A new heart

I have not looked on this page for over a year. As I reread it I still feel the same way about those posts. My heart goes right back to when this was new and raw and all consuming. After I lost Joe, I never thought I would have a heart to love anyone else, ever. I would die an old widow, sitting on my porch in a rocking chair, hollering at the cars going by too fast and scaring the neighborhood kids. I still might scare the neighborhood kids, the little shits deserve it anyway. But I guess the plan for me was to indeed not die alone. Picture it Spring of 2017.

I have this friend, well Joe had this friend, who is country, likes to drink Captain and coke, wears shorts with cowboy boots, will go to the ends of the earth for the ones he loves, he is hairy, and can grow a nice beard, he can get loud. When I would look at this guy I could see his capacity for happy, but he just didn't have it. Now after I lost my heart I always lost my filter on holding back the truth I have to speak. I would tell this guy, "the time is now to choose your happy and speak the truth". I didn't really think that we would be the truth that needed to be told.

When he ended up on my cabin doorstep with my camera lens cover and a pair of gloves that I had left in his truck a few weeks before, I still didn't think about us, that there was ever going to be an "us". Well before the weather turned warm there was an "us". Texting and talking with him was exciting, we had fun, we went out and he made me laugh like I wasn't broken.  I think I felt myself growing a new heart where the last one had sat, the one I had loved my husband with.  Now this guy, who I had once called a hairy headache, was on my mind, on my couch late at night, we were going out, he was my boyfriend. Me the wild widow, with a boyfriend.

Now handsome was very close with Joe. They threw horseshoes together, our families camped and boated together, they drank together, went to beer oh bear camp and attended safety meeting together. When Joe was in the ICU the night before he passed away, Kevin was one of the friends that came to see him. They were close and our lives were already intertwined. but to go from that to us being together as a couple, that was a little weird for both of us, my girls, our friends and family. But in my life I always say you need to be all in. If you aren't all in then get the hell out. So he and I, we went all in.