This is the 169th widowed blog I’ve written. In 28 days, it will be the fifth anniversary of Clayton’s death. I have been widowed longer than I was in high school or college. If that’s the case, did I float through my Grief grades or have I been applying myself to Life’s lessons? The only […]
Widowed Anniversaries
The Grief Graduate
It’s been almost 4 years since Clayton died. I was struck by that fact this week. I’ve been without him for as long as I was in high school. The biggest difference is that my schooling in sadness occurred much faster than K-12. Year 1 felt like being a scared kid starting up class in […]
“Go Get Yourself A Bigger Problem”
Photos by my friend Jane del Pozo Back in the early 1990s, I worked for a couple of years post-Masters, in a small consulting firm of organisational psychologists in Cambridge. One of my colleagues – let’s call her Terri – was a bullish, no-nonsense Aussie, who has stayed in my mind all these decades, despite […]
Today I have lived 20,000 days
Picture by Debby Hudson on Unsplash I know, notice, or choose to find out, the weirdest things about dates and days. I love number patterns. I love that my birthday is 270367 and Mike’s is 270763. Same digits. A numerical dream. Or so I chose to believe. Just recently, we have seen a lovely date […]
REMEMBERING NOT TO FORGET
So yesterday was the anniversary of the day that Don proposed to me under the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in NYC. I share this milestone date with a dear widow friend who lives in NYC, and the “crapaversary” of her death date is the same day as my proposal anniversary – December 18th. Yesterday she […]
Mourning and Evening Glories
Main image by Erda Estremera on Unsplash A couple of weeks ago, on 3rd November, I felt moved to celebrate a different kind of anniversary. The three-year anniversary of my widbud group, the “Mourning Glories”, comprised of Charlotte, Gordon, Michelle, Pamela and me. We met in early November 2018 in Toronto at “Camp Widow”, organised […]
Birthdays and Beginnings
Today is my 43rd birthday. Clayton passed away just before turning 42. I’ve officially lived a full year longer then him. That brings up a lot of emotions and I know that’s normal. Four years ago I didn’t want to celebrate that I was alive another year. I felt tremendous guilt and I thought that […]
Year Five… It is not what you think
Mike’s 5th death date is November 15th, 2021. For the last four years, I have always had a heaviness in my heart when Fall came around because it meant the anniversary of the worst day of my life was looming. This year, I don’t feel dread about his death date. The truth is, I don’t feel anything really. This is not easy to admit because it makes me feel like a bad widow. It makes me feel like people will think I didn’t love him. And, worst of all it makes me wonder if I am less devoted to him than I thought I was.
I feel sad that I am not sad. All these new and uncomfortable thoughts make me feel out of sorts. I am wrestling with my emotions because I don’t feel heartbroken the way I have in years past; but, I am grateful because this is far less challenging to sort out than the raw grief I felt in other Novembers. As I approach my fifth year without him, I don’t feel an endless longing for him anymore. Instead, I feel a type of acceptance.
Falling into my Own Life…
I wrote this one year ago. It is amazing how in a year so much can change in a person’s life. I will explain in an addendum that follows. ~S. I realize that I may always “fall” when the Fall season is before me. The first few years, when the leaves changed color I […]
Louder
Grief has a timeline of it’s own. For me, my grief only receded into the background when I started to genuinely LIVE more. I often say that “My Grief got “softer” when my Life got louder”. This is the most accurate way I can describe the process.
9/11 Memories, Appreciation and Honouring
Written on 11 September 2021 Main image by Jesper Blijdestein on Unsplash 9/11. Nine-Eleven trips off the tongue. It means September 11th 2001. Even to Brits, who would otherwise say 11th of September (and write 11/9), there’s no misunderstanding what 9/11 means. Anyone over a certain again remembers what they were doing on 11th September […]
The weight of time.
This past week I went with a close friend to the cemetery where her friend is buried. It was the 25th anniversary of his death by suicide. She has been a very supportive friend when Boris was receiving treatment and after his death. Though the loss of her close friend at 18 years old was […]