I don’t have time to watch much television, but I do enjoy movies of all kinds, and there is some pretty great television out there these days too. I just have to pick and choose – there is so much, and I’m too busy living life these days to spend too much of it staring into the idiot box…but still, I do look forward to those down times,…
After Shine
I am so grateful for this Widow’s Voice. And it’s not just about having the opportunity to share, but to know that each day I can check in and “hear” another widow’s voice; that I can follow and learn about the multitude of paths, thoughts and feelings that are experienced. Even if I ever stop writing here, I know I will read it every…
The Grim Reaper Repercussions
This past week or so I have been feeling very melancholy. This grief thing is a very difficult business. Will we ever get the hang of it? Will it forever be a process we can never escape? Will we always be struggling to slog our way through? The ever-changing game of it all is simply, some days, exhausting. I often feel as if death will be…
The Story
I met a new friend the other day and in the course of conversation The Story came out. You know the one. The Story. The one about how I was married and then wasn’t married. What happened, how it happened, what’s happened since then, what happened before then. Early on in my widowhood The Story was so deeply painful that I basically hid…
A Little Moment of Now
Mike always did enjoy the little things, when we were together. I think – no, I know – in days past he looked for the bigger thrills, but by the time he got to me, he had gotten to a point of really appreciating the simple pleasures of life. I am glad of that, and these days it continues to resonate for me. One of them, of course, was a meal out…
Matters of Interpretation
It’s been a busy week, and the highlight was a visit with my friend Margaret who flew in for a nice long weekend from her home in the Bay area. Her husband Dave, who was healthy and fit, died of a sudden, massive stroke at age 50 three months after Mike died, and she and I were put together by mutual friends and family who saw us both falling apart…
A Patchwork Girl
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.” -Stephen King I will apologize in advance for my perhaps over-use of metaphor. But I guess that’s just how my…
Tick, Tock…
When we met, Mike was 45 and I was 31. He died at 59, when I was 44. Now I am only a few days away from my own 47th birthday. I think about this a lot these days. Getting older; being middle-aged. Being older now than Mike was when we met. And the fact that I will not share those same years with Mike that he did with me. He was so…
Blossom and Fade
I sit here at Mike’s old desk, a glass of wine by my elbow and the almost full moon shining brightly through the window, and wonder what I would be doing now were he still alive. I pause for a moment and think of our other writers here and their lives; all of our struggles, changes, decisions and thoughts in the wake of our losses. And all the…
Dancing Anyway
An evening out with friends to listen to my new guy’s band on the water’s edge here in Kona. Drinks, laughing, dancing. I catch myself: what am I doing here? I can’t believe how much my life has changed. I gaze out to the stars hanging over the ocean waves and mentally reach out to Mike, as I so often do. Are you out there, honey? Can…
Dear Mike
Dear Mike, Part of me cannot believe it has really been two years since you left us. The other part of me looks back at all the changes in my life since then…and knows. Yes. Two years. It is real.For a long time I could not bear to think about life without you. I cried more than I ever thought I could. I staggered and stumbled through a dark,…
Too Short
Valentine’s Day. Another very difficult time of year for many of us widowed people. Two years ago, Mike came in the door with a delighted grin on his face. He brought me a big box of chocolate from our wonderful local chocolatier, and a new garden hose I’d been wanting, in its own new gift bag he had purchased along with a beautiful…