The Porch Is Closed

UPDATE - My New Blog: lifeaftertheporch
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The End.

My final post to this blog.

I began posting to this blog on Monday, July 9, 2007. This is my 417th post according to Blogger.

According to Sitemeter there have been more than 31,000 visitor sessions. That's rather amazing in itself.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the day that I traveled from my apartment in Dallas to spend the weekend with my Mom and Dad in 1998 and then to take them to the doctor on the following Monday. Looking back that was the closing of one chapter of my life and the opening of another. Then I could never have imagined myself as a caregiver for a few minutes let alone nearly a decade.

I did, some months back, begin writing a book about those 9 years, now turned 10. It does not seem very important to me now and I do not know if I will write more.

The last few months of caregiving were difficult for me. The time since my Dad's death has been difficult. Blogging helped.

I am grateful to all I've met and who have befriended me here in one way or another. My best wishes to all my friends and my most earnest prayers that the Lord sustain and keep you.

My heartfelt prayers for those of you still in the midst of your own caregiving. It is a difficult task as we all have learned. You all have my greatest admiration and appreciation and thanks.

When I started the blog I needed a title and I chose to use the porch.

The porch was where we gathered as a family to celebrate holidays. It was where I found my parents when I came to visit after I left home when I was 20. It was where we watched the hamburgers and the sausage cook on the gas grill. It was where we sat to eat them. It was where we made ice cream on the 4th of July and then watched fireflies and fireworks out the windows.

It was where the three of us sat and visited and watched the world out the windows when I came to live there in 1998. It was the first place Mom wanted to sit when it was warm enough and when she could walk again in 1999.

It was where Dad and I sat for hours at a time after Mom died. We grieved there together. He, in his recliner, and I, in the old springy lawn chair, would sit there together. I would read the paper and in the early days he would read to me sometimes. We both would comment about the headlines and we always read the obituaries. Sometimes we knew some of those people who died. Sometimes we just read their stories in the paper and somehow that made them more real.

We would listen to music on the old CD player that barely worked. Sometimes we listened to the classical station and sometimes we played a CD over and over.

Judy brought us a bunch of People magazines once and we read them all cover to cover.

We watched crews of people build bridges and widen the streets and build the car wash and the tire store and the Tractor Supply.

We watched the old pond and the trees and the creek disappear. We watched the traffic increase. On Saturdays at noon we listened to the siren that always sounded.

It was where Judy and I sat alone together when we first met in person.

It was where I sat alone early on Saturday mornings and sometimes late at night and often on Sunday afternoons.

Every winter about this time it began to be cold on the porch. There was an old radiator out there but it hadn't worked in years. Besides it wasn't the same during the winter months. So it was better to just shut the doors and open them again during the spring.

This time its different though. The porch will not be opened next spring because there will not be a porch there to open.

So this porch, the old porch at Dad's and Mom's house, is now closed.

Adieu and all my love.