Roughest Time in Life - Decision Time

I have been through some rough times in my life.  Not as rough as others, in fact when you come right down to it, I consider myself very blessed, but still there have been times when life has been difficult. Notice I am using the term rough and not hard, as I do not believe I lived through any hard times.  Other than in high school when there was a period when no money was coming into the house, we have always had money to live on, a nice house, health insurance, and family, so no hard times for me, just rough times.

In high school my dad worked in three different states, Ohio, Kentucky and South Carolina.  We moved to Kentucky to make things more centralized for him and because one of the jobs there was his biggest.  On his way back to Kentucky from South Carolina he stopped in Tennessee because he felt like he had the flu.  It turned out he had a bleeding ulcer.  Long story short, he almost died several times.  Even after they removed 3/4's of his stomach ruptured again and God must have made sure he was in Tennessee at the time of this because the University Hospital had an experimental treatment of shooting blood clots up into the stomach that saved him.  It was a long recovery, with many complications.  I lived with neighbors, and although they were very kind to me, I found the situation creepy so I eventually moved in with one of Dad's business partners.  My mom stayed with my dad and came home on weekends, unless I was taken to Tennessee by someone.  

Soon after I was married, my dad started showing signs of Alzheimers.  My parents moved to Arkansas to be closer to us, and we had many good years but the last few of his life were very difficult on all of us.  Right before dad died, Raymond started having symptoms we didn't understand with his leg.  That turned out to be a long battle with bone cancer.

After Raymond died, mom was diagnosed with Alzheimers.  She died two years after Raymond.

So yes, I have had some rough times in my life, those above were just the roughest, there were  other issues, but I got through them all.  Throughout all the rough times I could still count my blessings because things could have been so much worse.

I do believe though that I am now entering into one of the roughest times of my life.

First I have to let my boys, especially my oldest be an adult.  My oldest is a wonderful man, much like his father in his kindness and gentleness.  He is also totally disorganized and somewhat of an absent-minded professor.  It drives me crazy, but most times I do not know about his little forays into forgetfulness and therefore I don't go nuts.  Today I want to scream at him, but I can't because he is an adult.  Seems he forgot to turn in his hours to the payroll company and did not notice he did not get a check into his account and had an overdraft.  No big deal because he was smart enough to get overdraft protection, but I also get all his bank messages so I know when he has forgotten to keep up with what is going on in his accounts.  That drives me crazy!  I just do not understand why he can't keep up with his accounts since he does all his banking online.  My solution is that when he is home for Thanksgiving I will have him remove me from his account notifications.  

The youngest will be 18 in a few weeks and he is pretty much living on his own too.  He however can tell me his bank balance on almost a daily basis.  My issue with him is his freaky eating habits.  

Yes, I think this is going to be the roughest time in my life.  Not because the kids are adults and have their own lives, but because my life is no longer defined by their lives.  I am truly on my own.  

I now have to decide what I want to be when I grow up. That is going to be rough.