I downloaded the photos from Ruth’s cell phone the other day. Turns out there were 3,887. That’s about 1,300 a year since she purchased the phone. Some were copies of photos people sent her, but each was something she valued, because she spent many a car ride deleting those that didn’t measure up to her critical eye.
Ruth looked at life differently than most. She saw the details. While my look was pretty much where my eyes were pointed, with the occasional glance from side to side, she looked everywhere at everything from every angle. She saw beauty in things where I just saw things. That’s just one of the reasons I valued her as my life partner so much. She took it all in, rearranged the things she thought needed to be rearranged, and left the world better than she found it.
She would turn a vase full of flowers, or a tower of glass balls, a quarter of an inch, because it “looked better” that way. She placed over a hundred pictures, plaques, several must haves, and assorted do dads in our Florida home. There’s at least twice that many in our Michigan condo. She seldom measured, and she never used a level. One look with her eyes was all she needed.
We spent the winters of 2010, 2011, and 2012 in Palm Springs, California. One year we drove. While driving across the flat lands of Texas she thought we should head north or south, rather than west, to “see what’s out there”. We were driving across some of the flattest land either of us had ever seen. I was convinced north, and south were more of the same, but she wasn’t so sure. “Let’s just go see.”
That’s when I offered up, “We’ve never driven west like this. If we head north or south, we won’t know what west looks like.” I was the logical one.
Looking back, I should have followed her lead and explored a bit more.