loved this quote… putting it here for safe keeping

“The beauty of life is in the living of it.

And the living of life is now.

It is fine to make grand, wonderful plans and to then bring those plans to life through your efforts. Yet do not ignore the quiet, stunningly beautiful treasures in each ordinary moment.

Happiness is not in some distant place of perfection and pleasure.
Happiness is waiting for you to give it life in this moment.

If all of your dreams were to suddenly come true, you would have no use for them. For the real essence of their joy is in the journey you take to reach those dreams.

It is in working your way through each day, one moment after another, that you connect with the value of life. Every flavor of experience adds to the richness in one way or another.

Do not put a lot of effort into judging whether today is good or bad, happy or sad. Just go ahead and live it with a thankful heart, and you will surely experience this day’s own special value.”
––Anonymous quote from the Young Widows Bulletin Board

1 year ago today: Gaye Gwinn Sims

One Year. Twelve Months. Fifty-two weeks. Three hundred sixty-five days. Eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours. Five hundred twenty thousand six hundred minutes. Thirty-one million five hundred thirty-six thousand seconds. Six hundred forty-one million two hundred thirty-two thousand beats of a hummingbird's wings in flight.

However large, however infinitesimal the number, each in its way,

aptly describes Gaye's absence. Yet no number is large enough to capture the loss.
None is sufficiently small to be fewer than the moments of pure joy I have known without her.

It seems impossible that an entire year has passed since 6:50am on 2008, August 22nd. It feels so fresh a wound, so gaping and unhealed, that a week cannot have passed, hardly a day.

Yet it is a year.

The satirist, Ambrose Bierce, defined a year as

"a period of three hundred sixty-five disappointments."

I cannot share this definition for this particular year. I've known no disappointments since that utter disjuncture of the universe one year ago today.

Oh, perhaps , the roof leaked a bit, my car battery died, the job did not yield the results I had hoped. But disappointment is a term, in my mind, that means failed hopes, dreams and expectations. The hopes and dreams I had left after my Gaye died were few.

I have learned that the price of devastating loss includes the perplexity over how to be grateful for the good wonders that follow upon that loss. I have learned a great deal over the last three hundred sixty-five days. Learnings have come my way in this year that would never ever have revealed themselves to me had I not lost the girl of my dreams.

I have learned how fragile "Life" can be....

I have learned that nothing should be taken for granted

....NOTHING.....

Not a Kiss......

Not a warm embrace....

Not laughter....

Not looking into the eyes of a person you love.

I have also discovered it is LOVE that ultimately defines who we are.

Gaye taught me these things this past year.

And so I have learned. Learned things I would never have paid the price to learn,

yet would not want to continue a moment longer not knowing.

I heard a very wise man tell me that learning was the crux of life. All else hinged thereon.

I hate to admit it, but this past year, I have learned so much about myself.

Merlin in the book "The Sword and the Stone." perhaps says it best;

"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

Gaye Gwinn Sims has been gone from this world one year.

She has not been gone one solitary flit of a hummingbird's wing from my heart.

My Mantra and Aspiration moving forward!

“One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough.” –Hafiz

Sweetness (of Heart Ache)

i wonder where the sweetness lies.

is it there in the skin?

in a tiny, secret, double-helix?

like a powdered sugar on a doughnut,

just a subtle taste of you?

or does it pulse in rich red courses...

in a warm sangria-like streams,

heating you up

from the very inside out?

raising your core temperature to that

of my pounding heart?

perhaps,

the sweetness is just an aftertaste...

a subtle memory leftover

from the love we both had?

or maybe, just maybe,

the sweetness is your very heart and soul,

dear one,

dressed up for a red hot date with heaven

a tomorrow that can not be believed

lest I feel it with my own

two

longing hands.

i wonder where the sweetness lies.

is it in the soft, tiny kisses

of perfect tenderness?

or the endless aching dread

of unrequited luv

gone madly astray

much too soon

i wonder where the sweetness lies.

i think i know, dear one...

but you know i dare not say

- Unknown

The sweetness of Gaye was simply intoxicating.

I guess now,

just bittersweet