Dec 29, 2016 4 min read

I have a framed sign in my office of this Mark Twain quote: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lighting bug and the lightning.”

Sometimes, with a deadline looming, I will stop in mid-sentence to let my fingers do arpeggios across the keyboard, hoping to find the one precise word. Sad is the right word for today.

This is my last column for this newspaper. Budget cuts have become the reality of the newspaper business, and the powers that be have decided to use the space for other things. It’s been almost 20 years for me here, can you believe it?

This column started when my son was a baby and now he’s a college senior. It has seen the birth of my daughter, who will soon begin selecting her own college path. It has seen me through cancer and treatment-which cruelly coincided with the failure of my marriage.

And through all of that, you were there, shouting into that space between us with encouragement, funny stories and about a million recipes for using up all the zucchini we grow.

My parents have clipped and saved every column I’ve written, and placed them in the plastic sleeves of binders. The binders are heavy with my words; if my math is right, I’ve written about 1,200 columns.

I pre-write in my head during my nightly power walks. I usually can count on those three miles to come up with an idea; then I come home and hang words on the bones of that idea.

For about a year now, I’ve been conjuring some future columns that, sadly, will never make it onto this page.

Someday I would have surprised you with news that I had gotten married again. How, as I’d started to feel better after my illness, I reconnected with a friend who grew up across the street from me when we were little kids. How it turned out he was in Argentina, where he had a farm in wine country. How I visited him there – and visited again – and then through some gift from the universe, found a way to get him back here. Maybe we will run off, or maybe we’ll have a small shindig, but we’ll probably get hitched someday.

There would have been other happy columns, about my son’s graduation and his launching a photography career; and about what my daughter decides to do for her own career – maybe teaching or nursing.

And there now won’t be columns about grandchildren. Stupidly, I always assumed I would be on this page as an old woman, until the end. Now, I won’t know how it all turns out.

What a strange sentence that was. Of course I’ll be there for what happens next. But I’ve become so used to writing it all down here, that my columns have been proof that it has happened. This column has given my weeks a rhythm and structure; it has focused my thoughts and has allowed (and forced) me to really think about my life.

So, this is it, my friends, my last few hundred words to you. If the paper allowed me a million more words, I should use them to express how grateful I am that you were there, reading me all these years. You guys were with me through some difficult days. And you helped me use up all my zucchini.

This feels unfinished. But I can tell you things are going to work out OK. I won’t be writing about it here, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Things are going to turn out fine for me. Better than fine – things will turn out happy.

And that’s what I’ll always wish for every one of you.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.