Six months after Joanna’s passing . . . remembering her humor and all that she meant to me 
by Bill Jones

(Scroll to the end for links to my previous blog tributes to Joanna since her passing.)

For the past few months, our church’s parish nurse has been sending me a series of books about grief. The third in that series arrived today. In the letter accompanying it, she urged me to grieve at my own pace, to ignore any who might try to tell me that six months is long enough to “get over it.” Thankfully, everyone in my circle of family and friends has been fully supportive and understanding, and no one has expected me to “get over it.”

Since Joanna passed away on February 14, I’ve spoken with quite a few friends who have lost their spouses of many years, and I haven’t found any of them who have gotten over it, even those whose spouses have been gone for a decade or more.

On this sixth “monthsary” of Joanna’s death, I simply want to share two very short videos with you.

The first video was recorded on August 29, 2008. We had built a new house at 1834 Childress Lane in Allen (about a 12-minute drive from our old one) and were preparing to leave, for the final time, the house in Plano, where we had lived for 21 years and raised our kids. When we moved there from Colorado in August 1987, Alison was 5 and starting kindergarten, and Travis was not quite 21 months old. By the time we left in August 2008, we were grandparents! Our first grandchild, Avery Lin Clements, had been born to Alison and Adam in October 2007. We had experienced a lot of changes, to say the least, during our years at 3808 Parkmont Drive.

First day of school was a special tradition in that house. On the first day of school, every year, I would record the kids – standing in the entryway, with their backpacks – responding to my questions: “What day is it? What grade are you going into? What school are you going to?” As they grew older, they grew increasingly impatient with my questions, and would show me a little “attitude,” mostly disgust!

Well, as Joanna and I prepared to leave our home of 21 years, we decided to record a tour of the house, for the sake of nostalgia and posterity. Before beginning the tour, however, we paid tribute to all of those “first day of school” videos, with Joanna playing the role of Alison/Travis and her purse playing the role of her backpack. In this short video, her sense of humor shines, as she plays her role perfectly, right down to the “attitude.”

Click here to view Joanna: “Leaving 3808 Parkmont.”

In August 2018 (it seems we’ve had quite a few significant events in August), Wilshire Baptist Church and the Texas Baptists Committed Board of Directors gave me a retirement dinner. My remarks at that dinner focused mostly on saying thank you to the many people who had been special contributors to my life and work through the years. I saved the best for last: saying thank you to Joanna. But it was more than just a thank you. It was my way of letting people know how important she was to me and what a very special person I had married. I was okay emotionally until I got to talking about Joanna . . . it was then that I finally started choking up and getting a little teary-eyed.

I’m so glad that I had that opportunity to say publicly – with her sitting there listening – just how very much she meant to me, and that I had come to admire and respect her more than anyone I knew. For you see, any joy that I’ve experienced over the past 48 years (since we started dating in January 1973), including the joy I’ve experienced in my Baptist-related work, was always tied to sharing it with her. I still find myself getting excited over something I read or hear or see, and my first thought is to go share it with Joanna . . . and then I remember that she’s not here anymore. Yes, I don’t expect to ever “get over it.”

So here is the video of my closing remarks at my retirement dinner, as I thank my family, culminating with my loving – and deeply heartfelt – tribute to Joanna.

Click here to view my tribute to Joanna at my retirement dinner.

My previous 5 blog tributes to Joanna since her passing on February 14:

7/14/21 – Five months after Joanna’s passing . . . remembering the lively soul who brought us joy
6/14/21 – Four months after Joanna’s passing . . . a few personal reflections
3/19/21 – Joanna spoke out against demeaning racial slurs and the fears they caused her as an Asian-American
2/22/21 – How Joanna and I got together . . . the beginning of our love story
2/19/21 – The painful journey that took the love of my life, Joanna . . . to the great heavenly banquet