I have just come back from what should have been two lovely days away with my Medjool. My new love. My number two. (Not Second Best. Just Number Two. Subtle but Important difference). Some of our time away was lovely – truly relaxing, soothing, stunningly beautiful, comforting, renewing, and more. And some of it was just plain horrid. For me.
Multiple Losses
997, 998, 999, 1000
Today is Friday 3rd January 2020. 3/1/2020 Or 1/3/2020 if you’re somewhere in North America, but that looks plain wrong to me. And anyway, that would be my dad’s birthday, 1st March. Not my uncle’s birthday, 3rd January. Both healthy, sporty, fit 81-year old men. 82 now for my uncle. Today is 1000 days since Mike died. In about ten minutes,…
Mixed Up Emotions
I noticed Kelley Lynn put up a couple of lovely questions on her Facebook page in the run-up to Christmas. It went along the lines of: Tell me, what/who are you missing? And if you’re joyful, then say more about that It’s Christmas morning, and I am sitting in bed. No rush here, because for over a decade, Mike and I said to our guests,…
Bah Humbug
I am trying to get festive. I really am. But little things tick me off. Like Christmas decorations. Particularly the really garish ones. And the plastic snowmen. The ones in our house are okay. Right now, that’s the sum total of an undecorated Christmas tree. And fairy lights that never actually went down after Christmas 2017. Somehow they have…
Self-Care, Help, and Letting in Comfort
I have been pondering comfort, self-care, and help – what each of them is, to me, and what makes one or other easier and/or more accessible than another. Here is where I am at. And no, I have done no Googling or other research into what each of them is. Just research in my own life and experience. They are oft-used terms in Griefland – wobbly…
It’s About Time
Yes. I know. I have a funny thing about time. And dates. I take time to reflect on time and what time is, or might be. Linear? Circular? Fluid? Fixed? Conceptual? Real? Polychronic? Monochronic? Measurable? Full of meaning and emotion? Or void of emotion and meaning? Time takes on such a different meaning, a different feel, post-loss. People say…
Mourning Glories
One of my favourite widbuds is Charlotte, who I met last year at the Soaring Spirits Camp Widow event in Toronto 2018. She is beautiful and strong and capable and clever and funny. And she’s grieving. And despite her grieving, she attended my daughter’s funeral, “just because she happened to be in Europe at the time”. We are both in a…
I Love You Like I Love Mike
A little over 6 months ago, at the end of April 2019, two months before my 15 year-old daughter Julia died by suicide, and 2 years after Mike my husband died, I met a man on a dating website. He’s called Medjool, after my favourite kind of dates. Big, chewy, tasty, sweet. Yum. Since there seems to be some kind of annoying gender difference…
Maudlin
One of the patterns I have noticed in friends’ responses to whatever I happen to post on social media is that, when I post some good news, “happy photos”, or an achievement, I get 3 or 4 times as many “likes”, comments, and whoopy doos, than if I post something hard, messy, painful and tough. There the sorrow just hangs out its forlorn…
Running on Purpose_v2
21st October 2019 – today would be 32 years since my first date with Mike. This is the second time I have written a blogpost with the exact same title. Hence the _v2. The first was on my work website and was written on 7th June 2014. I had just completed a 32 km mountain trail run in our local hills, a “warm-up” for a bigger event later…
Syncopated Grief
Today is one of those exquisitely beautiful, bright autumn days. With temperatures that would feel “just right” on a mid-summer’s day, but with the added benefit of a gentle breeze to doubly kiss my bare skin as I sit now, in the garden, writing this piece. I have been out on a “long run”. The kind of “long run” I do in the run-up to…
The Grief See-Saw Roundabout
(Note: Even though I live in France, I am basically British, and in the UK we call what Americans call a “Teeter Totter” a “See-Saw”; and we call what Americans call a “Merry-Go-Round” a “Roundabout”. At least we did back in the last millennium when I last lived in the UK). I have in my mind’s eye one of those playground…