Dear Dead Husband,    It will be 6 years next month, since you died.  So, I think that’s more than enough time to conclude the following:  This widow thing?  This “you being dead” thing? This “not what I signed up for” thing? Yeah.  Not a fan.  I’ve decided I don’t care for this. I will, of course, keep trodding along, keep finding new…

My dearest D, It’s been 4 years and one month since you left me. I know that you didn’t want to leave me. If it had been possible, you would have fought tooth and nail, with every breath in you, to stay with me.  You couldn’t…the cancer that ate away at your body demanded nothing less than your life as its’ price.  And on that April…

When Joey passed away my kids went to a small preschool near where we live. I never imagined how important this place would become to me. The day after his accident my daughters teacher showed up at my house, I was a little surprised because her and I weren’t very close. But she said she felt like she needed to be there and would just sit if that…

Have you ever ….  Stared at your dead husband’s picture, the same one that’s been sitting on your nightstand every single day for over 5 years, and suddenly, for no real reason whatsoever, you don’t seem to recognize his face as his face?    Have you ever ….  Gone into the closet where you keep a few of his things, still, and taken out a…

It is as if I am a ship that is becalmed in the ocean. Stillness all around me, even as I am aware of movement and chatter around me. But my world seems still.  Even as it moves around me. Doldrums is the term used to describe the ocean when the winds have disappeared and ships lay still.  I’ve read of sailor’s accounts of the eeriness of…

Some moments can be so complex it just floors me. Tonight Mike and I were grilling out in the back yard and taking turns playing ball with his daughter Shelby. We had good music going and a beautiful warm sunny sky. At one point I went in the kitchen to clean up some things and they followed me inside. Mike started dancing with me to a sweet song…

On mother’s day just past I spent an hour trying to calm my three year old daughter because she didn’t want to get out of the shower. It was a huge tantrum that left the both of us floored and in tears. Admittedly for a while after John passed I let her walk all over me because I didn’t have the energy for a tantrum if she didn’t get her…

On March 31st, in NYC, I was honored to be chosen to give a TEDx Talk, at Adelphi University. My talk was about how we, as a society, need to change the conversation about grief and loss and death, and change the way we treat both the people we love who have died, AND those that are left behind to miss and grieve them. The talk was performed live…

Emptiness. It seems this word is the one that best describes my life since I dealt with the trauma stemming from Chuck’s death. It was difficult, when I sought trauma therapy, to accurately describe why his death so traumatized me. His hospice time, and the drama involved in that, though I very intentionally shielded him from the drama. …

I am strong, but I am also fragile. My heart feels as though it’s in ever changing pieces, but full at the same time. I am terrified of love, but long for its place in my life again. I am very self-assured but insecure of life around me. Because there are no guarantees and no promises. I make progress daily through this heart ache and take steps…