This week Mike, Shelby and I are in Texas. It’s the first trip we are taking down to my home state together since I moved. We have spent the weekend with all of my oldest and best friends, having our annual camping trip. It’s a trip we’ve done ever since Drew died… and this is the first year that everyone has been able to make it. These…
Widowed Effect on Family/Friends
Never Far
Death is never far from my mind. That probably resonates with plenty of other widowed people, as well as some who have suffered the passing of someone close to them. This past month, a friend of mine died, far too young. But my mom’s friend died too, which was very sad and perhaps unnecessary given the particular circumstances. Another extended…
Frozen In Place
A friend died this week – far too soon. A very dear, sisterly, special person I had known and loved for many years. Our friendship had suffered since Mike died…for a lot of reasons…they are personal and not for public airing. But there is no blame to pass around. Relationships can be complicated. And they can be further complicated when someone…
Mother’s Day Thoughts
As widowed people, most holidays will come with some sort of a bump or lump. We are socked by memories; how we spent the last 4th of July together, that empty chair at the Thanksgiving table, that Memorial Day weekend we traveled somewhere fun. This past weekend was Mother’s Day, which carries no less emotion for many of us. Often there are…
My Life With Grief
I write a lot about how strange and even unrecognizable my life is now. I can’t explain exactly how I got here, but I can tell you a little about what it’s like, just over three years after my husband died. I wake up every morning thinking of Mike. Reminders of him are everywhere in my house, on this island, and in my heart and mind. So in…
Trying to Treasure
I’m still working my way back into life on the island from the last two weeks I spent in New Orleans helping out my stepdaughter and her family. Two weeks of helping care for a four year old and a two year old with a newborn there as well pretty much knocks out everything else one might otherwise be doing or thinking about. Having never raised…
The Pulse Beat of Love Over Everything Else~
I have to remind myself, as many of us do, I expect, that this widowhood is, as I learned in AA, a matter of progress, not perfection. Because I, for one, consistently seem to expect more of myself than is realistic. By which I mean, I continually scan my body and mind and heart to see where I am in this grief and why I’m not further along, even…
“It Isn’t Just Me”
It’s less than a week until Mike and I will be flying down to Tampa for Camp Widow. It’s so surreal to think of all that has happened in a year. Life is no less complicated than it ever has been, in fact more so for me. It’s a good complicated, but that doesn’t make it easy. I was talking with another widow friend the other day about this. Like me,…
A Wandering Widow
I am traveling…yes, I’m off island once again. My poor little pink suitcase I bought the year after Mike died had to be taken out of service because the stitching actually ripped open this last trip, it’s been used so much. I can’t remember ever having a suitcase get worn out…and I can’t remember when in my life I’ve stayed in so many…
Camp Widow Lite
It’s been over a year since I attended my first Camp Widow. In less than two weeks, Sarah and I will be travelling to Tampa again to attend this year’s installment. I’d be remiss to say that we weren’t incredibly excited. Not only do we get to see, converse, and connect with widowed friends that we don’t regularly see otherwise,…
Death Day
My friend and fellow widow Karin here in Kona was talking about her husband’s death day last month…the conversation went on before I really realized how that term flew by so clearly and succinctly without us having to explain what that meant, though I hadn’t used it before. Death day. That day, we all know; that day, we all remember, that…
Monkeying Around
In the Chinese zodiac, Mike was a snake. He was born in 1953 which was the water snake. Each animal has five elements, so being that the animals recur every 12 years, if you multiply that by the five elements, the exact animal under which you were born doesn’t reappear again until you are 60. Mike’s full-cycle water snake began February 9,…