♫ Kansas City, Kansas City Here I Come ♫

For years my husband continued to say he was going to retire when he turned sixty-two years old.  In spring of 2013, the company where he was employed for better than 32 years closed down. As it turned out, he would continue to work until January of 2014 as an overseer while the building was torn down and nothing but dirt and memories would remain.

February and March would pass and come to prove that staying at home was not his thing. Being “almost” retired was boring and he was about to go crazy sitting at home every day. He would all but take over the washing and drying, the yard work, and errand running; but that would not be enough to keep him busy. He began to scheme in his mind something he had randomly spoke of doing from time to time; until one day I came home and he was putting his idea into motion.

His last job in life has become for him to be a pilot car / escort service; and if there was a man in this world made to do that job it was him. He has always loved to ride, drive and talk, and not necessarily in that order. He would get his truck licensed, his signs made up, his truck decaled and business cards printed with his business name; Kornbread Pilot Car and Escort Service at your service.

Word got around and he began to get job offers here and there. Some runs would take most of a day, and a few would turn into an overnight stay. Now it’s not that he hadn’t done this kind of traveling before, because even with his prior job he used to travel pretty regularly. He’d be gone three days here or four days there, sometimes even a week and occasionally two weeks at the time; depending on the problem at hand.

Last week he landed a job that would take him to Garden City, Kansas; the other side of the world as far as I’m concerned.  Before when he traveled I would miss him, but I still had kids at home who kept me running and of course my own job as well. I didn’t have time to sit and think about much other than trying to run the circus by myself while he was gone. Life is different now, we still have one child who lives at home, but he’s here to sleep and eat, and some nights, not even that.

This experience was very different. My routine was the same; work, walking at the track, then home and a sandwich, because who wants to cook for one? And how many loads of clothes does one person really wash? I have some girlfriends who live alone, some by choice, some, sadly not. This week I learned that although I am a very independent person, I’m certainly not ready to be alone, nor do I think I ever will be; and he doesn’t need another Kansas run for a long, long time.