My Next Birthday

 

In a few days, I'm going to celebrate my birthday. It will be a very special day for me.  Yet, dear reader, I am living a much different life now. It is one that frankly is still very strange to me and one that I'm getting used to. 

As you know, I am successfully seeing my way through a new existence after a horrific illness that almost cost me my life over a year ago. Luckily for me, last May, I was able to go out to my favourite restaurant and enjoy a fun outing and eat well. It was actually one of the first times physically that I was able to leave my old home at all. My wife, Marsha, and I had not yet moved to Tecumseh even though we had purchased the townhouse. 

I want to go out to celebrate again this year for a special reason. It is another day that I am still here. More importantly, I want to celebrate with my wife once again to honour her for all the wonderful things she has done for me since being home.   

I believe that I am living a very good life now. Both physically and mentally I'm still suffering some shortfalls and trying to recover from them. However, compared with how I lived a year ago, I am doing so much better now even if I cannot recover from every loss. 

Let me talk a little bit about my new life here. To be quite honest about it, it is quite a new one to me. I have never acted before the way I am doing it now after I moved. It has been almost a year since I have moved from our old house in South Windsor to our new home in Tecumseh. Sure, the purchase of our new home took place in early May, 2015 but I did not move until our old house was completely sold. 

It is a very strange way for me. This way of living for me now has never happened to me before notwithstanding the several times that I have moved from one home to another in the past. In each of those occasions, I became used to the new home within a very short period. This time around I just don't know when I will feel the same way. 

We have driven around the area of my old home a few times over the past year just to see what is going on there. While I still think that it is a fantastic place to live, it doesn't bother me whatsoever that I have moved from there to my new place of residence which I love so much.   

This move was necessary for many reasons. First of all, my old home was 2 stories. This made it difficult to walk up and down the stairs. Secondly, if I was not going to be in good shape, it would be a lot of extra responsibility and maintenance.   My old home was just too large for two people to live in.

I've always liked large homes, but at this stage of life, something more cozy was needed. In addition, because of my inability to move around physically, I really was not involved in all in the purchase of the new residence so I did not know very much about it at first. I saw photos and videos, but it's still not the same until you go in and look for yourself. I came to the new home only once before we moved to see where we'd be living, but this was after we had entered into a contract to buy it. There was no turning back and I'm glad that we made the purchase.  

I'm learning so many new things about my new life with Marsha and that it is very exciting. There are days that I like to take it easy and rest, but I am stronger now, so I feel like I try to embrace every moment, whether that is positive or negative.

I am not sure if this is what "retirement" is like for many people who haven't experienced a serious life-altering illness, but I am happy to be given the chance to live a good life.

So cheers to me for another year of being alive.