The past few days have been exhausting. As hurricane Harvey slammed into my hometown area – a whole flood of emotions has rained down on me. Mike and I have been glued to the news nonstop. Houston is now getting catastrophic flooding. Many, many people are still missing and unaccounted for in the worst areas. It is torture to watch it all from so…
Miscellaneous
Hit the Road
In about 36 hours, Shelby, Sarah and I are hitting the road. We’re not going to Texas, or the beach, or New York, or to visit my parents. We’re not planning this trip amongst anyone other than ourselves. I neither desired or solicited anyone else’s input with regards to our plans, other than Sarah and Shelby. We’re headed to the…
No One To Zip Me Up
I have recently discovered the latest in a list of annoyances caused by being a … (I still choke on the word “widow”) … alone. As I write this post I am preparing to board a plane tomorrow for San Diego … Widows Camp. There. I said it. I don’t fly back in until Sunday night so I have to write the post early. I’m sure that many of…
Over the Hump
As Sarah noted on Sunday, I stepped off into the mountains last Friday, disappearing into the wilderness on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. It’s no surprise to any of you that have read my posts for these past two years that backpacking, in isolation, is the most transcendent experience that I personally can have. No matter how my…
White Noise
I’m going to (try to) keep this short, simple, and to-the-point. Megan’s birthday was yesterday…the third since her death. She would have been 36, which, for someone born in the early 80’s with Cystic Fibrosis, is twice the normal life expectancy. The first thing I thought of when I opened my eyes in the morning yesterday was…
Life Getting in the Way
It’s not exactly a secret that sometimes, I just can’t foresee a good subject for my weekly writings here. I’ll pine over ideas to see if they spark something, thinking about if there were any milestones, anniversaries, or triggers in the past week. More often than not, I’ll find a nugget of something and expand upon it, and sometimes,…
Five-year Plan
In 2011, shortly after Megan’s lung transplant, we decided to have a 5-year plan of moving out of the house we currently live in. We bought this house the year we were married…2005 It’s small, in the city, with a busy highway, shopping area, and rail line within a few hundred yards, lending an ambient soundtrack of engines, train horns,…
Embrace the Tomboy
I don’t know how to raise a girl in any other way than I’m doing. I’ve never done it before, I don’t have a sister, and last I checked, I’d never been a girl myself. I’m pretty clueless when it comes to makeup or clothes, and the only reason I know how to braid hair is because it’s the same technique you would use to make rope in…
Father’s Day Gift
Father’s Day 2017. For once, we had a weekend day where there was nothing to do. We had visited with both mine and Megan’s dads on Saturday, specifically planning to have an open day wedged into the seemingly constant stream of other events that have been taking time on our weekends together. Sarah was awake and moving well before i was (a…
Soul Searching
I saw my therapist today, for the first time in about two years, we figured. She was the one who first helped begin to lift me out of the fog in those early weeks and months after Mike’s death. She knows my story, knows me. I had been thinking of her a lot this year, with all the issues and decisions I am facing, and low and behold, I literally ran…
My Own Decisions
Summer is here. Shelby’s last day of school is tomorrow. Work is slowing down, after the “sales” season rolls into the “build” season for the company I work for. Weekends are a time for rest and relaxation. Time to get things done around the house, and to spend time in the woods, at the beach, or just taking in an overnight trip…
Time Waits For No One
18 Months. 564 days. A year and a half has now passed by without him. It doesn’t feel like that long ago, but then again it does. Some days it feels like yesterday that we were sharing kisses. Other days our life feels like a sweet distant and faint memory. Some days it’s not real at all, as though we just lost contact somewhere along the way.