Earlier this week I was greeted by a Facebook post from five years ago. It was written late at night after Rich had spent several days in the hospital and I’d been trying to keep that quiet. But, with someone as outgoing and boisterous as my late husband, that was hard to do. Neighbors started […]
Widowed Milestones
Feliz Cumpleaños My Baby 🥳
My beautiful baby boy, mi chango peludo, mi pedacito de carne… Today, Wednesday, October 14, 2026, you are turning 18. A whole adult, they say. But as your sister keeps reminding you, your frontal lobe won’t be fully developed until you’re 25, so congratulations, you still have seven years left to blame your brain! 😂 […]
Feel what you feel when you feel it
I ended last week’s post on a positive note. They weren’t just words to fill a page. I really did feel more positive than I have since Jim died. I survived those first-year milestones, enjoyed some wonderful times with friends, visited some beautiful spots. I felt ready to make a real effort to figure out […]
The Blind Leading the Blonde, Happy Birthday Quint!
For the past week here in Northeast Florida, we’ve had nothing but steady rain and down pours. Yesterday was the first day we could venture out and stay dry. We are not in the hurricane zone in the panhandle region, and I don’t think our soggy weather pattern is even related to that storm, now […]
It’s been a year of Yin and Yang
shock & grief / hope ~ ups / downs ~ hurt feelings / kindness unexpected disappearances / lovely returns lots of tears / but also some laughter loneliness / community ~ isolation / travel I made it through all of those “firsts” since Jim died – and all of those memories of […]
100 Years, Honored With Love
My mother passed in February 2024. This Monday, October 5th would’ve marked her 100th birthday. Oh how I wish we could be celebrating that milestone and not just in spirit. My dad passed 11 months prior to her’s and I’m always grateful that she didn’t have to be a widow for too long. He […]
Rolling on the River
This Monday, September 28th, would’ve been our 30th Wedding Anniversary. What a beautiful day it was spent with our guests on the River Queen on the Manasquan River in New Jersey. Today, while doing some cleaning out, I came upon a framed wedding photo in the drawer of a piece of furniture I am […]
This is the week …
Posting this blog 16 years to the day after Vern passed … and spending this important week here in Calgary, Canada, honoring both Vern’s and Jim’s passings. Vern died September 22, 2010 … Jim died September 26, 2025 I do find it rather amazing that my loss dates fall within the same week, as do […]
A “Weekness” for Dogs
September brings a month of mixed-emotions for me. This week for instance, I was reminded that five years ago, Rich and I were headed from Georgia to a family wedding in Virginia then on to New Jersey to help clean out our family home in New Jersey. We also made a trip to the Jersey […]
My “Old Florida” Haven
Last Tuesday brought the third anniversary of the closing on the purchase of my log home in rural Florida. So much has changed since I landed in this place that a friend once described as being in the middle of the middle of nowhere. Some days it does seem that way, but there is something […]
Substitute for Life 👩🏻🏫
A little over a year after I lost my husband, I also lost my job. The DOGE closing of our main government client, where we provided media training and marketing support in Latin America, did us in. We hung on for about a year without getting paid, hoping and praying that the contracts were going […]
The Art of Good Memories
Seems like I was just writing about the Memorial Day and Fourth of July holidays and now here we are at the unofficial end of the Summer of 2026 and Labor Day. Weekends, especially holiday weekends, can be hard on the widowed no matter the point in time of our loss. Once a time of […]