Maybe Next Year

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This husband and I…

Took a rock hunting break and trekked to the neighboring towns where he lived as a child…

A pilgrimage of sorts…stop at the same places…drive by the same sites…pay homage to the same people…

Visit D & J’s antiques and oddities first…love the place…filled with more oddities than antiques…met at the door by our favorite one…beautiful…unique…meowing, pleading, making eye contact through the door…

But the shop was closed…sign on the door said, ‘For Sale’, bringing worry that something may have happened to D or J or maybe even D AND J…

Drove to Fife…a little town that’s no longer a town…the house where he lived no longer there…the country store where he bought candy for a dime, no longer there…

Stopped by the cemetery usually covered in wildflowers, sparse this time because of the drought…heard stories about friends from the past…had a mini science lesson about the fire ant…and then went in search of the real reason this old gal enjoys this little area…

The dung beetle…

A marvel…a wonder of nature…could watch them work for hours…or minutes, at least…always rolling around the cemetery without a care in the world…

But this time…they weren’t rolling…weren’t working…weren’t there at all…

And so it is…in life…sometimes you expect the unexpected…and sometimes you expect the expected but unexpectedly it’s not as expected…

Maybe next year…
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And this husband of mine…agrees…