Tomorrow is our first “Wedding” Anniversary. And, I call it our Wedding Anniversary even though Mike died before we said “I do”. I married him in a thousand different ways before he even asked me to be his wife. In our hearts we were husband and wife; And, now given the circumstance, people tell me that’s what matters. Still, I…
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A Wolf in Family Clothing
Over the river and through the woods, Tin’s Aunt had come down to see him before he passed and to help his mother handle a mother’s worst nightmare losing a child. She watched him grow, watched him thrive and now held him as he faded away. I can’t imagine and it seems unholy although if Jesus’ mother had to go through it than who am I to…
Working It Out
So, for the 457,000th time in my life, I have recently added exercise to my “trying to get healthier ” life routine. i joined the YMCA, and I have been taking classes, mostly in the pool. Water Zumba, water aerobics, water weights, things like this. It is actually a pretty damn good workout, and at the end of the hour-long class, I am totally wiped…
Get in the Casket and Die Too
The other week I saw this meme on Instagram about dying and not wanting the person you’re with to be happy afterwards and about how they should get in the casket and die too. It was framed in a “funny” way and meant to be a joke but I didn’t find it funny at all. I felt defensive, like it was an attack on me and other widows who have fought…
Love, On This Odyssey of Love
Perhaps one of the most helpful things I’ve learned in a little over 5 years of widowhood is this… I don’t have to be anything different, feel anything different, aspire to anything different…before going and doing whatever it is that I feel I must do to live this life without Chuck. I don’t have to have hope. I don’t even know what…
The Safe Choice
I met Megan when I was only twenty-two years old. I was fresh off of my active duty tour as a Marine, having been in the communications specialty for the past four years. My “job” was, effectively, IT, just as it is now. I was ready to “settle down” already. I had met a good woman, I was back home, with four years experience in my…
Love Note #1
My Love, I miss you to the depths of me. When I say to the depths of me, I mean I yearn for you, With all that I am -in my human form. And, then further. The aching for you lives, Both, inside and outside of me. I feel all the missingness, Loosely, messily, precariously Contained inside of me. Ricocheting off the corners of my…
The Spice of Life
It’s amazing how simple things can etch a memory deep into your heart. Music, sights, sounds and smells. Food and cooking has always brought back memories of family holidays and campfire stories. Tin loved food. That’s basically the understatement of the year. He would take anything we had in the kitchen and in an hour there would be a…
It’s Not Guilt, It’s Sadness
So it’s been 7 years since my beautiful husband left for work one morning, and never came home. Seven years since his shocking and sudden death. Seven years of living this life in the “after” of painful and life-changing loss. It’s a long time, and it isn’t. It’s forever, and it’s also ten seconds. In all of this time living with the death of my…
Badass Widows Reunited
This past weekend my friend from British Columbia flew to Ontario to come to visit me. I haven’t seen her in a year since we last did a road trip together. I’ve written about her before on my own personal blog about her being The Friend I Never Wanted. She is an amazing and inspiring person. She’s a young widow too and an incredible support.
Unshared Milestone
Yesterday would have been Megan and I’s thirteenth wedding anniversary. It has been the fourth since she died. We didn’t quite make it to a decade together as husband and wife, but we at least got to have the experience of buying our own home and becoming parents. We got to have a formal wedding, with a service in a church and a catered…
Falling out of Grief
I feel like this may need some sort of introductory explanation. Suffice to say, that this entry is kinda sultry; but, more so, it is fairly profound – at least to me. ~Staci I have figured out how to love Mike -in separation. And, I am not talking about some superficial, makeshift love. I am talking about deep, pure, passionate love. The type of…