The other night, I stayed up later than usual to watch the multiple Oscar-nominated film, “Terms of Endearment.” It’s a film based on Larry McMurtry’s book, with one significant difference: The film adds a major character — the middle-aged, former astronaut Garrett Breedlove (played to perfection by Jack Nicholson, who won the Oscar for Best […]
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After the Major Transition of Loss
Life Brings Other Transitions I joined the Widow’s Voice team about two months into my loss. Each writer (one for each day of the week) writes about whatever is relevant in their life that week. For about two months now, I have been in a state of transition. Preparing my home for a tenant involved […]
Magical Powers
Today I opened an assignment one of my kids participated in for school. The question posed to these middle schoolers was: If you had to choose one magic power for the rest of your life, what would it be? Why would you choose this power? This assignment was completed on a discussion board of sorts, […]
A Birthday Tribute to My Mom
Tomorrow, October 5th, would have brought the celebration of my mom’s 99th birthday. So many of my good friends lost their moms before they even reached age 30. I know they missed out on having their mothers there for so many family milestones, or just every day nice moments, phone conversations, shopping, lunches, and […]
Advice for the newly widowed …
I started writing here at Widow’s Voice as part of my own journey in this unfortunate “club”. But I also write so that other widowed people may stumble on these ramblings and potentially find some sort of solace or help or at least know that they’re not alone in what they’re going through (even though […]
Family Business
I hadn’t seen Paul and Joanne since their grandson’s birthday party in July, so I was looking forward to having lunch together this past Wednesday. They were both looking fit, I thought, having obviously lost weight since our last encounter. I made a mental note that each had left a few forkfuls of food on […]
Holding Up a Mirror
To Things Previously Unseen FILM AS MEDICINE I discovered something new… when watching a favorite film recently. Its title is perfect—The Meddler, with Susan Sarandon—but the first time I watched it, I didn’t agree. The film opens directly into loneliness. Marnie, the protagonist, lies in her bed staring at the ceiling fan. A feeling hangs […]
I No Longer Need My / Our Burial Plot
My close friend, J’s, husband passed away a few years ago. Lynn and I were very close to them, and when we would go out, we all joked that people would think the “couples” in our group were actually J and I, and Lynn and my friend’s husband. We just naturally would pair off when […]
Happily Accepting the “Silver” Medal
This weekend marks what would’ve been my 29th Wedding Anniversary, not the 30th that I mentioned in my last post. It gave me a little laugh when I realized my widowed brain error. 29th, or 30th, no matter, it’s a bittersweet occasion, but one to always honor. So many who shared our special day, and […]
That is the roller coaster that is life.
Whoever first coined the phrase, “life is like a roller coaster”, really was spot on. It’s all there – anticipation, regret, excitement, anxiety, smooth sailing, times when you feel like you’ll fly off track, and of course, all the peaks and valleys. What goes up, must come down and what goes down goes up again. […]
Prayers in Honor of the Dead
This is the time of year when Jewish people celebrate the High Holy Days, which include Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Since at least the fourteenth century, they have followed a custom known in Hebrew as Kever Avot, meaning “grave of the fathers,” where they offer graveside prayers in […]
Pausing in the Badlands
A Day in the Life of a BadA** Widow Tiny pause in the series for a Badass widow story. Long story, but I found out I can leave two bags of refuse each day at the dump! I went! A kind soul at the landfill office window gave me the required orange vest to […]