Peggy loves sunsets.

I have been working in Austin for a few weeks now, and we have begun the process of selling the house. Peggy will move over here as soon as the house is sold. Unfortunately, this is now the second time I have done this to her. When we left Dallas in 1994 I had to be in San Antonio in September; Peggy and Mike didn’t get to move down with me until late December. We are finishing up the work on the house this weekend and planning to put it on the market as quickly as possible. It is a good time to be selling a house in Katy, so I really don’t think it will take that long this time. At least I hope…

Now we have to find a place to live in Austin. We have made the decision to downsize and not buy another house. We are already in the process of getting rid of a majority of our possessions for the move. Our son, Mike, is going to come from Baton Rouge and get the things he wants to keep, but we are serious about this downsizing thing.

Fortunately, Austin seems to have some really interesting options in terms of apartments that are large enough without being too big. Peggy came to Austin this weekend and we visited some of them, and we will be making a decision soon. I think everything will feel a little more “real” when we have signed a lease. Until then I am living in a temporary home.

I have written previously about Peggy and I renting a condo for all of last summer on Lake Travis. Well, a friend of ours bought two condos at the same place, and I am renting one of them from him until we move into our apartment. It is a pretty long haul to the office each day, but the commute is worth it to be at a place that we love. And when Peggy comes to visit we already have a place to stay.

I like my office and I like my staff. Good thing since they are the only people I know here. But each night I come back to the condo, get in the pool for a little while, and then sit on the back porch to relax. After sixteen years commuting in Houston traffic I don’t think I want to live this far from the office full time, but as a temporary solution it is pretty hard to beat.

The book of Matthew twice says, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign!” I promise I’m not looking for one.

It doesn’t say, however, that you can’t recognize a sign when you see one. So, I’m just going to take tonight’s sunset for what it’s worth… 

I have written before about the musical comedy troupe of which Peggy is a part, “Minnie Pause and the Hot Flashes.” It is a group that has brought joy to many folks over the last several years. In fact, the group tagline is “Joy 4 Life’s Journey.”

That journey ended today for Bette Puffer.

Bette is a long-time friend. Peggy and I taught her daughter in Sunday School and watched as Bette bravely battled breast cancer while Courtney was still in high school. Bette’s tough, and she beat breast cancer.

In our wonderful, silly show, Bette played Edie, the shopaholic who lovingly learns a few lessons along the way. In real life, Bette was the one that taught the lessons.

When we found out last year that the cancer had returned everyone was sad, but Bette refused to let that be the dominant emotion. If we really are going to sing about joy for life’s journey, it has to be all the parts of life’s journey. Nobody embodied that better than Bette.

The cancer was in Bette’s brain but she continued to perform. Even when it started impacting her ability to remember lines and dance moves, it only added to the fun of her character. That’s because Bette did not allow frustration to enter into it. When she made a mistake she just laughed at it, and that helped the rest of us to laugh along with her.

Bette’s final performance was our first ever performance at her home church. For years the church would not support the ministry, but they finally came through when we told them we wanted to perform a show for Bette’s friends and family at no charge. More than 500 people showed up that night to have a laugh, enjoy the show and honor Bette. It was one of the coolest experiences in which I have ever been privileged to participate. Bette stayed late and took pictures with everyone who wanted one, and that was pretty much everyone.

We love Bette and we will miss her. The ministry — and the show — will go on. We will not replace Bette’s character, but we will add another member of the troupe and we will continue. That is what Bette asked us to do. And her husband Willis will continue to be a part of the roadie crew with the other husbands.

The other three ladies are going to sing the finale of our show at her memorial service. No makeup or wigs, just three heartbroken women singing to the glory of God to honor their friend.

It will be something Bette would have loved.

Today I was looking through some pictures from last summer. Man, we had a good time last summer. And man, we had a terrible time last summer.

This summer has been different. It has been tough since Peggy has been going back and forth to Dallas a couple of times per month, but at least we know what we are dealing with. Last summer we were on the beginning of the journey with her Mom and we had no idea where it would end up.

