I am just a couple short weeks away from the 3 year mark of my husband Don’s sudden death. I feel like I can’t even type that sentence without breathing differently. 3 years. Three. Years. I have no idea how it is even possible. I have no idea how those words could apply to me. I have no idea …. July 13th will be the 3-year mark. On the first…
Widowed Emotions
Live Large
I have so much now in my second chance. I’m forever scarred and forever missing someone I expected to be with until I died, but I get to live on for some reason and I’m doing it well. I’ve been lucky in some instances but in most, I’ve worked hard to be where I am now. I have a lot. I’m in a healthy, loving relationship. I have a beautiful home,…
I Miss You
Sometimes the English language feels so inadequate. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said ‘I miss him’ in the past 11 months since my husband passed away. But each time I say it, I find myself thinking that these three words just aren’t enough to fully capture the ache that is tearing at my body, mind and soul. ‘I miss…
What Was My Point?
I am the Friday writer here at Widow’s Voice. That means, that every single Friday, a blog post written by me goes up. Technically, I write the post late Thursday night, so as to have it finished by the deadline of midnight West Coast time, which is 3 a.m. my time. So, you would think that because I have been writing in here for quite awhile now,…
Chop wood. Carry water.
There is a saying in Zen: Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After Mike died I couldn’t function coherently at all for about a week. I couldn’t focus on the basic necessities of cooking, cleaning, errands…even driving. I really could not drive…
A Beautiful Day
This week brought with it a major milestone – my first wedding anniversary. A special day that I should have been celebrating with my darling but, instead, had to spend alone, as his widow. I’ve had a pretty busy few weeks so even though I knew it was looming, the reality of the day really snuck up on me. One year ago I married the man of my…
Help
Here’s what I’m noticing as I begin to build a life with someone since Dave died. I’m struggling to let myself be helped. I fight against the idea of my boyfriend doing things for me. I’m torn between the desire to let myself be a part of a couple again and split the work up – You do the finances because you love it and I’m terrible at it. I do…
One of Those Days
My car broke down. Again. It’s been acting up quite a bit lately. I took it in and they said it needed new struts. That wasn’t cheap. But it was still making weird noises and behaving strangely. A few weeks ago it didn’t want to start…then it finally did, so I immediately drove down and had a new battery put in. Then a few days later…
Fear
I was leaving the house yesterday when I realized, with amazement, that I wasn’t filled with dread at leaving my cats and house unattended. After Dave died, I would leave the house and immediately my mind would fill with images of the house burning down in my absence, the cats unable to escape the fiery death trap. I would think “I should just…
Empty Fury
I’m sure we’ve all been told that ‘anger’ is one of the phases of grief (coincidently, Stephanie wrote about these on Thursday). I say ‘phases’ instead of ‘stages’ because, in my experience, it’s not a linear process where you graduate from one emotion to the next. Instead, it’s been a messy, complicated jumble that throws us back and…
It’s Only Love. Or Grief. Or Love.
I’m near the end of the first month in the second year since my husband Chuck died. The nights and the days blend one into the other. When people ask me how I’m doing, I ask them in return if they want to hear the polite answer or the real answer. That’s pretty polite of me to ask that of them, isn’t it? I’ve run out of words to describe how…
Routnine. Junior Edition
I’ve written before about how my personal routines went out the window after Ian died. John was only 13 months when Ian got sick, and 16 months when he died. Getting him into a bedtime routine, let alone to going down at a regular time just never got re-established after the initial “everything gone haywire” period. We both developed bad…