Even when I’m not alone at the end of the day, I’m still lonely for Mike. His space can just never be filled. I wrote that line weeks ago but couldn’t finish anything with it. I think because it seemed like a complete thought; that one sentence summed it up for me in so many ways. But since I’ve been back from my holiday travels and looking…
Widowed Effect on Family/Friends
The Last Straggler
It was still dark when I stepped outside the Holiday Inn near the Los Angeles airport where the airline had been forced to put me up after a snarl of delays and cancellations across the country left me unable to make my connection back to Hawaii. It was the final leg in a long day and a half of travel and I felt bleary and grungy, having spent the…
Sadness and Sugarplums
Here’s the sucky thing about being widowed. Well, one of the many sucky things about it anyway. Holidays will always be hard. They will always be tarnished with lost love and that empty chair at the table. There is just no getting around it, and it doesn’t matter how long it’s been. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this year – my third since Mike…
Inspiration
At work the other day I was chatting with one of the young ladies who works at the coffee shop across the way. I had mentioned my late husband in conversation and this girl, young enough to be my daughter, immediately expressed her sorrow for me and went on to tell me about her beloved stepfather who died five years ago. She said he had been her…
The Road to Forgiveness
The face of grief is always changing. Grief never ends – it just shifts and changes, over and over and over again. The past few months, my grief tsunami has turned into something very different than ever before. I almost want to call it “profound”, but that sounds too pompous. I do feel as if this past year or so, I have been able to dig deeper…
Natural Selection
If you have followed Sarah and I’s writing over these months, you know that we’ve now met each other’s families. She traveled to Ohio a few weeks ago, for the first time, and upon arriving, we made sure to arrange time to specifically visit both my parents and Megan’s parents. Terri, Megan’s mother, has sadly had to watch two of…
Many Families, One Tree
Like his parents, Drew’s aunt is someone I’ve gotten much closer to since he died. Yesterday was our first time visiting since I went up to Ohio last month. I went to help her move some furniture out of her uncle’s garage. The 2 hour drive out to his place was just what we needed to catch up on all that is changing in our lives with my move to…
On the road again…
I’m writing this from my parent’s home in Virginia…the house where I grew up, so many thousands of miles from where I now call home. In the past week I’ve also spent time in Austin for a business convention and New Orleans to visit my stepdaughter and her family. I am glad I could work in a visit to my folks while I’m on the…
Turning A New Page
I am sitting in my hotel room in Toronto writing… trying to find the best and most concise way to describe all that has happened in the past seven days of my life. I say “most concise” because I’ve got a bag to pack, and many wonderful widow friends to still say farewells to before leaving Camp Widow Toronto. In a nutshell, the past week has…
A New Addition
Just a few days ago, Sarah arrived here in Ohio to visit for the first time. This is something we have both been waiting months for. As our relationship grew over the phone and Skype, the discussion arose on when she would finally meet Shelby, my parents, and Megan’s parents. When we first discussed, we agreed that now, in September, she…
Widows Walk
I am fortunate to have many beautiful family and friends in my life. Today, though, I feel moved to express just how important all my widowed friends are to me. I know I would not be able to walk through my own life now without them. The day Mike died, as we were making all those terrible phone calls, and just after that word “widow” had…
Hey Bud
I am in a very unique situation, not only being a widower, but in love with a widow. The silver lining to this is that it allows me to see things from two perspectives. I’ve decided that since Sarah hasn’t yet travelled to my home, I would write this week from the perspective of dating a widow. Things like meeting in-laws, friends, and…