Watching Loved One's Age

This month my father will celebrate his 83^rd birthday. It’s hard to believe that’s he’s that age and I still remember him as a young man working hard to earn a living for his family. My mother is 78 and she still gets around really well, but my father is starting to struggle.

Aging is just part of life’s journey and I know that eventually we all die, but until the last five years I never realized how difficult the journey could be. Unfortunately, I fear that I haven’t seen the worst yet and know that eventually there will be a time when my family members will be gone.

In the last five years, we’ve lost my husband’s mother, my grandmother, my aunt and an uncle. And I know that this is just the beginning. All my family is aging and for that matter, so am I.

Before my mother-in-law died at the age of 88, she told me she was ready to go because all of her friends had passed on. She said you reach a time when you no longer have funerals to attend and you’re the only one left. That statement has stayed with me and I know that there could come a day when that will be the case with me.

At first this really bothered me, but the logical part of me says that this is just part of life. This journey we call everyday living will someday come to an end. The optimistic side of me says that’s why we’re to love each other and enjoy our time together. Live each day to the fullest.

Sylvia McDaniel asks: Is Love only for Virgins?

I’m hard at work finishing up my new Christmas novella. This one is a little different. I went back to my best-selling western series, The Burnett Brides that I had written years ago. The series, set in the old west, is about a mother who has three very stubborn sons who have not gotten married. She wants grandchildren, and they’re not even married. So she pulls some tricks and by the time the third son is married, the children wanted to return the favor of finding her true love. I never wrote that book until now.

Eugenia Burnett (be careful what names you choose in books because they stay around a long time) has sworn never to remarry. She doesn’t need a husband or want one. She’s a free spirit doing what she pleases and doesn’t need a man to boss her around. Yet she’s not given up her matchmaking ways either. Now she’s moved on to the people she knows, and she’s putting widows and widowers together. Until one widower, Wyatt Jones (think John Wayne meets Maureen O’Hara) lets her know in front of a crowded restaurant that he’s not interested in any of the women she keeps sending him except her. He wants to marry her.

I’ve had a lot of fun with this book. The story just seemed to write itself with me hanging on for the ride. I love it when books are this easy to write. But this book is special because it’s about an “Older” heroine.