~and they matter to me~

It's Memorial Day weekend and so today we are going home.  For me it's Kansas, a state I'm proud to say that I hail from.  Although Mike was born there and attended his final 6 years of school in the little town of Haven, he doesn't feel the "home" feeling like I do.  His family was military and so "home" was in many different places, all around the world.

For 57 years, I stayed put in the same county of the great state of Kansas.  I was comfortable there, satisfied with no great desire to even live anywhere else.  Over the last decade or so, it grew fun to take a vacation once in a while to see what I could find out there in the great unknown.  But I always came back to that which was familiar to me.

Kansas.

The members of my family who have now gone on before me, are all lain in the rich earth of the state.  The little city cemetery of Halstead, Kansas is where most of them now can be found. One by one, their bodies made the journey there to rest in peace.  My folks, a sister and brother, a little niece, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and many friends are already now gone from the face of the earth.  

Some day in the future when the time comes for me, my body shall return to that great state as well.

It will be nice to go home today, not only to honor the dead whose lives have meant so much to me, but also to be amongst the living who still reside back in that very spot where I once lived. The passage of four years' time has come and gone since Mike and I were married in 2013 but I have never forgotten them.  Those good friends and family are special and continue to be held tightly in my heart.

They matter to me.
See you soon Kansas.

A Kansas sunflower along the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado got me through my first summer in a new home back in 2013.  This sunflower seed pushed through the clay filled soil of our front yard and managed to survive when 999 other seeds planted could not.  It survived.

So did I!