Where Is Your Heart...

I love it when things come full circle all in one day's worth of thoughts.

Late this afternoon at work, I came across a love story. My line of work involves helping people at various major points in their lives. Marriage, children, retirement, death...so it comes with a lot of stories, if you know where to look.

And today it was just sitting on my desk. Someone who was married for 60 years to the love of her life. They met when he was in the Air Force, fell in love, and got married. He went overseas and fought in World War 2, and he almost lost his life when there was a plane crash. They got married but the documents were lost somewhere.  They had kids and he worked for a paper mill, and then he started his own company, but they never forgot saturdays they spent touring the warehouse with their dad.  She wrote to thank the company specifically for the help in finding the info since all of it was from so long ago, and she sent paper clippings and the funeral program along, she said, both because they didn't have the marriage documents and because "I just want someone to read this, please."

So I read.
"We love this man for who he was, for what he loved: jokes, drawing, photography, family, grandsons, words, language, people, night skies, clouds, hiking, camping, trees-beautiful trees, every flower, every rainbow, double entendre, jazz, skiing, badminton, tennis, ping pong, golf, scrabble, Breyer's vanilla ice cream, coconut macaroons, sticky buns, buddy rich, jazz piano, fireworks, power saws, playing bridge, his vegetable garden, pride in his home, Messiah Methodist, boy scouts, home-made donuts on Saturday morning, syncopated rhythms, freshly squeezed orange juice, eye-popping colorful sweaters, table-top drumming, gravy with a little food, ballroom dancing, juggling, triple balance, stream hiking, magic, maps, airplanes....Dad, we all have so many wonderful memories...We see the world in technicolor because of you"

It *STILL* blows me away. 

People have a choice of how to be. Some people lost their conscience in lies and left a path of destruction in other people's lives and hearts. Some people get hurt by those people and make sure it never happens again by living in the dark. 

And some people?

Some people leave this man's legacy, love words, photography, beautiful trees and every flower....

And they teach the people they leave behind to see the world in technicolor.