Tomorrow, July 15, is the 5-year anniversary of the day we arrived in Florida. Lots and lots (and lots) happened in the last 5 years. My life today doesn’t resemble anything I imagined it would when we were driving from Wisconsin to a VRBO condo in Englewood, excited about new beginnings and the prospect of retirement life in the sun and sand.
Randy and I became homeless on June 20, 2021. We closed on the house we were selling in Linn Creek, MO and still hadn’t found a house to move to in Florida. We signed a 2-month VRBO rental agreement in Englewood, but we couldn’t check in there until July 15, 2021. We planned to couch-surf and visit friends and family for three weeks until we could take our stuff to the condo.
While we were homeless, I found, we made an offer on, and were chosen to purchase (yes, that was how competitive the real estate market was in July 2021) a house in Florida. It’s a long story about which I’ve written before. We bought this house sight unseen (well, we video-toured it) and ended up really liking it a lot. It needed a lot of work and updating though. A 30-year old house in Florida (ours was built in 1993) is ancient.
The kitchen was the first project we decided to tackle. That decision resulted in both a newly remodeled workspace that I loved, and one of my first best friends in Florida. Michele (who I mention a lot here at 68andCounting) a designer for Just Counters, reconfigured our kitchen beautifully based on our desires, and inspired both me and Randy to start blogs. I still speak to her nearly every day. She’s proven to be a thoughtful, intelligent, caring, and faithful friend through thick and thin.
Hurricane Ian, a high Cat 4 hurricane when it made landfall near here, blew through this area we call home with a vengeance on September 28, 2022. Not expecting it to be as bad as it ended up being, we were hunkered down at home as winds exceeding 150 mph at times pounded us for about 12 hours. For the record, I’m never staying for another hurricane. When all was said and done, we had more than $100,000 worth of damage to this house. In the end though, most of the outdoor building improvements and replacements we knew had to be done anyway were taken care of by insurance. We were in disarray for pretty close to a year, but it worked to our financial advantage in the long run.
The following year, 2023, started early with a suspicious mammogram for me. They diagnosed my second bout of breast cancer (the first one was in 2008). Most of that summer was spent dealing with a lumpectomy and breast reduction gone bad from that diagnosis. I never really felt like I was going to die of cancer but we made some hard decisions about quality vs quantity of life and what treatment I would accept or decline. That year was also very cancer research heavy. Between continuing to work on repairing all the damage to our home and making peace with the cancer treatment decisions, it finished far better than it started.
In 2024 we finally had a relatively uneventful year where we played more than we worked and weren’t reacting to events we hadn’t anticipated. We began to plan for our 50th wedding anniversary in 2025. Randy and I were both looking forward to celebrating the fact that we hadn’t given up on our marriage in the years that were tougher than others. We were now living a life we only dreamed about in years past as we thought about what our retirement would look like.
I know Randy never expected to be living in Florida, yet here we were. I’ve written the story about how, after visiting this tropical paradise several times between 2019 and 2021 I expressed my longing to live here someday. Randy assured me that was never going to happen, yet in April 2021, he claims God spoke to him about the fact that I’d followed him around for 25 years, and it might be time for him to follow me around for a while.
As we entered the beginning of our 50th anniversary year in 2025, in February I was told that breast cancer once again reared its ugly head. Randy and I made the decision to solve the problem in the most efficient manner available to us…a bilateral mastectomy. I wasn’t going to let cancer continue to plague me like that.
We made a trip to Wisconsin in May to help coordinate my mom’s move to a senior living community, scheduled the mastectomy for June so that I could be healed in time to embark on our Epic 50th Anniversary Grand Adventure Road Trip, and continued to plan to celebrate our 50th anniversary year in the way we’d originally envisioned it. We prayed there would be no complications reminiscent of the 2023 ordeal. Thankfully, there weren’t.
That Road Trip featured visits with friends and family all over the country, with an Alaskan cruise smack dab in the middle of the adventure. It was a magical time for me and Randy, of which I’ve written extensively in the fall months of 2025. We capped the year off with another cruise to the Caribbean the week of our actual anniversary date (December 12). What great memories I have of the year we created in 2025.
In addition to all the fun stuff, in 2025 we remodeled both bathrooms and replaced the floors right at the end of the year, thanks to a last-minute cancellation of another job the contractor had. Though scheduled for the first few months of 2026, when we were presented with the opportunity to finish it by the end of the year we decided, why not do it now! God obviously knew the other plans He had for us in 2026.
Of course, regular readers know those other plans included a shocking advanced cancer diagnosis for Randy, and his permanent move from SW Florida to heaven 7 weeks ago today.
So here I am, in what I think is a beautiful house, among scores of new and old friends, only an hour and a half from my youngest and most fun sister (who loves Florida as much as I do) and her husband, contemplating, again, what the NEXT 5 years, without Randy, will look like for me. I have no plans to move back north. Being up there for 3 weeks of the last month reminded me why and how much I love the sun and the sand here.
As I’ve said so often in posts the last month…adventure awaits. I’m grateful for the truly wonderful life I had with Randy. But he’s gone. I’m not. I’m open to what’s ahead. If I’d left first, I’d be cheering for him to be open to what’s ahead. I know him so well. I know exactly what he’s thinking from heaven…. “live, Laurie. Continue to live for both of us.”
P.S. My brother Denny is home from nearly a week in the hospital and is doing well. Miraculously, there is no heart muscle damage from the confirmed heart attack he had on the 4th of July. Thanks for your prayers and good, healing thoughts. Interesting story. Denny and his wife Marlene were suppose to go camping up to northern Wisconsin that morning. Their truck blew a head gasket. Denny said he knows that if he’d been that far north, away from quick emergency medical services, he probably wouldn’t have lived through that medical emergency. The paramedics broke 4 of his ribs giving him CPR. Me…? I can see Randy and my dad up there in heaven tinkering with Denny’s truck that morning, arranging that blown head gasket to keep him in town.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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