When life throws you a curve ball…

As always you make plans and then life throws you a curve ball and my response is always, “Well shit. Now what?”

The last time I blogged we had put our house up for sale and moved into my husband’s grandpa’s house with the goal of helping his grandpa, paying off debt and saving a lot to build our house on the family property. We finally sold our house in January and started getting settled into our new, simple life. We had routines established and finally felt like we could take a second and breath from how crazy life was back in November/December. We loved living with his grandpa. For us, it felt like we added to our family and adopted another person. Our hearts were full of gratitude and we felt lucky to be able to spend so much time with his grandpa.

February hits and grandpa started to get a cough. At first we thought it was just the common cold but his sickness got worse. He started to cough up blood and it was harder for him to get around the house. At that point, we were glad we moved in when we did. Grandpa needed our help and he wouldn’t have been able to take care of himself on his own. We were his caretakers and we loved it. We kept telling him that he needed to go to the hospital for how sick he felt but he refused and kept reassuring us that he was okay. Finally one night towards the end of February, grandpa had a hard time breathing through the night and finally that next morning agreed to go to the hospital. We took him in on a Friday and he passed away a few days later, just like that. Our roomie left us. His grandpa passed away because of pneumonia. We never expected him to go this soon. We were devastated.

At this point, we are both still grieving. It’s only been a little over a month. We still live in grandpa’s basement and we are unsure what our future will look like here with grandpa gone. Upstairs is still exactly how he left it. We miss him so much, especially my husband. Grandpa was his hero, a man that he wants to grow up to be like. Grandpa was a perfect example of how to live. He was tender, generous, loving and a righteous man. He loved everyone and made everyone feel special. I wish we would have had a few more years with him.

So where do we go from here…

As we continue to grieve the loss of grandpa, we don’t know what our future has in store for us. We are now attached to this house and would love to buy this house. This house is now our home and it would break our hearts knowing that we can’t stay here, that we would have to leave this place. It sucks because we don’t really have a choice in that matter. How long can we stay here? Do we still want to build here? Where do we go from here?

What life has taught me now for the 2nd time is that you can make all the plans you want but life always has its way of messing it up. So at this point, I am learning how to make tentative plans. I am learning how to roll with the punches a little better and to be a stronger person when things happen unexpectedly. It’s hard not to be negative. It’s hard to be positive at this point and to remember that everything will somehow be okay in the end. I am hoping things will work out and that in the end we will get our dream house. I hope in the end we can stay here and continue making more memories. Even though it is hard living here with grandpa gone, at the same time, this house and the woods around it offer the peace we need to get through this loss.