If you are widowed, and you are reading this, then you know that missing your person and the life you had together is as constant as breathing – it is a new fact in your new life that you didn’t ask for, and it’s just there, always and forever. The missing of what was never goes away. But then, above and beyond that missing, is a whole other kind…
Widowed Memories
Living Adventurously In Loss
Even though our adventure together did not last a lifetime as we expected – my fiancé and I certainly lived our days adventurously. He convinced me to go skydiving a week before we began dating to my surprise. I am not an adrenaline junky, but somehow he had a way of making me surprise myself by the things he was able to bring out in me. I always…
Grief Rising. But Love, Too
Tomorrow my daughter Rachael-Grace and I leave on our 6 month Nothin’ But Love tour. It will be quite an experience for both of us, filled with every emotion of the alphabet as we honor and remember my husband/her dad, meet people along the way and hear their stories, offer workshops to women around the country and, well, who knows what else. …
Reminder
I know with V-Day having past, that it’s good to have reminders that their love lives on. So I’d like to share this favorite story of mine:It was February 12th, 2009, and I decided to do something I had given up after Michael’s passing…create homemade Valentine’s Day cards. Making cards was one of my favorite things and with it being a dismal…
Slow Dance, Last Dance
So, here I am, writing my first blog right before Valentine’s Day. Right before what would have been our 24th wedding anniversary. I’m getting ahead of myself, I know. I was going to introduce myself, give some back-story, and I promise I will. But maybe, because of the timing of this first entry, I’ll give you a glimpse into the world that was…
Dark and Hidden
I am honest on this blog in that I don’t lie about anything I write. Ever. But I don’t shareabout everything here. I don’t talk about the problems in my marriage with Dave and I don’t talk much about my dating life now. There are some things I just don’t want to write about here. But what would it be like if we all had a moment or a day or a week…
To Be Changed
Last night just before going to bed, for some reason I felt called to go back through some really old journal entries from the years leading up to when I met Drew. I don’t always pay attention to those little cues, but last night for whatever reason I did. I smiled to read some of the entries about our first days together… about how safe and…
Birthday
Friday was Dave’s birthday. He would’ve been 41. I met him nearly 20 years ago. These three facts feel impossible. The day I met him feels like yesterday. I will always think of him as the 23 year old I first met. And his birthday keeps showing up to remind me that I’ll soon be older than he ever got to be. He was a sweet, chubby baby. His aunt…
Another birthday…
…… remembered, but not celebrated. Jim would’ve been 54 today (as I write this it’s Tuesday night). Instead, he’s forever 47. And that sucks. In more ways than one. I hate that his birthday is so close to Christmas …… which is so close to the day he died. This time of the year can be one onslaught after another. And yes, it still brings…
The Ghost Writer….
…… of Christmas Past. I know that most of you out there wish this day was just an ordinary day. Just the 25th day of December, no more, no less.Actually, I know that most of you wish that you could’ve fallen asleep around December 22nd or so and stayed asleep until January 2nd. Or February 15th.I get that.All too well.In honor of all of us,…
The Path
Things are softening. Memories that used to have razor edges that sliced me from the inside are hazier and the edges don’t leave as much damage as they used to. Talking about him often results in a smile almost as much as tears. Most of the time it’s both. And the tears are a bittersweet love story not a fathomless depth of blackness. The idea…
A Little Bit of Christmas
So, eight years ago this past Sunday, December 18th, Don Shepherd got down on one knee on a freezing cold night, in front of hundreds of cheering tourists, underneath the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and said, among many other things: “Kelley, in the middle of the best city in the world and with all these people watching, at the biggest tree…