When Rick met Nan, he fell madly in love, they were married, bought a nice home, and had their sweet daughter Monica. Unfortunately, he struggled with holding down jobs because he would party too hard and not be able to make it to work, he would be me argumentative and that would cause problems with his marriage and family life. That took a toll on the relationship and any stability that he had in his life - and eventually led to divorce and many years of homelessness on the streets of Madison. He was never able to accept responsibility for his actions and found ways to put the blame on others.
My brother Randy rescued him from his life on the streets, got to him to Springfield, MO and in a treatment program where he uncovered the Rick that I remembered as a young man and he stayed clean for a long time. Rather than move to a group home after a year of sobriety, he chose to have an apartment of his own and eventually started drinking again, spending all of his $$$ early in the month and being broke the rest of the time - yet he always found a way to get booze. His life started to really deteriorate after a throat cancer diagnosis and treatment - he didn’t follow instructions, missed treatments and appointments and the cancer never left his body. A few years later it was back and eventually took his life on March 26, 2018.
Yesterday morning, I went with James, our Maintenance man, to Home Depot to purchase plants for the flower pots in front of my building (he had the credit card). He bought hanging baskets and soil and I loaded up on flowers. When we got back home, I proceeded to plant and this is the end product.
We have gone straight from winter and temps in the 50s to summer. The trees have turned green over the last weekend I’ve been noticing lots of flowers starting to bloom.
