This photo was taken a year ago, on the 12th of July, and came up on my FB page as a ‘memory’. I hate those memory posts. They are a stark reminder of the sadness and turmoil of this past year, as I have wandered through the days without my husband. But this one was shocking to me. It is a photo of some rocks, near my home, called Worm…
Widowed Suddenly
What I’ve Learned
Losing my husband unexpectedly and learning to live with that loss has taught me so much. I’ve been thinking about this off and on for quite awhile…and while the sum total is far too long for one blog post and the learning process is ongoing probably for the rest of my life, I think there are a few pretty solid bullet points to share. What…
Without Him In It
This week marked another anniversary in the long and winding journey without my husband—his 65th birthday, on July the 2nd. Last year, his birthday came less than a month after he died, and I can’t say I even remember it. I had returned to work the day before, and I must have walked through my day in that office like a zombie on auto-pilot,…
New Life, Old Life
If I’m being 100% honest, which I always am in my writing about loss, there are actually two of me. Version One of me was born on September 26, 1971, and she died on July 13, 2011. Version Two of me was born on the same day, within seconds even, of version one’s tragic death. Version One never saw it coming. A massive heart-attack took her husband…
The Wave
You know the one. That wave of emotion that overcomes us, drowns us, in that rush of remembering all at once, what our reality is now… I still remember (how could I ever forget?) in the first days and weeks after Mike died, waking up before the sun and lying there trying to grasp that he wasn’t here anymore…dragging myself out of bed,…
Love’s Remnants
This week, I have been clearing and cleaning the home that I shared with my beloved husband, and, in doing so, I have rummaged through the drawers and boxes that contain the artefacts of his life. I have given away his posters and much of the artwork that hung on our walls. I have let go of his record collection. I have organised his seemingly…
Anchor
I went to the doctor today. I know. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but believe me, in my world, it is. When my husband died suddenly just under 4 years ago, we were living paycheck to paycheck. We shared his beat up old car to get to our jobs, and we had nothing in savings. We lived in a crappy and small apartment in New Jersey, and we were…
Unintended Solitude
I used to enjoy solitude. My mother tells me that when I was a child, I used to prefer playing in my room by myself with my toys and books to playdates with friends. She said I’d spend hours up there alone, and even thought it was a bit odd for it. Not to say I never played with other kids – of course I did. But a lot of the time, I was…
Grief Like A River
For the past few weeks, I have become weary of this grief. It’s not that I want to deny or forget my husband. I am still talking to him and kissing his photo in the mornings. I still think of him many times throughout the day and remember his words and his mannerisms and the unique way he walked down the hill toward the car. It is just that the…
Everywhere
There was a time, early on in my loss, where I felt like I was constantly on the search for my husband. Every second of every day was spent , in my mind and heart, trying to locate him somehow. People kept telling me over and over and over that he is always with me, that he is in my heart, and all those other cliche’, blah-blah-blah things that…
Room for What Comes
Last weekend, I climbed a mountain with my sangha friends to honour my husband and to raise money for a fund set up in his name. I came home from that mountain imbued with a new courage. My hike up that trail, under the most adverse conditions, has helped me to let go of the fears I have had around conquering other obstacles in my life. I have…
Around the Corner
On July 12th, 2011, during another ordinary day in my previous life, I could have never in a zillion years predicted or seen coming that only hours later, my husband would leave for work and never return again. I could NOT have foreseen that he would be sitting at the computer desk in our bedroom one minute, and the next morning,I would be jarred…