WHO AM I NOW? In talking with an old friend yesterday—recently widowed and in that oh-so-new-place of figuring out life without them—I found myself musing about who I am at mile marker 314 days. It’s hard not to compare life “then” with life “now”. The feeling, no longer new but never normal, of something missing; […]
Widowed Emotions
Sometimes…
Sometimes when I come to reflect on what to write about each week, I just know. I know – yes – THIS is the incident, the thought, the feeling, the reflection, the conversation, the insight, the piece of wisdom that LANDED in my marrow. THIS is the poem, the quote, the text. THIS is the […]
Resurfacing 2022
I originally had these thoughts in January of 2021. And, a lot has changed since this time. It is true that a lot can happen in a year’s time. If you told me how different my life would become in a year I would not have believed you. I reread this blog and I stand […]
Stains of the Heart
There have been moments this week where I’ve caught myself thinking more and more about the loss of my dad and Clayton. I had a friend from work pass away after being in the hospital. All I could think about was what his surviving wife was going through. Another coworker sadly lost his mother and […]
Friends
Gary is out of town this week but this blog entry is worth a re-read. Enjoy! Today’s theme concerning moving forward seems to be one that I gravitate toward with some frequency in these musings. In the next week alone I will be meeting Amy and Vik for dinner, and next week have made plans […]
Creating the Community I Crave
Image from Soaring Spirits – Gordon, Michelle and me – Camp Widow, Toronto, November 2018 Back in the early days of widowing, as I heard the likes of Megan Devine talk about the importance of community, my reaction was something along the lines of “Hrrrmph”. I didn’t get it. I didn’t quite see how hanging […]
Sharing A Smile
I miss his smile. It was a gift he had share with me to hold in my memories. It’s been almost four years since I saw him smile in person. Sometimes I forget to remember those moments because he was so sick near the end that he didn’t have the energy to smile. It wouldn’t […]
The World’s Loss
Sometimes I get sad for other people’s loss of Boris. Not only people he knew but also the people who never got to meet him. At times this grief feels worse than my own even though I know it isn’t. Boris was so many things to so many people. And then there are the people […]
WHAT IF . . .
. . . we keep telling our love stories? There is a beauty in love stories. We see it in rom-com’s like When Harry Met Sally. We see it in Marvel Films like WandaVision. Heck! we even see it in the nature stories of whale families and how they care for each other! Love, in […]
Throwing out decades of memories
Main image by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash Our house has long needed a lick of paint, new staining and varnish on wooden floors and stairs, mouldy patches on bathroom ceilings scraped off and refreshed with white paint, new lights/lighting, new curtains sewn so that they match better with whatever is around… And that […]
The Grief Graduate
It’s been almost 4 years since Clayton died. I was struck by that fact this week. I’ve been without him for as long as I was in high school. The biggest difference is that my schooling in sadness occurred much faster than K-12. Year 1 felt like being a scared kid starting up class in […]
When Life Intervenes
With rare exceptions, between Thursdays, the day on which I publish here, I let my thoughts rattle around inside my skull, hoping to catch a topic for the coming week. It’s as much about luck as skill, I suppose, like one of those old fashion handheld ball bearing games where you attempt to roll a […]