The sum total of change

This is the thirteenth day of the Love Blog Challenge
hosted by the lovely BelleBrita
Prompt for 2/19: Changes

The thing about change is that it changes. Good golly, Miss Molly.

When we are toddlers, a simple change in routine is catastrophic. Running out of Go-GURT or a blankey in the dryer is evidence the world as we know it is ending.

As school children, BFF’s can change every year. True, if we are super lucky, the best ones might become lifelong friends – but that is, indeed, a rare and priceless gift.

In middle school, changing classes can be terrifying. In high school, changing boy friends is heartbreaking or exhilarating or both.

By the time we are on our own, we are changing majors, changing jobs, moving up. Finding success, finding a partner, finding security.

We add children to our families and cars to our driveways.

We remodel bedrooms, replacing bulletin boards and rock star posters with original artwork and ficus benjamina.

We install the latest car seat and refill the snack drawer with Goldfish crackers. We have sleepovers that bring either great joy or total disaster.

We meet each of these changes with varying levels of anticipation, concern, surprise, or upset stomachs. But, in general, they affect us only for a while until we have had a chance to settle in, find our legs again, and carry on.

There is one kind of change, though, that can be deeper, harder, and more lasting…

Loss 

If you have lost the love, companionship, and support of a husband or wife or partner or other half, you know the effect of that change is timeless. It may fade and become more bittersweet. It might be less intense, more memory than pain. But it never leaves. It’s never gone.

My lovelies, for those of you who have suffered great loss, I share your pain because I know your pain. In many ways, I will forever be the person I am because of Bill – his life and his death. Losing him was and is deep and hard and lasting.

But today I celebrate an entirely different kind of change. The one that happened almost 20 years ago when I met and married Tim.  He has changed my life – and the life of our family – for good in so many ways.

The changes he and I experience now are just like everybody else. We’ve been through the car seats and Goldfish and harrowing sleepovers. We’ve had a chance to settle in, find our legs again, and carry on.

What’s funny about change, though, is that we will never, ever know what would have been if it hadn’t happened.

Who would my best friend be now? Who would I have married if not him? What if I hadn’t taken that job or lived in that apartment? What if I had gone to the wedding instead of the funeral? 

What if I had turned left instead of right? What if he hadn’t died or she was never born?

The changes in our lives may be by choice or by chance. But one thing is for sure. Where we are and who we are right this very minute is in large measure a result of the sum total of the changes in our lives –  yours and mine and ours.