I was asked recently to speak at an AA meeting in my old community in NJ. I’ll be traveling there at the end of this week. It’s been 3 years since I’ve connected with family and friends there. Family and friends who knew Chuck, who knew me when I was with Chuck. Memories will hit hard. I’m not trying to set myself up for that; I’m merely…
As Long As I Don’t Do This
I’ve been a recovered alcoholic for 30+ years. Chuck was a recovered alcoholic, also. He died 5 days shy of his 25th sober anniversary. The people who came to his bedside in southern California were some of those he’d sponsored. They presented him with his 25-year coin. Which he didn’t want to take, early, but I persuaded him that he needed…
To My Beloved Husband
To my beloved husband, Chuck D, as we approach the 6th anniversary of your memorial service, which we held 6 months out from your death… I know I did everything as perfectly as I could in those few short weeks between finding the cancer, our hospice time, and your death. I know this more than I know anything else in my life. And yet… Doubt…
My Dare to the Universe
The mere idea of dipping my feet into the dating scene, no matter how lonely I am at any given point, invokes in me a huge HELL NO! The quantity of nightmare stories I’ve heard from the widowed community about the quality of people in that scene, both male and female and what they’re looking for…no, please. There is, I hear, that 1% chance…
The Miracle of a Well-Lived Life
Each April 26, I post a blog I wrote in the days after Chuck’s death. I called it “Happy Anniversary, Dear Man”. But it wasn’t about our wedding anniversary; it was about his sober anniversary. One year, when I posted it, I was criticized for posting about his sober anniversary, because it broke Chuck’s anonymity, which is a crucial…
The Never Ending Story
Is loneliness the never-ending story of widowhood? Does it end if we find another chance at Love? Does the loneliness exist, even then Because the loneliness is specific to that person, your person, who died? Is there ever a moment again When a widow’s heart feels that lightness of being, Once felt? Or is the heaviness, the ache, the sadness of…
September and Remembering
My body felt September 11 approaching, even before my mind became aware of it. This morning, September 11, I woke up and could feel the nerves edging along my skin. The feeling only intensified as I watched snippets of remembrances on TV. Why, you might ask, would I put myself through watching something more when my heart was already hurting? To…
If
If all things that are impossible Became impossibly real, And the unimaginable Became impossibly imaginable, And what is impossibly, unimaginably, inconceivable, Became entirely plausible. In a world where my fiercest and most impassioned pleas, Ringing forth from the depths of my shattered heart… Could be heard pulsating through the days and…
Grief and Widow Questionnaire
My mind takes me into weird places, since being widowed, and today I imagined filling out a questionnaire, titled What has grief taught you? It would emphasize the importance of filling this out with no filter, thank you very much. How long have you been widowed? How I’d pose the question: how long since your entire world exploded and evaporated?…
What Remains, In This After of You
A trifold flag, presented to me at your memorial service. Where are you, my beloved? ID tags that hang over my bed or around my neck. Where are you, my beloved? 3 children you raised with me, though they weren’t of your blood. Where are you, my beloved? A grandson who would tower over you in height, and who reminds me of you each time I see a…
Love, On This Odyssey of Love
Perhaps one of the most helpful things I’ve learned in a little over 5 years of widowhood is this… I don’t have to be anything different, feel anything different, aspire to anything different…before going and doing whatever it is that I feel I must do to live this life without Chuck. I don’t have to have hope. I don’t even know what…
Where Are They?
Where are they… The ones we loved in life, love still, in death? Where do they go when they leave our sides? Do they exist in a far away Universe, Unseen and unseeable? Carried only in memory, That shows itself in the wind, In clouds tinged with the colors of a sunrise or sunset? Do they see us as we wish for them? Do they hear our cries of…