A Short Recap?

After recently switching my web/blog hosting services over to a new group, I experienced an increase in new subscribers. That made me realize that there could be people who never really got to know any of my background or the reasons this blog was started, other than my apparent incessant need to discharge a written assault with far too frequent regularity. In that light, I figured I may as well do a short recap for those who may be interested. For the regular readers, this would be a good opportunity to figure out why, exactly, you follow this drivel spewed out by some old Jersey guy …

On May 25, 2016 my 2nd wife, Bunny, died from colon cancer. We had been together for 35 years and Bunny had been fighting (and winning) the cancer battle for the great majority of that time. But those last two years were brutal and she finally decided to stop fighting, a decision I supported completely. You can read a brief overview, here.

Like most widowed people, I felt lost, lonely, and scared, but at the same time, I also felt blessed to have had such a great relationship for so long and I refused to just crawl into a corner and await my turn to check out. I summarized those thoughts in a July 10, 2016 post.

In early July of 2016 I made contact with Sheila through Widowed Village, an online grieving community. Sheila’s husband had died just two weeks after Bunny. WV is most definitely NOT a dating site of any sort, rather, a widowed support group where someone who has experienced such a loss can share with others in similar situations. Through WV it became apparent that Sheila and I had a huge number of things in common, significant things that were not typical of most new friendships.

Sheila and I began “phone dating” and after two months of daily 2-3 hour phone calls and countless texts/emails, we finally met in real life. By that time we both felt completely comfortable with each other, and when we did, at last, meet and kiss, it was obvious to both of us that our lives were going to include each other.

I relocated from New Jersey to Georgia (therein, the source of my web site title) in October 2016. Sheila and I were immediately comfortable with each other and much of my blog posting chronicles our relationship as it developed. BTW, much to Sheila’s chagrin … she was a very private person and not quite used to having her life story broadcast online for all the world to see. I used the past tense, “was”, since she has now surrendered her privacy, realizing the futility of it all.

There are posts about me getting my GA drivers license, posts about us traveling, even posts about purchasing new socks. Sometimes we talk about our families, other times about our emotions, even our clothes … and we definitely wrote about our engagement and subsequent marriage on September 19th.

Through it all, there is one common theme … we did not let the loss of our life partners bury us, even though we both could have hidden away, forever. We were both able to clear the fog long enough to let the goodness of the other person shine through and, as a result, we have made a wonderful new life together. Sheila and I openly discuss our past lives, both the good and the sometimes not-so-good, and we are both grateful to be able to talk freely with another person who completely understands what it is like to have lost your life partner.

To all who are new readers, Welcome to our online world! We hope this quick summary with some selected links will give you an idea of who we are and what we do. Please feel free to subscribe, like, comment and follow us through whatever social media source you used to read this. Both Sheila and I understand that we are a kind of rare exception in the widowed community, but the reality is that a new life IS possible if you remain open to that very possibility.