A: I’ll be devastated if they don’t playB: I’m sure Mick’s more devastatedA: It’s all a matter of perspective.The Rolling Stones were due to play my city on Saturday night just gone and this was one exchange that appeared on my Facebook feed in the first 24 hours of Mick Jagger joining our ranks.My jaw was on the ground and I thought “I’m…
Blog
Creating
There are times when I start to write a post or create a new art project and I get stuck. Suddenly, every idea I have and every mark I make or word I type is wrong. Wrong, stupid, vapid, empty, annoying, pandering, arrogant, contrived. I annoy myself. I disgustmyself. I decide that I will not be able to write anything helpful. I will not be able…
Listen
“Listen- life is really going on, right now, around us. Do you see it? Sometimes I lose it, but if I sit still and listen, it comes back, and then I think, how funny, this is what being alive is.” -Robin MorganI need to start this blog post with apologizing.In the 5 years of being a Widow’s Voice writer, I’ve recently been failing at my Saturday…
Weighing the Days
Yesterday was a hard day. Exactly a week until Drew’s birthday, perhaps I don’t remember how hard it was last year… but I could swear it’s hitting me harder this year. My body seems so much more aware of the lack of his body, but also just the feeling of him in the space is far more distant now. I downplayed that first sentence… it was a…
The Second Thing
A fellow widowed friend of mine recently brought my attention to this wonderful quote, said by the character Reddington, from the TV show The Blacklist. The quote is this:”There is nothing that can take the pain away, but eventually you will find a way to live with it. There will be nightmares, and everyday when you wake up, it will be the first…
The little things
…that annoy me (and drive me to drink).Warning – disorganised tiredness and general whining follows….. Somedays I think being a widow has taught me patience, but there are other days when I realise my fuse is very short and I have no time for pedants and things that make my life harder.I question why, instead of helping to simplify my…
Random Thoughts from a Disorganized Mind~
Each morning I wake up, knowing I slept, so I’m glad for that, but not feeling rested at all. By the evening, after a day spent getting through, well, the day, I’m done in. I take melatonin when I remember and that helps sometimes.Since my husband’s death, I’ve taken my wedding ring off entirely, along with my engagement ring, put them back on,…
Luck O’ The Irish
Ian loved celebrating his birthday with his friends, so last year, on his birthday, we marked the one year anniversary of him getting sick by going back to the restaurant we had to leave so quickly in 2012.Earlier this week I got a call from one his mates looking to see if I was planning to repeat the lunch for the second anniversary on St…
Loss
I was stuck for ideas the other day in art class and the teacher was trying to help me brainstorm. Make it autobiographical, he said, in his cheery 20-something voice, about the movie poster I was assigned to create.Autobiographical? I thought. Huh. Yeah. I began to sort through my life events. Lost my mom (and my dad, too, if we’re talking…
Camp Widow
Since I lost my fiancé almost 2 years ago, I have been acutely aware of how uncomfortable my very presence makes people at times. I talk about it less and less on Facebook, and even with my closest friends and family. It turns out people really don’t like being reminded of death. Who knew? I’ve started to feel like I am carrying around some bad…
Happy
This past Saturday night, while at Camp Widow East in Tampa, Florida – I was sitting at one of the tables at the fancy banquet that Soaring Spirits throws for us during each of the camp events. I was talking to my friend Sarah (who writes in here each Sunday), whom I had been talking with in regular phone calls and online for months and months…
Lesser Losses
When the children were small, I convinced Greg that we should get some pets so that the children could learn about life cycles early in life. They would experience the love and loss of a pet and understand that everything that lives must die.So Greg captured some pullets from themany of chooks at the farm back in 2006.These were hardy farm…