The summer started well. I say “summer” advisedly because my definition of summer is warm weather. I had just returned from a weekend in New Orleans with my group of lifelong friends, and Peggy and I flew to Cancun for a week. We had a blast. Beautiful weather. Beautiful girl. Too much to eat and drink. In other words, everything you could want in a vacation!

We returned home and Peggy immediately went into high gear. She took her Mom to numerous doctor visits until we got the news from the doctor that Peggy’s mother could no longer live on her own. Then it was time to find her mother a memory care facility that was good enough to fit Peggy’s standards.

Peggy was in constant communication with her siblings about timing and how everything was going to work. One year ago this weekend they moved their Mom out of her house and into a beautiful memory care facility right next to the church Peggy’s mother attends.

With Peggy working so hard to help her mother, I rented a condo at the lake for the summer to give her the opportunity to relax. We got a membership at a boat club and spent hours on the lake. We played golf. We hung out. She had some respite from the constant heartache and pressure.

Finally, one year ago this weekend, Peggy and her siblings moved her mother out of her home of nearly fifty years. In one week’s time, they got everything out of the house, fixed everything that needed fixing, painted the interior of the house, had new floors installed in the entire house, and put the house on the market.

I picked Peggy up in Dallas at the end of the week and took her to Colorado. We hiked, we played golf, we rode bikes, we had wonderful friends come to visit, all in the incredible, cool weather. The trip was just about perfect.

We were back in Dallas today celebrating Mary’s 85th birthday with her this morning before heading to Colorado for this year’s vacation. It was a fun time with her. She knows us and seems to really enjoy every visit. Peggy is a wonderful daughter and makes it a point to visit Mary as often as possible.

The visit with Mary this morning is what prompted the review of the pictures from last year. It’s funny — I don’t know if we have ever had more fun than we had last summer. And I don’t know if I have ever watched someone work harder or have more heartache than what I saw Peggy go through last summer. It was wonderful and it was painful.

I just know I never want to do it again.

I don’t post a lot on social media. This blog is my outlet, so I don’t have a lot of need to post pictures of what I am eating or funny pet videos (though I enjoy a good pet video as much as anybody).

My favorite aspect of social media, though, are the “memories” that pop up reminding you of something that you posted about previously. I always enjoy seeing the comments and pictures with the benefit of time passing.

The memory that popped up today was this picture:

This photograph, besides being a picture of an absolutely stunning woman, evokes many memories. But not from that night. Even though that night was memorable in itself.

The dress and necklace that Peggy is wearing were both from our 25th anniversary trip to Santorini Island off the coast of Greece in 2010. It was truly the trip of a lifetime. At least to date…

We hope to go back sometime in the future, but we created enough memories on that one trip to last forever. And seeing this picture this morning made all of those memories come flooding back.

Thank you, social media, for this delight.

I’m going to have to suggest that she wears the dress the next time we go out.

Peggy and I met in youth choir at church. Even though we went to the same high school, I was a year older and we were in different activities.

When I say “youth choir” it probably evokes an image in your mind. That image in your head is wholly insufficient to understand what I am talking about.

I was fifteen when I moved to the Dallas area, and I attended the Methodist church in the town where I went to school. It was a nice-sized church with plenty of activities and opportunities. I sang with the choir there which had about forty members.

At Christmas, a close friend from school invited me to the Christmas Concert at his Baptist church. The first group that sang had about 100 members, but they looked very young to me. When I looked at the program I discovered this was the Junior High choir. After they sang, the youth choir came on stage with about 150 members. I was blown away by two things — the sound that came out of that group and how good the girls looked! We had a few good-looking girls at the Methodist church, but, man…

When we came back to school after Christmas I joined the youth choir at the Baptist church.

Every summer the choir went on a choir tour and then every other summer the choir tour was combined with a mission trip. My first year we did a choir tour through the southeast with about 125 singers. The next summer was a mission trip summer, so when we traveled in 1980 we had more than 200 people on the trip with us. For seventeen days. Driving from Dallas to New York and back. Three charter buses and four 15-passenger vans full of people as well as equipment trucks and other vehicles. It was quite an amazing sight when we would roll up to a church where we were singing and see the looks on the faces of the church members there to greet us.

