Thinking About Blogging Here Again After A Really Sad, Awful Year

 Lizards in the Leaves is not quite an orphan blog, but definitely a neglected one.
Social media and the wider reach of it pulled my attention away from this space.
I have never updated my theme or template, this is the obsolete Classic format. My sidebar is dusty and full of cobwebs. 

I'm dusting a bit, changing some things, but I doubt I'll ever manage to make this shiny and crisp. It's an old cyber-house here, it will be 20 next year. It creaks and groans. Nevertheless, it's my cyber-house and I still reside here on and off.
 

 A year ago,  my husband Paul was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called MDS and an even rarer high-risk version. He was so immuno-compromised we went back into strict masking/lockdown mode.  Months of chemotherapy treatments never changed his condition and  by September he had transitioned into Acute Myeloid Leukemia. A grueling month in hospital in another city brought a partial, very short-lived remission.  The only possibility for cure, bone marrow transplant, had such low odds for him and a guarantee of even more grueling experience that he chose not to pursue that, asked for whatever care he could get here in our home city. We thought he would have a few months of quality life (defined by Paul as being able to go on walks, play the saxophone,and read.)

It turned out to be just weeks. At New Year's, he had a sudden, dramatic decline. After a brief hospital stay, I was able to bring him home with hospice help. When he was in the hospital back in October, he begged me not to let him die in a hospital. He wanted his death to be 'beautiful, at home.'  It was hard, but I think it was beautiful. Two days after getting him home, he died with me right at his side, holding his hand, kissing his brow and whispering words of love and devotion. Our son Shaun was there as well.  It was intimate, calm and sacred.
I am forever changed, standing in liminal space right now,  in a portal, wondering what's behind all that mist  ahead.

A birthday present I stitched for Paul a few years back:

  Paul's obituary