Tag: marriage

Carrying Love Forward

Brenda Stratton

I remember the first time I realized that letting go could open up a whole new world to me.

It was more than three years after my husband, Carl, died. 

I had spent those years trying to preserve a life that no longer existed. It wasn’t working. Nothing about my life was the same and never would be again. 

After I came out of the fog of profound loss, I realized that I had to make changes. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life like this. Carl wouldn’t want that for me. 

But how was I to move on? That was the question, and it didn’t come to me all at once. 

I was afraid of making big decisions because I didn’t want to have regrets later. So I took baby steps.

Always a writer at heart, I began writing down my family stories to leave behind for my children and grandchildren. Those first attempts have grown into this blog and a couple of other projects I am still working on. 

I began downsizing my home. A lot of things accumulate during fifty-two years of marriage, even if you periodically clear out the excess. This proved to be cathartic for me. I realized it wasn’t about leaving the past behind. It was about making room for the future. 

I reconnected with old friends and began to enjoy life again. 

There were pleasant evenings on my screened porch again. I enjoyed watching the sun set and listening to the birds as they quieted for the night, with a distant train whistle and bullfrogs from a nearby river filling the quiet the birds left behind.

My community was alive. I had missed that. Carl and I used to sit on the porch together, and for almost four years after he passed, I just couldn’t. Until the day I decided to live again.  

Moving forward felt like betrayal, at first—until I realized that I wasn’t leaving Carl behind. I was learning to carry his love forward. He would always be part of my life, even though he was no longer here physically. 

But betrayal? No. Just no. Building a new life isn’t a betrayal. 

It is a tribute to our love and the life we built together. To a man I loved beyond measure. To fifty-two years of marriage that gave me everything in life that I could have ever asked for. Nothing could ever erase that—or our love for each other.

At first, I thought this post was going to be about letting go. But I soon discovered it isn’t. Not at all. I am not leaving Carl or our love behind. I have just learned how to carry it forward.

The Day I Sold My Husband

Brenda Stratton

As an introvert, I have never liked to be the center of attention. 

I’ve taken piano and organ lessons as a child, and more organ lessons as an adult. But, I never liked to play for anyone outside my family. 

The business world wasn’t any different. A boss once asked my opinion on the subject at hand during a meeting—before I had formed one.

I felt like a deer caught in the headlights and spent the next minute or two feeling like I was babbling.

Carl and I went back to college when I was 36 and he was 39. 

As I was choosing my classes, I realized I needed one extra English class for my English/Writing major. I’d already chosen all the classes I really wanted. Of the ones remaining, speech was the most intimidating. But, I had it on good authority from other students in my class that it was easier (less intimidating) if I took it as a six week summer class.

Fortunately, it turned out that I only had to give one speech during the summer semester. That speech came at the end of the session—and counted as a significant portion of my grade.

The professor gave the class the freedom to choose our subjects, with some gentle direction on possible subject matter. 

After giving it a lot of thought, I settled on giving a sales pitch.

I decided to “sell” my husband. 

Of course, I asked Carl if he minded doing this for me. I explained that he would have to come to class with me and sit in front of the class beside me while I explained what a bargain he was. He readily agreed.

Here were just a few of his best features:

He’s a great cook and baker.

There is nothing that he can’t fix.

He is good-natured and has a terrific sense of humor.

He’s very smart. If you ask him a question, he usually has a ready answer. (This was before the internet.)

He pays the bills.

And there was so much more.

Having him beside me during that speech helped calm my nerves and made it much easier for me to get through it. 

As I had been advised by other survivors of speech class, it also helped imagining the whole class in their underwear. 

Between having Carl beside me and thinking of the class in that state of undress, I actually made it through my sales pitch with a smile. 

I also got a couple of offers for him, which made us both laugh. 

Somehow, between Carl beside me and an imaginary classroom full of people in their underwear, I got through the class and walked away with an A in Speech.

Meet Carl

Brenda Stratton
My husband, Carl, wearing the patient half-smile I came to know so well.

Christmas at our house was always so much fun. Our kitchen was the heart of our home, and our family naturally gathered around the kitchen table.

Our annual cookie baking marathon was a family affair. Carl stirred the huge batches of dough, while I measured ingredients. The kids helped by rolling dough into balls and washing dishes, jobs assigned according to age. Christmas lights twinkled merrily through the wide doorway into the living room. 

Excited chatter came mostly from the kids, along with plenty of sticky hands as they sampled cookies—and occasionally the cookie dough.

With a bitter north wind swirling drifts of snow around our home, we were snug and safe inside with a crackling fire to warm us. Carl always made sure to carry enough wood inside to keep the fire going late into the evening. 

The light scent of wood smoke mingled with the aroma of cookies rich with cinnamon and molasses. To me, those scents spelled home, and it was exactly where we wanted to be.

Carl was a fantastic helper in the kitchen, not just at holidays, but every day. 

He arrived home from work at 5:15 pm through the week. I tried to have supper ready by 5:30 pm so he didn’t have to wait long to eat.

I was usually standing at the kitchen stove when he arrived. After coming in the back door, he kicked off his shoes and slid in beside me to help finish cooking, often before he had time to say hello. 

