A life well lived

I watched the cartoon movie “Up” with my grandson recently. It’s an endearing story about Carl and Ellie, who met each other in childhood. Carl was a shy boy who was mesmerized by the much more outgoing Ellie. In a blanket fort in Carls room, Ellie shared with him her My Adventure Book scrapbook. Inside the book were pictures of a famous explorer and the far away lands he had been to. On one of the pages Ellie wrote “Stuff I’m Going To Do”. She explained to Carl that the blank pages of her scrapbook were waiting to be filled with all the exciting adventures she was going to go on one day.

The next scene shows Carl and Ellie getting married. They were blissfully happy together and as the images in the movie roll by it’s obvious how much they loved one another. They planned to do many grand things together in the life ahead of them and saved money in a big glass jar in anticipation of the day that would come to fruition. As so often happens, things come up, plans get derailed and money put away for future dreams has to be spent on other things. Eventually, Carl and Ellie’s plans get pushed to a dark corner and forgotten.

As they grew older, Carl and Ellie slowed down but they were still very much in love, just as much as they were on their wedding day. Carl decided to finally buy the tickets for him and Ellie to visit that far-away land they had both dreamed of visiting since their childhood. Before he could surprise her with the tickets though, Ellie fell ill. She never made it on their adventure. Carl was broken-hearted because the great love of his life was now gone and they would never get to make that trip together. He decided to make the trip himself in Ellie’s honor.

After his own adventure he sat down to look through Ellie’s scrapbook. He was filled with sadness that Ellie never got to go on that adventure she had been dreaming of for so long. When he got to the page that said “Stuff I’m Going To Do”, he touched the page with deep regret as tears welled up in his eyes. You can feel the pain that’s shown on Carl’s face. I can imagine that Carl felt like he had failed Ellie in never going on that adventure that they’d planned on so many years ago.

As Carl is about to close the book, he’s surprised to see that the pages are filled with pictures of him and Ellie beyond that page she had written on. There’s a picture of them at their wedding, both of them with big smiles on the faces. There’s one of them dancing, celebrating a birthday, riding in a car together, sitting under their favorite tree together, and many others. On the last page Ellie wrote a little note to Carl that said “Thanks for the adventure-now go have a new one!” It’s in this moment that Carl realizes that his and Ellie’s life together was the adventure. They didn’t need a trip to a far-away land to make their life complete.

I cried when I watched this scene in the movie because it’s the story of Kenny’s and my life together. We had big plans when we were just starting out. There were so many things we wanted to do that never happened. Something always got in the way and prevented those things from being realized. The house we wanted to build together never happened and that bothered Kenny a lot. He could have built the whole thing himself with the skills he perfected over a 40 year career as a master carpenter.

The only vacation we ever took as a family was to Disney World in 2004. We wanted to take our children so many other places over the years but the money was never there to do so. There were also places that Kenny and I wanted to go in the last few years since becoming empty nester’s. That didn’t happen either.

We wanted to find some kind of business we could do together that would be more financially lucrative for us and easier on Kenny than carpentry had been. We never figured out what that business was and so it never happened, just like the other things we had wanted to do.

We both beat ourselves up over the years for the things that didn’t materialize for us. Many times, we felt like failures. It’s hard to see other people have the things you so desperately want but not be able to have them yourself. It was hard for me to watch Kenny carry those feelings of his perceived unworthiness because he didn’t have the things he wanted for us that others did have.

In watching the movie about Carl and Ellie with my grandson, I realized that mine and Kenny’s life together WAS our adventure. We didn’t have the custom built home like we wanted but we did always have a roof over all four of our heads. We didn’t have all the extravagant vacations like we wanted but we made our own fun with our children. We never found that perfect lucrative business to do together but we still managed to get by on what we did make at our jobs. Life didn’t go as we had planned it to all those years ago, but the life that we did have together was a happy one.

Kenny gave me his own “Thanks for the adventure-now go have a new one!” after his death. The outpouring of raw and extreme grief brought about the best writing I’ve done in my entire life. That in turn brought new opportunities to my door that will fulfill one of my lifelong dreams, and for that, I am eternally grateful to him. In death, Kenny is still looking out for me, just as he had done every day of our life together.

What I want Kenny to know is that even though we didn’t have the life we planned, ours was a life well lived. It was a life filled with love, happiness, laughter and joy. It’s a life I wouldn’t trade for all the riches, custom built houses or fancy vacations in all the world for. It only took me watching a cartoon movie with a 4 year old to realize that the adventures Kenny and I had planned on so long ago did in fact come true but in another, much better form. Thank you for the beautiful memories, Kenny. I’ll see you on the other side…….after I’ve lived the new adventures that lie in front of me, gifted by the great love of my life who’s gone on ahead.