harold’s cousin does plow the driveway. At least, I could go get the gallon of milk that I neglected to get ahead of the storm.

Looking from the inside out, the winter wonderland still glistens several days after the storm. The windchills still have the temperature in the sub-zero range.

On our daily phone call this morning, my mom and I talked about warmer days ahead. All that stands between us and the balmy breezes of spring is the short month of February and a few weeks of March.

Wintertime can be a wonderland, or a “wonder how are we going to make it through” another Snowmageddon time. The beauty of winter is not so much in the eye of the beholder as it is whether you are inside looking out, or outside looking in.    

 

Copyright © January 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

#ENDALZ

The Fickle Finger of Grief

In the 60’s, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In had a segment on each show called the Flying “Fickle Finger of Fate” Award. The award was given to public and political figures, organizations, the government, or various other groups. When awarding the fickle finger to the Pentagon for their expensive purchases, Dick Martin observed there were “five sides to every story at the Pentagon.”

Although this reference to five sides was spoken in humor, it almost seems that all stories have at least five sides. We have the serious side, the hyped side, the biased side, the humorous side, and (once in a great while) the truth.

The fickle finger of fate sometimes points to the fickle finger of grief. We can ramble through our lives unscathed until fate steps in and snatches our state of blissful unawareness and replaces it with unfathomable loss.

Loss is based on our individual tolerance and scope of experiences. For young people: losing your boyfriend (or girlfriend) to a rival may be a crushing blow to your self-esteem, or incentive to enjoy alone time or to find someone more suitable. For adults, the loss of a job can be devastating to some, and a relief to others.

We can move on from most events, but the fickle finger of grief can move in and not move on when the loss is permanent and unreplaceable. When someone you love has dementia, the grief is ambiguous. You have an ongoing sense of loss and sadness although your loved one is still physically with you. Life as you have known it will never be the same. You will need resilience to rebuild your life and realize that you eventually establish a “new” normal.

Other situations can cause ambiguous grief. Any serious or terminal conditions can cause prolonged grief for the person with the illness, friends, family members, and especially the primary care partner. Being strong for someone you love can hurt your heart and shatter your world.

Rather than recovery from grief, we are in remission. Life moves forward, and yet a photo, a song, a random thought, being in a crowd, a quiet moment, or a vivid dream can cause a full-blown outbreak of grief.

A few days ago, I woke up crying after a vivid dream. The loss was as painful as the day it happened. Grief is like a dark cloud that can hide the brightest sun. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that when the cloud dissipates, the sun will shine again and warm my weary soul.

 Most days I feel normal. I refuse to let grief point its fickle finger at me too often. I made myself a promise that I wouldn’t make any major changes for a year. I try to keep busy and productive.

Sometimes I’m too busy and I’ve made myself a promise to relax from time-to-time. I have goals for each day of the week to keep myself from jumping from one project to another too quickly. I’m not as good at multi-tasking as I used to be and am more productive when I focus on one thing at a time.

 At least one day each week is reserved for doing something I enjoy. Its too easy to be bogged down in the drudgery of everyday life instead of making the most of the blessing of life.

No one deserves to let the fickle finger of grief point in their direction, but if it does, you have to remember that only one finger points to grief. The rest of the fingers and the thumb point toward finding your inner peace.

 

Copyright © January 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

#ENDALZ 

Weight of Your Words

 When we open our mouths, our words can be for good or evil. Carefully chosen words offer encouragement, hope, and heartfelt inspiration. Words carelessly spoken can ruin a person’s day, inflict emotional harm, or damage self esteem.

Effective Communication is essential to human relationships. We develop our personal style of speaking throughout our lifetime. Depending on our personalities, we may become more thoughtful as we age, or become “outspoken.”

 If by outspoken we refer to being assertive to protect ourselves or others from verbal abuse, it is a good characteristic to have. If our outspokenness is rude and hurtful, then we have become the verbal abusers.

As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, critique is in the ear of the receiver. Some people are more fragile than others. Whether you are careful censoring every thought and word around people like this depends on how much you care about them. Most of us are more comfortable around people with similar communication styles.

In my birth family, we don’t fuss and feud with each other. The main reason is that we don’t poke our noses into each other’s business. Don’t get me wrong, we are not mild-mannered people, and we’ve all been known to throw “Capps” fits from time to time. There’s a line we don’t cross.

