Get Up, Dress Up, Show Up has been my mantra for years. It has carried different weight at various points in my life. The last 2 months have been the worst in my life. That may sound a bit dramaic, but for those of you who might not know, I lost my husband to the Covid -19 virus on April 2nd. To put it mildly, I don’t feel like my life will ever be the same. I want that more than anything, but its not going to happen. I have to shake myself into preparing for a “new normal”. Is everyone sick of hearing that right now? Everyone has to make huge adjustments now with this pandemic and what may happen in the aftermath. But for me, its not just wearing a mask and waiting for restaurants to open. I have lost “my person”. Tom was everything to me. He was my love, my husband and my best friend. The plan was to take care of each other as we got old. We used to laugh at the possibility of one of us losing our memory. But Tom’s response was, well then we’ll get to fall in love all over again.

Tom was the most positive force in my life. There was nothing that we could not achieve together. Everyday was a great adventure and a cause to celebrate life and each other. Those of you who follow my blog have seen the wonderful times we had traveling either to Europe or on the road in the USA. We enjoyed traveling with friends and traveling by ourselves. Everywhere we went we met people and would wind up making new friends. Our life was wonderful and filled with love.

Now I have to figure out how to find joy in my life. I have written this blog for 5 years and have loved writing it. Tom loved seeing me get involved in the topics I was writing about. He would always read my blog before I published and make his comment which usually was “this is really good!”. He loved that I wrote about our travels but he also loved my fashion and color blogs. He said “I know you are helping other women see a new trend or get their colors right for the season”. He was my best fan.

What I’m getting to here is that as frivolous as some of the themes I write about have been, I am going to continue to write about them. As stupid as it may sound, it gives me joy to share my thoughts on fashion, color and places to visit with you. I know that Tom would want me to continue and not be so sad all of the time (that’s all I am right now -SAD- all of the time). I will also write about family relationships and friendships as I have in the past. I think grandparenting will become a point of interest for me to share with you.

My mantra continues to be Get Up-Dress Up-Show Up even though at the moment (as we are still going through the stay-at-home period), my “dress up” is wearing Tom’s shirts around the house and spraying his cologne. I suppose I will get my mojo back. I will get through this in time… I will never get over it.