Last Wednesday was Tony’s 2nd birthday since his passing. He should have been 45 but he is immortalized at 43. Having already checked off a birthday without him last year, I thought I was mentally ready for this day. I was wrong. When I woke up on the 2nd, I felt the weight of the […]
Widowed Birthdays
The Unconclusive Conclusion
While writing this blog, I was forced to revisit and relive more than just my widowed walk. I dove back in time through many memories I had forgotten or hidden. In reflecting back, how ironic was it that I rushed through the four years of high school and the four years of college only now […]
A Pyrenean Adventure Written in Thumb and Swype
27 August 2022 I thought I would pull together the various updates I posted on to Facebook when I had occasional internet access during our Pyrenean Haute Route – begun last summer, and completed this year. Inspired by my dad John and my uncle Ian who completed it in well into their 60s (in one […]
happy birthday babe
in relation to the years, i feel small marking the memories. i remember when you taught me to light the oven in our first O’Keefe & Merritt stove–light the match, hold the flame to the small hole at the bottom of the oven, turn on the gas. i thought i might blow up the house […]
A Guest House – A Birthday –
and Two Questions How is it possible that Dan’s birthday–the second since his death–is already coming up eleven days from now? Surreal. As a mom of seven, I am used to the arrival of ideas from one or another of my children. How to accomplish one solution or another…what flourishes to add–or ways to contain–an […]
Growing Through Grief with Gratitude
Yesterday I felt like I hit the grief guardrail at 75 miles an hour. I knew it was coming and I knew I couldn’t turn fast enough. It was emotionally inevitable and, as much as I wanted to avoid it, I also have been needing it. It was an intimate group of family and friends […]
My Past in My Future
I don’t know how to navigate this. I don’t know how to balance out this future placed bereavement. I have been pressuring myself to “figure it out” because I feel overwhelmed by a lot in life right now. Something has to give or I’m going to crash. My daily routines are way off, and I’ve […]
Comfortably Run
Edward’s 53rd Birthday Comfortably run. No, not a typo. Simply a not particularly brilliant nod to Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. I do indeed mean that I am comfortably run. By a 10 km road run. I am more than a little bit pooped. I can’t remember the last time I did a 10 km. I […]
Forever Young
Main image by Angello Pro on Unsplash Today is not only Easter Day. It’s also our lovely Megan’s 21st birthday. Her sixth birthday without her father. Her 16th birthday was just nine days after her dad died. Finding a date for Mike’s funeral in 2017 was so very hard. There is a “minimum” time required […]
Homesickness
Main image by Rowan Heuvel on Unsplash In English, when we miss our homeland, we say, “I feel homesick”. In French, when we miss our homeland, we say, “J’ai le mal du pays”. Close enough, but not quite the same. Taken literally, the English version seems just to be about missing one’s “home” (parents, family, […]
It is just a spider.
Yesterday, March 10th, Boris should have turned 31. But, as we all know, our people are forever frozen in time. In his case, he’s forever 27. I miss him so much every day, but on his birthday I always feel his absence a little more. For his birthday, wanted to share a memory and what […]
My Old Man
As a seven-year-old I wrote an essay entitled, “My Old Man,” for a second-grade writing assignment about our fathers, and instantly it had created a furor. Perhaps my teacher thought I was being disrespectful. If so, then she would have been wrong. However, I never received any explanation why she was discomfited. All I knew […]