Weeki Wachee

I was looking for a picture of Rick cooking to go with a blog post. I came across several pictures from Weeki Wachee. We stayed at a motel, loved it, and Rick went to the park to cook food while I worked during the day.

I knew we had some shots of us at the park. We had completely taken over many of the tables under a gazebo. We each had our own “work” table – me to work on the day job, him to work on websites, plus he had a “food prep” table, and then we had the table where we actually ate the dinner. It was humorous and just the kind of fun we always had together.

I didn’t find those pictures, at first. Instead, I found some photos of us outside the hotel room, eating at our little portable work tables. Rick had bought them for us so we could always work on the road.

I had completely forgotten that Rick had made us steaks and portobello mushrooms – at a motel! He was the consummate “work-around” kind of guy – and he did love his food! I had bought him a portable grill that supposedly didn’t get too hot and could be used anywhere – and he loved to use it on our trips.

Of course, I felt that bittersweet emotion – joy at the time we shared, devastation that he is gone. Our time is over. He will never go to Florida with me again. He will never make a steak dinner. I don’t know if I will ever stop crying.

About the author

Katherine Billings Palmer is a technical writer, poet, and essayist from Garden City, Michigan. She’s won several academic writing awards, including first place in the University of Michigan Dearborn Critical Essay Contest for her work about poet John Donne: “‘The Sun Rising’: A Lover’s Boast.”

In 2017, Katherine’s husband, Rick, died of complications from small cell lung cancer. She wrote a series of poems and essays about her struggles to cope with her grief. I Wanted to Grow Old With You is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.

Her latest book, A Widow’s Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry – The First Year was published in January 2019 and is also available on Amazon.com.

Katherine is a guest blogger for the Hope for Widows Foundation and writes about her grief journey at www.TheWritingWidow.com.

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