• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Widow's Voice

Widow's Voice

  • Soaring Spirits
  • Donate
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Categories
  • Authors
    • Kelley Lynn
    • Emily Vielhauer
    • Diana Mosson
    • Kathie Neff
    • Gary Ravitz
    • Sherry Holub
    • Lisa Begin-Kruysman

Bridging the Distance

Posted on: September 21, 2022 | Posted by: Kathie Neff

Structure of wood that holds up the pier.
Image courtesy of Andrea Leopardi via unsplash.com

It’s been one year, five months and five days since you left—

523 days—

12,576 hours 40 minutes—

I am keenly aware of your physical absence today, my love.

Empty beach chair on the beach sand.
Image courtesy of Raymond Kotewicz via unsplash.com

I’m in the city of Newport Beach—the air is cool. The beach out of view. 

Of many options on the Southern California coast, Newport Beach was your favorite spot for pier fishing. Folks gathered at the end of the pier, a family of convenience; a family of pier fishers, who came to know each other by face, if not by name.

You loved the fishing and the catching, but you did not want to cook and eat what you caught, so your habit was to fill other people’s buckets with any fish you caught—those big enough to keep. An unspoken agreement among the small angler community.

Sometimes, when I was with you, one or two sea lions frolicked in the water just off the edge of the pier where they tried to steal your bait and catch. Chocolate brown, tan, or variegated grayish-black, the shiny, wet look of them captures my imagination still. Graceful. Free.

Today, sitting at the long bar in a Newport Starbucks, I am thinking of distance. How far away you feel to me this day.

Often people ask me, “How are you?” The most accurate answer I can offer is, “Every day is different.”

Some days the energy of you feels palpable.

Other days, like today, you feel far away, like trying to hone in on an individual star in a clear, star-filled night sky.

Night sky full of stars.
Image courtesy of Jackson Hendry via unsplash.com

 

I’m no expert, but I think I can offer a simple credo of the way I see it:

Somehow you are always with me.

Somehow, our love lives on.

 

For now, that is enough.

Long Live Love.

 

Categories: Widowed, Widowed Memories, Widowed Emotions

About Kathie Neff

Kathie Neff was widowed on April 15, 2021. She and her beloved husband, Dan, were high school sweethearts and enjoyed dancing and riding horses together. They lived in gratitude, hope and forgiveness for 50 years and nine months when Dan passed quietly late at night, surrounded by their seven children who, with Kathie, were caring for him in their family home.

Dan and Kathie have been a part of Camp Widow and Soaring Spirits International since its inception, as members of Michele Neff Hernandez’s cadre of helpers from the Neff family.

Kathie believes strongly in the strength and bond that is the gift of community and brings a heart of love for all who have been affected by death and dying.

Long live love. XO

Primary Sidebar

Footer

Quick Links

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Categories
  • Authors

SSI Network

  • Soaring Spirits International
  • Camp Widow
  • Resilience Center
  • Soaring Spirits Gala
  • Widowed Village
  • Widowed Pen Pal Program
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Contact Info

Soaring Spirits International
2828 Cochran St. #194
Simi Valley, CA 93065

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 877-671-4071

Soaring Spirits International is a 501(c)3 Corporation EIN#: 38-3787893. Soaring Spirits International provides resources with no endorsement implied.

Copyright © 2023 Widow's Voice. All Rights Reserved.