APRIL FOOL’S DAY Laughter is medicine for the soul, they say. Humor is the “glue” that holds a relationship together, they say. But DARK humor? It can become a survival tool too, baby! I say. I am willing to bet my tax refund đź’µ to say that one doesn’t truly know dark humor until you lose […]
Widowed Memories
A Party to Plan
This week we turn the calendar to April. Once again, I will find myself in the month that Tony passed. What feels crazy to me is that this year will be the 5th anniversary of his death. Five years is bananas. It’s hard to believe that much time has passed. A month or so ago, […]
The Loss of Future Memories
One of the things that makes our people “our people,” is the million things we know about them that few / no one knew, and – as importantly, the million things they knew about us that no one else knew. We were also “each other’s people” because of the special 1:1 memories we had, the […]
How Different Grief Is
So last Saturday I was running an errand for my mom when I saw a flyer for a small Psychic Fair at a book store not far away from where I was. I detoured to check it out. There were various psychics in attendance, most of them reading tarot cards. While I am a believer […]
The Bittersweetness of Home Renovations
My siblings and I are renovating my Mom’s family home in the Philippines. Our Aunt passed away last year, and left her estate to the three of us (she and my Mom were the only siblings, and my Aunt had no children). We are in the long process of renovating the home. I was only […]
Livin’ On a Prayer
I spent a good portion of this past week at my now unoccupied home in Georgia. It’s up for sale and I continue to clean out the garages. The “downside” of a third garage is that there is more opportunity to store and thus hang on to items. It’s a museum of memories, a curated […]
Hi, My Name is Liliana…
THE MORNING I WALKED INTO A GRIEF SUPPORT GROUP I sat there, in my car, for what felt like an eternity. It was a cold, overcast Thursday morning in mid-February 2024, just like in the movies. I drove one hour to a city in Virginia to attend a Loss of Spouse Grief Share support Group, […]
Reminiscing … amongst the guilt and the quiet
2025 was a hard year. Really hard. Started that year with my own health scare while Jim’s issues began to escalate. So many doctors, scans, xrays, labs for both of us. Things changed drastically for Jim in May and then I got shingles (but I did get good news on my scare, so that was […]
Learning About Moving Forward from The Gilmore Girls
I love the Gilmore Girls, which originally aired from 2000 – 2007, then was revived by Netflix in a 4 episode series in 2016. The revived episodes follows the current lives of the 3 main characters (daughter, mother, and grandmother) 9 years after the original series ended. I loved most of the revived episodes. I […]
The Grass Still Grows
Mario absolutely hated yard work of any sort. He’s always said he hated it because he was “forced” to do it when he was younger. He was also just incredibly lazy when it came to manual labor. When we bought the house, the previous owner left what was, at the time, a practically new John […]
Shout Out To Our PETS Who Saved Us
I came across an instagram post that talked about why a PET might be the only thing that pulls you forward after a devastating loss (when nothing and nobody else can reach you). It was an amazing post (I will try to figure out how to link it…) and it ends with the statement, “Pets […]
Finding My Gold Mettle
Two years ago today, my mom passed in New York while I was enroute to see her from Florida. She’d suffered a stroke three months earlier in November, just seven months after the passing of my father. She passed peacefully in the presence of family. She also passed knowing of the “bold” move from my […]