Some of you may know my husband Bill died on February 23 after suffering irreversible damage from a stroke. I am learning to live alone and dealing with the legal details and day to day changes that come after the loss of a spouse. Many of you have been there and done this, losing a husband or a wife. Some of  you  may also have learned what I am learning. In my case,  I had a husband who spoiled and protected me in ways I never really appreciated until it was too late to thank him for all the things I fear I took for granted and just wasn’t aware of how those things would affect my life after he was gone.

I am changing names on accounts, moving automatic bank draft payments from one checking account to another, cancelling credit and gasoline cards, and looking into insurance policies that will make my life easier. And now I am realizing that when he would tell me some of these details, I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention.

So, shame on me for not thanking him for planning for my future financial security. I did thank him for the obvious things, like tolerating my love of horses and animals in general, helping with the cactus and rocks, and putting up with silly requests. It was also his idea to add onto the house so I could have a closet the size of a small bedroom! It’s full now and makes me wonder how I ever got along without it. I am also beginning to realize all the chores involving manual labor he did that I have not the physical strength or knowledge to take care of. I helped him put up two cedar post entrances to the cactus garden I wanted, but couldn’t have done them without him.

Dealing with all paper trail type things he did for me has meant drudging through copious files of papers and making sense of bills to be paid and policies to be dealt with. He tried to make me aware of all this paperwork, and probably thought he had  shown me what I needed to do when the time came. I felt safe letting him take care of all that, so I didn’t bother to pay attention. I had a safe and sheltered childhood and then transitioned into a safe and sheltered marriage. I never worried about stuff like this. Now, of course, I know I should have listened.

I used to post something Zig Ziglar called a vitamind on my classroom bulletin board every day, a vitamin for your mind, if you will. One that I have always found pertinent, but particularly relevant now, is Only put off until tomorrow that which you are willing to die having left undone. I didn’t die, but he did, and I left too much undone and unsaid.

So, now that it’s too late, thank you, Bill, for all you did for me that I failed to recognize when I should have. Thank you for your patience with me. Thank you for being there. Love you.

And for the rest of you, take that vitamind to heart and do something about it. You really don’t know what tomorrow may bring.

Because, as Bonnie Raitt sings, “Life gets precious when there’s less of it to waste.”