This is the trip when Peggy and I got to know each other and after which we began dating. I was seventeen and she was sixteen. We have spent the rest of our lives together since that incredible start.

So, think of this happening over a span of fifteen or so years. The youth choir fluctuated between 100 and 175 people as different classes graduated and moved on, but the tours continued uninterrupted.

Last night Peggy and I attended a reunion of the people that went on those trips in the 70s and 80s. We had such a great time seeing friends we have not gotten to see nearly often enough since we left Dallas almost twenty years ago. Getting back together made it seem as though no time had passed — at least until we look at the pictures!

What an incredible gift it was to be part of these events as we were growing up! And how do you ever thank the adults that gave up their vacation time to go along and make it possible for us to go? Seventeen days in a bus with a bunch of teenagers? For vacation?! It was an amazing sacrifice that I never fully appreciated when we were kids. I hope I was able to adequately convey my appreciation last night to the ones who are still with us and were in attendance.

I know that we will never see some of these people again — we even lost one of the organizers of the event during the preparations. It is just a reality of getting older. But we got to see so many last night and relive some wonderful memories. We will relive them again today on the four-hour drive back home to Katy.

Such a privilege…

It is 278 miles from our house in Katy to the apartment in the memory care facility where Peggy’s Mom lives in the Dallas area. Peggy drives it at least twice each month to go check on her mother. Sometimes I go with her and sometimes I stay in Katy and take care of the animals.

Peggy is the youngest child in her family. Unfortunately, her sister lives in Tucson and her brother lives in Seattle, so Peggy is the closest family member by a long shot. Fortunately, she loves her Mama and is happy to be the one taking care of her. But a thousand miles a month going back and forth is tough.

The emotional toll is the toughest. Because Mary has Alzheimer’s, she doesn’t understand why she is no longer living in her home of nearly fifty years. On every trip Peggy has to explain to her mother that she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and watch her mother react to the news like she is hearing it for the first time. I honestly don’t know how Peggy does it.

Peggy and her mother have always been very close. Peggy was the later-in-life blessing that her parents never knew they needed until she arrived. She and her mom were more like friends than mother-daughter — sometimes that is not the healthiest of relationships — so for Peggy, this journey is impacting her in more than just the traditional way.

This is the part of getting older they don’t tell you about. But Peggy is tough. And she loves her Mama.

I asked Peggy a couple of weeks ago if she was getting tired of the driving. Of course she is, but that was not her answer. She said she hasn’t even begun to approach how far her mother went for her.

That’s why I love her.

Today was a truly interesting day. Peggy and I got a new printer recently, and it includes a scanner. I have never been particularly interested in having a scanner, so it has taken me a while to warm up to the idea.

It was cold this morning when I got out of bed, so I waited to walk. Peggy was asleep. I didn’t want to turn on the television and wake her up, so I was looking for something to do. I was looking in a cabinet in our dining room for something totally unrelated when a folder full of photographs fell out of the cabinet. As I was picking them up to put away I noticed that some of them were showing wear on the edges (perhaps from falling on the floor repeatedly) and that the colors on some were beginning to fade. This discovery led me to open the other boxes and envelopes of pictures and notice the same thing.

In the same cabinet lives the aforementioned printer/scanner combo. An idea sprang to mind. If I am honest, that idea was “Peggy really needs to scan all of these pictures so that we can have them on the computer.” However, since she was asleep I decided to mess with it a little bit. You know, it would help me give her instructions later about what I wanted done.

Three hours later Peggy walks in with a cup of coffee and I am elbows deep in photographs. It took me a few tries to figure out the scanner, but after that I was just plowing through pictures. I could have gone faster but each one made me pause and remember when it was taken and what was happening at the time. School pictures, sports team pictures, church directory pictures, everything had been stuck in this cabinet. Then I found a box that contained old snapshots. The memories were running rampant while I was working.

