I have not felt your lips against mine for over two years. It has been almost a thousand days since I have heard your voice outside of my memory. And, it is starting like I knew it would. I am starting to forget your voice. I’ve tried to keep the sound of your voice clear in my mind by replaying our conversations again and again, but it…
Widowed and Healing
Finding Power when Powerless
“Sometimesthe most important part of the journey is just deciding to go.” I read this quote the other day in a book and I liked it. I tend to spend too much time overthinking things and not enough time just doing them. So this was refreshing to read. But it also got me thinking about widowhood, and decisions. And how much of the difficulty…
A Life Unfinished …
It hangs in mid-air, swaying through the trees, like an echo, sometimes, and other times, like a scream. That life unfinished, the one we didn’t get to have, because you died. It lingers there, in the breeze, like a hundred-thousand question marks, and never any answer. That life unfinished haunts me sometimes. I wish I had a book I…
Trying to Start Over
My wife and I have always enjoyed mixing our favourite coping mechanism, comedy, with accomplishing important tasks. Sometimes, the best remedy for the worst life stresses is proactive humour. Natasha came up with the term “cancer card” as a way to deal with life’s day to day challenges. We would often jokingly ask each…
Paradox
Anniversaries are, in general, a prompt for looking back. They’re an annual reminder to be reminded of the past. While oftentimes, an anniversary is also a milestone, it still remains that, simply put, an anniversary measures the passage of time. They don’t really MEAN anything to widows. Our person is neither more, nor less dead on…
Lifelines
This is not how I imagined my life. We should have been in our new house for over two years now. Mike and I should be celebrating our two year Wedding Anniversary August 20th, 2019. But, he died. And, none of this happened or will happen. There is no shared home. There will not be a Wedding Anniversary. There won’t be anything. …
When Love Wins out Over Fear
It’s been a little over a month now since Mike proposed. I’ve had a few hard triggers. Trying to think about planning a wedding has been tough at first. The last time I was going to marry someone, he died before we ever got to the big day. He died before we ever even got into the true planning. So needless to say, that part of me that remembers…
Superbowl Sunday and a Brand New Life
The year was 2005, and it was a cold day in February. I looked out the window of my New Jersey apartment, which sat on the Hudson River. NYC looked back at me. I put the coffee pot on, and started making the meatballs and sauce. My Nana Mary’s lasagna recipe, with bow tie pasta and meatballs and ribs on the side. I had made it for Don the…
Joy Isn’t Found in Tap Water
Grief is messy. And, it demands our attention. Grief does not follow a predictable route, and neither should you. There is no road map to follow. You need to find your own way through this. You need to follow your heart and trust your instincts. When your person dies, no one hands you a manual that explains how to handle the cruddy stuff that…
An Expert on Death
This afternoon, I was honored to be a guest-lecturer / speaker for a large class of mostly pharmacy students at Ohio State University, who will one day be future practioners. Due to the magic of the inter-webs, I spoke to the large class of students and the professor, from the comfort of my room in smalltown Massachusetts. They are learning about…
She is Missing
I miss the feeling of moving around life’s obstacles as a team of three, as opposed to a team of two; fortunately, I am gradually learning to rely on myself for mental and emotional stability more and more. Natasha and I were good at supporting and pushing each other to revel in the joy of being human. But these days, it is easy to…
Exclamations and Tildes~
Yes, tildes are a thing. Unlike exclamation points, which everyone learns in grade school, you probably won’t recognize the term, though you might very well recognize the symbol itself. Lest you think this is a blog about grammar, let me clarify my why of writing about grammar points. Both of them have played a significant role in my life for the…