Besides death and taxes, one other thing we can depend on in life is change. Even more than level of income or education, it's our ability to adapt to those changes that measures our "success" in life. Most of us get into whatever our comfortable rut is and that's where we want to stay for the rest of life. It's cozy there in the circle of our family, friends, and work colleagues. We go from day to day doing whatever it is that we define as our responsibilities, and assume that's the way it's going to be. But sometimes something happens to force us to review our lives--where we are, where we've been--and what has to happen now.

As early as 1995 there were rumors of layoffs and the possible closing of my husband's company office. Due to the slowdown of the industry he was working in, much of our last four years there he had found it necessary to take consulting assignments that took him out of town, so I lived solo weekdays. Weekends we continued to enjoy our mountains (the Great Smokies) and hoped things would get better. Unfortunately there were too many companies in Oak Ridge all vying with each other for the same government contracts.

Houses were going on the market all around us in Knoxville and Oak Ridge as layoffs began. But few people could buy the houses because there were hiring freezes everywhere, so a lot of people were in a bind. Something had to give! Near the end of 1996 it did. My husband's job and others were phased out with only a skeleton crew remaining to keep the company going. We were lucky. My husband was given a generous severance package that included a "retirement" plan based on his just-short-of-20-year service.

Always the optimist, he set about doing all the "right things" to procure a new job. He alerted his associates in the field that he was available, signed up with a professional placement service, even looked into other areas of work that might utilize his years of management experience in scientific study outside his field. He's always said one should never leave a job before finding a new one to go to, and this forced exit proved him right. Once he was out of circulation, so to speak, it wasn't long before many of his contracts dired up.

As for myself, I'd been out of the job market for 25 years, and having already passed my 50th birthday, I felt ill-prepared to contribute to the household income. The best salary I could hope for would probably be no more than the current minimum wage IF I were able to land a job at all.

My husband insisted I had marketable skills, and that I should go for a job not so much for the money but to make me feel good about myself. A good friend did some investigating and set me up with an organizatin in Knoxville that was set up specifically to help women who--like me--had been homemakers most of their adult lives, market themselves for a job. I literally dragged my feet all the way to the first meeting, so convinced was I that nobody would want to hire me. The only thing I felt fairly confident about was my ability to write, and my proficiency with computers and word processors. For every writing position, I was sure there were already hundreds of people available, and all more qualified than I of course.

I kept combing the job openings for any kind of work in the local newspaper (Knoxville News Sentinel), and soon saw an advertisement for a part-time position at the newspaper itself. I summoned my courage and drove downtown to their offices to fill out an application. Columnist Ina Hughs had been there many years, and I was involved in her creative writing group. Not that I wanted her to "get me a job" but I thought she might be a good reference for my writing skills. Later I learned from Roy, the Head of the Obituary Department, that she did chat with him, but he insisted that his decision to hire me did not rest on that conversation alone. What I do know for sure is that job saved me in so many ways.

I learned that Yes! I could learn new skills after 50, proven after I learned the new software for formatting the obituaries--appropriately called Osiris for the Egyptian god of death.

There was a lot of work and all under unrelenting deadlines. The paper had to be "put to bed" on time each evening so that it could be delivered before subscribers awoke the next morning. Once in awhile, due to deadline pressures, we were required to take down information given us over the telephone, typing as we listened. My typing speeds grew to 115 words per minute.

At times we had to meet grieving family members in the front office, which takes a certain level of "people" skill. Understandably, a grieving person is not always the most pleasant one to do business with. It requires a lot of tact.

Sitting in the comfort of our home here in the Southwest, long after our Tennessee departure, I look back and see that, only after my husband and I decided that whatever happened was for a purpose and that our lives would go on, is when things started to get better. He found a job that turned out to be one of the biggest challenges and wage earning of his career, and I became a docent at a historical setting in the Las Vegas, Nevada area, landing in our present Utah location in 2005.

Ever since then, I know that sometimes in order to regain equilibrium, you have to be willing to let go of control, at the same time KNOWING that in the end you will come out just fine. So my motto now is "change makes us grow, so accept it as it comes along and go on with life." It may be a different life than the one we had or imagined we'd live, but it will still be a good one. My taking on a new endeavor of writing for the Elders Tribune will be a change. Change leads to growth.