I’m filling in for Kelley Lynn today, she will be back next week! This post was written about four years after Phil died. It’s amazing how the written words mean the same thing literally, but six years later their figurative meaning has shifted yet again.Over the past four years grief and I have reluctantly become friends. Grief is not the kind of…
Blog
Tick, Tock…
When we met, Mike was 45 and I was 31. He died at 59, when I was 44. Now I am only a few days away from my own 47th birthday. I think about this a lot these days. Getting older; being middle-aged. Being older now than Mike was when we met. And the fact that I will not share those same years with Mike that he did with me. He was so…
Wandering Wonders
I wonder if I’ll ever wake up again. Wake up to the point where I feel anything besides numbness or pain or his absence.I wonder if I’m okay or if this grief has become complicated. Lately I’ve been reading some articles that suggest that it might be. Except that I only really meet one or two of the criteria and there’s upwards of ten. So…
Doppelganger
One issue I’ve found with having a few people having died on me when they were younger is the issue of doppelgängers – people who freakishly look the same. I’ve encountered them for my stepfather as I’m out around my city. Sometimes the right shape from behind, sometimes a glimpse of a profile. But I’ve not yet encountered Ian…
Tender Touch
I awakened last night, and reached for my husband in the dark, only to find that now familiar, empty space, instead. And I remembered how I would drape my leg over his, at night, and press my stomach against his back. Sometimes, he would stir, slightly, and tell me to take my leg off of him. He said my legs were too heavy. He referred to them as…
Both Feet In
This past week, a friend of mine shared a story with me about a woman she recently met while out shopping for boots at a western store. As they looked through the sale rack, the woman told her how she got through the death of her husband by promising herself a new pair of cowboy boots every time she had to do something hard in relation to her…
A Little Bit of Happy and a Little Bit of Sad.
This coming Monday would have been my husband’s 36th birthday. Instead, it will be the second that I had to mark without him. All week I’ve felt the weight of my grief with such intensity. The disbelief that he’s gone. The whys, the if onlys and the its not fairs. He died in…
Five More Minutes
I want to begin this post by letting you know that I am not suicidal. I am not going to do anything to harm myself , nor would I ever. Expressing feelings and taking actions on those feelings are two different things entirely, and I know this very well, and I am very aware of this. I am saying this because I know that some of you that may be…
Blossom and Fade
I sit here at Mike’s old desk, a glass of wine by my elbow and the almost full moon shining brightly through the window, and wonder what I would be doing now were he still alive. I pause for a moment and think of our other writers here and their lives; all of our struggles, changes, decisions and thoughts in the wake of our losses. And all the…
Shape-Shifting
This confusing, weird, strange, life as a widow.I’ve stored PinkMagic for a couple of months while I’m here in Arizona, while I take a break from the road to write my book and rest a bit. While I’m here, I’m staying with my son and his wife and family, which is wonderful and I know that they’re happy to have me but…my mind….oh, my mind and…
“Until my dying day…..”
“…until my last breath.” My wife Megan and I had those words tattooed onto our forearms on February 8th, 2014. It was my suggestion, and she was completely taken aback by it. Not because she wasn’t sold on the idea of a little ink (she had sixteen tattoos already), but because I suggested it and came up with the whole plan. I only had two…
Turning Back the Clock
I saw a grief post, recently, that resonated with me. It said “I wish I could turn back the clock: I’d find you sooner and love you longer.”When I read about other widows or widowers who lived with their spouses for decades, before they died, I feel sad for them. I think it must be so difficult to lose a partner with whom one has shared an entire…