Mike was always at the forefront of new technologies… Ha now there’s a sentence which is surprised at having been strung together. Mike was certainly not the most adept at such things…probably what I meant to say was that he loved to see all the techie gadgets that came along during his lifetime and then buy them and try and figure out how…
Widowed Suddenly
A Wandering Widow
I am traveling…yes, I’m off island once again. My poor little pink suitcase I bought the year after Mike died had to be taken out of service because the stitching actually ripped open this last trip, it’s been used so much. I can’t remember ever having a suitcase get worn out…and I can’t remember when in my life I’ve stayed in so many…
Hovering in Limbo
I’ve been spending some time here and there working on the book again, organizing all the pages, thoughts, dreams, adventures since Mike died…rereading much of what I’ve written. It’s been so long I have forgotten a lot of the words I’ve put down, but going through it has brought back much of what I’ve gone through. It’s brought me back in touch…
Death Day
My friend and fellow widow Karin here in Kona was talking about her husband’s death day last month…the conversation went on before I really realized how that term flew by so clearly and succinctly without us having to explain what that meant, though I hadn’t used it before. Death day. That day, we all know; that day, we all remember, that…
Monkeying Around
In the Chinese zodiac, Mike was a snake. He was born in 1953 which was the water snake. Each animal has five elements, so being that the animals recur every 12 years, if you multiply that by the five elements, the exact animal under which you were born doesn’t reappear again until you are 60. Mike’s full-cycle water snake began February 9,…
A Not-So Empty Palette
I pulled a Mike the other day. I was listening to someone playing the flute on a video and went looking for his little wooden flute to try and play it. That was Mike; he had all kinds of silly instruments around and was always trying to play them, especially after hearing something particularly moving or beautiful. He had moments of beauty…
A sea of flowers
So last Friday was the annual Circle of Remembrance memorial held by the Kona Hospice. It takes place at Hulihe’e Palace, an absolutely beautiful spot in Kona town. The building itself has a lot of history for Hawaii, which I thought about a lot sitting there; the place has a lot of history for me personally too. Mike loved it so, so much…
Death blows
I’ve been thinking about death a lot this week…how could you not. Not only do we have our own personal losses always dangling in our hearts, but when well known cultural icons pass away the whole world mourns for them and then it’s everywhere. David Bowie played such a huge role in my youth. He broke down barriers, broke new ground…broke…
Myrtle
I sit on my porch a lot…in Hawaii we call it our lanai. The same table and chairs have been there for years and years since we bought the place in 2001…scratch that, one of our dogs broke our original glass table; the cheap, wooden one there now is one I got at Ikea when I lived in LA in the 90s….ok I’m going off on a tangent… Suffice…
Not Alone and Lonely
Even when I’m not alone at the end of the day, I’m still lonely for Mike. His space can just never be filled. I wrote that line weeks ago but couldn’t finish anything with it. I think because it seemed like a complete thought; that one sentence summed it up for me in so many ways. But since I’ve been back from my holiday travels and looking…
The Last Straggler
It was still dark when I stepped outside the Holiday Inn near the Los Angeles airport where the airline had been forced to put me up after a snarl of delays and cancellations across the country left me unable to make my connection back to Hawaii. It was the final leg in a long day and a half of travel and I felt bleary and grungy, having spent the…
Sadness and Sugarplums
Here’s the sucky thing about being widowed. Well, one of the many sucky things about it anyway. Holidays will always be hard. They will always be tarnished with lost love and that empty chair at the table. There is just no getting around it, and it doesn’t matter how long it’s been. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this year – my third since Mike…