Tag Archives: Kathy Anne

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‘New normal’ still out there

My search for the “new normal” life I intend to live remains an active endeavor. I haven’t found it just yet, but I am putting some pieces together that I hope will create the normal life I am seeking.

One piece fit nicely. I joined a gym. Actually, I have returned to a gym where my wife and I once belonged before we quit.

Why did I quit? I wasn’t achieving the results I wanted. It was my fault. I had no one else to blame. And I didn’t level any blame; I accepted it. So did Kathy Anne

My new normal is going to include making a commitment where I failed previously. The workout club in Princeton, Texas, has a wide array of equipment. My intention will be to use as much of as possible.

I long have had this problem with food. I adhere to what we all call a “see food diet.” You know the punchline.

The new normal also involves me forgoing some of my culinary guilty pleasures. I have done that. As it was more than 43 years ago when I quit smoking, it is imperative that I give up these food items cold turkey. I cannot snitch a little here, a little there, any more than I could sneak a drag on a cigarette after I quit.

So, that part of the new normal isn’t so new, right?

The rest of it remains new to me. I am an old man, so I am acutely aware that it will take some work to shed the weight I have gained.

My task now is to adopt this new normal as part of every-day living.

I can do this.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Poignancy added to this exhibit

FORT WORTH — I have visited this exhibit many times over the years, dating back to the time before my wife and I relocated to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

You’ll find it across the street from the Fort Worth Convention Center and in front of the hotel where President and Mrs. Kennedy spent the president’s final night on Earth before flying to Love Field in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

We all know what happened next.

My son and I went there this weekend to gander and gawk at downtown Fort Worth, just take in the sights of the place. I saw the pictures behind JFK’s statue and was struck immediately about their poignancy.

They were taken literally hours before a gunman killed the president. The president was smiling, as was his wife. One photo shows JFK standing in front of then-Texas Gov. John Connally, who also would be injured by a gunshot on that horrible day in downtown Dallas.

The poignancy was heightened, strange as it might seem, by the loss I have just suffered in my own life. A little more than three months ago, cancer took my bride, Kathy Anne, from me, robbing my sons of their mother, my daughter-in-law of her good friend and confidante and my granddaughter of Grandma, who loved her beyond measure.

Seeing pictures such as what my son and I saw reminded me as well of how precious life is and how we must treat it as a gift we should treasure.

Just a short time — a few weeks, actually — prior to the terrible diagnosis we got regarding Kathy Anne, we were returning from a lengthy RV trip out west and we were looking forward to spending the rest of our life charting new journeys and adventures.

My life without my beloved bride is taking an entirely different course. I don’t know where it will lead me. I am just intending to be ready to embark when the time comes.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Here come the ‘firsts’

We knew these days would arrive, yet I am unprepared emotionally to cope with them.

These are the “firsts” that accompany the passing of a loved one.

My bride, Kathy Anne, is gone. This weekend will be the first Mothers Day without her in, oh, 51 years.

She became a mother herself at a tender age when we welcomed the first of our two sons into this world. Our second son would arrive 18 months later and together the three of us celebrated their mother and my bride, usually with a nice dinner and, of course, lots of love and expressions of appreciation for her role as the pillar of our family.

This year will be different for my sons, my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter. I feel the need to speak out to readers of this blog, many of whom have followed my journey with understanding and compassion, which I appreciate more than I can express.

I am heartened by the knowledge that we will all take this journey together and that I am blessed with family members I love beyond all measure. We will be strong.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Journey gains some light

Well, everyone, my journey through the darkness has brightened up with the arrival this week of my elder son.

My wife’s passing from cancer in February has presented all of us with a mighty struggle to be sure. My sons, my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter all miss Kathy Anne terribly … as I do. The sadness I continue to feel without her won’t go away any time soon. Of that I am certain.

My son’s arrival after he sold his house in Amarillo, though, has brightened both of our spirits. It’s the “new era” I mentioned in an earlier blog post.

It will be a temporary arrangement. He needs to find a job, even though he is officially “retired” from the state of Texas, where he worked for 20-plus years as an adult probation officer.

After that, then the search will commence on a new place to hang his hat. However, I am delighted beyond words to have human companionship in my house, which had grown so very quiet since early February.

