After a very relaxing 3 days in Salinas, we drove home late Monday to find our front door completely open. And our bedroom completely ransacked. My very, very few pieces of jewelry, their containers, a purse, Jay’s fun new coin counter, and our rainy day were all that were taken. After the inital shock – which was great – faded, I started thinking about the things they didn’t take. And I’m grateful because although what they took were very valuable to us, their true value lies in the relationships and events represented by the items. And those things I still have.

Where does time go? Would I find it if I looked under the sofa where I sat reading this morning? Maybe it’s on top of my laptop, closed after I finished paying my bills online. Perhaps I’ll find it if I look down the drain, after I run the garbage disposal to rid it of the remains of dinner. Better yet, maybe I should look beneath the car I used to help me purchase groceries. I think I’ll take a look under this seat cushion; maybe it’s there. If you find it, would you let me know? Once again, I let it escape me.

1. a kitchen with windows that don’t open – but do let in the beautiful sunlight!
2. a laundry room – I don’t have to listen to the whirrrrrrrr of the washer and dryer
3. a washer and dryer! – no, my clothes don’t smell as wonderful as they did when I dried them in the sun at my parents’ home. Then again, I don’t have to plan my wash days around the weather, either!
4. a cluttered kitchen – cluttered because we have lots of food, a composter, and modcons like a microwave and a coffee maker
5. lots of sheets to wash – they come with the pre-requisite bed
6. dirt-y wooden floors – because beautiful, bountiful gardens will cost you something! 
7. cauliflower ears – because I have 4 sisters, a fabulous mother, an equally fabulous mother-in-law and wonderful friends. I talk to as many of them as I possibly can, as often as I can.
8. tired feet – because I have a job.
9. a tired, happy heart - because the list goes on and on.

What a mix of bitter and sweet is the cup of Life. And we all take our turn.

Rudy was not just my sister’s husband. He was an integral and loved part of our family. As my husband remarked to me earlier this week, the folks who marry into our family aren’t considered in-laws. We (parents and siblings) view them as part of our Family. There isn’t a distinction between who is Family and who is not.

The questions raised by the death of someone for whom you care deeply are doozies. Concepts and ideas once conveniently considered unimportant or irrelevant suddenly show up at your door and rudely lean on the doorbell. Unfortunately, they’re usually messy questions with no easy answers. (I’m sure that’s why they were tagged as “irrelevant” or”unimportant” before.) Wondering whether or not someone will recognize and care (read: love) about you in heaven suddenly becomes more important than world peace.

It doesn’t help that the very Bible upon which I’ve staked my life tells me there will be no giving in marriage in heaven. That’s of little comfort since most of my life has been spent either waiting for Prince Charming or enjoying the charmed life I’ve led since finding him. How can Heaven be, well, heavenly if the life with the man of my dreams will be but a dream? That doesn’t sit well with me. Or my sister.

Her husband’s death was related to a trucking accident he had 10 years ago and the resulting brain damage. Yes, she finds comfort in knowing he know longer shakes or has trouble finding the right words. Yes, we’re happy to know he will never again need help to walk from the couch to the table and he’ll never fall again. But so what. Where does that leave her? And where does it leave that third member of their marriage, that mystical third person existing in every marriage, the ”us” formed by the uniting of two separate lives into one?