Jim and I used to have the best conversations, and when he developed dementia, losing that special connection was one of the hardest to accept. Jim had aphasia and throughout the years, he became more silent. When he spoke, it was often open to interpretation.

To communicate with a person who has a perception problem, whether dementia or another health problem, simpler is usually better.

 

1)   Use short, simple sentences and repeat if necessary. Short term memory problems may mean that your loved one only remembers the last part of the sentence.

2)   Allow ample time for a response. Older people may need more processing time to form a response.

3)  Agree with them, or distract with a different subject or activity. You will never “win” an argument and trying to correct a mistake only creates more confusion.

4)      Respond to their feelings, not their words. Watch for verbal clues.

 

Be forgiving and kind. Remember you are dealing with an adult and be respectful. When all else fails, kindness matters.

No one is perfect, and we can, and do, make mistakes with communication. Extend grace to others who misspeak, and give yourself grace if you are misunderstood.

If you hurt someone with careless words, it is best to clarify or simply apologize. It is best to not let the weight of your words break important relationships. I’ve seen life-long friendships severed by words spoken in haste, or anger, and left to fester into a chasm of blame.

Through grace, we can forgive and forget, and if remedied soon enough, we may even forget what we forgave. Holding a grudge means the weight of our words is an unnecessary burden too heavy to carry. 

 Copyright © January 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

#ENDALZ

Happy Trails

 

Since this is New Year’s Eve and everyone is looking for a better year ahead. It really isn’t going to take much to improve on the year that ends tonight.

I always like to see what animal rules the Chinese lunar New Year, although it doesn’t technically begin until February 17. We are in luck for the year ahead since it is the year of the Fire Horse. Apparently, this combination of element and animal is a Zodiac event that happens only every 60 years.

The Fire Horse is a combination of the independence, or freedom, of the horse ignited by the boldness and high energy of fire. The Fire Horse year is considered to be a lucky year and provide ample opportunity for personal growth, passion, action, and adventure. The caveat being that the rapid pace could turn into chaos.

The fire year speaks to me since I seem to have been on a rampage of putting out fires. I’ve learned to take one day at a time and not lie awake thinking about what new fire might break out overnight.

I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to know in the past year. I think about how simple life used to be and how complicated it is now. I have so many different fires to put out that I had to make a “day of the week” priority to keep myself on track. One of the best things I did for my mental and physical health was to schedule Sunday as my day of rest.  

At midnight, we symbolically get a do-over. Most of us know that technically, it’s just another day. Life doesn’t magically change just because we toss out the old calendar and hang a new one.

We will wake up the first of January and still be dragging around the same baggage that we had the day before. Our sorrows, worries, and fears don’t disappear overnight.

 Rather than making resolutions that I won’t keep, I will take a moment to reflect on how much I’ve accomplished and learned in the past year. From the losses of the last year, I’ve gained the wisdom that life is too precious to waste. I know that my loved ones who left this world will always live in my heart and bring comfort to my soul.

I have been blessed to have found love twice. Each memory, each piece of wisdom, each whisper of love, will stay with me. Eventually, I will focus on what I gained from them instead of feeling that I lost a part of myself.

I do have some hopes for the year ahead. I would like to play music at the nursing homes again. I’ve been practicing on my guitar and somedays think I’m making progress. I want to spend more time with family and friends. I want to relax more and stress less.

In the Year of the Fire Horse, I want to wish everyone “Happy Trails.”  If you celebrate, stay safe.  

 

Copyright © December 2025 by L. S. Fisher

#ENDALZ

Memory Lane

 

I don’t know what made me think that going to town two days before Christmas was a good idea. The traffic was horrific and Walmart was a hubbub of activity.

My trip to town was a four-fold mission. First, I had to take care of farm business, so with checkbook in hand, I stopped at two cooperatives—electric and Ag.

At Walmart, I needed to pick up a prescription and had a scheduled grocery pick up. That was not as easy as it sounds. Finding a parking place was a combination of luck and perseverance. Backing out of the parking place was more difficult. My seat constantly vibrated because of traffic and beeped pedestrian warnings. The only way I was able to back out was when someone decided they wanted my parking spot.

I began the slow process of moving across the parking lot to the grocery pickup area. Of course, most places were taken up by people who were in the store shopping. After I found a parking place and picked up my groceries, I drove across town to the post office. I turned onto Lamine Street and looked at the buildings. I saw the building that used to be the library and passed a place that was once a church and still had a steeple.  When I turned on Fifth Street, I saw what used to be the employment office and a large building that was the Southwestern Bell Telephone offices. Something tugged at my heart and niggled at my brain when I thought of all the changes throughout Sedalia.

