See Ya Later, Myrna

Operation midlife crisis is kind of lonely. I went from my phone going off constantly to total silence overnight. At first, I loved it—finally free from being available all the time. Now, I can disappear into the woods for hours, foraging off-grid without worrying about work.

But Monday, I caught myself checking my phone a lot. Habit, I guess. Still, I was disappointed to find no new messages.

I’m struggling to settle into a routine—no surprise there, right? Not exactly my jam. Writing is going slower than a two-legged turtle (because I’m not putting in the effort), my rafting adventures ended earlier than expected, and I’m still sore from my last fight with the river.

So I’m in limbo. But honestly, limbo’s not the worst place to be. I finally have time for things I used to put off. Over the past week, I’ve gutted and reorganized three rooms in the house, evicting dust bunnies the size of actual rabbits and collecting stuff we had to have at some point but no longer use.

At first, I thought I’d haul it to a flea market or rent booth space at the local indoor market—but I haven’t hit that level of commitment. Booth rental is $100, and I don’t think I even have $100 worth of goods to sell. Outdoor flea markets are an option, but people start showing up at 4 a.m., and I don’t have enough stuff to justify dragging my happy ass out of bed at 3.

So do I buy more stuff to make it worthwhile? Or just find something else to occupy my time until my hoard of novelties expands?

My hesitation isn’t random—I’ve watched others go down this path. Some women I know love flipping bargains for profit and do it successfully. But others just end up collecting junk, drowning in clutter, one estate sale away from an episode of Hoarders.

Antiques and vintage items require more money—and a more niche buyer. eBay’s an option, but their fees are ridiculous now. I learned a little about that world from working with Myrna at her Texas shop, Jewels and Junk.

Myrna was a petite Texas woman with a heart of gold who didn’t take crap from anyone. She had a soft spot for animals, especially the forgotten and abandoned. Folks down on their luck would wander in asking for money, and she’d give it—after they washed windows, took out trash, or moved furniture heavier than her 80-pound frame.

She was a chain smoker but not a cusser, and she loved that little shop almost as much as her husband, Jerry, loved her. Jerry towered over her, walked with a limp, and spent his retirement helping his son raise cattle and helping Myrna haul in her treasures.

Myrna would buy entire house contents, then pack everything up fast. We’d be up before the sun, wrapping breakables in newspaper, loading box after box into trucks and trailers. It took a day to clean out a place, but it would take Myrna weeks to go through it all—item by item, pricing, polishing, and inspecting.

She loved that Google replaced her antique value books. But she hated seeing people walk around with their noses in their phones.

Lunch breaks were sacred. We’d get fried chicken gizzards or submarine sandwiches with extra mayonnaise—so much that it dripped down her hands while she grinned ear to ear. “The cigarettes will get me before the mayo ever does,” she’d say. She was right.

Myrna had been diagnosed with lung cancer ten years before I met her. Her family pressured her to quit smoking—patches, gum, even chewing tobacco—but she always came back to her Eagle menthols in the green box. I never gave her a hard time. I was a smoker then too. I understood.

Smoking calmed her, and at 75, she wasn’t willing to change. Her kids gave her hell about it, and she hated feeling like she was letting them down.

Jerry died in 2019 at age 82. I had been in Tennessee for five years by then, but I still called regularly and even visited a few times. Without Jerry, Myrna was more lost than I expected. They argued like angry beavers and slept in separate rooms, but their love held them together.

She stopped going to her shop. Said she was sorting through everything she’d collected over the years. The attic was filled with records—seven copies of Thriller and more Elvis albums than I could count.

We kept in touch until 2022, when Myrna stopped answering her phone. Eventually, the landline was disconnected. I reached out to her daughter on Facebook but—no surprise—got no reply.

There was no love lost between her kids and me. Plot twist: I was married to her son for all of three months. Wade and I had dated on and off for years, and I thought I could save him. We got married in hoodies at the courthouse, and it went downhill fast. He quit his job and stayed home drinking Natural Light.

Everyone knew it would fail—including me—but I had to try. The girls and I moved out, but I stayed close with his parents. His brother and sister kept pretending I didn’t exist.

Still, I wanted to know what happened. One of the last things Myrna said to me was, “I love you, I’m proud of you, and I don’t ever want to lose contact.” But we did.

I figure she moved in with her son and his wife. As much of an ass as he was to me, he was a devoted mama’s boy and would’ve taken care of her. I called around to local nursing homes, but no luck.

Every now and then, I’d peek at her daughter’s public Facebook page. On July 8, 2024, she posted that Myrna had passed.

My heart sank. I never got to say goodbye.

Her obituary was awful. A few lines about being a wife and mother—nothing about who she really was. Whoever wrote it phoned it in. Myrna deserved better.

She’s buried beside her parents, Jerry, and Wade—who drank himself to death in 2016. I haven’t been back. Don’t know if I ever will. When I left Texas, Myrna told me, “I don’t say goodbye. I just say ‘see ya later,’ because by God, I will.”

Lately, I’ve been keeping up my yoga practice—an hour a day—followed by 30 minutes of meditation. It took me three years to build up to that. I started with five minutes and crawled my way to thirty.

About a week ago, I was sitting cross-legged in my meditation room, incense burning, candles flickering—and I smelled cigarette smoke. Clear as day.

And there she was.

We talked about the past—laughing about the time we found a sex swing in an estate sale and swung on it, not realizing what it was. Or when she found $2,000 in $100 bills stuffed inside shoes in a master bedroom closet.

It was calm. Easy. Surprisingly not weird.

I told her I was sorry we lost touch. She smiled and said, “Well, we obviously didn’t, did we?”

We ended with a “see ya later.”

As the bells sounded to end my meditation, I had tears streaming down my face. But I felt lighter. Lifted. Free.

I’d been carrying guilt about losing touch. Now, I’m not. I haven’t seen her again—but I sure hope I do.