So another Christmas has passed us by, my third without my husband. Initially, I felt like this one was going to be a bit easier than my past two, and I guess in some ways it was. However despite enjoying the festive build-up, the Christmas parties, house-decorating and gift-buying, the heaviness in my heart on Christmas day was unavoidable. A…
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Keep Them Alive at Christmas
As I sit down at my parents house in Massachusetts to write this blog, about 15 minutes before midnight, it is Christmas Eve. By the time many of you read this, it will be Christmas Day. I find it fitting that Christmas Day would fall on a Friday this year, therefore making it my day to write in the Widows Voice blog. Christmas Day, and the entire…
Sadness and Sugarplums
Here’s the sucky thing about being widowed. Well, one of the many sucky things about it anyway. Holidays will always be hard. They will always be tarnished with lost love and that empty chair at the table. There is just no getting around it, and it doesn’t matter how long it’s been. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this year – my third since Mike…
Trying not to Grinch the Holidays~
I feel like such a grinch with the holiday season. Honestly, it was never a big day for me or my husband, especially once the kids left home. The days we celebrated, the days that meant so much to us, were our birthdays~the days we each came into this world~and our anniversary~the day we joined our lives. That wet-blanket feeling of the…
Into the Woods, Part 2
I think I may be starting to sound like a broken record with all of my “nature” posts, but regardless, I’m writing about it again. I’m even stealing the title of Sarah’s post on Sunday, and rolling with it. Seeing as how we’ve both written about something we did together, I see no shame in making a “Part 2” It feels odd,…
Touching the Past
I sometimes wonder what would happen if all the wishes people made on stars came true. Where would my life be today if my whims were met by the imaginary wish granter in the sky who hears the things our hearts whisper when we witness those flashes of light across the night sky? One thing is certain, my heart has definitely not been whispering over…
Into the Woods
Patience. I’m trying my hardest to have some lately… with myself, with change, with pain. It’s easier said than done. I am beginning to realize that it is going to take a lot longer to adjust to moving somewhere so far away than I’d imagined. Especially while carrying my grief on my back wherever I go. No matter how much good there is…
A Fear I Can’t Ignore
I’m going to let you in on a little secret… one that I’m not even sure I’ve fully admitted to myself. I’m scared. My best friend is due to have her first baby in less than five weeks and I’m starting to feel absolutely petrified about it. Amidst all the excitement and happiness over the past few months that has surrounded her pregnancy,…
You Find What Works
So, today, December 18th, is the 10 year anniversary of my husband Don asking me to marry him, on a 23 degree windy Sunday evening, exactly one week before Christmas. Knowing my obsession with the Christmas holiday and the the entire season, he took me to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, got down on one knee in front of hundreds of total…
Far From Ideal
“Far from ideal”…just one phrase uttered by my friend Margaret during a recent conversation about the state of our lives well into year three of losing our husbands. It caught my ear because indeed…so much of our world now is far from ideal. We realized too during that conversation that our lives with our husbands were probably not…
Experimenting at Life~
I’m experimenting. I’m making decisions that go against my nature and against what I’d like to do, and, instead, I’m doing shit that is way out of my comfort zone. These decisions wouldn’t have been outside my comfort zone when Chuck was alive, but they have been, and remain so, now. Grief changes us, doesn’t it?In order to be…
Falling Water
There exists in Cuyahoga Valley National Park a small waterfall called “Blue Hen Falls”. For thousands of years, this ripple of water has been flowing over a sandstone ledge in 3 ribbons, proceeding on its course towards the Cuyahoga River. Spring Creek, it’s namesake being a natural seep about 1000 yards upstream, isn’t a…