It has been a long time since I have really shared my life with a man. Four years, ten months, and seven days to be exact. In that time I have learned to juggle life as a single parent, a single person, a sole provider, the sole tenant on my mortgage…I have become accustomed to the fact that the buck stops with me. For the last two weeks I have…
Widowed Parenting
Shhhhhh!!!
Shhh! Do NOT talk about them. Do not bring them up in conversation! Pretend they don’t exist. Proper widows talk about proper topics. These two topics are socially don’t-ask-just-assume-the-best topics. Only the bold among my friends will broach the subjects.SEX and MONEY Sex with a man I like is delicious, scrumptious, enticing, drug like,…
It Should Have Been ……
…. our 27th anniversary. Friday. The 28th. It should have been. Instead, it was the day our oldest child/daughter graduated from graduate school. And I was with her. Just me. It should have been us. But it wasn’t. It was just me. Again.I get tired of it being just me. For everything. Every big day. Every “first day of ….” Every “last day…
a voice
on my stomach, the pillow over my head, right ear pressed to the mattress. i can hear her voice resonating through the springs below,the vibration reducing the words to nothing more than a mumble. the voice, unmistakable, but she’s not in the room. …
Separate Worlds
A friend of mine told me that his 99 year old Grandfather had just died, and that his wife who is also 99 years old is still living. She wondered how long the wife was going to live now that the husband is gone. “I’m sure it’s not the same for you, but you hear all the time with the elderly how quickly other one dies after the death of their…
Men
I love men. I love their arms, their legs (athletic ones). I love the way they smile when they like me.I love the way their hand touches, attentively, the small of my back, as they usher me through a door of a restaurant to a car, out of some kind of “danger.” I like kissing them too. Yes, I said THEM. I like how their breath feels on my face. Or…
come again
I have gone out of my way to avoid the parking lot of our doctor’s office for two years and two months. I’d park on the other side of the building and walk the long way to get to my appointment. As I approached the glass doors to the dreaded parking from the opposite entrance I’d avoid looking at one specific tree. This tree marked the spot where…
where’s my towel?
for the second time in less than a week there was no towel waiting for me when i got out of the shower.why? because i left the damn thing hanging on the door knob in my bedroom. first instinct, still, 13+ months after she died was to yell, “hey liz! can you please bring me a towel?” fuck. when does that go away? the fact that i left my…
We Missed Him …..
…. at this little girl’s (the one in purple) college graduation this weekend. Very much. But I didn’t cry. If you don’t count the night before. That was the toughest time. For me. He should have been there. These “big events” are both sweet …. and difficult. I never pictured doing them without him. Never. But it was good. We celebrated. We…
Thanks for Being You
Grayson and I had a great day on Sunday. A relaxing morning of pancakes and hanging out around the house, followed by a crawfish boil and dinner at my mom’s. As I tucked him in for the night, I hugged him tight and said the words: “thank you for being you”. He asked me what I meant and I told him how much I love him for being just the way he is and…
new refrigerator
i bought a new refrigerator a couple of weeks ago to replace the one that had been fixed twice and was still leaking water all over my floor.a few days before it was delivered i looked at the old one and realized i needed to clean it. both the inside and the outside needed cleaning so i removed the photos, wedding invitations, recipes, and…
Uncomfortable
It’s been four and a half years. I have lived 1, 650 days without Daniel Dippel’s voice in my ears, his hand in mine, his presence at my side. I have bought and moved to two different houses and owned two cars he’s never seen. My child has grown 20 inches and advanced 4 grades. I have wrinkles I never dreamed of and traveled to places he’d only…