I Broke the Mower!

We awoke to partly cloudy skies yesterday with a forecast of “slightly cooler” than it’s been. While we were having breakfast, I asked Mr. FixIt if he thought we should go out to the farm and mow. We had to take his truck because the camper is still hooked up to mine. The AC isn’t working in his truck so we drove through the countryside with the windows down and the air felt so good. 

It’s apparent the seasons are about to change here in West Virginia. We may not get the beautiful leaf colors we usually have because we had such a long dry spell for much of the last month. The leaves will probably turn brown and fall off fairly quickly. Unlike the year I pulled the Girl Camper Raffle Trailer around the state of West Virginia all of October 2019. The colors were spectacular that year.

I’ve been looking at some of the beautiful pictures I’ve taken since Mr. Virgo died. I am moving photos from my phone to a flash drive and then transferring them to my computer. There are some 35,000 photos on my phone. Do I need all of them? Heck no. But just like going through a hoarder’s house, I have to go through each photo and delete the ones I don’t want and save the ones I do. (You think that’s bad…I have 42,643 emails in my inbox!) I just don’t stay on top of that stuff. However, seeing the photos of some of my solo travels as my grief began to ease filled me with a sense of unexpected pride and joy. 

Back to the farm…I got the mower out of the barn and stopped in back of the house to check the oil. It’s been dripping oil and I wanted to make sure there was plenty. I lifted the engine cover and suddenly I heard a crack. I looked down in time to see one of the hinges broke completely off one side of the hood. Before I could reach and grab it, the other hinge broke from the added weight and the whole hood fell off on the ground in front of the tractor. 

We just stood there dumbfounded, looking at each other. Dang. I picked up the hood and put it on the back porch. The tractor runs and mows just fine without the hood, but now it isn’t as pretty as it was before. On the plus side, the oil level was fine and I quickly had the whole place mowed while Mr. FixIt worked on the trimming.

I went inside and sat down for a moment to reflect. As I told you on Wednesday, yesterday would have been my mom’s 96th birthday. What I hadn’t remembered was…50 years ago yesterday, my PopPop died unexpectedly on my mom’s birthday. I sat in the chair in the dining room, remembering my grandma telling me how he didn’t feel well that day, but he didn’t want to go to the hospital…because it was my mom’s special day.

Losing my PopPop was my first brush with death. Grandma had asked him that day if he’d eat some corn if she heated it up. He said yes, so she went out to the cellar house to get a jar and by the time she got back inside…he was gone. She had my uncle carry him out to the car, and she drove like a maniac to town through those winding West Virginia roads I know like the back of my hand. She stopped at the State Police Barracks just at the edge of town and they led her through traffic with their sirens wailing to get him to the hospital as soon as possible…though even they knew it was too late.

Grandma was only 64…PopPop was 72. I sat there in the same room where she found him, thinking of her with a renewed sense of empathy for her pain. He died just three months before their 50th Anniversary. They’d been married since she was 15. He was all she’d known. I thought my pain was bad. I cannot imagine hers. They lost a beloved son in a plane crash a couple of years after I was born. She lost her beloved husband just before a milestone event in their lives. She went on to live another 29 years without him.

I shook myself from my reverie and gathered up my things to head home. I put the mower away and locked everything up. We loaded the push mower in the truck and headed to town to pick up some prescriptions. And here we are…at that age where it feels like we are either at the doctor or filling a prescription every time we turn around. I tweaked something in my hip the other night stepping into the pool. The simplest of things can bring the sharpest of pains…physical and emotional. Ice and NSAIDs are my friend right now because we are preparing for a very LONG road trip. I can’t get knocked down. I don’t have time.

At least all we have to do is put a few things in the truck and we’re about ready.

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“‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.””

Revelation 21:4 NIV

#Memories, #Grief, #Healing, #Joy