Bringing Richard Home

Pat Sponer Paholsky

Description

A story of love, loss, and healing as a widow offers a window into her sixty-plus relationship with her husband and her journey through grief after his death.
It is 1955 when seventeen-year-old Pat Sponer first met sixteen-year-old Richard Paholsky at a wedding. Instantly attracted, they quickly discovered they were complete opposites. He was confident, bold, and social, and she collapsed into a cocoon when someone spoke to her. As their unorthodox courtship began, Pat and Rich soon fell in love and eventually married five years later.
In a retelling of their courtship, marriage, and life together until his death in 2018, Pat shares insight into their relationship that includes entertaining tales about their travels together on Route 66 a few days after they were married, their experiences in California during the sixties, and later in Michigan as they started a family. Within her short vignettes, Pat leads others through her memories and life with Rich including the time leading up to his diagnosis, death, and her eventual journey through grief after he was gone. Throughout her story, Pat provides hope for anyone suffering a loss that healing comes with reflection, gratitude, and time.
Bringing Richard Home is a story of love, loss, and healing as a widow offers a window into her sixty-plus relationship with her husband and her journey through grief after his death.

Sujets

• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press
• Date de parution: 17 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781982276461
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Bringing Richard Home
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PAT SPONER PAHOLSKY
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2021 Pat Sponer Paholsky.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com
844-682-1282
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
ISBN: 978-1-9822-7642-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-7647-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-7646-1 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021922224
 
Balboa Press rev. date:   11/11/2021
 
To my beloved Richard
Contents
1       The Ending
2       The Beginning
3       Year of the Funeral
4       The Fifties
5       Harbinger
6       The Sixties
7       First Day in the Hospital
8       Cross-Country Moves
9       Days 2, 3, 4
10     Moving to the Farm
11     Days 5, 6, 7
12     The Seventies and Eighties
13     Days 8, 9
14     Retirement
15     Days 10, 11
16     Our Son Dies
17     The Last Day
18     Coming to an End
19     Back Home
 
Epilogue
Afterword
 
Dear Reader,
I began writing this as an homage to my husband, about whom a friend would often say, “He breathes in and she breathes out.” We were one. Now half of me was gone, but I gratefully realized later, only physically.
After I finished writing, I felt this would be a great model for anyone suffering a loss. If you keep a journal, you are halfway there. If you are not the journaling type, set aside an hour or so every day in a special writing corner and reminisce about all the memories that made up your life. Then feel your heart soar with gratitude that this person was in your life and how blessed you are. These short vignettes, over a period of time, will remind you of more memories. It is truly healing to put down on paper that which will be lost when you die.
I wish you peace.
 
And time remembered is grief forgotten.
            —Algernon Charles Swinburne
Chapter 1
The Ending
T he day before we drove into Michigan, I carried Rich up to our hotel room. With one hand. Told him that was the first time I could do that. The funeral home had put his ashes in a black leather urn and then put that in a cloth tote. Pam and I wanted to see what his remains looked like. We took the lid off the round urn and undid the twist tie holding him together. He was a fine powdery gray, and after I picked some up, I didn’t think it would be right to wipe my fingers with tissue or towel, so I licked my fingers. It seemed more dignified than depositing part of him in a hotel wastebasket.
It was the third day of driving from Arizona to bring Richard home. It was February 2018, and there were winter storms moving along with us. We started off with icy roads and another ten-to-eleven-hour drive. We had hoped to reach Indianapolis but instead pushed through to Fort Wayne, Indiana, which left us about five hours the next day to get back home. We had a relaxing dinner at Don Hall’s Pub and Tavern.