“I want my old life back.” I’ve heard a lot of widowed people say that, as I have, and continue to, some days. I miss a lot of little things about being married to Mike. It was a comfortable, familiar life, after nearly 14 years of marriage. I can still hear him shuffling across the tile floors, whistling. The refrigerator door opening and…
Widowed Emotions
Time Spent
Seriously there are just not enough hours in the day. And then when I think about it, there aren’t enough days in the year, or years in a life. There’s always so much to do…so much stuff to deal with, bills to be paid, shopping and work to do…I can’t remember being this busy when Mike was still alive, at least after we closed our…
Words
Twisting. Writhing. Hurting. Shrieking. Vomit urge. Nerves on skin. Racing pulse. Butterfly stomach. Dislocated. Disoriented. Discombobulated. Longing. Yearning. Starving. Reaching. Empty arms. Full heart. Meat-slicer in chest. Passion with no place to go. Love with no release. Wandering. Roaming. Searching.
Nero’s Cry
This week, on an animal sanctuary in Southern Spain, I am surrounded by rock, and the nude, bare earth echoes the inner emptiness I feel. In England, all that green and growing doesn’t match my insides. Here, this rock, this heat, this rugged blend of pine and desert wildflower, poking up from parched earth, speaks to my spirit. Here, amongst this…
Writer’s Block
NOTE: I wanted to start my post this week by thanking everyone who left such lovely and supportive messages on my last piece – Scared of the Anger. To receive your support after allowing myself to be so vulnerable really warmed my heart. I love our widowed community! — At every week’s end, I sit down to write this blog and sometimes…
Forgetting the Pieces
Tonight is opening night of the theater show at Adelphi University that I have been directing and writing for the past month. I am unbelievably proud of this show, it is hilarious and even poignant in parts, and of course I am missing my husband like mad right now. I want him here for this. I want him to be standing there after the first show ends,…
Here and Not. Me and Not.
I know I’m not actually a split personality. I haven’t disassociated from my body. There is nothing really wrong with me because what I’m going through is normal. I know this. This grief, though. Whoa. My brain sometimes slips into my consciousness the suspicion that maybe I am a split personality. Or whatever word it is that would…
Reach Deep, Find Warmth
I have been nestled inside the winter for months, it seems. It has been so cold and dark. Even today, at the end of April, spring struggles to gain a grip, the wind and rain overtaking its warm and promising breezes, painting the hilltops white, again, pouring pellets of icy hail onto the ground. This weekend, there are predictions of frost.
Scared of the Anger
It’s been a year, nine months, one week and two days since my husband took his life and I’m only now just starting to feeling angry. Even typing that, makes me ill. I’m very much NOT ok with feeling angry. When he first died, I had a fleeting moment of thinking ‘how could he have made this decision for us, without consulting me!?’ and…
In the Night
Last week, some of you may have noticed that I did not write a post in here. I would like to aapologizefor my lack of blog posting one week ago Friday. However, the reason I could not post in here is quite unique and different – I couldn’t post because I spent the entire overnight in an empty building, alone, at the college campus I work at,…
This Point
I reached a point in these last few days. I need to stop looking (albeit unconsciously) for this sharp cutting edge of grief in my body to stop. I need to stop looking for that elusive something that will take it away. Cut it away as carefully as a surgeon’s knife, leaving my body and heart as intact as it was for my 24 years with him.
Count on This
I have outlasted all desire, My dreams and I have grown apart; My grief alone is left entire, The gleamings of an empty heart. From Grief Alone Is Left Entire, by Alexander PushkinThe poem from which the excerpt, above, was taken, could be considered rather bleak. The writer speaks of his grief being the only thing he can count on in this world.