Images from internet searches for Netflix’s “After Life” Sometime after Mike died – perhaps a matter of months – Megan came to me and said, “Muuuuum – my Netflix account isn’t working”. It’s possible that I said, “What’s Netflix?”, but I don’t think I was living under a rock to quite that degree. But I […]
Widowed Effect on Family/Friends
The Keeper of the Lighthouse
Grief’s gaze. I knew it as soon as I got it this week. It’s that look you get from someone who has just suffered a new great loss. It conveys so much with so little. It’s so very different from the look they give to others all around them. Yeah it’s quite a powerful look […]
Purpose
What is my purpose? Why am I here? How do I help others? What can I do to make this world a better place?
These questions have been rattling around in my head more than ever over the last two years. I started to ask them when I was a child; but they became louder and resonated more inside my head in the weeks and months before Suzanne died in 2018.
Leading From the Heart
They say the 15-inch journey from the head to the heart is possibly the most difficult we can ever take. Many of us never even bother to take it, simply because we allow our egos to drive us and to rule us (“one ego to rule us all…”). But we don’t have to.
Thing is, the heart is actually the embodiment of our feelings and emotions. The head is our consciousness and thought. If we can “stop” thinking and just “be” for a while, then we can listen to our intuition and to our feelings and sit with them
Rewriting Friendship Contracts
Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash I had one of those rollicking walloping moments of insight a few days ago after what had been months of sporadic back and forth Whatsapping with a lovely friend, (let’s call her Catherine), who I met decades ago at university. We were really close in those years and stayed […]
Tears
I don’t remember the exact words I uttered, but I do remember choosing to kiss away her tears and hold her tightly. In that moment, nothing mattered more to me than to comfort her as best I could. And I did that many times throughout the years—far too many to remember.
What Do You Say to Someone Widowed? Exactly What You Say to Anyone Grieving…
There is just no way to gather the words to fully express the way current events are falling all around us. A pandemic, lost jobs, social upheaval and deep pain from racism. My broken widowed heart hurts for so many and it often takes my breath away leaving me speechless. So many of my friends […]
A Rite of Passage
One of the first big milestones of life without Suzanne has come to pass. Our youngest daughter has finished college and has basically graduated (she has fulfilled all of her requirements, but because of CoVID-19 the ceremony will now not take place until December). She arrives back at my home from England today after finishing last month.
The Fear in Forgetting
A regular weekend morning cleaning the house and my phone rings. It’s Judy, Clayton’s mother. I haven’t been able to get her on the phone in months. She had a stroke two weeks after Clayton passed away. She was never able to back to her home. She was flown up to Illinois to stay in […]
Potential & Change
I want you to know a few things. After Suzanne dies, you will feel like there is little potential of anything ever making your life any better. Did you know that you will be scared, hurting, very much alone (even surrounded by friends and family), completely lost, and heartbroken? Please know that although you could potentially just curl up in a ball and die from that heartbreak, you won’t.
Potential is an interesting word. It means, “having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.” When Suzanne dies, you will feel like there really is no future to develop into.
When that time comes, all you will want to ask yourself is, “What’s the point?” I mean, there won’t be a single thing that truly appeals to you as having any real potential for your future.
Dreams, Love and Gratitude
I wrote about unconditional love and gratitude some weeks ago, so you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about these things again. Well, I’m not writing specifically about those same topics as I shared then. Instead, I want to share about these three things together: dreams, love and gratitude.
What do I mean? To me, these things are inseparable.
My life’s dreams always included some form of love and gratitude. Those dreams have always been about true love and what it means to me. But my dreams were also my hopes for a future. They were what I thought I was meant to do.
Falling Backwards
Over the last week, I have been hit by several large waves of grief. Quite frankly, it sucks. It has been a long time since I have felt like this.
First, I want to talk about triggers and what I think kicked it off for me, so starting with a bit of a rant here. While much of the time, I am and remain hopeful about my life and about us as a society, the triggers that drove me to feel the way I did last weekend were simply signals to me that things are not always going to work the way I hope. That there will be times when I will know bitterness and disappointment. I will feel like I let myself down (and others).
But the key thing is, I know I can do better and even if it’s a matter of taking a tiny baby step forward and seeing the positivity and being grateful for the tiniest of successes, then that is a start. Will I always be able to overcome these bouts of grief? To quote Brian Wilson, “God Only Knows. And God only knows what I will be without” Suzanne…