He brought his two cats with him. As of this moment, there have been no issues with Toby the Puppy, who continues to dominate his house. I don’t expect any trouble with the kitties. At least that is my fond hope.

This arrangement produces a whole array of “new normal” activities for both my son and me.

The journey continues.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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New era update

AMARILLO, Texas — The elder of my sons is a giant step closer this afternoon to making a move that is likely to cause him more angst than he might realize at this moment.

He has been a grown man for quite some time now, so I am reluctant to share unsolicited advice with him … or his slightly younger brother. I did so privately today en route back from the landfill to his soon-to-be former house. He took it like the grownup he is, so enough said about that.

I also have told him that I am proud of him and that I welcome this change in his life and in mine as well. We’ll be roommates for a time in Princeton, sharing a house I once shared with my beloved bride, Kathy Anne.

It won’t be the same, for obvious reasons, but I welcome this change for reasons I know everyone who reads this blog and who has followed my journey through the darkness understands.

We have worked hard today. My son enlisted the help of a friend to do some of the heavy lifting. Very soon, he can put this chapter in his own life in his proverbial rearview mirror.

Then all of us — and that includes my younger son’s family — can look forward to new challenges and adventures.

For now, though, I am going to take a nap.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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A new era begins

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AMARILLO, Texas — I have returned to commence the next step in a journey I didn’t expect to take.

It will be a journey tinged with happiness, but also some sadness.

Once I depart this city, I will be able to have both of my sons nearby for the first time in, oh, more than 30 years. My older son is moving from the Panhandle to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where I now live near where my younger son lives with his wife and daughter.

The sadness comes — as many of you no doubt are aware — because my beloved bride, Kathy Anne, won’t be there to greet us. It’s just the three of us now, my sons and me.

Our older son graduated from high school in 1991 and went to college in Huntsville, about a two-hour drive from Beaumont, where we were living at the time. Our youngers son graduated from HS the following year and moved to Dallas to attend college; our younger son never looked back.

My wife and I moved from Beaumont to Amarillo in early 1995. Our older son graduated from college that year and moved to Amarillo to start his career.

But for all those years, we were separated from our younger son.

That is about to change. My older son had talked out loud for some time about moving from the High Plains to be near family. The loss of my bride to cancer in February accelerated his plans.

I am delighted to have both of my sons, along with my daughter-in-law and granddaughter, close by. I only wish our family was complete. Tragically, that cannot occur.

Meanwhile, my son and I are preparing to help his brother pack up.

A new era is about to begin. Pray for all of us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Blogging = journaling

You might already understand — those who have read this blog over time — that I am addicted to posting items on it.

I am in the midst of a lengthy string of consecutive days posting items on High Plains Blogger. It’s up to 585 days in a row. I am not even close to slowing down.

This is my way of suggesting that blog posts are my version of writing in a journal. It’s simple for me to sit down at my laptop sitting on my desk inside my North Texas man cave and pound out thoughts on issues of the day or just hammer out a commentary on this or that matter that interests me.

This is my version of “journaling.” Friends have encouraged me to write a journal while commenting, for example, on my mourning the passing of my dear bride, Kathy Anne. I have declined respectfully, telling them the blog takes the place of a journal. It accomplishes the same thing.

I actually have tried to write a journal. My wife purchased for me a set of notebooks on which I would write a journal during a November 1989 trip I took to Southeast Asia. I lasted only a few days. I couldn’t keep my concentration riveted enough to write down the thoughts in the notebook. I couldn’t even take the time to pen my thoughts as I returned to Marble Mountain, just south of Da Nang, Vietnam … where I served during the Vietnam War.

Had I been able to carry a laptop during that marvelous journey I would have been able to write something akin to a blog as I ventured from Thailand, to Cambodia, to Vietnam.

The blog has served me well at many levels. I want to keep writing it for as long as I am able to string sentences together.

So far … so good.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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She had astonishing intuition

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I have struggled with whether I want to share this blog post with you, but I have concluded that I need to offer a tribute to my late wife’s astonishing intuitive power.

With that, I’ll start at the end and work my way through it. I believe my darling Kathy Anne felt in her gut that she was sick a good bit before we received the cancer diagnosis on Dec. 26, 2022.

Kathy Anne did not reveal what she might have known. She was not wired to do that. It was her stoic nature that compelled her to keep it quiet.

