a year has passed

Wow.. has it really been a year already?
So much has happened in the last year that I hardly know where or how to begin
an update here.
I made a huge life change last June. I left my marriage of nearly 28 years, just one day shy of our anniversary. Perhaps that will seem heartless to some. I could not face another anniversary though pretending all was well and good in the marriage, when for me it was not.
My brother's death was a wake up call. Life truly is short, especially if you aren't living the life you want for yourself. He asked me at one point, when I was at his place visiting, if I was happy and I hesitated before answering in the affirmative. He knew though and I knew at that moment that I wasn't and didn't have a clue how to find it. I had lost my joy and didn't know how to get it back.
I went back home determined to find it in my marriage because it wasn't really that bad or I would have surely left long ago. I told myself to just be happy. If I acted it and was just grateful that he didn't drink and didn't beat me, happiness would find me. It didn't. Then I got the call that he had died almost two months after my return home and was bereft.
His death threw me into a period of grief and soul searching. I realized life really is too short not to be happy where you are and if I had given it a fair shot where I was and couldn't find it there it was time to go and find it somewhere else.
Am I happy now? I am closer to a sense of well being and happiness than I have ever been before. Other than at the time of my children's births, I don't recall ever feeling this good about myself and where I am in my life. I have a feeling of hope for the direction my life is taking, that I can make (and am making) all my own decisions feels unbelievably good. The worst (and possibly the best) is that I still struggle with being able to generate enough to live on. I am frugal yet yearn to be extravagant without guilt. Nice trick that one. I refuse to bury myself in debt and know I can be happy with very few luxuries. That being said I would love to live like money doesn't matter at all and lavish my friends and family with financial assistance because so many seem to be struggling with money that it almost seems epidemic.
This life is an adventure. I feel like the journey has just begun and can only get better.

bereft

Bereft is such a good word.

My brother died last week.
Part of me is relieved he isn't in pain anymore.
He'd been on a morphine pump since this past Dec and had faded into a skeleton of himself.

I had only begun to get to know him again.

Before this we hadn't been a particularly close family, in that we didn't maintain contact with each other very well. This does not diminish the fact that I loved him.
I'm just lousy at keeping in touch with people.
Family are people we're thrown together with at birth.
Sadly, family means more to me now.

My brother was my childhood hero

It's only been eight days since he died.
I've already gone back for his wake and returned home again.
He didn't want a funeral or any kind of religious ritual to mark his death.
We just had the eulogy and viewings at the funeral home .
This is a custom I will never get used to.
Oh I know, people say we need it for closure.
Well tough, nobody will be hovering over my carcass.
Perhaps I'll write a note now to put out for people to read that says.
"I'm not in here anymore"

I can't bring myself to use the word passing.
Passing makes it sound like he's just stepped out.

He died.

I did not have enough time with him.