Yesterday was one of those days. The kind that finds you hitting the snooze button, feeling a bit under the weather, and wishing like crazy it wasn’t Monday morning. Regardless of my wish, the demands of life motivated me to drag my tired butt out of bed and get going. Money doesn’t make itself, and little boys don’t take themselves to…
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Sorry to Meet You ….
…. ummmm, what? Doesn’t that sound a bit rude? SORRY to meet you? Well, one would assume that the above statement is very rude indeed …… if one is a person who is not reading this blog because they are not on this “path”. For the women (and men) who read this blog because you are on this path, I am very, very sorry to meet you.Let me…
Team Dippel
When my husband received his third and final cancer diagnosis in the fall of 2005, he decided to formalize his support team and designed a T-shirt that he intended to make and pass out to his posse. His shirt read: “Team Dippel, Living to Fight – Fighting to Live” on the front and on the back it read: “Fight to be Cancer Free in 2006”.
Who Am I?
Who am I? At 21, life threw a wrench into the mechanics of my life. I had found all the parts that made me me, all the parts that kept my heart racing, all the parts that made my dreams come true. But on May 21, 2007 a phone call would take it all away. Michael had been killed by multiple roadside bombs while serving in Baghdad, Iraq.My soul mate,…
Stronger than Death
I woke up the morning of January 8th, 2008 elated to be alive! I guess you can say David and I grew up together. We met when we were 12 years old. My soulmate. I’ve held only his strong hands, kissed only his beautiful lips, and slept next to only his gorgeous body. My husband always said I was a “happy” morning person and that morning was no…
Meet Mie Elmhirst
Hello Wonderful Widows. I often do things a little backwards…now is no exception. Last week I wrote an article for this blog on widows and teens. I was a stranger in your midst. This week I will let you who I am. I was widowed in 2000 when I was 47 and Mike was 52. Our daughter was 7 years-old, and his daughter, my step-daughter, was 25. Now they…
The Ongoing Challenges of the Only Parent
I think one of the bigger adjustments of all of my big adjustments to widowhood was the status as Only Parent. Only Parent is different from single parent in some situations, although very similar in lots of ways. I think one of the biggest differences is in the filling out of forms. Those damn forms. You know, the ones that say: married, single,…
Sunshine
There have been many days since Phil’s death that I was sure the sun could not possibly be shining…how dare that orb glow as if the world were right?! And then there have been other days when, unbelievably, that sun shone right on my head in the form of a blessing that was all the sweeter due to my familiarity with loss.Meet my nephew, Miles. He…
If You’re Not Having a Good Time….
We had the annual “Mardi-Craw” this past Saturday. I think about my husband Daniel every day, in lots of different situations, but our annual crawfish boil is one particular day I think about him all day long and cuss him for not being there. I have to admit that for the past four crawfish boils since he died….we’ve had SPECTACULAR weather,…
Celebration
Celebration of life has become a popular description for funerals over the past few years. And while I agree with the concept, the reality of celebrating my husband’s life while trying to grasp the idea that he was not coming home, ever, was hard for me to do at his funeral. While the services we planned to commemorate Phil’s’ life were truly…
Widows and Teens
My 15 year-old daughter Anneke landed the role of Polly in Neil Simon’s play The Gingerbread Lady. In this play, Polly’s (Anneke) mother seems intent on self-destruction, and at one point in the play, Polly (Anneke) is moved to desperate tears, wanting her mother to be OK. Anneke was unable to perform the scene. She could not cry on stage and…
How ARE you?
I went with some new girlfriends to the rodeo last night. As it usually does when meeting new people, conversation turned to my history and my experience of being a widow. One of the girls had recently lost a sister-in-law and was sharing with me the difficulties her brother was experiencing. It has only been three months for him, but I was…