Image by Nick Fewings on Unsplash I am in a hard place. A fragile space. Hard and fragile. That sounds like “brittle”. That works too. The six weeks of “hard and fast and furious dates” between 27th March and 2nd May are finally over, culminating in Ben’s 21st birthday yesterday. I so wish he’d had his dad […]
Widowed and New Love
Postponing Weddings, but not Love
If there is one thing widowhood has taught me, it’s that love never ever goes anywhere. I love Drew the same as I ever have, and now I love Mike too. If the worst comes to my door again, if someone I love dies, I will know that I have tried to be good and kind and loving and connected with everyone I care for.
Bittersweet
Photo by Bannon Morrissy on Unsplash 24 April 2020 More stories of dates. And Dates. Sometimes I count a year as 52 weeks. Sometimes I count a year as 365 days. Or 366 days as the case may be. Sometimes I remember the day something happened. Sometimes the date is more important. And sometimes the Date. It’s […]
Messages from Mike
There seems to come a time in life for those of us who do not grow up with formal religion – and perhaps it’s triggered by loss and hardship, perhaps by age – where we search for meaning in losses and in life, and messages or clues that there might be something before and after […]
Acceptance
My awakening was the rationalization that Suzanne was truly gone. It didn’t actually take very long after she died. In fact, I woke up, bolt upright, in the middle of the night around a month after she died and had that sudden overwhelm of emotion and knowing that she was never, ever coming back.
It was in that moment that I realized that she was truly gone. She hadn’t just “slipped into the next room” or “gone away and would be right back.”
No. I was fully conscious of the fact that she had died.
The Wrong Kind of Dates
About a year ago, I ventured a little toe into the on-line dating waters. Everything about the idea was absurd, unfathomable, unimaginable. Before that, I’d had a couple of months where I bravely, if hesitantly, asked trusted friends, “Do you know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone (etc) who might know a nice man […]
Tread Lightly On My Memories
I live in Small Town France. In a village, actually. It’s a lovely, charming village called Sergy, nestling under the Jura mountain range, and looking across (over Geneva, Switzerland) towards the Mont Blanc. Magical scenery. Four proper seasons, each lasting 3 months. The kind of place where, when it’s Spring, Spring is my favourite season. […]
When the Volume Gets Cranked Up
And sometimes, when that other life slams into me, it feels like both of these separate worlds are cranked up to 100% volume simultaneously and it’s incredibly traumatic.
Scared
On March 15th, I will be moving into an apartment with my boyfriend of 2.5 years, Nick. We signed the lease on Valentines Day. (which was just a coincidence, but ended up feeling somewhat romantic and sweet). Over the past 8 years since Don’s death, I have moved 3 different times, finally ending up back […]
Widening the Gap
This past week, Sarah and I marked our five-year anniversary as two widows, together in a relationship. Meeting at Camp Widow in 2015, we found ourselves just simply “connected” somehow…so much so that we were actually asked if we were siblings at one point that weekend. But, this isn’t a story of how we met, or even of the five years…
The Kitties Can’t Come
A large part of the story of Don and Kelley is our kitties. He loved animals, and over our years together, we had our little family of kitty cats. Isabelle and Ginger are over the rainbow bridge now, but I still have Autumn and Sammy, who we adopted together from a rescue shelter in NJ. These 2 cats have stayed with me all throughout losing Don to…
No more Second Fiddles
A few weeks ago, Mike and I wrote a joint post together about some of the challenges of two widowed people dating. The metaphor that we mentioned, which is a common one, was of being second fiddle… the idea that each of us sometimes feels “second” to the person that came before us in our partner’s lives. It’s a bit unavoidable now and…