“Don’t lie” shouted my step-dad from the other side of the room. This exchange happened while my Mum was in ICU in April 2008. My dad called to check up, and we had our auto-pilot introductory exchange. My step-dad called it for what it was. My step-dad also said during this time, “Never get married. Loosing a spouse sucks”. Well…
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Spoons
Why do I keep expecting to be someone who hasn’t been through what I have? Why do I have these ridiculous expectations? Why do I feel less than because I’m so changed? Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be disabled by this tragedy, but I am anyway. I try not to use it as an excuse for my failures, but sometimes I forget that I am not as I…
The Dream & The Death
Today is a very big day. In just a few hours, I will be loading up nine of my large framed photos and delivering them safely to the local hospital for my first solo art exhibition. It is a lifelong dream come true. And mostly, it has been incredible. I told my counselor the other day that it feels like a dream… that it feels like I got dropped…
A Farewell Toast
It’s come. The time for me to step away as a writer for Widow’s Voice and let another share their life with all of you…to heal and learn in new ways and see things from another’s view. This moment was inevitable, as the only permanence in life is impermanence (as we all know too well…hence us being here), yet I want to share a bit of what it…
Secret Universe
The other day, I was watching the Yankee game, and the Yankees were playing at home, against the Seattle Mariners. Now, if you know anything at all about baseball or the Yankees, you might know that Robinson Cano left the Yankees at the end of last season, and signed on with the Mariners. It is complicated and has to do with contracts and…
A Long Strange Trip
I lost my husband on February 17, 2013. Mike had a heart attack in his sleep; he was 59. I was about a month away from my 45th birthday, and we were a few months away from our 14th wedding anniversary. I found him that morning. It was the single most shocking and horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. The past 439 days have been the longest,…
The Person Underneath
In the beginning, I couldn’t imagine talking about anything else. Did you hear? My husband died. I’m a widow. You have something else to talk about? Why? Is there anything else in the entire world that matters as much as this fact? Talking about anything else felt like forcing my brain to think around the sound of a tornado tearing through…
Strut
It’s been said that once we have found the true path, destiny unfolds before us like a red carpet. I’m a believer of that and the fact that much of destiny (if not all) is determined on our ability to self-propel ourselves into it. Sometimes we don’t notice our forward trajectory and the red carpet unfolds at a slow speed, that years…
Happy Birthday
Yesterday was my fiance’s 30th Birthday. I don’t say “would have been” because it doesn’t make me feel like I am allowed to still celebrate it when I saw that. So instead, I say that it was, and is, the day he turned thirty. Even if he isn’t here physically, saying it that IS his birthday helps me have permission to still celebrate.The morning…
Sick of It
I need to whine. Actually, scratch that. I’m not a whiner. I need to bitch.I am not in love with my life right now. Right this minute. This “after” life that was handed to me in grenade form, exploding in my hands seconds upon it’s rude entrance. Who the hell asked for this life – this life where I no longer have a husband? Where we don’t get to…
Day Number 5 on the Road
Hi there everyone. This is Megan from www.refugeingrief.com. I’m filling in for Amanda today. My partner, Matt, drowned on an otherwise ordinary day in July 2009, the first sunny day after 6 solid weeks of rain. He was 3 months shy of his 40th birthday. Last fall, I packed up the place where we’d lived, said goodbye to all the familiar…
Time. And love.
Time means nothing and it means everything since my husband died. My heart beats its’ rhythm. It plods and it races and jumps and bumps and shatters and breaks and leaps and is subtle and loud. All at the same time sometimes.In one month it will be one year since he died.I turned 56 two months after he died. When people ask me I always…