Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, a holiday that has always been one of my favorites. It’s a time of renewal and hopeful warmer days. This past week we celebrated the first anniversary of acquiring Winnie, the puppy I brought home after a visit to our local Winn Dixie. Hard to believe a year has gone by […]
Widowed Milestones
Six Months
Even though it’s a bit cloudy, it’s a pretty lovely day here in the desert. My roses are budding and blooming, leaves have returned to the trees, there’s a soft breeze, 83 degrees. Spring has most definitely arrived. And it’s been six months since Jim died. He created this beautiful backyard, so I always […]
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 […]
Anniversary Missives
St. Patrick’s Day was/is Tony and my wedding anniversary. This year, we should have been celebrating our 19th. Instead, we are always stuck at 14. Walking through the wedding anniversary grief always hits a little different. It is a striking reminder of our widowhood coupled with their death. The other big days, like their birthday […]
Springing Forward
Yesterday welcomed the first official day of spring and for many it didn’t come soon enough. This winter has been a beast and judging from last week’s storm in Michigan where snow seemed to swallow houses and cars whole, winter isn’t lying down quite yet. Being from the Northeast originally I always understood that although […]
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 […]
The Daze of a Week
The first week of March brought a strong sense of nostalgia. When I was prompted to grab my phone and to access my archived memories on Facebook early Monday morning, I realized that on that day, 8 years ago, my sister passed after a long illness. Today was her Service I’m also reminded. I remember […]
Fever Nights
Wow, last week was ROUGH. When I wrote on Monday about being sick, I had no idea what I was in for. I was down for seven days with a fever of 102 I couldn’t keep under control and exhaustion. Every night, I woke up every hour or two either chilled to the bone or […]
Same heart. New chapter.
On June 30, 2021, I hit “publish” with equal parts excitement and nerves. Today, I’m hitting it one last time — with a full heart. Keeping my promise to write here each Wednesday created a map of my path through grief. Nearly five years of questions, lessons, fears, laughter—feeling lost more times than I […]
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 […]
The “Ruff” Road Forward
I’m mindful that the major holiday for celebrating love occurs on my day to post for Widow’s Voice. It isn’t an easy one for the widowed population to say the least. The other day I imagined a Timeline of Personal Love Stories. A visualtion that might help those who still have their spouses and partners […]