**This post contains discussion of suicide and seeking mental health treatment for suicidal ideation. Some background: before Boris died by suicide, he was hospitalized three different times. Two times in the same hospital. He also did a partial hospitalization program at the same place and some evening groups. If you live in the U.S., especially […]
Daydreaming.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Boris came back to life now. If he just appeared again, alive and starting where he left off. Maybe he was never dead. Maybe he was just away. I have little daydreams about this pretty often (And, sometimes my subconscious joins in and I have vivid […]
Love has Paws
Dear Kitty Cat, What a silly name your dad gave you. I tried to convince him to choose a more creative name, but he was settled on Kitty Cat. Now, I couldn’t imagine you having any other name. And I could not imagine life without you, though I know all too well how fragile that […]
Return to Therapy
Tomorrow I will be returning to therapy after several months “off”. It feels like good timing, but I wonder how it will be different this time around. I started going to therapy shortly after Boris was hospitalized for suicidal ideation for the first time, in June 2017. We also saw a couples therapist for several […]
4 years
April 7th marks 4 years since I saw Boris alive. And, it still feels like, how can this be? I have been listening to Maren Morris’s new album and she has this song about someone she loves dying and imagining what the world would do without them. I know the sun will set into the […]
Trauma
Isn’t it weird and incredible what we can do if we have no other choice? Our traumatic experiences, before they happened, seemed foreign and impossible. They seemed like things we would not be able to survive. And we definitely never thought we could not only survive but function and do the “tasks” of grief. But […]
It is just a spider.
Yesterday, March 10th, Boris should have turned 31. But, as we all know, our people are forever frozen in time. In his case, he’s forever 27. I miss him so much every day, but on his birthday I always feel his absence a little more. For his birthday, wanted to share a memory and what […]
Undone.
A partially written Master’s thesis. Half-completed songs. Medication bottles with pills still inside. An unmade bed. A guitar halfway strung. Bills unpaid. A bottle of water never finished. A face of stubble never shaved. Laundry that needed washing. Tickets to concerts never to be attended. A cat that needed to be fed. Work and volunteer […]
The World’s Loss
Sometimes I get sad for other people’s loss of Boris. Not only people he knew but also the people who never got to meet him. At times this grief feels worse than my own even though I know it isn’t. Boris was so many things to so many people. And then there are the people […]
Reflecting on Early Days of Grief
I am realizing that I am now far enough out from my loss to have some perspective on my behaviors and reactions when I was only hours, days, weeks, and months out from it. Isn’t it weird how much we forget and the parts we remember? And I wonder how much of it I remember […]
Loving him was red.
So, this is going to sound weird. But, sometimes I feel jealous of widows who have seemingly perfect love stories with their late partners. Especially, widows who were married, had a beautiful house together, and so many big life moments together. I have no engagement photos or stories, no wedding videos, no “bought our first […]
“Happy” New Year?
Well, somehow tomorrow marks a new year. If I am being honest, I do not feel cheery or happy with the ring of the new year. I feel like 2021 was just a year of surviving and getting by. My dad’s health took a turn in late December 2020 and since then he has needed 24/7 […]