Patti had many happy years.

This is "My Patti."
It's kind of funny that all the way back to about 1965 I told her we would wind up getting married. We both accepted that with a glad heart. We really did love each other. That was not faked. Of course, my decision to join the Marine Corps to go fight for my country was not something she readily accepted.
She was like any other girl at that age. She wanted to do the fun things that kids her age did. From what I know, she did. She was very active in school activities. I have lots of pictures to show she had a good time getting through high school, college, and universities. She led her life doing pretty much what she wanted. It's true that at some point after she married, her life became complicated and she may not have enjoyed life as she would have liked, but she was an independent lady from early on, and she succeeded in many ways. I like to think she found joys in her own ways.

When we eventually met up again and married, we were ecstatic to be together. We both worked really hard through the years, she at her college, me at my store and then at the college. She cross-stitched a piece that said, "The best is yet to be, grow old with me." We looked forward to retirement. But as the thief entered her life, she started saying she would work until she was 70, then get a part-time job. Shelby and I did everything we could to try to talk her out of it. Two years before she passed she was still saying she would get a job at Barnes and Nobles. She would point out all the old timers that worked at the bookstore and assured us she would do it. Eventually, we had to tell her she could not walk, she could not talk well enough to help a customer, she could not handle money, and she simply could not do any job. By this time, she was less lucid, and she realized she could no longer do cross-word puzzles or even read a magazine. Her thoughts of working were stolen from her mind.

As for our retirement, she could not see herself being able to go on trips to see our children and grand-children. She knew her piano playing days at church were gone. She knew she could no longer crochet more than rolling the yarn into balls and placing them in zip-lock bags. She could not count her cross stitch. She had thoroughly enjoyed her tv shows and dvds. The thief stole her ability to even follow a show. She would start a show, fall asleep, wake up to find she didn't know what had happened and would start it over. Then came the time during her four months flat on her back in a hospital bed when she could not even see the large tv screen. The thief took and took and took some more. Patti would have fought with all her might, but by this time, there was not fight. Alzheimer's Disease took her from us. Alzheimer's Disease stole her Golden Years of Retirement, but I have to believe she had a good life, doing the fun things that Baby Boomers dreamed of back in the day.