Peggy and I went and did all the things we do on Saturday in the spring. After running all of our errands and going out to lunch, I was itching to get back to the photographs. It’s not an obsession, but it is an objective now. After I have finished the “loose” pictures, I will get to work on scanning the ones in albums, like our wedding pictures. That’s a little more delicate work because they have been stuck in that album for more than twenty-five years.

We finished our day doing our favorite thing in the world — sitting on the back porch with a fire, listening to music and talking. After looking at memories all day long there was a lot to talk about, and the music brings back even more memories.

Fortunately, there was a lot of fuel in the yard to keep the fire burning. We used every bit of it.

My wife is a gambler.

It’s not a problem if you win, is it?

Peggy likes to play slot machines. There are no legal slot machines in Texas, so we make the three-hour drive to Lake Charles and go to L’Auberge du Lac. Sometimes we stay here on our way back and forth to Baton Rouge to visit our son or to attend events at LSU. And she plays. For hours.

This trip we went to Dallas to spend Easter with Peggy’s mother. After visiting with her we made the drive to Lake Charles to spend a couple of days and allow Peggy to relax. The weather is nice so we will spend time in the pool and have several nice meals. Then after dinner she will play penny slots while I entertain myself.

Here’s the thing. “Penny” slots aren’t. She is typically playing two dollars a pull. And on most spins she wins something, usually something less than two dollars. But every so often she wins more. So she keeps playing.

The casino has a rewards program. They give you a point for every $5 you bet while you are playing slots. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you sit there and keep playing you can accumulate some points. Peggy starts every night with $100. She plays until she gets tired or until she runs out of money.

In a year she has accumulated 15,000 points. Do the math — that means she has bet more than $75,000 this year. And because she has accumulated 15,000 points everything we do at the casino is free. The hotel rooms are free, the booze is free, and much of the food is free. Because she plays penny slots.

Sometimes she loses her $100. But usually she comes home with the same $100 she started with. Or more. And we stay at the hotel free.

I know there has to be a catch somewhere. But I haven’t found it. The hotel room would cost at least $300 for the weekend, but we get to stay here because, you know, she plays penny slots.

I have stopped trying to make the math work. I just stay in the pool.

One of the things that sucks about getting older is loss. Loss of hair, loss of stamina, loss of strength. Even harder is the loss of friends. Worse is the loss of loved ones.

My mother died unexpectedly at the age of 68. Always healthy and active, still an outstanding athlete, she starting having breathing difficulties and went into the hospital for tests. While hospitalized she suffered a brain aneurysm and died. I was 39.

I was very close to my mother. She was a world-class smartass, and it was years before I stopped picking up the phone to call and tell her something funny that happened. Peggy was very close to her, too. We started dating in high school, so in many ways my parents were intimately involved in raising Peggy to adulthood. Losing my mother so young was hard.

But it might have been easier than what Peggy is going through now. There is clearly more than one way to lose a parent.

We visited Dallas for Thanksgiving in 2011 and noticed a few changes in the behavior of Peggy’s mother. Mary had worked as the office manager for a pediatric practice for many years, and her record-keeping reflects that. Every month’s bills are paid and filed by month, checkbook balanced monthly, everything in its place.

When we came back to Dallas to see her for Christmas we noticed a few month’s worth of bills unopened on the desk in her office. She explained that she had set up some payments automatically and we really didn’t think too much more about it. Until we came back a month or so later and saw past due notices for those same bills.

That began the process of making appointments with different doctors. It soon became apparent that the news was going to be bad. We were afraid of a diagnosis. We got it. And more. The biggest blow was finding out that she was not really capable of living by herself anymore. And it was explained that she could not come live with us because the doctor said she cannot imprint new information, so moving her away from Dallas would be tantamount to torture.

Peggy has worked and driven herself to death to make sure her mother has a wonderful place to live and is being taken care of by people who care. So far Mary knows us every time we come to visit. And she is delighted to see us, so the visits are always comforting.

When we leave Dallas I always try to have something fun planned for Peggy so she can began to relax. Today it was lunch in a place we have always enjoyed. When we come back in a few weeks for Easter I am going to take her to Lake Charles for a few days. Next time it might be the lake.

She needs to be able to get away. Because this hurts. And it’s not going to get easier.