Taken By Surprise

My girlfriends want to plan a weekend getaway at a Scrapbooking retreat. Before the pandemic, we usually did this twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall.  The last time we went, it was early March of 2020 and the lockdown came a week or two later. 

The Scrapbooking Group from 2020

If you've never been scrapbooking, it's pretty impressive how much STUFF each of us brings to the event. Carpooling isn't possible because our supplies take up all available space in our individual vehicles. Seriously. It's a little obscene. Paper. Stickers. Albums. Ribbons. Stamps. Glue. Silhouette or CriCut machines. Pens. Laptops. Printers. 

Yeah, it's a lot. 

My favorite scrapbooking haul might have been the year I opted to work on editing senior photos instead of scrapbooking.  That year, I only had to pack up my laptop.  It was glorious being able to walk into the building with only one little bag slung over my shoulder. 

I'm not sure what tactic I will take in April 2023.  Is it cheating if I decide to work on a computer-based project?  Or should I return to my scrapbooking roots and lug everything out to the car, into the weekend rental, and then back into my house? The hard part about traditional scrapbooking is not just the bulk but the emotional weight of sorting through pictures and revisiting more pleasant times. 

Already, I've taken one emotional hit just by looking at my April 2023 calendar.  Ken's birthday is in April but that's not it. I know when his birthday falls and I'm mentally and emotionally prepared to see that on the calendar.  What I wasn't prepared for was an event reminder celebrating what should have been Ken's retirement from the university. An event he had created who knows how long ago..

I saw that on my calendar and I cried. He was so close to being able to retire. We were so close to retiring together and traveling in our RV like we had dreamed about for years. It's really not fair that he never got the chance to live this particular dream. It's not fair that I won't get to live that dream with him by my side. 

Do I actually think he would have retired from the university next April? Probably not. For a couple of reasons. While he might have met all of the requirements set forth by the university, we still have a kid in college and tuition is not cheap.  Also, Ken was not the type who could sit still and do nothing. I always thought he'd find retirement a difficult transition, especially if I was still working. Then there's the fact that letting go of his role in ITS was hard when he so very sick, so letting go when healthy would have been even more difficult in my opinion.

Still, seeing how close he was if he had wanted to...that was heartbreaking.