One night when I was working as a crochet designer, I dropped a crochet hook into my printer as I was preparing a pattern to send to my editor the next day. I couldn’t get it out, and I was afraid I would damage the printer if I tried running it that way. 

So, I woke Carl up. He went to get the long forceps he used for working on TVs and was able to quickly retrieve the hook. The pattern went out to my editor the next day, and Carl was back in bed within minutes. 

Sometimes, I attended needlework conventions in Chicago to meet with my editors. It was a two hundred mile drive, and lasted for three days. He always drove me, and helped me find my way around the convention hall. Whenever I had materials to carry, he handled it for me then stood quietly by, waiting for me to finish talking with my editors. 

He was always up for a road trip, whether it was local or halfway across the country. 

He was the same with the kids when they grew old enough to go places without us. Since we lived in the country, and some of their friends lived in town, they would need a ride and Dad was always ready to take them. 

In the summer, he planted a garden to help provide fresh food for our family. When our family grew, he planted a second garden. 

While he tended the gardens, I was usually in charge of preserving the harvest.

If something was broken, he fixed it. He knew how to fix everything from household appliances and TVs to air conditioning and broken toys. If it could be fixed, he found a way to do it. 

If I could choose one way of describing Carl, it would simply be that he showed up, something that he did every day for the entire 52 years that we were married. 

He didn’t stop to ask if it was something that he wanted to do or might inconvenience him. He just did it. 

His quiet devotion and sense of humor meant everything to me. He was my  home. 

When The Quiet Comes

Brenda Stratton

When my family was young and life was busy and noisy, it did not prepare me for the quiet that came after.

As the years passed, life changed. The kids grew up and built lives of their own. They no longer needed me in the way they once had—and that is as it should be. They no longer depended on me for meals, schedules, or bedtime stories. Their lives expanded outward—as they should.

And suddenly, the house was quieter.

It was unsettling at first. My life had revolved around my children for so many years that I didn’t quite know what to do with the empty spaces that appeared when they left. The quiet felt heavy. It surprised me.

At first, I threw myself into work. As a crochet designer, I took on more projects, more deadlines, more responsibility. It helped—but only partially. I still felt the quiet waiting when the work was done.

Then Carl and I began talking about going back to school. Neither of us had ever gone to college. The idea started as a conversation, then became a plan. By the fall semester of 1986, we were enrolled.

Suddenly, there was no quiet at all. We balanced family, home, jobs, and school. It was the busiest season of our lives — and one of the most fulfilling. We were growing in new directions together.

But life has a way of shifting rhythms. Just when you think you understand its pattern, it changes again.

And in time, the quiet returned.

Only this time, I understood it differently.

The quiet was no longer something to fill or escape. It became space—room to think, to create, to remember, to become. It became the place where new parts of myself emerged. The place where stories surfaced. The place where writing began.

I’ve learned that every season has its sound.

And sometimes, the quiet is not an absence at all—but an invitation.

A Quiet Grief

Brenda Stratton

When my husband died, I died too. Not in the same sense, of course, but the life and love I had known for 52 years were gone in an instant. I was lost. I didn’t know what to do or how to go on without him. And yet I did, whether I wanted to or not.

Those first days were surreal. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I couldn’t get away from the pain. Even brief distractions only reminded me of what I had lost.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. Then the firsts began. The first Thanksgiving without him. The first Christmas without him. His first birthday in Heaven. 

I had sweet memories of our lives together and returned to them often, picturing where we were and what we were doing. Sometimes, they were how I soothed myself to sleep.

I thought the second year might ease a little. It did in some respects, but there were the seconds — second-year celebrations marked by the empty chair at the table and his recliner no one would sit in.

During this time I stopped doing so many things that had once been enjoyable for me. Carl and I had a multipurpose basement that was part storage and part recreation. His computer sat in one side of the basement, and my paper crafting area sat in the opposite side. He used to go downstairs and peruse social media while I made greeting cards and other paper crafts. When he died, I lost all interest in paper crafting. 

It was during the summer of the third year that I had a sudden revelation that shocked me. I realized that I had been suffering a quiet depression—quiet because it didn’t look dramatic or urgent. It consisted mostly of apathy. I lost interest in nearly everything in my life except my children. I gave up my driver’s license for several reasons and stopped going out except for doctor visits and food. 

Looking back, I can see that the holidays during this third year were still hard—but they landed somewhat softer. His birthday still lies ahead. I haven’t forgotten him. I never will.

Once I realized that, things began to change. I had been in coasting mode with my health, so I took charge of it and made improvements that needed to happen.

It was also during this time that I rediscovered my love for writing. I wanted to start a blog, and what you see here is the result of that.

As they always do, the holidays came around again. I opted not to spend time with my family for Thanksgiving this year. I treated myself gently and spent the day in bed, not from depression, but as a kindness to myself to rest and recharge. I woke up that afternoon feeling good, really good, for the first time in years. I don’t know where it came from, only that it felt like part of my healing—and I was grateful for it.

This Christmas

Brenda Stratton

This holiday season of 2025 is the first one since Carl passed away three years ago that I didn’t long to make into something that it can never be again. And it is okay. I was standing at the kitchen sink looking out at my neighbor’s Christmas lights when that thought occurred to me. I believe I have finally stopped struggling against what was, and accepted what is.