After stopping at the post office, I drove down Third Street toward Engineer. I saw where Mr. Reed’s grocery store used to be and turned off Engineer to the neighborhood where we used to live in the mid-70s. The house we lived in was gone, of course, and in its place were three new homes. Jim’s Grandma Fisher’s house was still standing and someone lived there. I drove a few blocks and turned north. Where Jim’s Grandma Tubbs house and Uncle Floyd and Aunt Ida’s house used to be were completely hidden by a privacy fence.

By this time, tears blurred my vision. I passed Uncle Johnny and Aunt Nita’s house and back onto Engineer. I couldn’t help but feel lonesome for the people who were once a big part of my life, and a time and place that I could never visit again.

Jim and I were in our 20’s when we moved to the Sedalia area. Our kids were little, and we were surrounded by family and friends. We never knew what the future held and we were unafraid. We lived in a rented house filled with old broken-down furniture. We had few worldly possessions, but we had love, hope, and faith that life would be easier eventually.

One of life’s blessings is that we don’t know what we don’t know. Would I have changed anything had I known how it would end? To stop the bad times, I would have missed the good times. I would have missed the love and laughter. I would have missed my second family that I loved as dearly as my birth family. I would not have known my second mother and father, my second brothers and sisters, and the multitude of cousins, nieces and nephews. Jim’s family was my family, and my family was his.   

As I continued down Memory Lane, or Engineer, I passed by Crown Hill Cemetery. Most of Jim’s family is buried there. For the first time ever, I wished Jim was buried there so I could easily visit his grave. Instead, I turned into the last loop of the cemetery, to visit Harold’s grave. By the time I got out of my car, I was sobbing.  I straightened the flowers in the vase, ran my hand along the smooth service of the stone and thought about finding love again in my sixties.

When I returned to the car, I caught sight of myself in the rearview mirror. I don’t know why I thought it had been a good day to apply mascara for the first time in years. Liquid love had left angry black streaks down my face.

I wiped away the evidence of my sentimental journey, and drove the memory lane I had used for the past fifty years to go home. If I had followed the highway farther north, I would have passed by the house where we lived on Newland Hill and continue to the house that Jim and I built on Sinkhole Road. Instead, I turned into the driveway to my current home. As I rode the lift and opened the door, I smiled at the wagging tail and hopeful barking of my dog. I was home where new memories will be made every day.

 

Copyright © December 2025 by L. S. Fisher

#ENDALZ

Random Thoughts

 When I woke up this morning, my thoughts didn’t turn to what I should do on this cold Saturday morning. Oh, no, a blast from the past crossed my mind instead.

I was driving home from work and as soon as I turned onto Kemp Road, a man wearing a ball cap started waving his arms at me. Since I wasn’t prone to being flagged down by strangers, I made my turn and planned to pass him by. Instead, he began to wave more frantically, and I rolled down my window about two inches. “Lady, lady, please stop!” I began to roll forward and he yelled, “Jimmy Fisher is in the ditch across the road.” I looked and sure enough, our van was in the ditch.

I turned and looked at the man more carefully. “Leroy?” Sure enough, it was Jim’s cousin Leroy. I had never seen Leroy without a cowboy hat and wasn’t expecting him to be in Missouri instead of Idaho. Jim had thought it would be funny to see if I would stop for someone I didn’t recognize. Leroy realized that I was just going to drive on, and thought he’d better tell me Jim was in the ditch.

Why a random practical joke from forty years ago was my first waking thought this morning is a mystery. As we get older, I guess the long-term memory is our key to the past.

Life can take some twists and turns. I think the most important lesson I’ve learned in life is to live in the present. If we worry too much about tomorrow, we forget to savor the good things that happen today. Dwelling on the past isn’t good, but happy memories of those we loved and lost makes the grief bearable.

The world is in some ways a vast sea of humanity and in other ways a small community. Two of the women at the dialysis clinic took care of Jim when he was in the nursing home and took care of Harold when he was in dialysis. I recently saw them when I delivered on a long ago promise to Harold to give all the professionals at the dialysis clinic gift certificates to Dairy Queen. After dialysis, Harold and I often went to Dairy Queen and took our lunch to Liberty Park to watch the squirrels.

