The number 4 figures loudly and persistently for me this year. The month of March figures just as hugely. The end of May rings loudly in my heart too. Chuck and I lived on the road, adventuring in our Happily Homeless travels, for 4 years. In those 4 years, we traveled all of the lower 48 states and oh, the sights we saw. I saw places and…
Writing From the Depths of my Heart~
My dearest love, my beloved husband. D. It’s 4 years since you and I drove to the ER at Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs. It is now 4 years since you and I began our final Happily Homeless travels, travels that began on a sunny May day in NJ in 2009, as you got into the UHaul truck with the few of our belongings that we’d kept…
Getting my Footing. Not.
Groundhog Day. Do you ever feel that widowhood is like Groundhog Day? A wide and conflicting range of emotions exist in widowhood. As many as you can name, from A-Z, and many more that can’t be named, only felt. Emotions that veer wildly about in one’s mind and heart and body. For most of us, over time, the hardest ones seemingly…
Love and Magic…Does it Still Exist?
“Sometimes I feel like there’s a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean….I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still, sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing…I dream of a Love that even…
Love. Only love.
When calls my heart To the distant past that is both yesterday and incalculably forever ago. When calls my heart To those feelings and emotions that seem so far distant And so deeply buried That they are unreachable. Unrememberable. Cherished. Loved. Nurtured. Secure. In Love. Joyous. Passionate. Spontaneous. Upbeat. What…
Black Widow in Pink
The colors of widowhood. I reflect on them sometimes. The colors we wear. The colors we strive to wear personally and the colors social structures put on us, or expect from us. Maybe not so much in words, maybe not consciously, But still there. Black widows are the female spiders that kill their mates after…mating. It is the term used to refer to…
Another Valentine’s Day
This particular blog will be short and sweet, and I know that all of you understand. It’s night on Valentine’s Day and I’ve spent the past two days determinedly making Love bigger than grief, delivering joy in colorful bouquets of flowers. I took on a job with a local florist, appropriately named Fairytale Florals, just for this day. I knew…
Owning up to What’s True. No Excuses.
How often does it strike right through you that you maybe, just possibly, will not survive this? This being the loneliness, the grief, the sadness, the confusion, the not knowing, the uncertainty, the anxiety, the desolation of living without your person? At times it hits me that I have now lived 1387 days +21 hours without Chuck. That’s 45 and a…
It’s 2 AM. Do I Know Where my Brain is?
When does this change? The missing-ness? Does the emptiness ever fill up? I know that there are no solid answers for my questions but they invade my brain during my days and in the middle of the night. Sleeping with my arms wrapped around a soft pillow, trying to find some comfort in the feel of something, anything, pressed to my body. Does…
This Love, this Love, this Love~
Valentine’s Day draws near and I know that many of us anticipate a day filled with reminders of how our person isn’t here with us, and the pain that gets all twisted up with his or her absence. I get it, and I feel it too. My and Chuck’s anniversary is just a few days later. Double whammy in the gut. But, yeah, Valentine’s Day. As…
Unbecoming Me~
Much of our adult lives are about unbecoming. Widowhood is very much about unbecoming. And, like any struggle to unbecome, it can be torturous. It is torturous. For me, at least. For many of us, I’m sure. But…unbecoming. I recognize that I must unbecome who I was. I was Chuck D’s wife. And oh, how I loved being his wife! Unbecoming…
This Left-behind Love~
What do we do with left behind Love? How do we take what was an active, living Love, in life, And make it matter and make it count… In the after? After the death of that one, your person… The one you slept with and loved with and talked with, who knew you better than anyone, Whose death changed everything…What do you do with the many losses…