It's the start of a new chapter in my life

So very much has happened over the last five years, that I couldn't begin to discuss it all in one post.  Here's a short version.   Rob had an serious accident on his scooter in October 2013 and almost died from a severe head injury.  His recovery was far beyond what the doctors expected and he was able to come home after a couple of months in the hospital.  He had a slow and steady improvement, however, he never was able to get back to 100% and return to work.  The years of 2014 and part of 2015 were spent helping my mom who had been diagnosed with cancer.  She made it through the difficult treatment and was pronounced cancer free at the end of it.  Towards the end of 2015 my dad's kidney failure became progressively worse.  He managed to pull off one last Christmas with the family, but died in January 2016.  A few months later, my mom's cancer returned and she had major surgery and further chemo.  We made it through all of that, only to have her experience an allergic reaction to medication which resulted in an emergency tracheotomy.  She never really recovered from that and died in July of 2017.  The year of 2018 hasn't fared much better. My brother had a heart attack and almost died.  Fortunately, he had a successful bypass surgery and recovered completely so I had hopes that I was finally done with this sort of thing.  Until Rob started getting sick.  He wouldn't go to the doctor, no matter how much his friends and I pushed him to go.  And to my great sorrow, Rob died on Monday, September 17th. I thought it was difficult losing my parents, but losing my soulmate has been much, much harder.  

Although I am grieving, life does go on and I've decided to pick up this blog again.  Writing has always helped me through the tough times in my life and I'm not sure why I stopped posting here during these last five difficult years.  Maybe it's because I had so little free time or maybe it's because I just didn't want to write about all the turmoil.   Either way, that chapter of my life has closed now so I think I'll give it another go during this next one.