That reminds me of another junction. I used to take Jim to Dairy Queen to buy him a strawberry milkshake, and we often went to Liberty Park. After he passed away, I went to Dairy Queen one day and the kid at the window asked me about the guy that used to come with me.

Losing someone you love leaves a hole in your heart that can only be filled with memories. Following a long illness, you may need to work hard to find the random memory that makes you smile. Remember the good times, the happy times, or even the times of struggle.

Holidays, anniversaries, and maybe each day of the world, grief may try to win the day. We don’t overcome grief; it becomes a part of who we are.

Grief can make us more determined to live life to the fullest and to cherish the treasures of family, friends, and love. Each day we are given is a blessing, and when we are gone, we can hope to be occasionally remembered in a happy random thought.

 

Copyright © December 2025 by L. S. Fisher

#ENDALZ

On This Date

 

After I was completing my two-year degree at State Fair Community College, the job placement office sent me to an interview at Full Cry Magazine. I worked in subscriptions at Full Cry until the owners sold the company and the office moved to Boody, Illinois.

Toward the end of 1980, I was in the job market so I registered with the SFCC employment office. In the meantime, I was spreading my resume like confetti to any place that would take it. I tried to leave a resume at the electric cooperative because I had a premonition many years before that I would work there someday. They weren’t taking resumes and hadn’t hired any new employees in the past seven years.

About a week later, I received a letter from the college asking me if I would be interested in working on a computer at a company that would train. Although my computer skills were non-existent, I always liked to learn new things. That afternoon I interviewed at the same electric cooperative that wouldn’t take my resume. Ed Walters told me later that as soon as I left, he turned to Harold Ream and said, “She’s the one.”

On December 4, 1980, the trajectory of my life changed. I began my career at CMEC and our family had the kind of stability that we had never had. From day one, I loved the challenge of the job. As I took on new roles and learned new skills, I was never once bored in the 33 years I worked at the Cooperative.

Jim and I began to take vacations in Colorado, and we fell in love with Rocky Mountain National Park. We camped, relaxed, and enjoyed the clear mountain air. After Jim started having cognitive issues, we still enjoyed the mountains, but stayed in a hotel or cabin. We still enjoyed animal watching, visiting our favorite places, and going on short hikes.

Throughout the ten years that Jim gradually became worse, the Cooperative allowed me the flexibility I needed to arrange in-home care for him. It was a time of uncertainty as family members had to fill in the gaps with the professional caregivers I hired. Before long, I was running on caffeine and fumes. I was working as much as I could, using vacation, my day off to make sure Jim was safe. Everyone was understanding when I had to grab my purse and head for home when Jim wandered off and wouldn’t get into the car with anyone else.

The second hardest decision I ever made was to place Jim in a nursing home. The hardest was when he was kicked out of the first home, and I had to find a new one for him. For five years, our family and I checked in on him almost daily to make sure he ate and was clean and dry  When Jim passed away, I felt like a part of me died too. We had been married 35 years.

I lived alone in the house that Jim and I built for fourteen years. Then, in 2014, I married Harold and moved into his house. Yes, we all called it Harold’s house for a long time. I found out being a farmer’s wife had its challenges. One of the first projects we completed was preparing metal rails for a farm fence. We lugged those all over the shop as we sanded, primed, and painted them. He dragged me into other projects until one day when he had me lifting heavy landscaping bricks into the bucket of his tractor, I said I’d rather drive the tractor than lift the buckets. Anyway, Harold was used to teaching me new skills and I drove the tractor while he did the heavy lifting.

During our marriage, I learned to rely on Harold, and after his health declined, he learned to rely on me. Toward the end of his life, he made it plain to the doctors that we didn’t make major decisions without talking it over. When Harold passed away, I discovered that being widowed the second time was more traumatic than the first time.  It may be because I’m older, or it may be that until the end, I hoped that he would get to come home.

As hard as it is at times, life goes on. Harold taught me as much as he could and with the written procedures, I can do most of the work that needs to be done. He at least gave me a list of who to call when something goes wrong. And, boy, have I needed that list.

Tomorrow night is the Cooperative’s employee appreciation dinner. The first time Jim, the kids, and I went was in 1980 a few days after I had taken the job at the Cooperative. I only knew the first names of the office employees. Harold and I went to the dinners until he had too much trouble walking. Many of the current employees and retirees we worked with were at the dinner.

This year, I’ll see old friends and meet new ones, but I know I’ll be missing the ones that won’t be there.  

 

Copyright © December by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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