In the year 2000, author Mitch Albom wrote a book titled “Tuesdays with Morrie”  chronicling his weekly visits with  his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz who was terminally ill with ALS. Although, thank God, we have no major illness in our lives, I realize as I am now 65 and my husband is 74, that we have a finite number of days left to enjoy life and each other. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard my husband say “I’d like to go there”; however, for what ever reason, he never makes any plans to do so.  (He only plans hunting and fishing trips.)

He’s said it enumerable times about going to Nashville to visit his nieces and nephews and also to catch up with his high school friend who he hasn’t seen in over fifty years. He’s so accustomed to me making all our travel plans, be it personally or with my travel agent, that he does nothing. I’ve told him repeatedly when he says he wants to go to Nashville, to make plans for it; pick a weekend, make reservations, find something to do with our dogs and just let me know. I’m totally retired now so my weekends, for the first time in five years, are all my own.

Back to my Mondays with Morie. My husband still works (or did up until a month ago) work 25-30 hrs a week delivering auto parts for a local company. He does this because he doesn’t have a pension; just his social security which he took early at 62, so it isn’t all that much. He’s old school and feels bad that he’s not able to contribute more to our household income. He’s been dealing with an intestinal issue for the last six months and and finds that once he gets home from work, he often collapses in his chair and stays there. After many months of talking, I finally convinced him to cut down to four days a week. He now has Monday’s free and we decided to make that our day date and go to all the places around St. Louis that we haven’t gone because there never seemed to be enough time.

Ergo, Episode 1 of Monday’s with Morie–Soldiers Musuem.

The Soldiers Memorial is part of the Missouri History Museum and is located in downtown St. Louis.

It was recently renovated and had been closed for some time, reopening in fall of 2018. The museum contains exhibits from the civil war through WWII and beyond. Unfortunately, our visit was short-circuited by a power outage that disabled all the visual and audible exhibits, leaving us only with displays and photographs. When we left, we decided to have lunch at a south city deli (and you have to realize how out of our comfort zone that was to appreciate it).