Lisa

“She took a few steps away from him, let him stand there alone in the house in which they had lived, one of the many attempts they had made at their marriage. She watched her husband, her love, nearly sightless. He looked like a headless flower, just a stem. She forgave him and did not yet. She was more his and less than she had been. Ahead of them were years of pulling closer and years of pushing away and years of pulling closer again.”
― Ramona Ausubel, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

“But one thing Annie had figured out in her almost sixty-three years of life was that although you could dip your toe in a pond on a summer day and guess how cold it was going to be, you never really knew for sure until you plugged your nose and closed your eyes and jumped all the way in. The unexpected could always be a shock, but sometimes it was the expected, the predictable, the resigned acceptance of whatever bad thing was coming your way that could end up dragging you down.”
― Elizabeth Letts, The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

“I knew that families had their own holiday traditions, but ours seemed to keep us dispersed while Bryce’s gathered them together.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Wish

“The lady is ninety-two years old, petite, well poised, and proud. She is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coiffed and her makeup perfectly applied, in spite of the fact that she is legally blind. Today she has moved to a nursing home. Her husband of seventy years recently passed away, making this move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiles sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvers her walker to the elevator, the staff person provides a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet curtains that have been hung on her window. “I love it,” she states with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. “Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room… just wait,” the staff person says. Then Mrs. Jones speaks these words: “That does not have anything to do with it,” she gently replies. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like the room or not does not depend on how the furniture is arranged. It is how I arrange my mind that matters. I have already decided to love it. It is a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice. I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or I can get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do work. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I will focus on the new day and all of the happy memories I have stored away… just for this time in my life.”
― Joyce Meyer, How to Age Without Getting Old: The Steps You Can Take Today to Stay Young for the Rest of Your Life