Today marks 1,000 days since Tony died. 999 days I’ve woken up as a widow. I have a countdown app on my phone. The kind most people use to enter fun things, like upcoming vacations or special events. I do use it for those things, but awhile back I also discovered that it would count […]
Widowed and Healing
Tripping Around the Sun
I’m posting this on what I call Birth Eve, the day before my birthday. It’s been a busy time on many fronts leading up to the “Big Day”. Last week I saw my first snow while visiting family in Upstate New York. I think it had been five years since I’d last experienced that cold […]
Anatomy of a Four Letter Word
. . . FEAR I rather envy those who don’t seem to have a lot of fears. Even if it is “not noticing” or “tuning it out” it is a skill that might be helpful at times for someone like me. I notice everything and kind of suck at tuning things out. As a young […]
As I Enter Twenty Twenty-Four
A Brief List of Happenings This year I eschewed a few traditions. “No,” I told my children, “I am not depressed; not avoiding you; not in a funk. Just changing it up for New Year’s 2024.” It was the opposite of being in a funk. Recently, I resolved to face any problems full-on and to […]
Word of the Year
Happy New Year everyone!! Emily is out and enjoying vacation with her kids. Please give her post from the start of 2023 a read as it is still quite fitting to be present in 2024 too! ~Mary “In my very first post here I said I’ve never been a New Year resolution kind of gal. […]
Hoot Owl Anthem
With the passing of another year, I strive to comprehend the incidents that have unfolded in the span of the past four years. In 2020, my late husband and I closed on our dream home in a gated community in Southeast Georgia. We enjoyed settling in to our new lives even with the challenges presented […]
Stuck in the Mud
With only 3 days until another year is done, I like to take time to reflect on how the year went overall, as well as things I want to include in the next 12 months. One of the things I’d really like to include is to overcome my own struggle with procrastination. Google’s Bard defines […]
Marking Time
Through Numbers This is my 85th blog post as a widow. By 71 years + 230 days, time marked 32 years since Dan’s first heart attack at age 39. When he died, we had been married for 18,913 days (50 years + 9 months) when no one thought these two crazy kids would make it […]
Christmas Past
There are certain days of the year we use to mark the passage of time. After losing someone that time either falls into the before or after loss category. I don’t know if it was always that way for me, but Christmas is now one of those days. Today marks our third Christmas without Tony. […]
When Things Go Wrong
in Grief and Life I love this image. One folder looks like tax receipts; another could be love letters. Bookends of life. When things go wrong in grief it forms a layer on top of the grief itself. We are carrying one thing and then, suddenly, there is another layer on top (and often another […]
Overindulgence
If I’m going to write my truth in full here, sometimes that means sharing the uglier side. Many of us have vices. They are not all healthy. I don’t want to condone it or judge it here, only share. Occasionally, I find myself in a situation where I have overindulged in alcohol. Where one drink […]
Christmas Cheer “Condensed”
Awaiting stormy East Coast weather and settling in to write my weekly Post. I continue to coordinate with family at a distance as my mom faces post stroke challenges up in New York State which has been my recent primary focus. I often remind those who are assisting us that my mom lost her husband […]