My wife just left for 10 days to Colorado along with her 2 older sisters to spread the ashes of her recently departed Mother. Since her Mother’s passing a number of things have surfaced that I find confusing, my wife on the other hand understands these things perfectly. Her mother loved to travel, love to spend time with her children, even owned property in Colorado which was never developed. On numerous occasions over the past 10-15 years we tried to get her mother to travel and see as much as she could (everyone knew she was fading) but she never did. Her excuse was always that “I just can’t afford it”. Even offering to pay her way was met with “No thanks, I’ve got to much going on here to home to leave right now”

As it turns out, money was not an issue; in fact she could have fulfilled all of her travel desires and then some with the money that she had stashed away. My wife tells me that she purposely choose to forgo her desires in favor of providing for her children all of which are grown and perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.

Not that I am saying that she lived a wasted life, far from it, however what I struggle with is giving up a dream that was not necessary to give up.