And there goes the second December without Erik. This past week has been a whirlwind of emotions. December is always such a hard time. The holiday season starts with our wedding anniversary on the eve of Christmas Eve. This second year of celebrating the holidays without Erik hit me harder than I had expected. It […]
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Christmas Past
There are certain days of the year we use to mark the passage of time. After losing someone that time either falls into the before or after loss category. I don’t know if it was always that way for me, but Christmas is now one of those days. Today marks our third Christmas without Tony. […]
This Christmas
It’s Christmas Eve morning, and after feeding and loving on the kitty, I made myself some coffee and am now sitting down to read more of my book: “The 36 Hour Day”, to keep prepping for how to best love and help my dad, as his disease continues to slowly progress. There is no Christmas […]
The Natural Order of Things
Here we are a day before Christmas eve, and up until now, I hadn’t been inspired to write a new post. Recently I’d written about the passing of Lonnie DuPont (aka Callie Smith Grant) in August of this year. Lonnie was a Senior Acquisitions Editor at the Revell-Baker Publishing Group and I was honored to […]
The Holidays
Holiday time is often a real bummer when you’ve lost your spouse. Holidays seem to shine a brighter light on the fact that there is a missing person. When I first met Mario, he had grown to hate Christmas. I think he felt like after his parents divorced, there was just a lot of tension […]
Winter Break
After last night’s tutoring session, we are on Winter break for the next two weeks. As I wrote back in August, this is my first go-around as a tutor. I thought today might be a suitable time to update you. It turns out that I do have some things I can impart to a student […]
When Things Go Wrong
in Grief and Life I love this image. One folder looks like tax receipts; another could be love letters. Bookends of life. When things go wrong in grief it forms a layer on top of the grief itself. We are carrying one thing and then, suddenly, there is another layer on top (and often another […]
Last Parent Standing
A repost! I am not a single parent. I am a solo parent. It was only a few months after Erik’s passing that I was out of town. Everything during this time was still painful. Waking up, breathing, pretending to smile, existing – it was all so painful. I was on my way to the […]
Overindulgence
If I’m going to write my truth in full here, sometimes that means sharing the uglier side. Many of us have vices. They are not all healthy. I don’t want to condone it or judge it here, only share. Occasionally, I find myself in a situation where I have overindulged in alcohol. Where one drink […]
The Things That Help
Hello Sunday Readers. Great to see you here. As I have mentioned in some past blog posts here, there are currently some big things going on in my life and in my family’s life that I really can’t share here, or it wouldn’t be a good idea anyway. But one thing I have noticed is […]
Christmas Cheer “Condensed”
Awaiting stormy East Coast weather and settling in to write my weekly Post. I continue to coordinate with family at a distance as my mom faces post stroke challenges up in New York State which has been my recent primary focus. I often remind those who are assisting us that my mom lost her husband […]
Aging is not for the weak.
I’m an only child. As my parent’s get up into their 80s, it’s just me to look after them. I thought I’d at least have Mario to lean on when the time came when my parents (and his dad for that matter) needed more assistance. But nope, he’s not here to help me deal with […]