I lost my bride to glioblastoma cancer of the brain on Feb. 3. She fought a brief — but very fierce — battle against the disease before it claimed her.

Now for a brief flashback.

We returned in October 2022 from a lengthy trip in our travel trailer. We hauled our trailer to the West Coast, visited family and friends. Then we returned home. On our way back to North Texas, Kathy Anne broached a subject I wasn’t expecting from her: She wanted to sell the RV. It was time, she said.

Kathy Anne laid out plenty of reasons for selling the vehicle: We had traveled far and wide in our three RVs; we were weary of battling the little problems that kept cropping up with them; we could sell the RV and then decide how we wanted to spend the rest of our life.

I signed on. Sure thing, I told her. I am ready to do something else.

So … we sold it. We pocketed the money and then, barely a month later, she began exhibiting some curious symptoms. She began losing her balance. She was stumbling — a lot.

Kathy Anne also had undergone a significant loss of weight over the course of several months. Our friends would comment on it and she would blow it off, saying she had spent a lot of time power walking through the neighborhood; that’s how the weight came off.

It sounds plausible to me even now. But … then came the decision to go to the hospital in McKinney the day after this past Christmas. The doc told her of the mass they found in her brain. Her reaction? Typical stoicism. “Let’s just get it out of there,” she said.

I look back on all this now and wonder: Did she know something she couldn’t share this past fall? 

I have told members of my family that Kathy Anne was the most intuitive individual I have ever known. As I recall the sequence I have just described, I am convincing myself that her marvelous intuition was at work. Quite obviously, I cannot prove any of this.

Thus, I have just explained why I have struggled to tell this story.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Fog is lifting … slowly

Every friend with whom I have discussed this matter has said the same thing: Do not rush your way out of your mourning and your heartache.

It will take time for your heart to heal, they say. Yes. I get it. My heart is still broken from the loss of my beloved bride, Kathy Anne, to cancer not quite three months ago. It isn’t likely to heal completely … ever!

I am not rushing anything. However, I am happy to report to those who have an interest in this journey I have been taking that I am beginning to establish a bit of a rhythm to my new life and, yes, the fog is lifting … albeit slowly.

Some things still pierce my soul; they bring tears to my eyes. One of them is the sight of the headstone with Kathy Anne’s name on it. The monument maker this week installed it and I have made two trips to the cemetery to see it. I’ll leave it at that.

But as I go through my day, I am finding an ability to accomplish tasks with dispatch. I take time to laugh at a joke. I play with Toby the Puppy, who continues to provide tremendous companionship … and who continues to entertain me in that way that only devoted pets can do.

And I am able to write about her on this blog, an exercise that gives me a form of emotional therapy.

I can talk openly about my bride now, whereas doing so just a few weeks ago would reduce me to blubbering.

Is any of this a startling revelation? Of course not! It is merely my understanding and appreciating the knowledge that my life is changed forever.

This much hasn’t changed since the day Kathy Anne left us: I still think of her practically every waking moment of every single day. Maybe one day that will change. Just not yet.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

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Indeed … all things must pass

The recent tragedy that befell my family and me has forced us to learn some of life’s harshest lessons.

The great singer/songwriter George Harrison once told us that “All things must pass … all things must pass away.”

Indeed, if I have learned anything about myself while I mourn the passing of my beloved bride, Kathy Anne, is that grief and mourning are part of life.

This is my way of reporting to those of you who have been following me along this journey that I am a fairly quick study when it comes to learning that lesson. I am able to go through most days now without welling up, or without weeping openly at the thought that my bride is no longer by my side.

I am able to complete household tasks. I am able to look at Kathy Anne’s pictures without sobbing. I am able to talk about her (most of the time) without stopping to collect myself.

Granted, there remain many more hurdles to clear as I continue this trek through the darkness. They don’t look quite as daunting today as they did soon after cancer took my bride away from us. Do not misunderstand me on this point, which is that those hurdles are formidable, but I am beginning to have faith that I’ll be able to get past them … eventually.

One of the lessons that has been drummed into my noggin is to not “rush anything,” that I am entitled to grieve in my own way and at my own pace. I accept that and I am adhering to that advice.

Thus, my grief will continue, but I damn sure won’t let it burden me. That’s life, man … because all things must pass.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com