A day or two after Rickie died his best friend, next to me, came by. John and Susie lived in Houston near us and also had a place in the Hill Country. They were South Texas natives and ranchers. We had known them since our days in Lafayette many years ago. John said to me as they left “Sue, it’s a bad hand you’ve been dealt but if anyone can handle it, you can.”
I’ve repeated that to myself many times over these last years alone. I’ve made hard choices and I’ve done things I thought I’d never do. The hardest was giving up the ranch. Not only was it the place Rickie and I had loved for almost 30 years, but we had built it up from bare land to be our home, our place to live out our lives. Truly our blood, sweat, and tears were in it, as well as every penny we could scrape together. We knew every inch of it, every animal that we shared it with, every season and the changes it brought. We loved the smell of it, the caliche and the cedars, the draw flowing after heavy rains. We loved the history of it, the feeling that those who walked it before us still passed by every so often. Unless you have also loved a land, the actual land beneath your feet, you can’t understand this and I can never explain it to you. You either know it or you don’t.
But as y’all know, living there alone consumed me with a sadness that ruled my life. And over a couple of years I contemplated how best to play the hand I’d been dealt. My choices were simple. Live there alone trying to keep our dream on life support, and be sad every day of my life, with the kids and grandkids occasionally coming out and being sad with me, or try to find some joy in the years I had left. The sadness would always be with me but there had to be some joy left for me also.
My overriding guide in decision making was this - my choices were to be made not only based on what I might want but on what would benefit my kids and grandkids. I’d lived 65 years already at that time. What could I do to make life different for them? As I told them, Rickie left us an opportunity and I intended to take it for all of us. I would make the final hard decision for all what would happen.
I have a little moleskin tablet Sarah gave me years ago. I write down quotes I like in it. A few months after Rickie died I ran across it while rearranging a drawer. There was a quote by Muriel Rukeyser that I had written twice. I figured I must have either needed it then or at the time I rediscovered it. “However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we who do now face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.” It was time to face it and go on.
It’s been a year now since I sold the ranch and moved to Pagosa Springs. It’s been everything I hoped it would be, for me and for the ones I love. It’s been a year of skiing, sledding, horseback riding, rafting, kayaking, hiking, train riding, tubing, cowboy parades, campfire sitting, and hot springs. A year of new friends for me and doing things I’ve been scared to do. A year of adventure. A year of healing.
A few months after I moved Sarah and her family sold their home and left Austin, the city they loved. They decided they wanted a change and new adventures of their own, and also being closer to me factored in. They moved to Denver, because of the job market and the big city opportunities. But they’ve decided they just traded one big city for another and haven’t had the change they hoped for. So, as Sarah puts it, they’ve decided to do a “Waylon, and Willie, and the boys” and sell their home there and move here to Pagosa.
When I decided to come here, my original plan was to buy a place here and be here most of the time but to go back to Austin and stay in my tiny house in the kids back yard some. Then they said hey, let’s all move to Colorado and find a place where we can all be together. Our search for that didn’t pan out. But as it turned out the place I bought here fit that plan better than anything we found then.
So once again we’re changing up our lives a bit. Sarah, Justin, and Bix are selling their house in Denver and moving into the cabin here. I’m in the process of converting some of the big 5 car garage with workroom into a space for me. It’ll be about 500 sq feet, a bit bigger than the original ranch cabin but with a different design. I’ll have a separate living/mini kitchen, a bathroom, and bedroom. I’ve started on it already and more on that later.
When I was a teenager Elvis movies were all the rage. They were as we know, just a way for him to sing his songs! The movies were all the same mostly but we loved them anyway. My favorite was Follow That Dream. I loved the words to the song. “When your heart gets restless, time to move along. When your heart gets weary, time to sing a song. But when a dream is calling you, there’s just one thing that you can do. You’ve gotta follow that dream wherever that dream may lead.”
And so, in playing the hand I was dealt, I’ve also managed to follow a dream. A dream of adventure in a place Rickie and I also loved, a dream of a new life, a dream of finding some joy left to me.
And a year later, I offer thanks to the ranch we loved that provided the funding, to my kids and grandkids for having the nerve and the heart to let go of the ranch for a chance of new adventures, to Colorado for making us welcome, and as always, to Rickie for teaching me to be strong and having the courage to go for it. The hand’s been dealt and played.
