Things That Made Me Cry .....

.... like this picture of Jim .... no longer make me cry.
Well, the majority of the time.
There are always "one of those days/weeks", but they are few and far between now.
Mostly.


This realization occurred to me this past weekend.  I was looking for a tote bag to use for my swim suit and towel and various other Fourth of July sundries.  I happened to choose the first one I saw.
It was a bag that Jim purchased on our last vacation.
The vacation we took with the boys to Alaska.
Not knowing, of course, that it would be .... our last.

So, I grabbed the tote, threw my stuff into it ... and then felt something in the inside pocket.  I wondered what could be in there and when I had last used it as I unzipped the pocket and looked inside.

And I discovered that I had not been the last one to use that tote.

I pulled out the items that Jim had left in the pocket and stared at them for a moment.
A highlighter, a couple of paper clips, a pen and some small stick-it notes that are used to note something on a page.

Just a few things .... things that would mean nothing to most people.
But I knew that Jim used to take reading materials with him almost everywhere we went.
He could usually be found sitting somewhere (even on a beach) with a stack of papers in one hand, a highlighter in the other, and a pen clenched in his teeth as he marked sections on a page.

And the picture of him doing just that entered my mind as I stared at those objects.

And I smiled.

It was shortly after that when I realized ..... the things that used to have the power to make me cry, to bring forth gut-wrenching pain and huge sobs of grief .....

.... now have the power to make me smile.