Winter has arrived with a vengeance here in Winnipeg and I decide to walk to the dentist and hairdresser for my appointments. Thankfully, I have retrieved winter jackets and boots from last year's hiding places before the snow arrived. Suddenly everything seems to have changed and there is a different landscape...so strange...kind of like my life now, since Hardy left...

The tree with its silver branches standing alone, reminds me of how I feel these days--lonely and cold. Then I see another tree and the autumn leaves shining red and yellow against the snow laden branches show me that I have also experienced lovely and beautiful things that give me joy. 

The best gift of all is one I received from Hardy. I was going through the boxes he stored in the garage and to my surprise, I found all the letters I had written to him when he was in Congo, two years before we got married. Ours was a courtship by correspondence, after we had been introduced to each other and had one date. "the ones he wrote to me must be in my possession" I thought. I went to look for them, and found them in one of my file folders. 

The letters I sent to Hardy have a hole in them because he is a stamp collector and wanted to keep the stamps. He carefully rewrote the words he had cut out while retrieving the stamps. So typical of him! There are a lot of letters, (we wrote two or three letters a week for two years!) so I have a date with Hardy almost every evening after supper, reading his declarations of love for me! I feel like we are talking together again as I carefully read the letters according to the dates in which they were written. I was a student at Canadian Mennonite Bible College (Now Canadian Mennonite University) at the time and working at a Christian bookstore on Saturdays. Most of what I wrote to Hardy has escaped my memory, probably because of all the momentous events that happened after these letters were written. I share some things with my sisters when we get together for coffee and we have a good laugh.  Some words I share with my daughters and we shed some tears. Among Hardy's letters I also found a letter my mother had written to him without my knowledge! She asked him not to tell me about it and he never did!! Gotcha mom!

Hardy had a lot of sweaters and the grandchildren each picked a favorite and took it home with them. It was so much fun to see them prancing around in Opa's sweaters and sharing memories of him. My sister, the amazing quilter, is going to make us a quilt using some of Hardy's shirts. That certainly will help me get over the winter blahs!

Shortly after Hardy's passing, when my heart felt broken, the neighbour's cat came and looked at me through the door leading from the kitchen to the deck. This happened about three times, when I felt most vulnerable. He has never come back since!

How thankful I am for all the love shown to me during this heartbreaking, heavy time of loss. Hardy's former coworker in the Bible translation work, John Mwanga, who now lives in London, England, grieved with me, the African way, when I told him in a phone call that Hardy was no longer with us. Then he flew in for the funeral. It was so good to see him, and also Hardy's encourager and long time supporter and friend, Nancy Fehderau, who flew in with her daughter Becky from Ontario. They were the family Hardy lived with during his first year in Congo. 

Beautiful flowers and cards fill my house from friends far and near. I keep wanting to share them with Hardy, to tell him, "oh, look, here's a card from..." 

Gifts of delicious food came in abundance and it was so good not to have to cook for a while!

I felt like I needed to somehow acknowledge all this love I received in such abundance and to give something in return. I noticed that our little neighbour across the street had a birthday. I decided to give her a birthday present and went downstairs to the crawl space where my children's and grandchildren's toys wait silently for someone to play with them. The first thing I saw was the perfect gift for her, and she received it with a big smile!

Hardy would have approved!