I have been attending a weekly virtual community through my church for the past few months. This week I shared that I have been thinking a lot about spirituality and religion and how it is so intertwined with death. I am taking a class called Death, Dying, & Loss in my Ph.D. program, which has […]
Three Years.
April 7th marks 3 years since Boris died. 3 years since I have seen his face, heard his voice, or touched him. I honestly do not know how I survived the last 3 years. In the first few weeks and months, the loss consumed every part of me. I still think about him every single […]
Social Anxieties
As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are less scary plus more and more people are getting vaccinated, it seems like there is finally hope for somewhat normalcy in the coming months. There is a sense of optimism in the air and people are thinking about plans to return to in-person activities and traveling for the first […]
The darkness.
There are not many places where you can be open about the “dark” part of grief and widowhood. Not just that you miss the person or that you are lonely, but the trauma of it. The details of it. But, I think it is important that we talk about it, if only so that others […]
I Miss the Early Days
In a new episode of New Amsterdam, they briefly showed the characters (they all work in a hospital in New York) in the midst of COVID-19–the bruised faces, the tears, and the death. The episode begins in a “post-COVID” world, but they do not ignore the effects of it. One character is still on a […]
Sad Season
It is the beginning of my “sad season”, as I call it. Boris’s birthday is March 10th and the anniversary of his death is April 7th. Things feel a bit different this year since we are still in a pandemic and we’ve been dealing with it for almost a year now. Even though things are […]
Jealousy & Guilt
Today, I feel jealous…and guilty for feeling that way. I don’t want to be jealous of other people’s lives, but I am. I want to only feel happiness for the people around me who are getting engaged, getting married, having children, or buying a home. But, the truth is, when I hear about it or […]
“There is No Remedy for Love but to Love More”
The past three days have been loaded with all the feels. Friday was Lunar New Year, which is an important holiday for Boris’s family. They usually celebrated as a family in some way and he’d always get a little red envelope with money. I know the holiday must be challenging for his parents and sister […]
Cemetery Thoughts
Currently, most of Boris’s ashes are interred in a cemetery in Atlanta. I did not think this was something Boris would have wanted at the time, especially considering the hefty price tag. He was too practical and untraditional. However, his mom wanted to have a place to go visit him and she wanted that for […]
Taking Time for My Grief
When I began to write, I realized that I do not have a lot to say today and my brain is going in a million directions. I think it may be because life has been pretty busy lately. My dad requires more care, a responsibility I share with my mom and sister, and I am […]
Are we ever really ready?
I love TV shows, movies, and books with widowed characters. I did not realize how many there were until I lost Boris. A few weeks ago I started watching The Unicorn. It is about a man who lost his wife to cancer. He has two daughters and close friends who are also main characters on […]
Afterlife Thoughts
I have complicated feelings about the Afterlife. I grew up in a Christian and relatively conservative family and I used to have confidence in my beliefs: when you die, you go to Heaven or Hell. It’s that simple. Then, I got older and started to question the existence of Hell. After that, I began to […]