I hate to think I need bad stuff to happen to put life in perspective. Haven’t I already tortured myself enough, trying to understand painful life lessons after my wife’s passing? After three years, haven’t I come out on the other side a better person?On the three year anniversary of Lisa’s passing, my parent’s basement flooded due to…
Miscellaneous
Plus One
Not long after Chris died, I received a wedding invitation addressed to “Wendy and Guest.” It was one of the first visual affronts to my newly-acquired widowed senses. I remember looking at the envelope and wondering, “Who the heck is Wendy and Guest?” I certainly sympathize with the couple who sent the invitation. I’m confident that they…
touch me
I can handle being alone. Being “single” is just fine and I often think that this is how I would prefer to live. Loading the dishwasher in the way I deem to be correct is truly satisfying. Dancing spastically in the kitchen while the kids sleep and not concerning myself with looking coordinated or even sexy is fabulous. But not having any…
Weirdly Emotional ….
(This is a post I wrote 10 months after Jim died. It still applies.) This is one of those pictures that doesn’t need any words about love. It’s there. OK, let me just warn you upfront. This is going to be a weird post. I’m going to try to explain something that I felt yesterday but I don’t really know how to explain it, and I wonder how…
Castaway
Sorry for another movie reference, but this one has been on my mind. Remember the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks? I was reminded of this movie just last week because of a dream I had. Remember how in the movie he returns after being presumed dead for years? His girlfriend of many years has married, and she now has a child, a family…she’s moved on.
You Can’t Fix Me
Sometimes I want to scream at people: “You Can’t Fix Me!” …because sometimes, I get so sick of hearing that I need to “look after myself” or “do something for myself” or “make it happen” or “chin up” or “forge ahead.”Sometimes it’s just too much when friends and colleagues minimize my grief in their misguided belief…
I Had a Nightmare ….
…. last night that Jim came back. I know. A nightmare? It should have been a dream. A wonderful dream. But it wasn’t. He just walked in to our house one day. Three and a half years after his “death” …. he just walked in. In this dream he had been in the Service and I had evidently been notified that he had been killed. I guess they never…
A typical day
I’m trying to keep us steady in this new normal…this Clayton’s normal…and there are some moments where I feel like we are OK, we three. We joke around. We talk about our day. We read and laugh and play. We do chores. We have a routine that ensures we joke and laugh and read and clean and play….….and I am the supreme leader with whom…
i need more dreams
Written 6 months after Jeff’s death… A few weeks ago, I had a dream that I was standing on a bridge looking toward the sea where a fishing boat was coming. I started calling out to it. I was calling Jeff’s name. As it came closer, I could see Jeff standing on the bow waving to me. He jumped off the boat as it was about to go under the bridge and…
On the Humor of Our Grieving …
…. and a paragraph about a dream. This is a post I wrote back in March of 2008, three months after Jim died. The kids and I traveled to Oklahoma, where Jim was born and where we both grew up. Well, he grew up in one part of Oklahoma, I grew up in another. Anyway, we went to the farm where Jim was raised for a very solemn purpose. We were…
Home Destruction
On my way to my morning breakfast taco place, I had to dodge a large truck in the road carrying a huge backhoe. Oh brother, I thought. They are going to tear something up. That’s going to be an inconvenience for someone. And I didn’t pay another thought to it, at least until I drove by on my way back home just thirty minutes later. The beast…
Sex, Sensuality and Sadness
Sex. I’ve been thinking about it lately. And I really miss it. I miss the animal-ness of having another sweaty body pressed down against mine, the sounds, the smell. I miss being openly desired, I miss teasing, I miss all the foreplay that comes before. I miss being sexy. I miss being a sensual woman. And I find myself unsure if I even know how…