I realized, late yesterday afternoon, that one year ago, as I stopped spinning from a stroke 10 days earlier, Dennis came home at 10:00 a.m. and had been laid off from his 15+ year drafting/designer job at what we always believed was a wonderful and caring local engineering company. I knew when he walked in the door with his lunch sack that it wasn’t going to be good news. And it wasn’t.

My friend, Denise, was here, to drive me to my therapy appt. with the Occupational Therapist. What a crappy day. To say we felt betrayed would be such an under statement. But we were cruising, couldn’t believe he’d be unemployed long. Maybe fodder for a novel one day.One year later. He’s working a temp project for a manufacturing company here in Spokane, but – oh, my – the gravy days are gone.

So much of my own life is gone, too. I feel like I’ve wasted it by not writing and getting a career going. I thought I knew everything when I started chasing the dream, but somehow came to a fork in the road, went to work full time and threw the dream away, having no idea that’s what I was doing at the time.

It feels like I’ve buried my heart’s desire in a secret spot in the forest, came back 25 years later and found a bull dozer had plowed it up and planted a business park there, instead. Covered in concrete now. Not an easy dream to unearth. No going back for it. It’s starting from scratch now, if that possibility is even still alive. Something inside me tells me that just maybe a tiny piece of that dream ended up in the new business park, though … a small speck, just enough to make me still wonder if a small part of that energy is still around, waiting. I laugh thinking well, if a part of that landed anywhere, it would have landed in the petite dept. of a Macy’s department store. You never know. Stranger things have happened. This makes me smile.