Widow's Voice

Widowed Emotions

Falling Backwards

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Over the last week, I have been hit by several large waves of grief. Quite frankly, it sucks. It has been a long time since I have felt like this.

First, I want to talk about triggers and what I think kicked it off for me, so starting with a bit of a rant here. While much of the time, I am and remain hopeful about my life and about us as a society, the triggers that drove me to feel the way I did last weekend were simply signals to me that things are not always going to work the way I hope. That there will be times when I will know bitterness and disappointment. I will feel like I let myself down (and others).

But the key thing is, I know I can do better and even if it’s a matter of taking a tiny baby step forward and seeing the positivity and being grateful for the tiniest of successes, then that is a start. Will I always be able to overcome these bouts of grief? To quote Brian Wilson, “God Only Knows. And God only knows what I will be without” Suzanne…

I am no longer the woman you loved…

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Everything is jumbled inside me.  My life has been muffled since you died.  My thoughts of you are so loud that they quiet everything else in my mind.  Tender thoughts of you hijack me from my own life.  (It must be sad for you to watch.)  Ruminating about you sends me in a tailspin back to the past – to a point in time when you are alive.  Mike, I love my memories of you, but I can not continue to relive our life in my head.  I can not continue to journey backwards.  I can not keep returning to this place where I keep you suspended in time.  I need to take flight and move forward.  I know full well that life is not lived in reverse.  Dammit, I know this but lately I feel like I am losing traction and slipping backwards.   

Covid-19 is complicating my efforts to reengage in living.  Now, like everyone else in the world, I am stuck in a holding pattern.  I can’t exactly make bold moves and reenter life with any real passion right now.  The whole world is paused.  We are all standing still.  Collectively, we are waiting.  Standing still.  Waiting…  

Humanity is waiting until it is safe to reenter life.  And, I am just one person lost in this stillness.  This lack of momentum reminds me so much of early grief.  It is feels far too familiar to me.  This stillness the world is collectively participating in has returned me to the habits of early grief.  I have begun ruminating about you again.  Thought of you consume me. And, these persistent thoughts are robbing me of my own life. *Sigh.  I am so fucking tired of being stuck.  I feel like I am held hostage by my thoughts about a life that died with you.  I desperately need to find respite from my rumination of you my dead lover.  You are the dead man who keeps me from living.  I know this breaks your heart.  I’m trying to change this.

Quarantined from Closure in a Garden of Grief

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We find ourselves surrounded by closures of stores, restaurants, movie theaters, parks and beaches. Those are the closures we can tangibly see but there are so many more emotional situations we are closed off from. The one I’m feeling heavier than any other is a certain aspect of closure with the loss of a loved […]

Breaking Down — Making Amends

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This morning, I had a “break down.”

What does that actually, really mean? Did I truly break down? Did I break and now need fixing? Or, did I really just lay on the carpeted floor of my office and ugly cry for around 10-minutes vacillating between feeling sorry for myself, scolding myself for it and then trying to make myself feel better (by saying it was “okay to not be okay”)?

Now What? (Take 2)

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Still, I can not believe how drastically different my life is without him.  I still ask myself  “NOW WHAT?” …  What the hell am I supposed to do without him?  I don’t have the answer.  In truth, I  have more questions than answers and I think that’s okay for right now.  It has to be because it is what I’ve got.

Maybe, I will find the answers to the questions I ask in the stillness and in the quiet of the lockdown Covid19 has created.  Maybe, while distancing from others, I will become closer to myself.  And, perhaps, I will “hear” what my Soul has to say while I retreat into mandatory solitude.  Maybe, I will figure out the direction of my life when I am forced to be alone – sheltering in place without the man I love.

The Heroic Haircut

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I gave myself a haircut at home this week. Well maybe it’s not exactly heroic to get a haircut but it took a lot of courage to do it. Not because I might miss a spot or screw up and shave a line across my head but because I had to do it myself. It’s […]

Gratitude

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In recent weeks, as I have continued to shelter in place in my house (with four fur kids and no one else to keep me company), I have had a lot of time to think about so many things. What is it that causes me to feel so stuck? Why do I wait until the last possible minute to write these blog posts every week, knowing that I have a deadline (for the posts I publish to other websites in addition to my own)?

It’s simple. I recently stopped feeling grateful.

Yard Work in Progress

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This blog features my tantrum against his death, and that’s okay because life isn’t always wonderful.  Sometimes it’s cruddy and messy.  Sometimes life is a work in progress.  And, sometimes, big lessons are learned while you roll up your sleeves and get dirty doing something very ordinary like yard work.  This is what happened today.

Grief and yard work are both labour intensive and each thing demands your attention at various times.  On Sunday, I gave both the yard and my grief the time they demanded and I’m better for it.

The Power of Your Name

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Dear Tin, It’s so hard to believe that this week makes the second year I’ve had to wake up without you. I don’t know how to describe how 2 years feels like already and forever ago at the same time. Many people don’t understand that grief comes in drops, ripples, waves and flash floods. For […]

Weeds

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This week, I spent a couple of mornings outside in my yard using a weed eater to knock down some of the weeds that have been growing rapidly after lots of rain here in San Diego County over the last few weeks. Weed eating is hard work. Not that I am afraid or don’t like to do hard work, but it is very tiring.

What struck me is that a couple of weeks ago, I had already started to pull weeds in the yard by hand. I have never liked to pull weeds, especially by hand. In that moment, I remembered how many times Suzanne used to plead and negotiate with me to do any kind of yard work when we owned property together previously.